[Ziptie]

Sorry guys but I am agreeing with moon. I align with a lot of other thoughts on stuff you say with but this Russian thing is... I have read Putin's statements of why he is doing what he his doing. Doing what he thinks is best for protecting his country and it has not just been Putin but other leaders of Russia has been saying this for a long time.

What I have yet to have anyone answer for me is. How is what is Putin doing any different than what we did in Afghanistan and Iraq? We thought we were doing what was best for our country to keep it safe? Why does Russia not have the same right as us?

This is not a statement of agreement on what Russia has done.

Are Russia leaders lying SOB, yes... but I could same the same thing about most of our leaders.

 

[HDRider]

What I have yet to have anyone answer for me is. How is what is Putin doing any different than what we did in Afghanistan and Iraq?

I had not seen you ask.

You believe in your heart of hearts what Russia is doing is on the same level as what we did in Iraq and Afghanistan?

If so, I don't think I could pull anyone that far from the line over to another view.

BTW - I never saw Moon express that same sentiment. I don't think I would have missed that.

 

[GunMonkeyIntl]

What I have yet to have anyone answer for me is. How is what is Putin doing any different than what we did in Afghanistan and Iraq?

Iraq is an interesting case for you to bring up. The first time we went into Iraq, it was in response to them doing EXACTLY what Putin has done in Ukraine. Hussein concocted a story about how Kuwait was a threat to Iraq’s sovereignty, and how Kuwait rightfully belonged to Iraq anyway. We (the international coalition) was justified in smacking the despot back into line. In fact, Hussein should have been put on tribunal and hanged after his first stunt.

The second trip into Iraq was a more complicated story, and not as clearly justified, but we weren’t without cause. Everyone likes to recall the story about how it turned out that Hussein didn’t have WMD, but everyone conveniently forgets that he intentionally acted like he did. He did everything in his power to convince the world that he had WMD. And, after we went through Iraq, there was loads of evidence that he’d had WMD there very shortly before our (again, the international coalition, NOT just the US) invasion- but let’s not let historical facts get in the way of a well-crafted media retelling of history.

So, you might ask why it was any of our business that Hussein had WMD, and why we’d be justified in taking them from him. The answer to that is much more clear-cut. Hussein had demonstrated his willingness to use WMD against his neighbors, and to conduct a genocide within his own borders. Part of the agreement that we wouldn’t stretch a new length of rope with his corpse was that he wasn’t to be trusted with WMD ever again, and had to submit to inspections to prove that he didn’t.

The key to understanding Iraq II was that it was in direct response to Hussein’s prior despotism, and that it wasn’t a US invasion. It was a coalition invasion conducted mostly with US assets because we’re one of the few nations on earth with the balls to actually hold a despot accountable.

Afghanistan is easy: they harbored a criminal who waged war on us, on our soil. We told the Afghani government that they could either turn him over to us or face our wrath as if they were the ones who’d attacked us themselves. They chose the latter and they lost their sovereignty for it. They chose poorly.

Russia in Ukraine is nothing like the invasions of either Iraq or Afghanistan. Putin is dying, and dying to be known for being the one to rebuild the Soviet Union. Since shortly after taking the throne, he’s repeatedly invaded former slave states of the Soviet Union in order to claim their resources and land. His adventurism in Ukraine is no different. Ukraine, while imperfect, is an ally of the United States, and deserved no different response than we showed when his ilk tried to steal Kuwait. Even if we didn’t respond directly to the invasion, we should have maintained our embassy, and, when the first bullet hole showed up in one of our walls, we should have destroyed every Russian asset in Ukraine. If they put a second bullet hole into our assets there, we should destroyed every Russian military asset within 100 miles of their border.


Any other burning questions you’re having trouble getting a straight answer to?

 

[HDRider]

I have always been of the opinion you should leave some things to the professionals

That was good Monkey

 

[Hiro]

Iraq is an interesting case for you to bring up. The first time we went into Iraq, it was in response to them doing EXACTLY what Putin has done in Ukraine. Hussein concocted a story about how Kuwait was a threat to Iraq’s sovereignty, and how Kuwait rightfully belonged to Iraq anyway. We (the international coalition) was justified in smacking the despot back into line. In fact, Hussein should have been put on tribunal and hanged after his first stunt.

