Note: The Monday Taki post is up and this week I decided to change gears and write about a past hero of the cause. Sunday Thoughts was on break while I was away at a secret handshake meeting, but I have posted some travelogues. I will be posting some more detailed information about the event this week so if you do not have a subscription, get one. SubscribeStar and Substack.
Over the weekend news began to leak out about a series of calls between Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and his counterparts in Turkey, The United States, France and Great Britain. The purpose of these calls, reportedly initiated by the Russians, was to warn of the possible Ukrainian use of a radioactive bomb, a dirty, bomb, in the coming days or weeks. The point of the bomb was to escalate the war in order to force NATO to directly intervene in the conflict.
The Russians also reportedly said they had intelligence that the Ukrainians were getting help on this project from the British. It is largely assumed that it was the British that provided the intelligence and logistics to smuggle the truck bomb onto the Kerch Bridge two weeks ago. It is also assumed that the British helped the assassin with the murder of Alexander Dugin’s daughter. The British have been intimately involved with the war since the very beginning.
Interestingly, British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace denied the claims but then quickly added that the Russians should not use this thing they deny is happening as a pretext for escalating the war. The American version of this bit of double-speak was almost identical, suggesting some level of cooperation. Given that various Biden administration officials have been claiming the Russians will use nukes on Ukraine, this has the look of the kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar.
Another clue about what is really going on is the fact that former CIA director General Petraeus has been sent on a public relations tour to prepare the media for the entry of American troops into Ukraine. Here he is three weeks ago talking about a hypothetical that no one considered plausible at the time. Here is a story about the 101st Airborne training in Poland for the purpose of joining the fighting in Ukraine. In other words, the narrative makers in the West have been hard at work.
Interestingly, the Ukrainians were not ready for their usual story telling and had to scramble in response to the Russian calls to the West. Zelensky does not do anything without permission from his Western advisors who are always in the room with him, so it would seem the Russians caught everyone by surprise, not only with the calls but with making sure they got into Western media. Zelensky then came out with the claim that the Russians planned to nuke themselves as a false flag.
One cannot help but detect a pattern with the false flag business. The Ukrainians claimed the Russians killed Dugin’s daughter as a false flag. They claimed the bombing of the Nord Stream pipelines was a Russian false flag. They made the same claim about the Kerch Bridge and the shelling of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plan, which is held by the Russians. Someone in the Zelensky media team has a bizarre obsession with this particular narrative structure.
Putting that aside, we have two competing stories. The Russians, who have repeatedly ruled out using nuclear weapons, but have been warning that this war could easily escalate to nuclear conflict, are saying that the Ukrainians are planning to use a dirty bomb and blame it on Russia. The West is saying they are totally innocent and it is the Russians who are planning to use a dirty bomb on themselves and then use that as an excuse to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine.
If you are inclined to believe what you hear from Washington and their media organs, you will want to accept their version of this story. If you are skeptical of the people who lie to you every day about the most trivial matters, then you are probably thinking that the Russians are telling the truth. It is impossible to know the truth at this point, but one should always leave open the possibility of a third option. Both sides could simply be psyoping one another on this issue.
Regardless of the truth, it reveals a serious problem for the West. They have pushed all of their chips into the middle of the table, betting on the prospects of a deeply corrupt country run by a narcissistic sociopath. The one thing everyone can agree upon is Zelensky is just an actor hired to play the role of president. This is the role of a lifetime for him and he has thrown himself into completely. Much now depends on the mood of an actor high on the attention of a global audience.
Tucker Carlson touched on this last week when he highlighted the absurd demands being made by Zelensky. This pint-sized potentate is calling Western media demanding that he be supplied hundreds of billions in aid. If an American mayor or governor made a tiny fraction of these demands he would be pilloried. It has somehow become completely normal for this nut to demand massive sacrifices from Western people in order to perpetuate a war with Russia.
This is not without president. America’s unconditional commitment to Israel has led to several disastrous wars against Islam. Officially, the Afghan war cost $2.3 trillion and the total bill for the neocon wars is $5.8 trillion. Not all of this can be laid at the feet of the Israelis, or the Saudis, who also played a role in these wars, but it is the danger that comes when large countries make open ended commitments to defend small countries in their wars with other countries.
The Founders strongly opposed these sorts of foreign commitments. Washington explained the danger of “entangling alliances” in his farewell address. John Quincy Adams echoed those same sentiments a generation later. When a nation considers another nation a friend, it inevitably takes on the friends and enemies of that nation, which inevitably warps the decision making of the country, putting the interests of foreigners ahead of the people.
It is important to remember that the last two European wars were due in large part to great powers aligning with minor powers. It is fair to argue that war with German was inevitable, but the British commitment to the Poles certainly guaranteed it. Western commitments to Ukraine look a lot like the same error. Nuclear war now hinges on the mood of an emotionally unstable circus performer. The so called great powers are now led around by a tiny corrupt backwater.
This will not end well.
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Also the rumor at the time was that when the Ukes blasted that Russian ship that the Brits did everything but push the “launch” button on the missile battery.
Zman- Remember your great post from last October on the GrillCons- People do not care and most people are idiots- We fell for the normal flu “pandemic” and now all that matters is the Phillies are in the World Series. I read post all over blogs about how a war with Russian will be over in one day and how sons and daughter just finished basic training and are chomping at the bits for war.
“There is still considerable confusion about our present form of government, which is a form of the managerial society predicted by Burnham, and outlined in intricate detail by Sam Francis. However, their works are still largely unread, which is a shame. If there was ever a case of predictions made and verified, their books are it.”
https://www.wmbriggs.com/post/43124/
In 1987 in the city of Goiânia, Brazil there was an incident with a mishandled radiation source from a radiotherapy unit that killed 4 and injured 249 people:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goi%C3%A2nia_accident
The source contained 93 grams of caesium chloride, a salt based on the highly radioactive caesium-137. It is one of the most common byproducts of nuclear fission in reactors and weapons.
The Russians have shown an almost autistic amount of adherence to the rules and global norms. They’ve also shown a shocking amount of restraint.
The collective West has done the opposite of both things. Historically and in this conflict.
Point Russians. The Ukes ‘ill nuke.
Dear Z. I love it when you interact with the comments and always scroll down to catch the shaded bits where your responses are. More please …
[…] The Great Mistake […]
The Ukraine war, like the Islam wars, is brought to you by Israel and the neocons, most of whom are Jewish.
I didn’t know Bush and Cheney were Jewish. Thanks for the laugh.
Bush and Cheney aren’t Jewish, and neither are Powell and Bolton. But that’s not true of Perle, Feith, Wolfowitz, Albright, Kagan, Kristol, Rumsfeld, Abrams, Frum, Kristol, and Wurmser. Just a reminder that 1.8 to 2.0 percent of the US population is Jewish. Weird, isn’t it?
