Pentagon disputes 24/7 theme by State Dept. and Congress that Russia is “stalled” in Ukraine. 3/22/22, Newsweek, “Putin’s Bombers Could Devastate Ukraine But He’s Holding Back”….Reuters, “No Indication of Imminent Russian Chemical Weapons Attack in Ukraine”

 .

3/22/22, “Putin’s Bombers Could Devastate Ukraine But He’s Holding Back. Here’s Why." Newsweek, William M. Arkin…..3/22/22, “No Indication of Imminent Russian Chemical Weapons Attack in Ukraine -U.S. Defense Official," Reuters, by Phil Stewart and Rami Ayyub, via US News

……………….

March 23, 2022, “Pentagon Drops Truth Bombs to Stave Off War With Russia," Joe Lauria, Consortium News

“Two leaked stories from the Pentagon have exposed the lies of mainstream media about how Russia is conducting the Ukraine war in a bid to counter propaganda intended to get NATO into the conflict, writes Joe Lauria.”

“The Pentagon is engaged in a consequential battle with the U.S. State Department and the Congress

to prevent a direct military confrontation with Russia, which could unleash the most unimaginable horror of war.

President Joe Biden is caught in the middle of the fray. So far he is siding with the Defense Department, saying there cannot be a NATO no-fly zone over Ukraine fighting Russian aircraft because “that’s called World War III, okay?

Let’s get it straight here, guys. We will not fight the third world war in Ukraine.”

“President Biden’s been clear that U.S. troops won’t fight Russia in Ukraine, and if you establish a no-fly zone, certainly in order to enforce that no-fly zone, you’ll have to engage Russian aircraft. And again, that would put us at war with Russia,” said U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin earlier this month.

But pressure on the White House from Congress and the press corps is

unrelenting to recklessly bring NATO directly into the war.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, hailed as a virtual superhero in Western media, has vacillated between openness to negotiating a peace settlement with Russia and calling for NATO to “close the skies” above Ukraine. To save his country he appears willing to risk endangering the entire world.  

Meanwhile, Western corporate media, depending almost exclusively on Ukrainian sources, report that Russia is losing the war, with its military offensive

“stalled,”

and in frustration has deliberately targeted civilians and flattened cities.

Biden has bought into this part of the story, calling Russian President Vladimir Putin a “war criminal.” He has also said that Russia is planning a “false flag” chemical attack to pin on Ukraine. 

But on Tuesday [3/22], the Pentagon took the bold step of leaking two stories to reporters

that contradict those tales. [3/22/22, “Putin’s Bombers Could Devastate Ukraine But He’s Holding Back. Here’s Why,” Newsweek, William M. Arkin]

[Newsweek:] “Russia’s conduct in the brutal war tells a different story than the widely accepted view that Vladimir Putin is intent on demolishing Ukraine and inflicting maximum civilian damage—and it reveals the Russian leader’s strategic balancing act,”

reported Newsweek in an article entitled,

“Putin’s Bombers Could Devastate Ukraine But He’s Holding Back. Here’s Why.”

The piece quotes an unnamed analyst at the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) saying, “The heart of Kyiv has barely been touched. And almost all of the long-range strikes have been aimed at military targets.”

A retired U.S. Air Force officer now working as an analyst for a Pentagon contractor, added: “We need to understand Russia’s actual conduct. If we merely convince ourselves that Russia is bombing indiscriminately, or [that] it is failing to inflict more harm because its personnel are not up to the task or because it is technically inept,

then we are not seeing the real conflict.”

The article says:

“As of the past weekend, in 24 days of conflict, Russia has flown some 1,400 strike sorties and delivered almost 1,000 missiles (by contrast, the

United States flew more sorties and delivered more weapons in the first day of the 2003 Iraq war). …

A proportion of those strikes have damaged and destroyed civilian structures and killed and injured innocent civilians, but the level of death and destruction is low compared to Russia’s capacity.

‘I know it’s hard…to swallow that the carnage and destruction could be much worse than it is,’ says the DIA analyst. ‘But that’s what the facts show. This suggests to me, at least, that Putin is not intentionally attacking civilians, that perhaps he is mindful that he needs to limit damage in order to leave an out for negotiations.’”