The second trip into Iraq was a more complicated story, and not as clearly justified, but we weren’t without cause. Everyone likes to recall the story about how it turned out that Hussein didn’t have WMD, but everyone conveniently forgets that he intentionally acted like he did. He did everything in his power to convince the world that he had WMD. And, after we went through Iraq, there was loads of evidence that he’d had WMD there very shortly before our (again, the international coalition, NOT just the US) invasion- but let’s not let historical facts get in the way of a well-crafted media retelling of history.

So, you might ask why it was any of our business that Hussein had WMD, and why we’d be justified in taking them from him. The answer to that is much more clear-cut. Hussein had demonstrated his willingness to use WMD against his neighbors, and to conduct a genocide within his own borders. Part of the agreement that we wouldn’t stretch a new length of rope with his corpse was that he wasn’t to be trusted with WMD ever again, and had to submit to inspections to prove that he didn’t.

The key to understanding Iraq II was that it was in direct response to Hussein’s prior despotism, and that it wasn’t a US invasion. It was a coalition invasion conducted mostly with US assets because we’re one of the few nations on earth with the balls to actually hold a despot accountable.

Afghanistan is easy: they harbored a criminal who waged war on us, on our soil. We told the Afghani government that they could either turn him over to us or face our wrath as if they were the ones who’d attacked us themselves. They chose the latter and they lost their sovereignty for it. They chose poorly.

Russia in Ukraine is nothing like the invasions of either Iraq or Afghanistan. Putin is dying, and dying to be known for being the one to rebuild the Soviet Union. Since shortly after taking the throne, he’s repeatedly invaded former slave states of the Soviet Union in order to claim their resources and land. His adventurism in Ukraine is no different. Ukraine, while imperfect, is an ally of the United States, and deserved no different response than we showed when his ilk tried to steal Kuwait. Even if we didn’t respond directly to the invasion, we should have maintained our embassy, and, when the first bullet hole showed up in one of our walls, we should have destroyed every Russian asset in Ukraine. If they put a second bullet hole into our assets there, we should destroyed every Russian military asset within 100 miles of their border.


Any other burning questions you’re having trouble getting a straight answer to?

Many folks don't want straight answers that go against their preformed or ill informed opinion. Carry on.

 

[GunMonkeyIntl]

Many folks don't want straight answers that go against their preformed or ill informed opinion. Carry on.

Commies gotta Commie for other Commies.

It’s what they do.

 

[Ziptie]

<sigh>, You kinda missed my point and appeciate the points you brought up. We thought we were doing the right thing at the time. What about the things that were being done to the people in the Donbass region. Accidently stumbled on some horrible things the Ukrainian army was doing to them. Ukrainian is so corrupt that after repeated attempts of trying to join Nato ,Nato said no each time clean up your corruption. This is a group that let places like Turkey in.

So if someone pretends like they are doing something bad it is ok to go in a do something about it. Just like we have all those bio labs in Ukraine, after we denied it, but we are always in the right whatever we do and any other country is in the wrong?

You don't seem to want to listen when I and others say that we don't support Russia in what they are doing so be it. You say this is a good guy vs bad guy situation I say they are both in the wrong, but humans are going to just keep on being human.

 

[homesteadforty]

Sorry guys but I am agreeing with moon. I align with a lot of other thoughts on stuff you say with but this Russian thing is... I have read Putin's statements of why he is doing what he his doing.

Problem #1: believing any of Putin's statements.

Doing what he thinks is best for protecting his country and it has not just been Putin but other leaders of Russia has been saying this for a long time.

Problem #2: believing anything Stalin said

What I have yet to have anyone answer for me is. How is what is Putin doing any different than what we did in Afghanistan and Iraq? We thought we were doing what was best for our country to keep it safe? Why does Russia not have the same right as us?

Solution #1: read what @GunMonkeyIntl wrote in post #63

This is not a statement of agreement on what Russia has done.

But it sure is a statement of condonation.

 

[GunMonkeyIntl]

<sigh>, You kinda missed my point and appeciate the points you brought up. We thought we were doing the right thing at the time. What about the things that were being done to the people in the Donbass region. Accidently stumbled on some horrible things the Ukrainian army was doing to them. Ukrainian is so corrupt that after repeated attempts of trying to join Nato ,Nato said no each time clean up your corruption. This is a group that let places like Turkey in.