Rumsfeld was not Jewish despite the second syllable of his surname
The Bushes and Cheney are neocon stooges for Israel.
Thanks for the bigger laugh.
The Muslims would (and have historically) enslave you in a heartbeat if given the opportunity. The only reason their slave raids stopped in Europe is because we became far more technologically advanced. There’s this weird blind spot on the DR for the Muslims, and a tendency to empathize with them. Probably because the DR sees Israel as an enemy. However, the enemy of my enemy is certainly not my friend.
It not empathizing with them, its the understanding that if we were not over there doing fake democracy wars for decades, they would not be over here.
With friends like these…
Sometimes you get to know your “friends” well enough you realize why you’re basically they’re only friend, and maybe what everyone said about them is, GASP, true.
Really need that edit button… their*
I have no illusions about the Sand Hutus. But at least they don’t worship nuggras and sexual deviants, and they don’t put Karens in charge of their society. They also have a very strong belief in their traditional culture, and I can respect that.
“But at least they don’t worship nuggras and sexual deviants, and they don’t put Karens in charge of their society.”
But their representatives here are the primary architects and enforcers of what you hate.
I’m talking about Muzz, not Finkels.
Arabs are still the seed of Abraham. Their family squabble with their half-brothers is over inheritance rights.
Oddly, the Bantus, who rampaged and slaughtered up and down Africa for 2000 years, originated in the east/northeast as newcomers. Were they the black “Guterian beast-men” used by the proto-Semites to destroy Mesopotamia?
Something in that Levantine nucleus is dark, dark and terrible.
The Bantus originated in, roughly, the Cameroon area, and from there marched on to colonize the entire southern triangle of Africa. So, no northeast in their story, and no contiguity with the Levant.
“The Muslims would (and have historically) enslave you in a heartbeat if given the opportunity. ” A tiger would eat my toddler in a heartbeat if someone (lets call him Izzy) wearing a “I hate tigers” shirt… threw my toddler into the tiger enclosure at the zoo. Obvious correct response is that I take the advice of my best friend Izzy and spend all my money on a preemptive campaign to kill all tigers in the jungle of India. Izzy borrowed my rifle but will not provide any material support or venture into the jungle himself though, he says Tigers… Read more »
Looks like Elon has been properly re-educated and has promised to keep Starlink on even if he doesn’t get paid for service.
Neocon freak Dave Frum is still shreiking that USG should just nationalize Starlink, for the greater good.
https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/musk-makes-new-promise-ukraine-amid-starlink-drama
Here’s a reason that he can’t say no. Play in the Casino, chances are good that the House will win; younare not permitted to leave the table. https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/10/21/1062001/spacex-starlink-signals-reverse-engineered-gps/ Ukies were making use of Statlink for military purposes, but the Russians said, “Au contraire”, apparently spoofing their system. At the end of my supplied link, Musk, resignedly or not, said that they would have to invest more in “security”. Massive assistance for Tesla, and SpaceX from the Feds; and if that wasn’t enough for him to “see the light”, threats of Federal investigations to protect poor, poor Twitter from him. Looks… Read more »
Zman – Excellent Takimag piece. Thank you for heaping obloquy on the oleaginous Dinsesh D’Souza. I’ve yet to see a single non-White conservatard who’s not a grifter par excellence . . . and every last one of them marries a White.
From Zman’s piece in today’s Takimag: Arguably, Sam Francis was the first victim of cancel culture. There have always been people in politics who clash with the consensus, but Francis was the first guy to be cast out like a demon by the great and the good. His crime was pointing out uncomfortable truths about the human condition that contradicted the emerging new religion of liberal democracy, so he was banished, and in a very public way. While the column about Francis is excellent, I can’t resist the urge to nitpick. Jimmy the Greek (JtG) was “canceled” for making race… Read more »
Didn’t mean to italicize that final paragraph above. Oops!
I thought about that, but I would place those in a different bucket. There was not a concerted effort to destroy these people in advance. People simply responded to Jimmy the Greek saying bad words on TV. In other words, Francis was the first guy to be targeted for political assassination. They went looking to make a case against him. Guys like Jimmy the Greek made the case on their own.
The Birchers are a different issue entirely. Many of them were clearly nuts.
Good points. The Jimmy the Greek controversy was certainly not a pre-planned maneuver to destroy the guy’s reputation — as it clearly was with Francis. The fact that the lowly cretin Dinesh D’Souza played the decisive role in sabotaging Francis makes the whole matter even more tawdry that it might have otherwise been. D’Souza could be the poster boy for “conservative” grifting. I doubt that adulterous scoundrel has any genuine principles at all. That so many conservatives have fallen for his schtick does not reflect well on them. We need smarter allies.
Whenever I begin to think normie has revolutionary potential, I think about Dinesh D’Souza and the thoughts go away.
https://thefederalist.com/2022/10/20/we-need-to-stop-calling-ourselves-conservatives/
This is along those lines
Around the same time as Jimmy the Greek, the GM of the Dodgers got fired for make common sense observations about blacks and why so few had been hired as coaches and front office jobs in Major League Baseball. He was answering questions from Ted Koppel on Nightline though and made the mistake of speaking candidly, no one was out to get him.
Al Campanis was the man.
Sam Francis was influential. He was a syndicated columnist and the first writer to win the Distinguished Writing Awards of the American Society of Newspaper Editors for editorial writing two years in a row, in 1989 and 1990. He also was a major influence on his close friend Pat Buchanan and his campaign for president in the 90’s. Obviously he was an enemy of the Democratic party but also the Republican party, relentlessly calling them the “Stupid Party.” Since the Republicans were all about promoting America as an “idea,” or the “Proposition Nation,” and Francis pushed “Blood and Soil Nationalism,”… Read more »
Rishi Sunak to become first person of color to lead Britain. Ha ha ha
That “honor” goes to Benjamin Disraeli.
Nope. He was white.
If jews are white was the (definitely not exaggerated) holocaust a genocide against whites?
If yes… Does the ADL and the state of Israel agree with your answer? Why or why not?
Given jews don’t seem to think they are white and the fact he was sephardic then it seems he fits that just fine.
Some Finkels consider themselves white, but I imagine the majority do not.
White is shorthand for White Western Christian. Turks, Iranians, Afghans even are phenotypically white, yet not Whites, but Muslims. That’s the critical factor of their identity. Equally, collectively Jews aren’t White.
Individuals from both backgrounds can become/choose to be White, obviously. Yet in political terms that doesn’t matter, for the time being and the foreseeable future.
And now we have a new British PM who attended Stanford, was a hedge fund manager in the US, and is rumoured to have made billions doing so. If I’m Washington DC, I am very happy one of “our guys” is top politician in the UK, if only to keep up the tactics in Ukraine.