These Pentagon sources confirm what Putin and the Russian Ministry of Defense have been saying all along: that

instead of being “stalled,”

Russia is executing a methodical war plan to encircle cities, opening humanitarian corridors for civilians, leaving civilian infrastructure like water, electricity, telephony and internet intact, and trying to avoid as many civilian casualties as possible.

Until these Pentagon leaks it was difficult to confirm that Russia was entirely telling the truth and that corporate media were publishing fables cooked up by Ukraine’s publicity machine.

No Evidence of Chemicals

The second article directly undermines Biden’s dramatic warning about a false flag chemical attack.

Reuters reported [“No Indication of Imminent Russian Chemical Weapons Attack in Ukraine -U.S. Defense Official," By Phil Stewart and Rami Ayyub, 3/22/22]:

“The United States has not yet seen any concrete indications of an imminent Russian chemical or biological weapons attack in Ukraine of an imminent Russian chemical or biological weapons attack in Ukraine but is closely monitoring streams of intelligence for them, a senior U.S. defense official said.”

It quoted the Pentagon official as saying, “There’s no indication that there’s something imminent in that regard right now.”

Neither The New York Times nor The Washington Post  published

the Reuters article,

which appeared in the more obscure U.S. News and World Report. 

Never let the facts get in the way of a good story — even if it could lead to the most devastating consequences in history.”

 

 

.........

US is main predator of humanity, War Criminal team of Pentagon and US taxpayers won 37 of 57 attempts to overthrow other governments from WWII to 2014-William Blum…Infantile US President hurls spoiled brat insults at leader of another nation

 .

“Whatever the sympathy we may have for the people of the United States, their country is still the main predator of humanity. We can in no circumstance claim to share their “values."” July 2019, Manlio Dinucci

……………………………………

“Overthrowing other people’s governments: The Master List," by William Blum

“Instances of the United States overthrowing, or attempting to overthrow, a foreign government since the Second World War. (*indicates successful ouster of a government)

• China 1949 to early 1960s
• Albania 1949-53
• East Germany 1950s
• Iran 1953 *
• Guatemala 1954 *
• Costa Rica mid-1950s
• Syria 1956-7
• Egypt 1957
• Indonesia 1957-8
• British Guiana 1953-64 *
• Iraq 1963 *
• North Vietnam 1945-73
• Cambodia 1955-70 *
• Laos 1958 *, 1959 *, 1960 *
• Ecuador 1960-63 *
• Congo 1960 *
• France 1965
• Brazil 1962-64 *
• Dominican Republic 1963 *
• Cuba 1959 to present
• Bolivia 1964 *
• Indonesia 1965 *
• Ghana 1966 *
• Chile 1964-73 *
• Greece 1967 *
• Costa Rica 1970-71
• Bolivia 1971 *
• Australia 1973-75 *
• Angola 1975, 1980s
• Zaire 1975
• Portugal 1974-76 *
• Jamaica 1976-80 *
• Seychelles 1979-81
• Chad 1981-82 *
• Grenada 1983 *
• South Yemen 1982-84
• Suriname 1982-84
• Fiji 1987 *
• Libya 1980s
• Nicaragua 1981-90 *
• Panama 1989 *
• Bulgaria 1990 *
• Albania 1991 *
• Iraq 1991
• Afghanistan 1980s *
• Somalia 1993
• Yugoslavia 1999-2000 *
• Ecuador 2000 *
• Afghanistan 2001 *
• Venezuela 2002 *
• Iraq 2003 *
• Haiti 2004 *
• Somalia 2007 to present
• Honduras 2009 *
• Libya 2011 *
• Syria 2012
• Ukraine 2014 *

Q: Why will there never be a coup d’état in Washington?

A: Because there’s no American embassy there.”

************************************

Added: Biden calling President Putin names and refusing to converse is typical of late empire behavior:  “indifference to other people’s rights, views and interests."…..(Ordinary Americans get the same treatment that Pres. Putin gets. We're either totally ignored or written off as selfish racists). 