So if someone pretends like they are doing something bad it is ok to go in a do something about it. Just like we have all those bio labs in Ukraine, after we denied it, but we are always in the right whatever we do and any other country is in the wrong?

You don't seem to want to listen when I and others say that we don't support Russia in what they are doing so be it. You say this is a good guy vs bad guy situation I say they are both in the wrong, but humans are going to just keep on being human.

It’s you that completely missed the point or “didn’t listen”, and I suspect it’s a result of you having your position on the matter already chosen.

You asked (in a kind of passive aggressive manner) how our actions in Iraq and Afghanistan were “any different” than what Russia is doing in Ukraine. I directly answered that question and illustrated how they were entirely different situations.

Then, in this post, you take on the air of responding to my post, but actually use points of your own creation that have nothing to do with what I said- which is the definition of a strawman argument. The two specific strawman points from your post were these:

We thought we were doing the right thing at the time. What about the things that were being done to the people in the Donbass region. Accidently stumbled on some horrible things the Ukrainian army was doing to them.

So if someone pretends like they are doing something bad it is ok to go in a do something about it.

The first strawman has nothing to do with either our invasion of Afghanistan or either of the invasions of Iraq.

In the case of Afghanistan, our beef was with a criminal terrorist that declared war on us and accepted responsibility for a series of attacks that killed thousands of our citizens, on our soil. We offered the Taliban the opportunity to turn this criminal over to us. They refused. We went in and got him ourselves.

In the case of Iraq I, Iraq had invaded a sovereign nation to steal their land and resources- incidentally, EXACTLY as Russia has done to Chechnya, Georgia and, now, Ukraine. An international coalition pushed Iraq out of Kuwait, and de-fanged their military to keep them from trying it again as soon as we left.

In the case of Iraq II, Hussein didn’t just “pretend like he was doing something bad”, he’d actually used WMD against neighbor states and in the course of a genocide against the Kurds. In response, an international coalition put sanctions on Iraq only to be lifted if Hussein cooperated with international weapons inspectors, and proved that he no longer kept WMD. As soon as the sanctions were lifted, Hussein started blocking the weapons inspectors and telegraphing in the regional media that he still had his WMD and was prepared to use them. When we (again, the international coalition) went in, we found that Hussein had had WMD only very shortly before we’d gotten there.

The fact that you can so readily rewrite history, distilling it to “Hussein only pretended to be doing something bad” shows that you’re not capable of being even remotely objective on the topic. It makes you appear biased and intellectually dishonest.


Now, let’s consider what Russia is doing in Ukraine. Russia has been fueling a civil war in the Donbas and Luhansk oblasts since the afternoon of the morning that Ukraine declared its independence. That’s 30 years that Russia has been sending weapons, money, and uniformed and ununiformed troops into Ukraine- this all while Vlad Putin was a ranking member of the KGB. As soon as Putin stole his first election, he ratcheted the covert ops he’d been doing as the KGB to overt missions of national policy.

Putin took Chechnya because he thought it should belong to Russia. Putin then took Georgia because he thought it should belong to Russia. All along, he was continually working on the bigger prize, Ukraine. He escalated the insurgency in Donbas and Luhansk, and even attempted assassination against the Ukrainian president before installing his own puppet. Note: this took place prior to the US/West’s retaliatory meddling in the Ukrainian elections, in a period that @MoonRiver prefers to ignore when he’s trying to blame the whole thing on the US, so don’t be surprised that neither he nor rt.com told you about it- they do have an agenda to propel after all.

So, after having his own puppet removed, Putin opted to just blatantly steal a large and valuable piece of Ukraine. He never stopped fueling the insurgency in Donbas and Luhansk, but he managed to claim most of Ukraine’s coast and all of their Black Sea oil for his own. Then, back in March of this past year, he decided to just try to take the whole thing. His conventional military proved to be woefully inadequate, and he’s now resigned himself to openly using it to try to steal the Donbas and Luhansk oblasts.

And, now, here you are telling us all about Putin found that the Ukrainian army was doing a bunch of bad-guy stuff in Donbas and Luhansk. Putin, the guy who’s been trying to steal it for 30 years (first as KGB, now as President) wouldn’t make up something like that, right?