Sunak wouldn’t be there is he were not one of “D.C.’s” guys. The British get a Pajeet, we got a dementia patient. In addition to the raw puppetry, there is a degree of sadism in all of this.
This will not end well. It seems like nothing ends well an a daily basis these days. I have a friend ( old guy) 70’s I haven’t talked to I a few months. He’s got the blue and yellow flag hanging in his camera repair shop. Sends lots of money to pat Robertson, wants to know where I’ve been via text. Anything I say to this guy is going to upset him. Was going to send today’s post to him and decided not to. He’s in deep and won’t believe anything but what he hears on boomer radio.
Send it to him. He needs to see it and maybe it will turn him around a little. Never give up trying to reach someone up to a point. He sounds like he might have it in him to be saved.
I agree. A few months ago I made mention of a conversation with a friend of mine who was born/raised in Kiev and how me towing anything other than the official line, sent him off into a violent paroxysm.
I forwarded this column to him today and I got a response of, “Well I never said my government was perfect and yes, I cannot stand Zelensky.” He was also enraged about the fact that Zelensky bought his folks an 8 million dollar home in Israel. This guy is VERY well schooled on the “J” question. So yes, forward it along!
It is said that Nature abhors a vacuum. What I find so amazing about this situation is that the US Elite are seemingly fighting on all fronts without any real coordination or “executive function” governing the crazed hyperactivity. Vaxx war, race war, open border, China trade war, Ukraine war, financial collapse, election “irregularity” etc. It’s like the Elites are looting a convenience store in Philly. Could it be that nobody is in charge and that all the factions and power centers in DC are engaged in grabasstic pursuit of narrow gang agendas? People say Obama is calling the shots, but… Read more »
Obama hasn’t done much of anything since he left office. Any attempts to get back in the spotlight have gone poorly for him. He wishes he was a power broker but the older white neoliberals still cling to the Clintons and the firebrand anti-white progressives have largely moved past him. Most of his top lieutenants have gone on to do other things without him. He was a good zeitgeist of the “nudge” neoliberalism and that’s it.
I suspect Obama didn’t even call the shots in his own 8 years.
Precisely. Obama got high in his own supply. He served his role as first colored president, but when the gig was up, he was finished. He never will run the shown from behind a curtain.
Well, Obama did write a book with Bruce Springstein
I am not so sure about that. He was a stooge of TPTB. However, like the Kamala and Ketanji Hyphenated-Boston-Brahmin-Wifey appointments, the black caucus must have made their demands. On top of that, he came as an Alinsky acolyte who promised a, “radical transformation”, of America. His wife is a bitter and angry black women typical of her ilk, (both Dressed Up AA Ivy Leaguers and Ghetto Leaguers) who ooze spite and contempt for America, and who seem to have a blood libel for whites. Obama hatched Holder and Rice and they in turn hatched BLM. It was Obama who… Read more »
You’ve a point there. Perhaps I’m jumping the gun on judging Obama—but he sure has been quiet. Perhaps he’s playing the elder statesman as was the rule among (White) ex-presidents?
“What I find so amazing about this situation is that the US Elite are seemingly fighting on all fronts without any real coordination or “executive function” governing the crazed hyperactivity.”
It’s called “grand strategy” and seemingly the US (or global) elite does not have one. Usually every empire has one.
It seems that of the nations involved in this conflict only Russia has a grand strategy that includes serving its own national interest. One could theorize that the Western countries have grand strategies that focus on serving globalist (international oligarchic crony cartel corporatism) interests, but while that explains much, it is incomplete. Few of the people currently operating inside the system had a hand in building it: they inherited it. How many of the people involved understand the full complexity of the US led multinational system of coercion and persuasion much less are in possession of the authority to remediate… Read more »
No, BO is not entirely stupid. However, he is an AWR of the first water, and could well be the commander on the race war front.
He did signal service to anti-white racism during his terms in office through creatures such as Eric Holder and Susan Rice and the policies they implemented. Biden was probably thrust upon him, and was a cat’s paw of the neocons. A poor tool, but a tool nonetheless, and a bargain was probably crafted to leave intact much of the anti-white agenda, but a free hand for the neocons to work their deviltry in winning support of the black churches to get Joe boosted by that community while simultaneously jawboning other Democrat primary contenders to drop their campaigns.
“It’s like the Elites are looting a convenience store in Philly.”
Excellent metaphor and hilarious image of the Biden administration and associated NGO actors plundering and ransacking like blacks.
Try not to visualize “Dr.” Jill and Kamala twerking on a counter in a jewelry store to encourage the men.
Rotflmao.
Their butts ain’t big enough.
Alright then, Lizzo
Blinken is probably the real president, but he governs on behalf of an informal cabal of his cousins. Just kidding, that last part is clearly just a conspiracy theory trope. No tightly knit group ever works together to advance its interests. Whites do though, because institutional racism, but that’s different.
This sounds like a desperate Ukrainian ploy to me. The Ukes know they cannot hold out against the Rooskies much longer and are gambling on a nuclear–or at least radioactive–gambit to get NATO to commit combat troops to the Ukraine. Failing actual NATO intervention, it sounds like the Ukraine could fall before the end of this year.
The only way Ukraine can put off defeat after the Russian winter offensive is for NATO to join in. That’s not necessarily ground troops. I suspect you’ll get heavy air support—manned and drone originating in Poland first. Heavy air support—assuming Russian ineffective counter measures—are all that’s needed to stem any offensive. But it will be expensive.
Will be quite a show.
Russia will retaliate if NATO tries any kind of air support and the war will expand to the west. Poland and the Baltic states will suffer heavily along with Brussels and probably London.
Remember Russia has probably the best air defense and EW capabilities in the world. The US and NATO will be reluctant to show the world just how vunerable their weapons systems are in a peer-to-peer conflict.
Sooner or later somebodys going to harpoon a carrier, 5 thousand KIA in an instant.
I believe this thing is beyond stopping now.
I can just see it now. China invades Taiwan, the US navy responds.
The Russians decide to jump in at the same time.
The combined Chinese and Russians submarine force begin sinking the American Surface fleets across the world.
I have often wondered what would happen if a carrier is sunk. Would the country be in a post-Pearl Harbor mood or want off the stupid train we’re on now? I think want off, but can’t be sure.
I do know that in case of a shooting war, there would be a substantial minority who would monkey wrench the war effort. There would be very little “thank you for your service” probably.
Due to fhe exclusive “NATO” ability to e-print $s without limits, and the unevenness of resources descending from that, if NATO steps in for real, Russia has no means to not be quickly defeated and humiliated and Iraqed than have recourse to nuclear retaliation.
Both outcomes, Russia throwing all of her nuclear weaponry at the countries that are actually waging war on her, and Russia being Iraqed, are most worrying not only for Russia but for the world
People predicting inevitable US victory in any war are apparently operating on the classic gambling addicts theory that a future win is now “due” after so many actual losses in a row up to now.