3/21/22, “PATRICK LAWRENCE: Imperial Infantilism," Consortium News   .....

“We find that hurling playground insults at the leader of another nation has become normal in post-9/11 Washington….

Question of Statesmanship…

When those purporting to serve as America’s statesmen and stateswomen think calling other world leaders names is properly part of the diplomatic repertoire — a prominent part, I’ll add — we are left with only one conclusion: The U.S. has no one capable of sailing its ship of state, no one in a position of influence worthy of the title “diplomat.”

3/16/22, “President Biden: “I think he is a war criminal.”” Cspan, You Tube 

To qualify it, I’m certain there are plenty of mid-level people trained in the foreign service now in mid-level positions at the State Department. But they do not count, by and large, because what passes for diplomacy in Washington is driven not by skill, experience or subtle intelligence but by fidelity to American ideology and a nose for what plays in Peoria.

Over the weekend I found myself thinking about FDR. I thought about Roosevelt in that famous photograph with Churchill and Stalin at the Yalta Conference. There they are in their overcoats against the cold of February 1945 (FDR in a dashing cape). Then I thought about Biden and his nonsense name-calling and his refusal to even consider an encounter with Putin at this crucial moment….

It’s simply not easy to find truly good diplomats in the post–1945 annals of the American Foreign Service. I am talking about people who understand that one of the primary responsibilities of a diplomat is to understand how those on the other side of the table think and see things, what the other side wants and why. Here’s why they don’t exist anymore: Simply stated, power obviates the need for serious statecraft. The powerful nation has no need of diplomacy. A figure such as George Kennan was the exception proving the rule, and he was an exception because he saw the need to understand how the world looked to the Soviet Union. Henry Kissinger proved the rule: For all his claim to diplomatic skill, Hank K. was a wielder of American power with a calculating mind, nothing more. 

The rest follows naturally: Antony Blinken is not a serious diplomat. Samantha Power is not a serious diplomat. As a diplomat (and various other things), Hillary “He’s Hitler” Clinton is a walking calamity. Biden, who’s spent his career selling snake oil off the back of a buckwagon, is not a statesman of any kind, serious or otherwise. We should consider when, precisely, calling other leaders names became an accepted feature of American “statecraft” (and I insist on the quotation marks.) When, why, and what are the consequences of this undignified practice?

Sept. 11

I date this phenomenon to the events of Sept. 11, 2001. The lineup of secretaries of state and senior diplomats prior to the attacks in New York and Washington is other than brilliant, but it was by and large accepted that talking to one’s adversaries was at least as important (and often more so) as talking to one’s friends.

It was the Bush II regime, with all its kooky ideologues in positions they never should have gotten near, that declared: “We don’t negotiate with our enemies.” This pronouncement was advanced, if you recall, as if it were a sound, baseline rule of wise statesmanship. There were corollaries. Diplomatic contacts with those deemed enemies would “give them credibility.” At the outside there was Richard Perle’s infamous dictum. Perle, one of Bush II’s intellectual ornaments, urged “decontextualization”: We must not put things in context lest we understand them. Instead, we must be confined to reaction (in both senses of the term). Responses to the events of 2001 bear careful interpretation….The American way of defining the world was the only acceptable way.Nothing else need be considered. This is how empires conduct themselves when aware of their vulnerability as the Sept. 11 attacks forced Washington onto its back foot.

Descendants of George W. Bush

Is there much distance between decontextualization and the we-don’t-negotiate-with-enemies bit plus “he’s Hitler, he’s a thug, a dictator, a criminal”? I see none. In this way all post–2001 U.S. administrations descend from George W. Bush —characteristic of late-empire regimes.

One can argue the Obama administration was an exception, but I don’t buy it. At bottom, Barack Obama’s perspective on the world and] America’s place in it was no different from that of any other post–2001 president’s. He tinkered with methods of American power — fewer invasions (except Libya), more drones, a veneer of diplomacy —to obscure continued reliance on power alone and indifference to other people’s rights, views and interests.