And, even if Putin didn’t make it up, would you really be shocked and appalled that the Ukrainian military had committed some atrocities against Russian agents who have been conducting a terrorist insurgency on their soil for the last 30 years?

The fact that you intentionally leave out all of the color, except the Commie red and gold, for your assessment says everything one needs to know about your support in this matter.

But, just for the hell of it, why don’t we try this another way, Buttercup? How about you tell us with specifics, not your vague, selective-historical RT talking-point platitudes, how about YOU tell ME exactly how what Putin is doing in Ukraine is “no different” than what we did in Iraq and Afghanistan. I’m dying to hear it.

 

[crabappleplum]

There are ethnic Russians who live in Ukraine. Putin made it clear several years ago he will go anywhere to protect ethnic Russians from abuse. Ukraine did have a nazi problem and they were targeting ethnic Russians. Putin went in to denazify Ukraine.

Here;s a video to prove nazi strongholds in Ukraine The other video showing nazi tattoos on Mariupol pows is taken down. It refuted the western narrative:

EXCLUSIVE! AZOV Battalion Mariupol Headquarters Walkthrough PT 1! - YouTube

 

[HDRider]

It’s you that completely missed the point or “didn’t listen”, and I suspect it’s a result of you having your position on the matter already chosen.

You asked (in a kind of passive aggressive manner) how our actions in Iraq and Afghanistan were “any different” than what Russia is doing in Ukraine. I directly answered that question and illustrated how they were entirely different situations.

Then, in this post, you take on the air of responding to my post, but actually use points of your own creation that have nothing to do with what I said- which is the definition of a strawman argument. The two specific strawman points from your post were these:



The first strawman has nothing to do with either our invasion of Afghanistan or either of the invasions of Iraq.

In the case of Afghanistan, our beef was with a criminal terrorist that declared war on us and accepted responsibility for a series of attacks that killed thousands of our citizens, on our soil. We offered the Taliban the opportunity to turn this criminal over to us. They refused. We went in and got him ourselves.

In the case of Iraq I, Iraq had invaded a sovereign nation to steal their land and resources- incidentally, EXACTLY as Russia has done to Chechnya, Georgia and, now, Ukraine. An international coalition pushed Iraq out of Kuwait, and de-fanged their military to keep them from trying it again as soon as we left.

In the case of Iraq II, Hussein didn’t just “pretend like he was doing something bad”, he’d actually used WMD against neighbor states and in the course of a genocide against the Kurds. In response, an international coalition put sanctions on Iraq only to be lifted if Hussein cooperated with international weapons inspectors, and proved that he no longer kept WMD. As soon as the sanctions were lifted, Hussein started blocking the weapons inspectors and telegraphing in the regional media that he still had his WMD and was prepared to use them. When we (again, the international coalition) went in, we found that Hussein had had WMD only very shortly before we’d gotten there.

The fact that you can so readily rewrite history, distilling it to “Hussein only pretended to be doing something bad” shows that you’re not capable of being even remotely objective on the topic. It makes you appear biased and intellectually dishonest.


Now, let’s consider what Russia is doing in Ukraine. Russia has been fueling a civil war in the Donbas and Luhansk oblasts since the afternoon of the morning that Ukraine declared its independence. That’s 30 years that Russia has been sending weapons, money, and uniformed and ununiformed troops into Ukraine- this all while Vlad Putin was a ranking member of the KGB. As soon as Putin stole his first election, he ratcheted the covert ops he’d been doing as the KGB to overt missions of national policy.

Putin took Chechnya because he thought it should belong to Russia. Putin then took Georgia because he thought it should belong to Russia. All along, he was continually working on the bigger prize, Ukraine. He escalated the insurgency in Donbas and Luhansk, and even attempted assassination against the Ukrainian president before installing his own puppet. Note: this took place prior to the US/West’s retaliatory meddling in the Ukrainian elections, in a period that @MoonRiver prefers to ignore when he’s trying to blame the whole thing on the US, so don’t be surprised that neither he nor rt.com told you about it- they do have an agenda to propel after all.

So, after having his own puppet removed, Putin opted to just blatantly steal a large and valuable piece of Ukraine. He never stopped fueling the insurgency in Donbas and Luhansk, but he managed to claim most of Ukraine’s coast and all of their Black Sea oil for his own. Then, back in March of this past year, he decided to just try to take the whole thing. His conventional military proved to be woefully inadequate, and he’s now resigned himself to openly using it to try to steal the Donbas and Luhansk oblasts.