I like the de Gaulle saying that no nation has friends only interests. I guess though if you are the neocons, running money laundering schemes though the defense industry and corrupt small countries would count as interests.
“If you are inclined to believe what you hear from Washington and their media organs, you will want to accept their version of this story. If you are skeptical of the people who lie to you every day about the most trivial matters, then you are probably thinking that the Russians are telling the truth. It is impossible to know the truth at this point …” I’m a simple man with a correspondingly simple outlook on world affairs — viz. everything the US government says is a lie. If the USG says the invasion of Iraq was about WMD, I… Read more »
Exactly, that is why I never got the Coof thing or Ukraine for that matter as a matter of doubt.
Even of you ignore the mechanics of the virus and the vex, you just need to look at who is fronting in the media 24/7 for the issue.
You don’t need really to know anything else. But if you look you will invariably find why this scam issue is the same as the last scam issue.
You know a man by the company he keeps. Have no problem figuring out the correct position on the issues of the day like covid, jab, ukraine, or any of the others.
Well, you have learned, Padawan. Well, you have learned…
Reminds me of an episode of Seinfeld….
So we’re on the precipice of WWIII.
But hey, at least the Yankees lost the ALCS!
The important takeaway from today’s post is that the disease cells in power care not about the welfare and well-being of the dirt people. They are viewed simply as expendable pawns on a GAE chess board. If a dirty bomb accomplishes the goals of escalation and improves the Ds election prospects in November, then let the dirt people downwind of the detonation suffer and die miserable deaths of radiation poisoning. If your deranged neighbor threatened to do this to your community, would you stand idly by and hope for best while waiting to vote harder in a few weeks? Or… Read more »
I don’t see how a dirty bomb improves the Democrat’s chances in the election. It’s either a forgone conclusion that the steal is in or they get hammered in honest, more or less, voting.
They’re desperate. In theory, a dirty bomb being detonated in Ukraine can be blamed on Putin/Russia via a major media propaganda campaign. And they believe that this can become a catalyst for galvanizing Americans into a patriotic fury that puts country first (Pearl Harbor effect). Finally, they believe that this patriotic passion can be directed toward support for all incumbents, which would maintain the status quo of Democrat control of both houses of Congress. They clearly have societal models which reinforce this belief, hence the gambit. But my models predict the opposite net effect. As with the Nordstream sabotage, most… Read more »
The dirty bomb will go off in a major metro US area. That will be the excuse to cancel the elections
“This is not without president.” Freudian slip?
I could be ashamed of the increasingly demonic travesty that is U.S. foreign policy. Fortunately, I divorced myself psychologically and spiritually from the American regime a long time ago. I merely live here. This so-called country does not belong to those of my benighted ilk.
Funny, I read the next line as “America’s unconstitutional commitment to Israel…” He be slippin’ lol.
“I merely live here”.
Sums up my view exactly. I’m not indifferent though. I actually hate this so-called country.
I love Americans, the American land, and the wonderful wilderness we still have…I despise our foreign occupation government and the people who support it…,.,.
But what percentage of AINO’s subjects qualify as Americans? Certainly below 50 percent. Maybe below 20.
While I can understand the inclination to hate this so-called country, I am attempting to maintain detachment from it instead, if only for the sake of my own mental wellbeing. It helps that I don’t have any children. If I had kids, I would be livid about all the various debacles that have come to define Western culture. My rage would be uncontainable.
And that is precisely why I chose not to become a father. I knew what was coming down the road…
I am very patriotic for an America that no longer exists.
I can accept that. What I can’t/won’t accept is that such can not exist again. Without such hope, there really is no point.
It can exist again, but it will have to be on a much smaller scale and incorporating lessons learned from America’s failures.
Yes and no, Z. America entered both previous world wars totally unprepared, and literally with its pants down around its ankles. But… the country literally had God on its side. Anyone that knows the timing and sequence of events during the Battle Of Midway understands this. America was unprepared for those conflicts preferring to stay at home. Some would say they were drawn into both conflicts by the use of false flags. I am not sure if staying at home, sitting on your hands and watching monster and gangster govts grow and knock off your friends is either moral or… Read more »
Why are people always ready to justify invading far off lands to kill people and destroy countries “because they deserve it” based on some hand wringing about not acting morally, while their own countries wage constant war for decades?
A million dead and society collapsed because he was a local strong man in a culture that is founded on such?
I don’t get the moral positioning of this.
F all to do with the west what local disputes are going on. Its not our problem.
As to Tim Osman…?
What I don’t understand with OP post is, What country has killed the most innocent people in the 20th century? That would be the US. The US constantly anoints itself as a lamb, but it is certainly a devouring lion.
That would be China. But have it your way.
Their own people to boot.
America slaughters foreigners; the commies massacred their own.
Probably killed more of their own. But nobody beats the ZUSA at killing the other.
Heaven forfend.
You mean America cries out as it strikes you?)
“Why are people always ready to justify invading far off lands…”
Because those two bit thugs you ignore today (while they are knocking off your friends) – can grow to be very serious threats tomorrow.
There are costs to operating an empire. They are paid because they are worth it. I know and understand that this doesn’t sit well with most dissidents. Who, BTW, are going to learn to their dismay that having an empire carries many more advantages than not having one does.
I don’t like either.
Rarely do I meet an American who is a conscious supporter of the Empire. That kind of awareness is always at least refreshing. Even Romans believed in the empire until their very end(s).
Threat to whom?
To the US? To Europe? To Israel?
What possible vector of threat could Hussein develop to threaten the west?
Its ridiculous as an assertion.
At the time he had the fourth largest army in the world. They took him out because he had the means and the motive to unite the arab world.
We know Saddam had WMDs because we and our allies sold them to him, and he used them on the Kurds.
Hindsight should be 20/20, but most of today’s dissidents were awfully young at the time.
@Glenfilthie Really? Your hypothesis is that he was going to be a reborn Suleman the maginificent? A largely secularist state surrounded by theocratic Arab states that hadn’t managed to expand his borders in 21 years, fought a stalemate 8 year war with Iran, Kurdish fighting in the North, uprisings from the Shi’ite Muslims against the party in central Iraq and was largely supported by the French? On what basis was he going to unite the Arab World? Talk about fantasy. The view you have is a narrative hanging around from the same liars that ran with WMDs, yellow cake bombs… Read more »
Two bit thug SH didn’t threaten us but he possibly threatened our greatest ally. Sounds like a good reason to spend 4 trillion dollars and thousands of American lives.
Oh and dont forget he literally tossed babies out of incubators.