[“In 2016 alone, the Obama administration dropped at least 26,171 bombs....That’s three bombs every hour, 24 hours a day."]

 

Look where this has landed us. Every time I hear Biden call Putin or some other world leader, not to Washington’s liking, a name out of the American inventory of epithets it is a reminder of how grotesquely U.S. “statecraft” has been infantilized. We cannot be surprised. How much distance is there between the infantilization of the American public and the infantilization of the post–2001 excuse for diplomacy?…

Americans post–2001 live in a state of intellectual isolation so pervasive most are not aware of it. Name-calling, as a third-grade symptom of the anxiety and insecurity of the past two decades, is a way of expressing patriotism (a comforting euphemism for nationalism). America is left utterly incapable of imagining —to say nothing of creating — new possibilities in a new, multipolar world….

Every time Biden or another American “leader” hurls one of their playground insults at the leader of another nation, (Putin as the Beelzebub du jour) they are reminding us: There will be no diplomacy emanating from Washington because they have no idea how to conduct it. Power and coercion are all they know.”

…………………………………

“Patrick Lawrence, a correspondent abroad for many years, chiefly for the International Herald Tribune, is a columnist, essayist, author and lecturer. His most recent book is Time No Longer: Americans After the American Century. Follow him on Twitter @thefloutist. His web site is Patrick Lawrence. Support his work via his Patreon site. The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.”

…………………………………………..

Two among comments

………………………………………..

“Ian, March 21, 2022

It won’t be long before the US Empire decrees

it unlawful to acknowledge even the

existence of Russia, it’s language, or people.

They really have the hubris in thinking that

they hold the power to legitimate or

de-legitimate the mere existence of other

nations, and so the notion of even talking

to countries like Russia, or responding

to their views, is heresy. They won’t even

cede the millimeter of dominance

required to have cooperative relationships.”

…………………………………………

“Dienne, March 21, 2022 

America is a giant drunken cruise ship run by

a military crew that thinks they’re operating

a battleship in conjunction with a horde

of wasted frat boys looking for their next

score with the actual crew tied up in the

lowest cargo hold while the passengers

party on as the iceberg approaches.”

…………………………………………..

 

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NATO "expansion" under Bill Clinton in 1990s was, as usual, "expansion" of chump US taxpayer dollars. "Emotional" Lockheed would get billions even though new countries signed couldn't afford it. US tax dollars were seized for overages-NY Times, 6/29/1997

 .

Increased “weapons spending could create political and economic problems in Central Europe. "It’s extraordinarily unwise for these countries to shoulder these costs when they must pay the costs of meeting their social needs….These countries are free to buy American arms,...The question is how they pay for it. If the American taxpayer finances them, this would be a direct subsidy to the arms industry."

June 29, 1997, “Arms Makers See Bonanza In Selling NATO Expansion,” NY Times, Jeff Gerth, Tim Weine

“At night, Bruce L. Jackson is president of the U.S. Committee to Expand NATO, giving intimate dinners for Senators and foreign officials.

By day, he is director of strategic planning for Lockheed Martin Corporation, the world’s biggest weapons maker.

Mr. Jackson says he keeps his two identities separate, but his company and his lobbying group are fighting the same battle. Defense contractors are acting like globe-hopping diplomats to encourage the expansion of NATO, which will create a huge market for their wares.

Billions of dollars are at stake in the next global arms bazaar: weapons sales to Central European nations invited to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

Admission to the Western fraternity will bring political prestige, but at a price: playing by NATO rules, which

require Western weapons and equipment.

”The stakes are high” for arms makers, said Joel L. Johnson, vice president for international affairs at the Aerospace Industries Association, a trade group. ”Whoever gets in first will have a lock for the next quarter-century.”

The potential market for fighter jets alone is $10 billion, he said.

Those jets will require

flight simulators,

spare parts,

electronics and

engine improvements.

‘‘Then there’s transport aircraft, utility helicopters, attack helicopters,’‘ Mr. Johnson said — not to mention military communications systems, computers, radar, radios

and the other tools of a modern fighting force.

