re: OT Ukraine thread - you were not kidding

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some say?

everyone not in bed with bush.

there were no wmds. no yellow cake either.
al quaida was not in Iraq.

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Take off the partisan, #HateBush glasses for just a second. Nearly everyone in government got on board that one for the money train. Reid, Hillary, Powell, W, etc., they don't normally all row together (however real the uniparty is). There WERE WMDs left over from the Soviet partnership and from the Iran-Iraq War. Saddam used them over and over against civilians, Iraqi troops and, yes, in some limited instances against Coalition forces during Desert Storm.

The intelligence on the nuclear weapons program is more complicated. There is no "global" G2X section to deconflict HUMINT sources. Curveball was selling the same data to the U.S., U.K., Germany, France, Russia, etc. His raw intelligence was then "corroborated" among the nations without them all having the capacity to verify him as the same source. Obviously there was an inherent bias to "believe" because believing allowed the war to go forward.

There is also this internal issue that Saddam wanted to pursue a more robust nuclear program, particularly in the mid/late 90s and his people were lying to him about the progress (because they were siphoning off the money and didn't want to get killed for either corruption or incompetence). We intercepted that traffic in many cases and took it at face value, particularly with Curveball seemingly confirming some details.

Did they make a mountain out of a molehill? Yes. Did they know the intel was shaky, particularly on nuclear program? Absolutely. Did the uniparty want a war? No question.

But to pretend this particular war was partisan (at least until Kerry made it a partisan issue in 2004 in one of the most crass, self-serving pivots in my lifetime) at the onset and even through the early phase of the war (folks started to dump W when things went bad, for sure) is ludicrous. 1/3 of the Dem caucus voted for the bill in the House and almost 60% of Dem Senators (and the Senate was 49-49 with Jeffords-I caucusing with Dems at that point) did.

The Minsk Deception and the Planned War in Donbas

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But there was a possible solution before the Minsk agreements.

On May 11, the Donetsk and Lugansk regions of Donbas voted in favor of sovereignty. Putin had asked them to delay the referenda, and, while Moscow respected the will of the people, it did not recognize the results.

Two weeks later, Pyotr Poroshenko was elected president, and he initiated negotiations for a peaceful settlement with rebel leaders in Donbas. The talks were promising, and, by the end of the next month, a formula for peacefully keeping Donbas in Ukraine had been found. At this point, on June 24, the Russian parliament rescinded the authority to use troops abroad. A peace was possible.

But instead, Nicolai Petro reports, the government in Kiev decided that Putin’s decision to withdraw troops put the Ukrainian military in a new advantage, and, instead of pursuing the peace, Poroshenko ordered the launch of attacks to recapture Donbas militarily.

It was that betrayal of the peace process that necessitated the signing of the Minsk agreements. Badly losing the battle, Poroshenko was forced to retreat to negotiating a peaceful return of Donbas.

It was only after Poroshenko’s sabotage of the peace process that the Minsk agreements became the best available solution. He would sabotage those too. But he may have had a lot of help.

The Minsk agreements were negotiated by Russian President Vladimir Putin, Ukrainian President Pyotr Poroshenko, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President François Hollande. Recently, each of Putin’s partners has revealed that the Minsk negotiations were a deliberate deception to lull Russia into a ceasefire with the promise of a peaceful settlement while buying Ukraine the time to build up an armed forces capable of achieving a military solution. If their claims are to be believed, the apparent peace negotiations were a cover for what was intended all along to be a military solution.

The major European power in the Minsk process was German chancellor Angela Merkel. But, according to Der Spiegel, she said in a December 1, 2022 interview that she believes that “during the Minsk talks, she was able to buy the time Ukraine needed to better fend off the Russian attack. She says it is now a strong, well-fortified country. Back then, she is certain, it would have been overrun by Putin’s troops.” On December 7, Merkel repeated that admission in an interview with Die Zeit. “[T]he 2014 Minsk agreement was an attempt to give Ukraine time,” she said. Ukraine “used this time to get stronger, as you can see today. The Ukraine of 2014/15 is not the Ukraine of today.”

Merkel’s claim has been verified by her Minsk partner. In a December 28 interview with The Kyiv Independent, François Hollande was asked if he "believe[s] that the negotiations in Minsk were intended to delay Russian advances in Ukraine." He responded, “Yes, Angela Merkel is right on this point.” He then said, “Since 2014, Ukraine has strengthened its military posture. Indeed, the Ukrainian army was completely different from that of 2014. It was better trained and equipped. It is the merit of the Minsk agreements to have given the Ukrainian army this opportunity.”

It has been plausibly suggested that Merkel and Hollande, in order to fit in with the accepted narrative of the present, have engaged in an Orwellian act of rewriting the narrative of the past. But their account is supported by the other person negotiating with Putin.

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Wow! If that's accurate, it's daming as hell.

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You do realize it is possible to support Ukraine's sovereignty without being in favor of U.S. monetary or military intervention, don't you?

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There is nothing sovereign about a country that sells itself for cash.

This conflict is a direct result of that.

Just had to go check it out and could not resist posting some things in favor of Mother Russia. They got a little restless in their jimmies

RogertheShrubber and I kicked em around for a while and still had time to drink a few beers, now that we are back...

Where is ole reese bobby get on in here and take your arse whooping like a, well like whatever you are

You are either a troll or an imbecile.

As for “what I am” I’m a patriot and a retired soldier.

The truth is that this place is openly rooting for Russia and buys into the idea that Russia is some savior of virtues we value. Which is a joke, of course.

But the OT thread will not entertain any suggestion that what we're doing in that conflict is pure hubris and resembles dozens of other US intervention efforts that ended up far more messy than we intended.

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The truth is that this place is openly rooting for Russia and buys into the idea that Russia is some savior of virtues we value.

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You've got to be intentionally obtuse not to notice that every pro-Putin pro-Russian success story, no matter how poorly sourced, is upvoted and celebrated on this board, and followed by people claiming that Putin is fighting globalism and for Christianity/etc.

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Gonna laugh when their children get drafted into their war.

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Don't laugh for long because your children will be drafted, too.