You missed the point. He didn’t pose a viable threat to us AT THE TIME. This is what the young dissidents keep missing. Where would Saddam Hussein be today, had we sat on our hands and done nothing? Welp – Saudi Arabia and Kuwait would certainly be his, possibly Iran. How many other states would have fallen to him? The dissidents are going to have to outgrow their naive affinity for isolationalism, or they won’t be taken seriously. It flat out will not work in today’s world. Having said all that… I agree with them in that the USA has… Read more »
The US had an empire and a sphere of influence of an entire hemisphere, which was formidable and evil enough.
We had the gold and manufacturing base to make the UK competitive in the wars and keep the Anglosphere dominant, so, you know.
The two bit thugs don’t live across the ocean though.
Empires are both murderous and suicidal. Of them, I want no part.
Saddam Hussein’s Iraq was the richest, best educated longest lived population in the Arab World. That went downhill with Bush the Wrinkled accelerated with Clinton and exploded with Shrub. Despite the drivel of the insane, the people who needed killing were in the US, not Iraq.
“Saddam Hussein was one” No good little neocon could have said it better. White Knight for the world on your own gd tax dollars and blood if you feel so strongly about it.
We all got so many benefits out of that war, the Empire was refreshed and we took out all those WMDs!
America unprepared in WWI and WWII is somewhat of an exaggeration. We had any number of strengths in those times. For example, we were a far off country protected by two large oceans. We were a populous country of great resources—basically all of them needed to sustain the people and to produce weapons. Finally in both wars we had an industrial capacity that lead the world.
What good are those strengths now—even assuming we still had them? In an age of nukes and guided missiles and quick strikes and therefore quick wars…
Zelensky makes my skin crawl. I can’t be the only one. I cannot stand him. Right from the start I saw right through him. Everything is stage managed in such a transparent, fake way. The manner in which he meets these other world leaders in a green t-shirts, making demands on them while they genuflect before him in a fitted suit, is just nauseating. His insane rhetoric about Russia and the Russians is straight from the “Holocaust Industry” playbook. The demands for more and more of our treasure, and the way he yells at countries that don’t give him money,… Read more »
Anyone who makes a video playing the piano with his organ should be excluded from decent society…
I share your instinctive revulsion to Zelensky’s physiogamy. He’s a somewhat less gross version of Ron Jeremy.
It wouldn’t surprise if this reaction is inherited from our evolutionary past, like fear of snakes.
If one has the stomach, the can lurk the Ukraine forums on reddit.
It won’t take long to note that soys of all genders seem quite smitten with Elensky.
They also genuinely believe his little fetish wear dance bit makes him look, “fierce.”
I would guess that the last thousand or so years of predation coming from Jews and Arab slavers would tend to produce an instinctual revulsion and distrust against those big hook noses and chesire cat grins they have.
The depictions of demons and gargoyles didn’t come out of nowhere, and when you get further north away from the semites the evil fantasy creatures lose that particular physiognomy.
These sociopaths desperately want another world war, but the rest of the world doesn’t seem willing to follow the West blindly into yet another disaster.
What happens when only one side shows up?
The other side loses.
Loses what? The cesspool of corruption and neo-Nazis that is the Ukraine? Good riddance…
To quote another Internet personality:
“The side who wants to win always beats the side that just wants to be left alone.”
On your Taki column on Sam Francis, it appears the neocon lunatic squad has now sent out the signal to destroy Rod Dreher of all people because he is pro Orban. He points out Bulwark writer Jonathan Last calls anyone pro Orban and fascist, but used a Orban quote about fertility rates favorably in a book he wrote 10 years ago. How did these incompetent clowns get so much power and influence?
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/unpatriotic-conservatives-2022-2/
Barnard: Peace, love, and crunchily-certified Dreher has done more than his fair share of disavowing anyone to his right. He has supported censuring and ostracizing in the name of whatever branch of Christianity he is suddenly discovering at the time. Let him go cry on David French’s shoulder; I’m all out of F’s to give.
I have no interest in protecting or defending Dreher, I just thought it was interesting how far into the purity spiral they are going now. Even in this piece he defends David French as a friend, but says he is wrong about this. Their influence over the rank and file on the right is down to almost nothing, but yet they still get funding.
“How did these incompetent clowns get so much power and influence?”
They are employed by the group that makes the largest percentage of contributions to both parties.
They are employed by the group that mostly controls the media.
“…a passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils.
Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter, without adequate inducement or justification…”
Why is it that idiots like Petraeus continually fail to heed Gen. Washington’s advice?
The lure of Empire is irresistible at the beginning, but crushing at the end.
Followed by the lure of the lucre on retirement.
Because Petraeus is a puppet of technocratic globalists. And Washington was an “evil slave-owning White male” whose wisdom can easily be dismissed by modernists and postmodernists too arrogant and self-righteous to detect their own follies.
Petraeus once sneered at Robert E Lee as a “traitor.” That tells you everything you need to know about the vile piece of shit. Ditto McChrystal and all the rest of them. I’m perfectly happy stating out loud that I hate the United States and spit on its flag; as a Southerner, I have more reason than most. Southerners (eg, Dabney) said that what is happening now would be the consequence of the U.S. victory in their war against the South.
I still forward to when they name all of the military bases in the south “Tubman”.
That’s alarmist rhetoric. Some military bases will be named after sodomites.
Well, we’re already got USNS Harvey Milk… Maybe Ft. Liberace and Ft. RuPaul?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USNS_Harvey_Milk_(T-AO-206)
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-59196462
Yeah, Harriet Tubman the “rifle toting republican,” in the words of space lawyer Glenn Reynolds. I truly loathe the GOP more than the Dems most days.
At any rate, I’m glad the names of our Southern heroes will be removed from U.S. bases. I don’t want our grave and noble men associated with that mercenary horde.
Reminder that the British only guaranteed Poland’s security as an excuse to declare war on Germany. Othwrwise they would have declared war on the Soviet Union until Poland was free.
A friend of the family is a super liberal history professor at an “elite” university. One Christmas Eve, as he was pontificating about Germany’s invasion of Poland, I asked (what in my mind was/is a legitimate question) if Germany invaded Poland or Prussia? He doesn’t come to my parent’s house for Christmas Eve snacks and drinks anymore. I, of course, am a “fascist”. My old man is not upset in the least by his absence.
If you want to fry your average patriotic American’s brain about WWII, ask if we were the good guys, why we allied with a communist country that ended taking over a third of Europe.
They usually switch their programming to the stopping the Holocaust script, even though that wasn’t a concern at the time of the war.
Or even written about in most of the major war histories written shortly afterwards.
It never really happened until the early 70’s.
The BBC’s first big TV series on the war had a brief mention of minor prison camps.
Then the Retcon artists got to work.
@bilejones, There was a Twilight Zone episode about the horrors of Dachau. The construction of the Holocaust narrative began no later than the early 60s.
@Ostei
I find it interesting for stuff like that to an ngram search on google to see when the concepts started to get pushed.