”Add them together, and we’re talking real money,” he said.”

The first signs of a military spending spree in Central Europe have led the

managing director of the International Monetary Fund to raise the issue with the Secretary of the Treasury.

While the State Department says it is urging restraint on the potential NATO nations,

the Pentagon is enticing them to buy American warplanes.

NATO leaders are to meet in Madrid July 8-9 to vote on expanding the alliance.

The Clinton Administration says

Hungary,

Poland and the

Czech Republic

should be admitted now.

Some NATO members say

Romania and Slovenia

should join now, too.

But the Clinton Administration says Romania’s democracy and Slovenia’s military do not yet meet the alliance’s standards.

After Madrid, the issue moves to the

United States Senate, which must approve

new member states by a two-thirds vote.

‘‘To make sure the Senate knew

this was an important aspect of U.S. security,”

Mr. Jackson said,

his U.S. Committee to Expand NATO

recently gave a dinner for a dozen Senators

at the private Metropolitan Club, two blocks from the White House.

Over lamb chops and red wine,

the Senators heard

Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright explain NATO expansion.

The guest list included Bernard L. Schwartz,

chairman of Loral Space and Communications,

a company partly owned by Lockheed Martin.

Mr. Schwartz personally donated $601,000 to Democratic politicians for the 1996 election.

Lockheed Martin itself gave $2.3 million to Congressional and Presidential candidates in the 1996 election,

part of a five-fold increase in defense companies’

donations to Democrats from 1992 to 1996.

Lockheed Martin wants its F-16 fighters to replace the old Soviet-made MIG-21’s in the hangars of Central Europe.

Norman R. Augustine, Lockheed Martin’s chief executive,

toured Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic, Romania and Slovenia

in April, drumming up business and

supporting the largest possible expansion of NATO.

In Bucharest, following through on an $82 million radar contract, he supported Romania’s entry.

”Norm [Lockheed CEO] has an

emotional commitment

to NATO expansion,” Mr. Jackson said.

In May, Bell Helicopter Textron’s chairman, Webb Joiner, also promoted Romania’s bid as he sealed

a $1 billion deal to sell the Romanians marine attack helicopters.

In Washington, the company’s lobbyist, Dick Smith,

said that Bell Helicopter Textron

was fighting for Romania’s inclusion by ”doing everything we can

to tell their story to our friends here.”

Mircea Geoana, Romanian Ambassador to the United States, said, ”The most interested corporations are the defense corporations, because they have a direct interest in the issue.”

NATO was founded in 1949 [during Truman administration], at the dawn of the cold war, to enlarge the [US taxpayer funded] United States’ power in Western Europe

and contain the Soviet Union

and its satellites in Central Europe.

The end of the Soviet empire [meant NATO’s purpose had ended]

[allegedly] created the chance

to expand the alliance. [It's the exact opposite. End of Soviet empire meant end of NATO's reason to exist. Continuing NATO was just an excuse to bleed struggling, powerless US taxpayers].

”NATO enlargement is in our national interests,” President Clinton said this month at West Point’s commencement.

”But because it is not without cost and risk, it is appropriate to have an open, full, national discussion before proceeding.”

The Administration says the cost of a few nations’ joining NATO may reach $35 billion over 10 years, with the United States paying about $2 billion.

But the Congressional Budget Office says the cost may reach $125 billion over 15 years,

with the United States [taxpayers]

paying up to $19 billion.

Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott said in an interview

that Central European nations

would actually spend less on arms once admitted to NATO than if left out, thanks to the collective security offered by the alliance.

‘‘Feeling more secure, 

they will feel less incentive to build up their armaments to deal with real or perceived insecurities,” he said.

But Hungary, the Czech Republic and Poland all project rising military budgets in coming years, though that spending is still a small portion of their economies,

according to a Senate Foreign Relations Committee report by

Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr.,

a Delaware Democrat who supports NATO expansion.

Hungary expects that joining the alliance will increase its military spending by about 35 percent. Poland projects a 20 percent rise, though a United States Information Agency survey in Poland

found that three-quarters of the people

favored spending more money on health and education, not weapons.