And, now, here you are telling us all about Putin found that the Ukrainian army was doing a bunch of bad-guy stuff in Donbas and Luhansk. Putin, the guy who’s been trying to steal it for 30 years (first as KGB, now as President) wouldn’t make up something like that, right?

And, even if Putin didn’t make it up, would you really be shocked and appalled that the Ukrainian military had committed some atrocities against Russian agents who have been conducting a terrorist insurgency on their soil for the last 30 years?

The fact that you intentionally leave out all of the color, except the Commie red and gold, for your assessment says everything one needs to know about your support in this matter.

But, just for the hell of it, why don’t we try this another way, Buttercup? How about you tell us with specifics, not your vague, selective-historical RT talking-point platitudes, how about YOU tell ME exactly how what Putin is doing in Ukraine is “no different” than what we did in Iraq and Afghanistan. I’m dying to hear it.

I have a very simple question.

How often do you disagree with a person that basis their position on facts and reason?

 

[Vjk]

Russia is not the Soviet Union.
Russia is not Communist.
USSR was Communist.
Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Chernenko, and Gorbachev were all Ukrainian. Stalin was Georgian.
Khrushchev gave Ukraine Crimea to placate them for the Holodomor.
Adam Schiff's grand-uncle financed Vladimir Lenin's exploits.
The anti-Russia side gets its information from the same people that got Pulitzers for their Russia collusion hoax, peepee tape reporting, and Ukraine coercion hoax. Trustworthy lot, that.
The USA funded and ran at least 47 bioweapons labs in Ukraine.
The USA funded and ran the Wuhan Institute of Virology - cooperating with the Chines army researchers.
Obama overthrew the duly elected government of Ukraine in 2014, which led to massacres of ethnic Russians in Ukraine.
The ethnic Russians have lived there for centuries under various dominions. They are not like the foreign invaders the USA and other Western nations face.
Sevastopol has been the home port of the Eastern Russian Fleet since Catherine drove the Ottomans out - after 200 years.

I don't claim to know why Putin invaded Ukraine. But I also have no respect for anyone who claims they know why. There is definitely more to it than we are hearing, but that is the way of it eh.

I absolutely, today, would 100% support a US invasion of Mexico to obliterate the drug cartels and the politicians that support them. And stop those that facilitate the illegal invasion of the USA. I suspect Putin sees the US puppets in Ukraine in the same way.

 

[Ziptie]

It’s you that completely missed the point or “didn’t listen”, and I suspect it’s a result of you having your position on the matter already chosen.

You asked (in a kind of passive aggressive manner) how our actions in Iraq and Afghanistan were “any different” than what Russia is doing in Ukraine. I directly answered that question and illustrated how they were entirely different situations.

Then, in this post, you take on the air of responding to my post, but actually use points of your own creation that have nothing to do with what I said- which is the definition of a strawman argument. The two specific strawman points from your post were these:



The first strawman has nothing to do with either our invasion of Afghanistan or either of the invasions of Iraq.

In the case of Afghanistan, our beef was with a criminal terrorist that declared war on us and accepted responsibility for a series of attacks that killed thousands of our citizens, on our soil. We offered the Taliban the opportunity to turn this criminal over to us. They refused. We went in and got him ourselves.

In the case of Iraq I, Iraq had invaded a sovereign nation to steal their land and resources- incidentally, EXACTLY as Russia has done to Chechnya, Georgia and, now, Ukraine. An international coalition pushed Iraq out of Kuwait, and de-fanged their military to keep them from trying it again as soon as we left.

In the case of Iraq II, Hussein didn’t just “pretend like he was doing something bad”, he’d actually used WMD against neighbor states and in the course of a genocide against the Kurds. In response, an international coalition put sanctions on Iraq only to be lifted if Hussein cooperated with international weapons inspectors, and proved that he no longer kept WMD. As soon as the sanctions were lifted, Hussein started blocking the weapons inspectors and telegraphing in the regional media that he still had his WMD and was prepared to use them. When we (again, the international coalition) went in, we found that Hussein had had WMD only very shortly before we’d gotten there.