For stuff like this its really informative as to the massive ramp from the mid 60s onwards, and the paucity of references much before.
For this stuff the massive rise was the 80s up until now, which seems very odd that 40 years on is when real traction starts and it just keeps rising 70 years on.
I always love to point out to them that we were on the side of Stalin, a man who dwarfed Hitler in the number of people killed. We literally sided with the only leader with a bigger head count than good old mustache man and the future mass murderer, Mao Zedong.
They talk about Hitler like he’s the worst guy to ever live in all of history. He was not even the worst guy alive at the time, even using their narrative about why he’s so evil.
You just get crimestop responses.
You can’t get them to quantify what metric is the correct one to justify their opinion, as they have none other than the evilly, evil scale of evilness implanted by hundreds of TV shows and movies.
trumpton.
And that’s what matters in the evilness stakes Good PR : Pol Pot? Never heard of him.
Don’t you understand the one Jewish life is worth like 10 gentiles?
The trouble for the neocons is that they can’t let Russia win this war and abandon sanctions. You rule because people think you rule. Once someone beats you, you lose that aura.
The US has thrown everything that they can against the Russians. This is a full-court press – and the world knows it. The Americans have already lost a lost of prestige (and trust) due to this war, they can’t afford to lose anything more. They’ll throw everything they can into the fight.
Assuming we are not all turned to glass, this insanity may lead to the defenestration of the Neocons. Never let a good crisis go to waste and so forth.
The Russians will oblige if the West wants to find a way to make it look like they won a victory. It will be some meaningless, piecemeal gesture that will be propped up as a savage concession forced on Russia. The West is the one who is interested in humiliating Russia, not the other way around.
That’s going to be tough. We’ve insisted that Putin is Hitler and a war criminal. Not sure how give him the Donbas and call that a victory.
Well, that was last week. They can memory hole all that. They go from A to Not A all the time.
I am going to have to update my boolean logic table to use Hitlers.
Tough? An administration that can pull out of Afghanistan as they did, can bungle anything.
I agree. The US has no prestige and credibility left in the kitty. It’s all gone. It started to vanish in 2003.
How about 26 May 1865.
^this. The South and the Southern cause has been completely vindicated.
The Ukraine war is being fought by Russia at three different levels. 1.Military, where Russia’s modest stated goals in announcing the Special military operation were defense of the two Dombass Republics, De-Nazification and demilitarization and a neutral Ukraine government are about two thirds met. BoJo’s derailing of three different attempts to reach a negotiated settlement now mean at best a stub Ukraine. The Russians will do this on their own time, not that of the Keegans and their ilk. 2.Economic where the clowns running the West lost no opportunity to shoot themselves in the nuts: It has been astonishing to… Read more »
And the really great news is (for holders of iodine futures and Vault-Tec stock, anyway), the coming “red wave” midterms will really kick American interventionism into high gear. Lots of people say there’s no difference between the parties. Pshaw, I say. There’s a major difference: The Republicrats are much, much better at starting stupid wars of choice than the Dempublicans. I mean, yeah, obviously the Dempublicans will do it if they think there’s a buck in it (making sure, as always, to hold back 10% for the Big Guy), but their hearts are never really in it. The Republicrats groove… Read more »
Agreed. The upcoming GOP sweep will prove very dangerous in this regard. Rather than face the “who lost the Ukraine?” question, “Biden” will escalate the conflict as he is pounded with Republican war rhetoric.
Wasn’t Cocaine Mitch himself already making noises about *speeding up* aid to Ukraine if the GOPe takes Congress?
He was. McConnell is one of the biggest grifters in congressional history and it is a safe bet his is profiting handsomely from all these alleged aid packages. God knows he, his Suzy Wong wife, and the Biden Crime Family have perfected the art of syphoning foreign aid to themselves.
loved the Suzy Wong alliteration “dirty little yum yum girl”..
These people make Senator Geary in “Godfather 2” look like a boy scout, and one who was angling for chump change
Where does one even find bottlecaps these days? I need to build up my stash to survive the post-apocalyptic wasteland.
Perhaps the Russians fear martyring Zelensky, but since the war has now taken on something of an official character (as opposed to a “special military operation”) one must think that “regime change” is back on the table for Russian military planners. Sure would be a shame if one of his highly publicized photo ops at the “front” got disrupted with extreme prejudice… …unless, of course, Ukraine’s “leader” isn’t actually in Ukraine at all. Which is a theory I’ve heard, but discount, because what would send a clearer message to the slavering warmongers in NATO than an “incident” in Warsaw or… Read more »
I suspect that this option the West will soon have to consider. They kill Zelensky, blame the Russians but use it as a reason to abandon the project but keep the sanctions regime in place.
The sanctions are the real war. They’re the weapon that we’d use against most countries. If they fail, it’s a huge blow to American power.
Indeed, Russia is test case for many countries on how to survive such an attack.
The primary war aim, I think, was to divorce Russia and Europe. That has been accomplished, at least for the immediate future. But you are right: the actual war was the sanctions, and the United States was defeated and humiliated on that front. Just as the West and the Ukraine were militarily prepared, the Russians were economically. Long term, I suspect this will be the lasting effect of this madness will be what you described, a template to mitigate and even defeat the Empire’s economic bullying.
Agree that one big victory for the neocons is breaking the link between Europe and Russia. Europe is now truly under our control. But we may have lost the rest of the world. We’ll see. The dollar/treasuries remain King Kong in the global financial system, and there won’t be an alternative anytime soon. That said, I’m not sure the US controls the dollar as much as people think. The Eurodollar system isn’t directly controlled by the fed. Banks – both US and foreign – print dollars and those banks, at least the foreign ones, aren’t controlled by the fed or… Read more »
The US (and Europe) is only defeated if you think that it had objectives outside of basically cutting itself off completely from Russian hydrocarbons with the intent of de-industrializing all the economies and getting people conditioned to poverty and food rationing.
I believe this was the primary objective. So in that sense it is a complete success.
How many times have they told you that its about “transitioning” the entire economic model?
Its only a loss if you think they did not intend to ruin the economies.
To my mind — and perhaps I’m mistaken — the problem is the Western elite (whoever that is) cannot think strategically. It’s all tactical and shirt-term opportunism. It’s similar to a tactical and attacking talent like Frank Marshall playing against the likes of Capablanca and Alekhine. Both of these were also tactical and attacking talents but in addition they were master strategists. So Marshall usually (always?) lost against them.
