June 20, 2022

An Assessment of Putin's Little War

An extremely dry and turgid discussion between eggheads on the Ukraine situation that is, nevertheless, worth watching because these guys actually acknowledge how much we don't know, as well as some surprising assessments regarding what we do. 


Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 07:25 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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1 The panelists are pretty malicious, as you expect from the CIA crew. And, they are also ... how should I put it... not "dumb", but perhaps "believe their own bullshit". It was especially apparent in the cyber discussion, which was at the absurd levels of utter nonsense, about what you'd hear when people talk computers on TV. Microsoft is a biggest factor, really. 1500 ISP providers and no word as to which ones are backbone providers and which are retail providers. They are just living in the fantasy world of cyber, which they created by misusing the taxpayer money.
But the lowest part was when Elliot Cohen started talking about giving Ukrainians more terror capability, which he thinks is essential (about 38:00). Even as we speak, Ukrainians are increasing the terror bombardment of Donetsk, trying to kill as many civilians as possible. It is their whole strategy - kill, kill, kill. They do it even as it drains their military resources that are needed elsewhere, just like Hitler's machine kept sending Jews to gas chambers when trains and locomotives were in a short supply, all the way to the May 1945.
So, despite all this going on, Cohen literally claimed that Ukrainians "would not" use the long-range strike capability in order to strike deep into Russian territory, and inflict terror upon cities other than Donetsk. Why is he claiming this? He clearly does it on purpose, it's not a slip of tongue.
There may be a couple of explanations.
One, he (and his colleagues in CIA) may just want to turn the heat up, just to see if they could force Russia to use nuclear weapons. Then, Russia would be the bad guy for sure, and not just someone stopping the Ukrainian Nazis.
Or, they may think that increasing the pain upon the Russian population could bring about a regime change. Once Ukrainans land a few missiles at the busiest streets of Tula, Russians will see that they are vulnerable, and hopefully blame Putin.
Well, it can be that he's just an idiot, but don't bet on that.

Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at Tue Jun 21 17:58:15 2022 (LZ7Bg)

2 I am spectacularly unconcerned if Russian targets get hit. Russia is the aggressor here. It beggars belief that a grotesquely corrupt country with literal NAZIs in its parliament could ever be the undisputed "good guy" in a conflict but Putin has made that happen. Impressive.

However, there are a couple of things in the video towards the end that do bother me about these eggheads. There is a sense of whiplash comparing the earlier part of the video where there is a, frankly humble, acknowledgement of what are called "unknown unknowns" and that so much of the establishment got EVERYTHING wrong  and the very end of the video where everybody agrees that the goal of the support of Ukraine is now not a Ukraine free of Russia, but completely ending Russia as a major power. 

6,257 Russian nuclear warheads say "Hi!".

This does not seem to have been given a lot of thought.

My God. Talk about mission creep.

There seems to be a deep misunderstanding of the endurance resolve and tenacity of the Russian people, who have endured ungodly crap since the Mongols. They are NOT going to just roll over to make some euro weenies happy. The sanctions aren't working, and cutting off Russia's internet is likely to have left most Russians  with ONLY Russian state TV and such. 

The other thing that bothered me that I'd missed the first time I watched it Was the comment about how Americans are going to have to get used to high gas prices if we are going to sanction Russia. 
UH, no. No we don't. We were energy independent two years ago and we can be again. If it is necessary to sanction Russia, that should not affect gas prices to any great extent. 
I don't know enough about the cyber discussion to do anything but nod in somewhat bewildered interest. 

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Wed Jun 22 09:08:07 2022 (aw2/F)

3 Given the the fact that the Slow Joe and his corrupt critters are spending more money than Taiwan's entire annual defense budget to buy weapons for Ukraine instead of, say, increase funding to the Navy or buy weapons for Taiwan, we certainly are doing a wonderful job of giving Ukrainian arms dealers Western stock to peddle after this is all over.

Before anyone jump on me - No, I am not supporting Russia.  Far from it.  But I am not an enthusiastic supporter of the Ukrainians and I believe the way the US and the West have been supporting the Ukrainian war effort has been badly mistaken and has the high probability of leading a wider war.

Posted by: cxt217 at Wed Jun 22 15:10:47 2022 (MuaLM)

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