The fact that you can so readily rewrite history, distilling it to “Hussein only pretended to be doing something bad” shows that you’re not capable of being even remotely objective on the topic. It makes you appear biased and intellectually dishonest.


Now, let’s consider what Russia is doing in Ukraine. Russia has been fueling a civil war in the Donbas and Luhansk oblasts since the afternoon of the morning that Ukraine declared its independence. That’s 30 years that Russia has been sending weapons, money, and uniformed and ununiformed troops into Ukraine- this all while Vlad Putin was a ranking member of the KGB. As soon as Putin stole his first election, he ratcheted the covert ops he’d been doing as the KGB to overt missions of national policy.

Putin took Chechnya because he thought it should belong to Russia. Putin then took Georgia because he thought it should belong to Russia. All along, he was continually working on the bigger prize, Ukraine. He escalated the insurgency in Donbas and Luhansk, and even attempted assassination against the Ukrainian president before installing his own puppet. Note: this took place prior to the US/West’s retaliatory meddling in the Ukrainian elections, in a period that @MoonRiver prefers to ignore when he’s trying to blame the whole thing on the US, so don’t be surprised that neither he nor rt.com told you about it- they do have an agenda to propel after all.

So, after having his own puppet removed, Putin opted to just blatantly steal a large and valuable piece of Ukraine. He never stopped fueling the insurgency in Donbas and Luhansk, but he managed to claim most of Ukraine’s coast and all of their Black Sea oil for his own. Then, back in March of this past year, he decided to just try to take the whole thing. His conventional military proved to be woefully inadequate, and he’s now resigned himself to openly using it to try to steal the Donbas and Luhansk oblasts.

And, now, here you are telling us all about Putin found that the Ukrainian army was doing a bunch of bad-guy stuff in Donbas and Luhansk. Putin, the guy who’s been trying to steal it for 30 years (first as KGB, now as President) wouldn’t make up something like that, right?

And, even if Putin didn’t make it up, would you really be shocked and appalled that the Ukrainian military had committed some atrocities against Russian agents who have been conducting a terrorist insurgency on their soil for the last 30 years?

The fact that you intentionally leave out all of the color, except the Commie red and gold, for your assessment says everything one needs to know about your support in this matter.

But, just for the hell of it, why don’t we try this another way, Buttercup? How about you tell us with specifics, not your vague, selective-historical RT talking-point platitudes, how about YOU tell ME exactly how what Putin is doing in Ukraine is “no different” than what we did in Iraq and Afghanistan. I’m dying to hear it.

Sorry if I came off as passive aggressive did not mean to sound that way. I enjoy having these conversations and hearing about other points of view, but my time here is limited and I don't always have time to convey my thoughts as thoroughly as l would like.

As for mind made up no, I just have not seen an argument that...puts all the pieces together.

Last I heard from the testimony's that were given we never proved Hussein had the WMD . I could be wrong.

I guess I would say as specifics about Iraq and Afghanistan is the oil. Do you believe if they did not have the oil that we needed(or that it would destabilize the region for the oil to flow) we would have ever gone over there and stayed like we did?

 

[Ziptie]

One danger I see happening for the USA is that we are in a proxy war with Russia. When this is all over Russia will have the Donbass Region. At that point MY GUESS is they will call it good but..
In the meantime the Ukraine people will figure out that the powers that be in the US were just using the Ukrainian people in our war with Russia. The US gov knew they would lose but let them waste their fathers and brothers for Russia to use up some of their resources.

In the meantime as we are sending all our weapons' to Ukrainian as fast as we can make them. China helps leak the info they they gathered from our Congressman for sale to help turn us into the worlds bad guy for doing such a thing. The rest of NATO said it is not our fault US made us send the weapons' and oh by the way China makes certain components for said weapons'. They decide due to supply chain they are not going to send us certain parts so we can't make more.

I just wish we had better leadership so we could stopped this whole mess.

 

[GunMonkeyIntl]

I have a very simple question.

How often do you disagree with a person that basis their position on facts and reason?

Despite being “simple”, that’s a really strange question. I suppose I disagree plenty often enough on a fact-for-fact position. I do have a very low tolerance for people who insist on arguing from feelz and platitudes, though, if that’s what you mean.