@trumpton: Deindustrialization and decarbonization and the attendant impoverishment are the aspirational goals, to be sure. Divorcing Europe and Russia was the key there. But it just doesn’t seem the rump West anticipated that China and Russia could circumvent the sanctions to the extent they did let alone benefit. I have not been able to untangle how there is some inside ball being played between China and Washington that would explain how this is fine with the latter. It is the one thing that is a very big surprise given how much Beijing has bribed the rulers in the rump West,… Read more »
@Jack I honestly don’t think they care that much about the sanction avoidance by Russia and China. The sanctions were aimed at Europe and the US. The goal is a new Iron curtain for the whole west isolated form the rest of the hydrocarbon industrial world and non suicidal countries. Russia just wants the social poison gone. If they wrecked Russia then I think that was a bonus for them, but I don’t really see it as the primary objective at this time. I wager you will end up with a no mans land across Ukraine and both parties will… Read more »
@trumpton:
I disagree to the extent the thought apparently was that Russia and, to my surprise, China would be collateral damage. No doubt the war is primarily being conducted against Europeans and North Americans, to be clear, but the aim was to maintain a unipolar world controlled by the cabal behind Covid and every other recent catastrophe.
@trumpton:
I’ve considered it and I can’t make it work. The strongest evidence for it is when “D.C.” issues a threat to China that it had better get with the program or….or…or….the “or” never being explained. The more likely explanation is that China will not go along, although, as I wrote earlier, I still cannot totally discount there is some inside ball being played between D.C. and Beijing. These people are arrogant as hell.
Don’t knock the effectiveness of sanctions in war. Remember when we imposed crippling sanctions on Cuba after Castro took over? Those Commie bastards collapsed in a heartbeat.
I looked into the “multipolar world” that Putin keeps talking about, and it’s all WEF social credit CBDC fascism. Putting aside the Kazarian lust for the Pale of Settlement and the Neocon need for any war anywhere with anybody, the Great Reset away from the petrodollar empire into a New World Order appears to be thriving.
The true purpose of the sanctions is to make Russia/China the designated escape route from UK/America.
“The true purpose of the sanctions is to make Russia/China the designated escape route from UK/America.” I’ve tried to work that through my head and just cannot. Obviously this is a war against Americans and Europeans, but it seems the expectation was Russia and China would be collateral damage. Putin, at least, is not in a position to engage in kabuki over this war because there are power centers inside of Russia who could make his life miserable if that were to happen (I think). I’ve not been able to wrap my head around China’s Western stooges turning against their… Read more »
@Jack
Have you not thought that a new US/Sino pretend old war is going to be great business for many decades. Just like the Soviet/US one?
The US gets to recreate the glorious cold war years and China can focus its exports on SE Asia and internal production.
I’ve always assumed Russia would prefer a live Zelensky calling for peace and laying out the machinations of the US and UK that led to this war. IOW, Zelensky is at far greater risk of being murdered by London and Washington than by Moscow. This is why I discount the green screen business.
There’s been some instances where Zelensky was using a green screen. Him actually being in London or even in a bunker in an undisclosed location is a definite possibility.
I’m uncertain I agree with your last sentence: “(T)he so called great powers are now led around by a tiny corrupt backwater.” Zelensky seems to be a puppet who has started to believe he is legitimate. In this sense, he resembles Big Pharma’s stooge Fauci, who went from tool to unabashed egomaniac. Both show the dangers of the reliance on puppets who get high on their own supply. This always has carried the potential to escalate to a nuclear war, and the psychopaths in Western leadership easily could get us all killed. Did the Ukrainians get the ability to develop… Read more »
Ukraine has nuclear power plants and they have nuclear waste. IIRC, they process nuclear waste for other countries too. They would have little trouble making a dirty bomb. The challenge would be the delivery. They cannot launch it from artillery or their remaining missile inventory and they have no air force to speak of now. They would have to use a truck to smuggle it to the target. Reading Russian media, the Russians started waring of an attack on civilians in Kharkiv last week. The claim was that Western contractors were going to fire on civilians and then blame the… Read more »
Point taken. The shelling of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant certainly bolsters that possibility and shows the degree of recklessness at play.
I would think that the Russians have enough radioactivity monitoring capability in place to detect a dirty bomb on a truck quite easily.
If Russia moves to cut Uke supply lines, I can see the 101st being airdropped into Odessa and a combined force of Poles and Romanians streaming over the Uke border to support them. Poland will likely be ordered to occupy, possibly even annex Lvov.
Russia is a very bureaucratic society. They may have the means to do this, but the system could just as easily let them down, as anyone who has been to the post office can understand. Look at how many spree killers have been on the FBI radar but managed to commit their crimes anyway.
On the radar? This seems like another Gellman effect reading about how the FBI magically somehow knows about all these guys before anything happens, but fails to do anything.
Yeah sure. Like the 1st trade center bombing, or the whitmer kidnap or insert many others.
They obviously know as they run and recruit them?
It is Gell-Mann, but that would not apply here. The FBI only prevents the crimes where they entrap someone or some idiot makes it easy to be caught. That was the point. The FBI always claims after the fact to know about the villain, but never stops him.
>is a very bureaucratic society
It is a theme running through all of their literature, especially Gogol and Count T
I think Russia would be estatic if Poland occupied Galacia and Lvov. It’s historically Polish anyway and the Poles would be stuck with the local Banderites.
Perhaps depends on your definition of a “dirty bomb”.
I’ve heard two descriptions: One simply exploding (spreading) radioactive materials over as wide a range as such a device allows in as smallest particles as possible. The other actually making a nuclear weapon, but which is designed to fail to contain a critical mass for the maximum explosive yield, but rather comes apart while vaporizing the critical mass—now that’s a dirty bomb!
The first being less effective, but perhaps more feasible to produce and deploy. The second, needing highly enriched material, not necessarily stored waste.
Ukraine does not have the smarts to make a bomb now. Too much brain drain over the last decade and the infrastructure is not in place to do it. They do have the ability to make a radiological dispersal device. My guess is they would put it in a truck and move it to Kharkiv city to use on the public.
I agree. You don;t need to build a nuclear bomb if you have radioactive waste/fuel. That bit is complex. You can stuff it in a normal bomb and just explode it and rain down the material. Or even spread it around and leave a bomb casing. I assume all those on the forum remember the “white phosphorus” chemical attacks in syria which still gets repeated over and over, had demonstrably fake video and the head of OPCW said you can’t even use that form of phosphorous as a chemical weapon due to its nature. Did not even make a dent… Read more »
The Russian war with Ukraine is a classic case of a situation where we have no dog in this fight and should’ve wisely stayed out of it. I think any sympathy that could be given to the Ukrainians for their unsustainable losses on the battlefield is being overcome by their “leader” constantly begging the West for money like a very annoying pest of a homeless person you wish would leave you alone. I think I share the view of many in the West that I just want this war to end. I don’t care who wins. I just want it… Read more »
The USA does have a dog in this fight — Ukraine. Without the USA, there would be any trouble between Russia and Ukraine in the first place. It’s USA that’s behind Ukraine, just as Emilio Barzini was behind Virgil Sollozzo.
The only place I disagree with Z man is the role of minor powers. They have no part in this US-engendered conflict between major powers save as proxies.