Critics of NATO expansion say weapons spending

could create political and economic problems in Central Europe.

"It’s extraordinarily unwise for these countries to shoulder these costs when they must pay the costs of meeting their social needs,”

said Jack Matlock, a former United States Ambassador to Moscow.

”These countries are free to buy American arms,” he said. ‘

‘The question is how they pay for it.

If the American taxpayer finances them, this would be

a direct subsidy to the arms industry.

If they pay for them themselves, it could lead to real distortions in these countries’ own budgets.”

The prospect of soaring arms spending by potential NATO nations, particularly Romania,

also worries the International Monetary Fund,

whose billions of dollars of loans in the region

are conditioned on fiscal restraint, according to the fund’s officials.

This month, the fund’s managing director, Michel Camdessus,

raised the issue of military spending in Central Europe

with Treasury Secretary Robert E. Rubin,

according to a senior Treasury official.

At the same time, the fund’s staff, in its annual review of the United States economy, reminded the Clinton Administration of its past promises to help

prevent ”excessive military spending” in emerging economies,

including Central European nations.

The fund’s staff urged the United States to handle arms sales

"in a way that 

avoids encouraging unproductive expenditures

and heightening security tensions.”

A senior Treasury official said the United States shared those concerns and had "urged NATO candidate countries to be cautious about buying big-ticket items.”

Still, to entice those same nations to buy American weapons,

the Pentagon has laid out a smorgasbord of

grants, discount loans and free leases.

The Air Force and the Navy

have offered Hungary, the Czech Republic and Poland five-year

leases of F-16 and F-18 fighter jets,

free of charge [meaning paid for by voiceless, enslaved US taxpayers].

That offer came after the three nations asked the Pentagon about the individual prices and availability of more than $8 billion in jets, according to documents obtained by Arms Trade News.

Eight billion dollars exceeds the three nations’ combined annual defense budgets.

Last month [May 1997], Romania became the first country to tap into

a $15 billion defense export loan guarantee fund,

created by Congress in 1995

at the urging of executives like [Lockheed CEO] Mr. Augustine.

The Romanians want the money to buy $23 million in unmanned reconnaissance planes.

And this year [1997], Hungary, the Czech Republic and Poland

received $30 million from a $60 million Pentagon grant program.

Beyond Congress, the White House and the Pentagon,

NATO expansion is a hot issue in the growing subculture of nonprofit organizations, where interest groups form associations with civic-sounding names to advance their causes.

Mr. Jackson set up his U.S. Committee to Expand NATO committee last November [1996]. The committee’s board of directors includes

educators, business executives and lawyers.

Its members donate their time; it accepts no corporate donations.

One of its founders, Greg Craig, recently became the State Department’s director of policy planning.

Now the Romanians, hoping to win NATO membership in the next round of candidates, are helping to set up

two nonprofit foundations in Washington to advance their cause,

said Ambassador Geoana. Financial support for at least one of the foundations will come from Bell Helicopter, Lockheed Martin and other arms makers, the Ambassador and company officials said.”

……………………………………………………

“A version of this article appears in print on June 29, 1997, Section 1, Page 1 of the National edition with the headline: Arms Makers See Bonanza In Selling NATO Expansion.”

..................

 

Mr. Putin, you’re the world’s only hope to stop the US taxpayer funded rabid US global war machine. ‘The vanity of US misleadership is the most deadly force on the planet’

 .

Russian flag.

As someone recently said, “The vanity of US misleadership is the most deadly force on the planet.”