 

[GunMonkeyIntl]

Russia is not the Soviet Union.
Russia is not Communist.
USSR was Communist.
Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Chernenko, and Gorbachev were all Ukrainian. Stalin was Georgian.
Khrushchev gave Ukraine Crimea to placate them for the Holodomor.
Adam Schiff's grand-uncle financed Vladimir Lenin's exploits.
The anti-Russia side gets its information from the same people that got Pulitzers for their Russia collusion hoax, peepee tape reporting, and Ukraine coercion hoax. Trustworthy lot, that.
The USA funded and ran at least 47 bioweapons labs in Ukraine.
The USA funded and ran the Wuhan Institute of Virology - cooperating with the Chines army researchers.
Obama overthrew the duly elected government of Ukraine in 2014, which led to massacres of ethnic Russians in Ukraine.
The ethnic Russians have lived there for centuries under various dominions. They are not like the foreign invaders the USA and other Western nations face.
Sevastopol has been the home port of the Eastern Russian Fleet since Catherine drove the Ottomans out - after 200 years.

I don't claim to know why Putin invaded Ukraine. But I also have no respect for anyone who claims they know why. There is definitely more to it than we are hearing, but that is the way of it eh.

I absolutely, today, would 100% support a US invasion of Mexico to obliterate the drug cartels and the politicians that support them. And stop those that facilitate the illegal invasion of the USA. I suspect Putin sees the US puppets in Ukraine in the same way.

That was an almost unintelligible mish-mash of disconnected “points”. You managed to throw a bunch of things together but failed to assemble them into a cogent, or, for that matter, even coherent point.

For lack of any better direction on where you were trying to lead that Jackalope, I’ll respond to what I saw as your two most noteworthy points. If there was something in there you were earnestly trying to draw out, please let me know, and I’ll see if it’s something I can respond to.

Russia is not the Soviet Union.
Russia is not Communist.
USSR was Communist.

If this was some basis for a point you were trying to make, you couldn’t have been more wrong from the start.

The USSR was not “Communist”, unless you meant in the sense of the difference between “Communist” and “communist”, which I suspect you didn’t, because you said that Russia is not “Communist”.

The USSR was not communist. It was an oligarchy. Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky, Khrushchev and all the other more-equals were very wealthy men. I’m not aware of any State that has pulled off real communism. Every government labeled as such as been either an oligarchy, a terrestrial theocracy, or some mix of the two.

Russia is, today, what the USSR was, in 1990, minus the number of slave states they held for the financial benefit of their oligarchs. In 1990, the el jefe oligarch was Gorbachev. Today it is Putin. Under both, the average Russian was allowed to have what the oligarchy was willing to spare them, and drew breath at the pleasure of their leader. Under neither was communism practiced. Neither was communist. Both were/are Commies.

Trying to make a distinction between Russia, today, and the USSR is just pandering to the propaganda they publish about them being “Under New Management”

The anti-Russia side gets its information from the same people that got Pulitzers for their Russia collusion hoax, peepee tape reporting, and Ukraine coercion hoax. Trustworthy lot, that.

And you pro-Russian sympathizing apologist sycophants get your information from the same office that issued all of the Soviet propaganda. When you get your talking points, for which you find yourself so clever and sophisticated in parroting, from RT, it comes right off of Putin’s desk, so don’t try to sell your “knowledge” of the situation as being somehow more truthy than the anti-Putin media. It just makes you look silly and simple.

 

[Hiro]

That was an almost unintelligible mish-mash of disconnected “points”. You managed to throw a bunch of things together but failed to assemble them into a cogent, or, for that matter, even coherent point.

For lack of any better direction on where you were trying to lead that Jackalope, I’ll respond to what I saw as your two most noteworthy points. If there was something in there you were earnestly trying to draw out, please let me know, and I’ll see if it’s something I can respond to.


If this was some basis for a point you were trying to make, you couldn’t have been more wrong from the start.

The USSR was not “Communist”, unless you meant in the sense of the difference between “Communist” and “communist”, which I suspect you didn’t, because you said that Russia is not “Communist”.

The USSR was not communist. It was an oligarchy. Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky, Khrushchev and all the other more-equals were very wealthy men. I’m not aware of any State that has pulled off real communism. Every government labeled as such as been either an oligarchy, a terrestrial theocracy, or some mix of the two.