Typo, mea culpa. Meant to write “there would not be any trouble.”
I wonder why Russia did not make these calls to China and India as well. Any idea?
India, who knows. I’d say the Chinese are well informed
Ukraine is a western puppet,-particularly of the US and UK. Natural to call it masters.
These calls were likely intentionally leaked so that citizens of the countries that the Russians talked to are aware this is a possibility. India and China are basically on board with Russia already. There’s a large Turk population in Europe so they were the target audience for the call to Turkey.
They would have. But no need to publicise them. The calls to the US and NATO countries did need to be publicised.
It’s such a tragedy; the Trump Administration had a once-in-a-millennium opportunity for the Anglosphere to forge a new relationship with Russia, but the Frankfurt School sensed what was happening, and unleashed the Russia & Ukraine hoaxes on the goyim, and got Trump not one but TWO different impeachments [as I recall]. The big question is why the English have this hatred for Russia in the first place, and how much of the hatred is fueled by Lord Rothschild. The English assassinated one of the great intuitive minds of the last 500 years, Grigori Rasputin, because Rasputin’s advice to Romanov was… Read more »
You are mistaking the current controllers in the UK for being English.
They are not English, nor do they give a flying F about the English.
They have destroyed England on the way on purpose it seems as thanks for using the host country for 100 years as a tool for the empire that never ended, before they moved onto the US.
People keep talking about England this, and Germany that as if its still native elites in power from 50 years ago. It is a category error.
For being a “children’s book”, Kim, is a complex read that would be beyond the ken of most youth today.
The Russians are also very adept at false flags, and there’s even an argument that the infamous apartment bombings were a flag that allowed Putin to rise to power: https://www.wilsoncenter.org/publication/foiled-attack-or-failed-exercise-look-ryazan-1999 The issue right now is Russia knows they don’t have the propaganda capacity to pull off a false flag. They simply have no ability to saturate the airwaves with propaganda to dilute any talk of funny business in the West. They have a tactical disadvantage on the propaganda front. The West, on the other hand, has way too much confidence in their ability to control and mobilize the masses through… Read more »
I am extremely skeptical of the false flag business. When you start digging into the topic you find too sets of examples. One are the Gulf of Tonkin or the sinking of the Maine in the Havana harbor. In these cases, they are simply opportunism. Washington wanted an excuse to go to war so they seized on the gulf of Tonkin incident. The other set of examples are crackpot conspiracy theories that never hold up to scrutiny. They always rely on the fact that the conspirators are super villains able to trick everyone but some weirdo who unriddled their dastardly… Read more »
I would argue the Mother of All False Flags was rhetorical rather than kinetic. “Weapons of mass destruction” led to the most disastrous war the United States ever entered, and it is kind of rich to see Petraeus crawling out of the cracks again.
The thing is, Saddam certainly had chemical weapons. He appears to have some biological agents, but he never had nuclear technology, so the claim was not entirely false. The west also believed he would use these weapons, which is why they went through all of those ridiculous, measures to guard against it. maybe it was all an act, but I have always suspected that these people just got high off their own supply and really came to believe Saddam had a weapons program. The neocons have an extraordinary ability to believe their own crazy rhetoric. This is what makes them… Read more »
As I understood Scott Ritter at the time, 90-95 percent of the chemical and biological weapons had been destroyed prior to the war. I had thought the false WMD claims were an intelligence debacle, but after the Trump-Russia collusion hoax, I’m inclined to believe it was an outright lie.
It is one of those thing where all options could be true. The neocons were sure he was Hitler with nukes. The intel community was just selling them what they wanted to hear. The opportunists took the opportunity to make money. Many people in MIC got very rich off those wars, so cynicism played a role. I think instead of false flag, false pretext is probably a better term. it allows for the instigation of some event, with the knowledge that it could be used as a pretext for other action, but also leaves open the door to naked opportunism.… Read more »
Z: “In other words, it was a conspiracy in search of an opportunity.”
Can you fathom the cynicism of a race which has an entire toolbox filled with conspiracies pre-planned ahead of time, and at any important point in history, can simply dial up the most efficacious conspiracy in the playbook, and press the “Start!” button on it?
Nietzsche did feel that they were the consummate actors [and actresses].
And they certainly own The Narrative.
The Danish PM at the time – Anders “Fogh of War” Rasmussen – certainly knew what was going on at the time. He was peddling the WMD-story 24/7 but when he was talking in parliament, he carefully only ever mentioned “Saddam’s dangerous weapons” – nothing about mass destruction. All the MPs bar one, just pretended they didn’t notice the difference.
Parliament, incidentally, is the only place where it’s illegal for a politician to lie.
Back in the late summer of 2003, Washington had officially retired the WMD-story. That same week, the foreign editors from four of Denmark’s largest news outlets were on the radio on one of these hour-long programs where journalists talk about themselves. At one point, the conversation meanders towards the embarrassing business with the AWOL WMDs. One editor says: “Well, I never believed in the WMD-story anyway.” The three others hasten to add that neither had they. Except none of that scepsis had made it into their papers and news programs during the preceding year. The program was wiped from their… Read more »
“The thing is, Saddam certainly had chemical weapons.”
He had these weapons and he used these weapons against his native Kurds while he was chums with the West during the late ’80s. Not a squeak of protest from the West then, who damn well knew about it. Look, the adventure against Iraq was never WMD, which was just a convenient fig leaf. When it turned out there were no WMDs (vindicating Scott Ritter), the reasons for the invasion became to, er, restore democracy and, er, Saddam was a bad guy. Even the lies of the USA are pathetic and risible.
“US attacked by Saudi nationals!, funded by Saudi rich guy!”
“US immediately declares war on Iraq!”
Uh, what?
The pretenses don’t matter. US will murder by the millions whomever it pleases.
Fortunately, “they” always deserve it, and ‘Merica is ALWAYS the good guy.
Wasn’t Scott Ritter conveniently convicted of sex crimes for solicitation of minors? Sounds like he was guilty of sexting with FBI operatives who kept messaging him that they were underaged girls. Just a coincidence I’m sure.
Put me in the camp that says you cannot be tricked into showing your weaner to someone online. He did what he did because he wanted to do it, but you can be a pervert and right about the Iraq war. They are not mutually exclusive.
SH had no functionable chemical weapons in 2003. That fact was established a long time ago and I am surprised some people still believe otherwise. That might be testament to the propaganda campaign put out by the GWB administration at the time.
He had chemical weapons in the 80s because the USA and France and Germany helped him build them to kill Iranians. There was zero evidence of a chemical weapon program found post 1991.
@Felix:
“Parliament, incidentally, is the only place where it’s illegal for a politician to lie.”
Classic. I wonder what weapons are not dangerous? Apparently truth is a criminal act for the Congress over here.