re: Latest Updates: Russia-Ukraine Conflict

Looks like Biden is a Russian asset now.

Makes you wonder if there’s more to this Griner shite than meets the eye because it’s so stupid.

Even if it actually is what it is at face value, though, that doesn’t really have much to do with anyone else except Biden.

Right on line with Biden’s master Obama though. He traded Bowe Bergdahl for 5 high ranking Taliban commanders. A guy that walked off on his own from his base and then had several real soldiers lose their lives in attempts to locate him. We are a joke on the world stage.

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I’m ashamed to call myself an American this morning and that hurts. You just traded the merchant of death for a law breaking, America hating liberal while leaving the real American deserving to go home still sitting g in a Russian prison. So all you have to do today is say how much you hate America and how racist it is and you are a hero I guess. I’m just beyond tired of this. This shouldn’t be political this should just be common sense and our current President just proved he has none. I don’t want to hear one more time how Trump was a Putin lover when Biden just agreed to this bull shite deal.

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This x 10000000000000000

My Twitter feed is full of people celebrating enthusiastically.

I think Griner is a celebrity in the sports world and among black Americans.

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could pick her out of a lineup before she got busted for smuggling drugs like the idiot she is?

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Anyone who couldn't pick the 6'8" woman out of the lineup wouldn't be very good at this.

I'm not telling you not to be upset -- you have good reasons to be. I'm just telling you why I'm not surprised in the slightest.

And FWIW, I think President Trump would probably have done the same thing.

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It is another example of if the other side is for it I am against it, even though I was for it last week. A rot that infects all sides of the political spectrum these days.

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this is what kills me on both sides. you either have princples or you dont.

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The head of Russia's chief propaganda outlet, RT, decried the prisoner exchange of Brittney Griner and Viktor Bout Thursday as a sign of U.S. fascination with identity politics, since it left out a U.S. veteran, Paul Whelan, who remains imprisoned in Russia.

Since Mr. Whelan's arrest on espionage charges in Moscow in 2018, U.S. officials have tried to free him in various trades involving Mr. Bout.

Margarita Simonyan, the head of RT, said that instead of freeing Mr. Whelan, the U.S. exchanged Mr. Bout for a drug-using basketball player, referring to Ms. Griner’s conviction in August of drug smuggling and possession of less than a gram of hashish oil, which she said she had in her luggage by mistake.

“They wanted to exchange Bout for Whelan, but they exchanged him for Griner," she tweeted. "That's because when it comes down to a heroic spy and decorated Marine who suffered for his service to his country and a drug-addicted black lesbian who vaped hashish, the modern American voter makes an obvious choice."

"That's why we will win," she added.

RT, funded by the Kremlin, has been banned in much of the West for disinformation and promoting conspiracy theories.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Thursday he regretted that Mr. Whelan wasn’t also freed in the swap. He said in July that the U.S. had made a "substantial proposal" to free both Brittney Griner and Mr. Whelan, a former U.S. Marine who denies he was involved in spying activities.

Mr. Whelan’s twin brother, David, said in a statement that “the Biden Administration made the right decision to bring Ms. Griner home, and to make the deal that was possible, rather than waiting for one that wasn’t going to happen.”

But he also said that the news was a “catastrophe” for Paul, asking: “How do you continue to survive, day after day, when you know that your government has failed twice to free you from a foreign prison?”

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WSJ again

Prisoner exchanges always seem unbalanced. I would argue the only balanced one was Powers for Fisher AKA Abel. However, the head of CIA counterintelligence vehemently argued against it. Angleton (sp?) argued Powers had spilled everything he knew and they had not gotten everything out of Fisher yet. Who knows the truth. Powers' wife was a piece of work though, she was apparently always drunk and cheating, just what you need in a wife of a spy plane driver. The CIA actually had her committed so Powers wouldn't hear of her craziness and get even looser lips than they thought he had.

All the prisoner issues are political to some degree. Audrey Lorber was arrested on weed charges in 2019 and was just released after about a month in jail with her fine dropped. Fogul is still there on weed charges but he had a lot more than Griner or Lorber and all his was hidden. We got Trevor Reed back in April convicted of assaulting a cop and traded a drug trafficker for him. At least he was by all accounts a good Marine compared to Whelen who was kicked out of the Marines on a big chicken dinner for trying to steal $10k and a couple of other charges. There have been some knighting for Whelen in other threads but I suggest if you have that inclination read up on him, he is suspect as hell or just a weird dude that tried to make himself seem more important than he was and it bit him in the arse.

I wouldn't have traded Nic Cage I mean Bout for Griner or Whelen probably not even both. I probably would have traded Yaroshenko for Reed because of all the recent Russian arrests and convictions of Americans his was likely the most trumped-up charges and his record and actions in the US appear to be spotless.

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I admit to being a bit of a devil's advocate on TD at times just because I occasionally like to scream into the void of an echo chamber. It is in my nature to make counter-arguments when it seems the stream is only flowing one direction.

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I think this is often an extremely healthy mental exercise on several fronts

It helps you learn debating skills, it helps form empathy for the opposing views of an argument, and ultimately it helps strengthen your convictions in your own argument as you learn to fortify/adapt your positions against attack vectors. Humanity would greatly benefit if everyone tried this every now and again.