As a US taxpayer, I very much identify with the Russian Federation. US elites have treated both of us like garbage for decades. And they’re getting more rabid by the day: 

Codevilla, 9/23/20: “Our revolution is by the ruling class—a revolution from above. Crushing obstacles to its growing oligarchic rule is the proximate purpose.…Affirmation of one’s own superiority by punishing inferiors is an addictive pleasure. It requires ever stronger, purer doses of infliction, and is inherently beyond satisfaction…The ruling class’s intensifying efforts to oppress those they imagine to be their inferiors is not reversible….It is awakening to its deep resentment–indeed, to hate–for whoever does not submit preemptively.”…(subhead, “The Logic of Hate”, 9/23/20, “Revolution 2020")…US elites lounge behind two vast oceans and throw poison spitballs at Russia. Post WWII agreements setting the US up as "superior" and binding US taxpayers to fund permanent US military presence in foreign countries must be cancelled. All 800+ US taxpayer funded military bases around the world must be closed. US must have no military “alliances.” US is a taxpayer funded military dictatorship which is allowed to print money. It must be stopped, either by breakup of the US into 3 or 4 parts, and/or allowing Americans to vote for neutrality in all wars. Missile and bomb makers in US must be closed. I never knew until a few years ago that Russia or USSR was even involved in WWII. Now I know Russia was the main player in WWII, the sole reason Hitler was defeated. It’s so sad that Russia lost 27 million lives in the process.

The late Angelo Codevilla considered Sergei Lavrov “the world’s top diplomat.” In his Sept. 2021 letter to David Goldman, Codevilla notes US ruling class is treating Russia horribly, but is treating much of US population even worse:

“Again and again I’ve counseled people to read Sergei Lavrov, who I consider the world’s top diplomat. He is also in tune with Russian public opinion….

Putin seems made of the same stuff. What is going on is, as you write, disgustingly, moronically unnecessary.

But it is sanity itself compared with our ruling class’s attempt to make war on perhaps the majority of the US population. Yes, I know that defeated elites turn their resentment onto domestic opponents. But doing it to this extent is sheer madness.””

……………………………………………

Below, 4 comments to recent Diana Johnstone article, 3/16/22, “DIANA JOHNSTONE: For Washington, War Never Ends,” Diana Johnstone, Consortium News

………………………………..

“Vera Gottlieb March 16, 2022 at 16:35

Let the Americans experience a war on their own territory – let them experience all the suffering that comes with war – let them experience the misery – and, for all the nation’s nefarious behaviours,

let them experience

the hell so many countries are experiencing because of Yanx’s [Yanks'] meddling.”

……………………………………………..

“Kay Weir, March 16, 2022 at 15:32

………

A brilliant insight, that the conflict in Ukraine is related to World War 2 which never ended for America because war was very good for its "economy.” While for Russia WW2 was utter devastation with 27 million dead, and thousands of cities destroyed.

I cant bear to think that Russia may be trapped in this conflict, wearing it down. And then there’s the nuclear option –

the madness of America’s war economy,

devoted to death and destruction

at the expense of their own impoverished society and people,

and the rest of the world.

Those in charge behind the scenes have lost basic intelligence, which means the entire world is at risk.”

…………………………………………..

“Lois Gagnon, March 16, 2022 at 15:15  

.......

The vanity of US misleadership is the most deadly force on the planet. Most of the world is painfully aware. The foolish Europeans seem incapable of learning.

It’s up to the people of the US to take this empire down.”

………………………………………………

“RS, March 16, 2022 at 16:38

Lois, if we lived within a democracy that took to heart the will of the people we could take the empire down. Unfortunately, we don’t have that power. If you read the American newspapers you will not find a shred of information about the Donbass or the civil war that resulted from the coup. I certainly tried in my letters to the editor. These were not published. All letters demonizing Putin as a latter day Hitler is printed. The United States is an ordered society that advertises that it isn’t.”

…………………………………

Added:

2/23/22, “US Foreign Policy Is a Cruel Sport," Diana Johnstone, Consortium News

“For a generation, Russian leaders have made extraordinary efforts to build a peaceful partnership with “the West,” institutionalized as the European Union and above all, NATO. They truly believed that the end of the artificial Cold War could produce a peace-loving European neighborhood. 

But arrogant United States leaders, despite contrary advice from their best experts,

rejected treating Russia as the great nation it is,

and preferred to treat it as the harassed bear in a circus.”…

…………………………………

Added: US Grim Reaper: “State Department’s Mission: Coup d’etat,” the technocratic tyranny, 2/27/2016

 

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