dagblog - Comments for "Wesley Clark: "We need to tell the truth about what Russia is doing in Ukraine""

The exact number of tanks,

NCD — Fri, 05 Sep 2014 00:39:20 +0000

The exact number of tanks, weapons or men Putin sends is doesn't matter, he will send enough numbers to accomplish what he wants, which I don't think anyone really knows at this point but Putin.

Fai enough and you have been

A Guy Called LULU — Thu, 04 Sep 2014 23:34:53 +0000

In reply to Yeah, but I oppose those

Fai enough and you have been consistent in that position.

You say Putin is right to

A Guy Called LULU — Thu, 04 Sep 2014 23:32:59 +0000

In reply to Agree tha Diane Rehm has long

You say Putin is right to keep firm grasp on 'his influence' in Ukraine.

Actually, NCD, I did not comment one way or the other on the right or wrong of Putin's actions. I said what I believe to be his motives.

If so, it would make perfect sense for him to ensure his control by sending tanks in

It may come to that but what I said is that I do not believe he has already sent them in by the hundreds or thousands. Maybe he has sent a few but that doesn't seem smart and Putin doesn't seem dumb.That column of white trucks was easy enough to photograph, why no pictures of the tanks? A column of one hundred tanks should be pretty easy to spot. I would bet he does have special forces in Ukraine like we do in Iraq and Syria and Afghanistan and Pakistan, and sixty or seventy other countries.

Lulu: Putin has the justification and motivation to invade, ...

The justification would be, like I said before, the exact same as the U.S. would use.

... he has the troops and tanks to invade, but I don't believe reports that that is exactly what he is doing.

Do you believe he is invading with masses of troops and hundreds or thousands of tanks?

I don't doubt for a moment that many in Ukraine would like to be in or closely aligned with the EU.

Yeah, but I oppose those

Aaron Carine — Thu, 04 Sep 2014 23:25:31 +0000

In reply to I don't know either, it is

Yeah, but I oppose those American wars too.

I don't know either, it is

A Guy Called LULU — Thu, 04 Sep 2014 23:11:43 +0000

In reply to I also don't know if

I don't know either, it is hard to do anything better than make a best guess at the veracity of reports and opinions. But, I doubt that Russia's action regarding Crimea would have happened, at least in the near or foreseeable future, minus the eruption of the Ukraine situation and I seriously doubt that Putin either planned or anticipated that.

I would agree about Ukraine's right,in a more perfect world, to join NATO but in that world NATO would have no need to exist anyway. Regardless, the U.S,, has been willing to go to war in the past to keep Russian forces out of our near neighbors land, it came very close to happening, and would no doubt react the same way again. A logical goose would expect the same logic from a logical gander.

Agree tha Diane Rehm has long

NCD — Thu, 04 Sep 2014 22:07:54 +0000

In reply to I predict a continuation of

Agree tha Diane Rehm has long ago joined the MSM in stoking every kind of scare and war fever out there. Its what media does these days. Regardless, I don't really think either the US or NATO is going to war in the Ukraine.

However Lulu, half of your argument on Putin contradicts your other half.

You say Putin is right to keep firm grasp on 'his influence' in Ukraine.

If so, it would make perfect sense for him to ensure his control by sending tanks in.

Then you claim you don't believe reports he is sending tanks in.

Lulu: Putin has the justification and motivation to invade, he has the troops and tanks to invade, but I don't believe reports that that is exactly what he is doing.

Does that make sense?

On the other hand, no member of the EU has ever asked to leave it to rejoin the 'old Soviet sphere'. It would not be surprising many in Ukraine would like to be Euro based also, instead of run by a corrupt Putin crony. And that they would fight and die confronting a Putin invasion, which seems to be what is happening.

I also don't know if

Aaron Carine — Thu, 04 Sep 2014 21:51:19 +0000

In reply to Mersheimer seems to think

I also don't know if Mersheimer is right in saying that the invasion of Crimea wasn't pre-meditated.

Mersheimer seems to think

Aaron Carine — Thu, 04 Sep 2014 21:49:47 +0000

In reply to I predict a continuation of

Mersheimer seems to think that Russia has the right to prevent the Ukraine from joining NATO or otherwise forging ties with the West. I would call that imperialism. Ukraine should be free to form alliances with whoever it wishes. Putin is treating Ukraine much as the United States treated Central America. That is indeed realpolitik, and realpolitik is immoral.

I predict a continuation of

A Guy Called LULU — Thu, 04 Sep 2014 19:30:14 +0000

In reply to Prediction after reading the

I predict a continuation of predominantly one-sided news. For example, I just heard on The Diane Rehm show that Russia has moved into Ukraine with hundreds of tanks, artillery pieces, etc. That stood unquestioned. Later, towards the end it became a thousand tanks. Maybe, but while I have no doubt that Russia is providing some aid to the separatists, I doubt the truth of those statements. I also suspect that that speaker knew that he was spouting BS. Fear mongering with lies and exaggeration is the first cousin of war mongering.
With all the reasons given to blame Putin, to fear him, to say how critical it is to wave a unified coalition of dicks at him, I heard nobody suggest that the West has any culpability at all in the crisis. There were no suggestions of possible beneficial actions by the U,S.that did not involve military force.

http://thedianerehmshow.org/audio-player?nid=19764

Other things not mentioned there and barely mentioned elsewhere:

Why the Ukraine Crisis Is the West’s Fault

The Liberal Delusions That Provoked Putinhttp://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/141769/john-j-mearsheimer/why-the...

OSCE observers register no troops, amunition crossing Russia-Ukraine border

http://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2014/09/04/osce-observers-no-troop...

I believe that Putin's purpose is to keep Ukraine separate from Western domination which he believes would make it a base for Western military. I do not expect him to back down on that as the West justifies his fear with its proposed quickening of its ongoing militarization on and near Russia's border.

Prediction after reading the

artappraiser — Thu, 04 Sep 2014 16:55:53 +0000

In reply to Wesley Clark: "We need to tell the truth about what Russia is doing in Ukraine"

Prediction after reading the following: Putin will be backing down considerably not because of the Wesley Clark types, nor NATO and Obama, nor McCain types, but because his own citizens still have the fear-of-quagmire syndrome from Afghanistan and Chechnya. And these fears are now ramping up considerably. Selling this domestically is the main reason for all his silly tricks all along trying to make military ops look like civilian ops, and now he has to either figure out how to hide his use of troops even more or back down considerably:

Russian soldier: 'You're better clueless because the truth is horrible'
Despite Moscow denials, Ukrainian troops give accounts of fighting Russian army in Ilovaysk outside Donetsk

By Shaun Walker and Oksana Grytsenko in Komsomolske, Leonid Ragozin in Moscow
The Guardian, Wednesday 3 September 2014

[...] the evidence is mounting that an impending rebel defeat pushed Moscow to intervene more overtly in the past two weeks. There have been repeated sightings of Russian army ration packaging and of "green men" without insignia similar to those who took part in the annexation of Crimea, as well as satellite images which, Nato claims, show Russian armour inside Ukraine.

A video posted on YouTube this week showed a huge armoured column that appeared to be Russian moving well inside Ukrainian territory. Inside Russia, a regional newspaper has published a long transcript of what it alleges to be recorded conversations with two servicemen of the 76th Pskov airborne division who returned from Ukraine. In their answers, the soldiers relate the story of a company that was almost completely annihilated by Ukrainian artillery. The men say only 10 out of between 80 and 100 from the company survived the shelling.

Lev Schlossberg, a local Pskov politician who obtained the tapes, told the Guardian the soldiers were Russian servicemen but said he could not reveal the identities of the three men or explain how he got hold of the recordings. Schlossberg is recovering from a beating he links to his inquiries about the fate of Pskov soldiers. He said military authorities are coercing relatives of soldiers believed to be in Ukraine into silence, and only a handful are willing to talk.

The Committee of Soldiers' Mothers, a rights organisation, claims up to 15,000 soldiers have been sent over the border in recent weeks. The newspaper Novoya Gazeta published an interview with the mother of 20-year-old sapper Vadim Tumanov, alongside a photograph of an official notice informing the local military commissar of his death.

The last time she heard from her son, he told her he was near the Ukrainian border and "going to war".

The Guardian has found the social network account of a soldier who appears to be fighting in Ukraine. In a post on the Russian Vkontakte network, dated 31 August, Kirill Zdrok from Nizhny Novgorod said he was determined to fight on out of a sense of duty to his fallen comrades. "You know, I will stay here. I cannot sit idly and watch our guys being taken home as Cargo-200s [a Soviet codeword for coffins] … One day you say hello, talk to them, laugh with them, then the next day you find out it's all over – they are no longer alive, heading home in a metal box." He appears frustrated by the secrecy surrounding his mission and his close friends have no idea what is going on.

"You won't see it on TV, hear it on radio or read it in newspapers. You won't find anything on the internet that explains what is really happening where we are now. Honestly, you're better clueless, because the truth is horrible", Zdrok wrote in a post dated 26 August. He had earlier posted a newspaper article about Russian casualties on the border with Ukraine, remarking that they were reconnaissance soldiers from his 9th motor-rifle brigade, based in Nizhny Novgorod. [....]