Russia is, today, what the USSR was, in 1990, minus the number of slave states they held for the financial benefit of their oligarchs. In 1990, the el jefe oligarch was Gorbachev. Today it is Putin. Under both, the average Russian was allowed to have what the oligarchy was willing to spare them, and drew breath at the pleasure of their leader. Under neither was communism practiced. Neither was communist. Both were/are Commies.

Trying to make a distinction between Russia, today, and the USSR is just pandering to the propaganda they publish about them being “Under New Management”



And you pro-Russian sympathizing apologist sycophants get your information from the same office that issued all of the Soviet propaganda. When you get your talking points, for which you find yourself so clever and sophisticated in parroting, from RT, it comes right off of Putin’s desk, so don’t try to sell your “knowledge” of the situation as being somehow more truthy than the anti-Putin media. It just makes you look silly and simple.

The Tsars never left. They just changed their 'religion' that justified their rule.

 

[GunMonkeyIntl]

Sorry if I came off as passive aggressive did not mean to sound that way. I enjoy having these conversations and hearing about other points of view, but my time here is limited and I don't always have time to convey my thoughts as thoroughly as l would like.

As for mind made up no, I just have not seen an argument that...puts all the pieces together.

Last I heard from the testimony's that were given we never proved Hussein had the WMD . I could be wrong.

The passive aggression may have been unintentional, but, rather than just asking someone how to explain how our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were any different than Putin’s theft of Ukrainian territory, you said that no one has been able to answer that for you, insinuating both that you had asked and it couldn’t be done.
That’s neither here nor there.

It is a bit of a tangent at this point, but our soldiers and marines were constantly finding WMD in Iraq. Many were injured by them, and the VA is constantly logging new cases of side effects from it. The anti-Bush (or any Republican doody-head, for that matter) press fully invested in a word game by claiming that “No WMD were found in Iraq”. What they meant is that an active factory was never found, but plenty of the weapons were still there well into the 2nd invasion. Of note, much of the equipment that we knew to be in the factories later showed up in Syria, Jordan and Turkey. So, bottom line, WMD were there, in production shortly before we got there, and in warhead format after we arrived.

If you know more than a handful of vets, you know at least one or two people who could testify as to their being there, whether they’ve mentioned it to you or not. And, so you don’t think I’m just making this up;

BOMBSHELL: New York Times Reports WMDs WERE Found in Iraq!

How many times have we been told that there were no weapons of mass destruction found in Iraq? I’m pretty sure I’ve heard it millions of times. I’ve read stories here and there over the last several years about WMDs being found, but of course it never got much news coverage – until now. The […]

thepoliticalinsider.com

I guess I would say as specifics about Iraq and Afghanistan is the oil. Do you believe if they did not have the oil that we needed(or that it would destabilize the region for the oil to flow) we would have ever gone over there and stayed like we did?

I can’t say, for sure, but I would bet that our interest in stability in that region did hinge on the oil. Had they been without resources we probably wouldn’t have cared. That said, we didn’t go to Iraq and steal their oil. In fact, we continued to buy it, at and above market value. We could have made a rational argument for using the revenue for that oil for reconstruction and to repay the taxpayers of the coalition, but we didn’t. We paid for reconstruction, out of our pocket, and never stopped paying for the oil.

On the other hand, when Putin stated that Crimea should belong to Russia, and then took it, he TOOK it. I’ve posted about this before, and I don’t recall where, or I’d link the post. Prior to Putin stealing Crimea from Ukraine, Russia and Ukraine had roughly equal sea floor allotments for oil drilling development. Putin had tried to force Ukraine to contract the development of theirs through a Russian company (a portion of which would kick back to Putin being the communist oligarch that he is. The west then “meddled”, as RT and @MoonRiver would tell you, and Ukraine pursued the development through a western company. It was immediately after that development that Putin declared that Crimea belonged to Russia, and then invaded and took it. Incidentally, the land area that Russia took was precisely the lines necessary to move 100% of the Ukrainian Black Sea sea floor drilling allotment to Russia.

Putin literally stole Ukraine’s oil.

So, no, not at all similar to what tie there may have been between the western coalition (again, NOT just the US) interest and involvement in Iraq. Not even a little bit.

Wanna try again?

 

[GunMonkeyIntl]

The Tsars never left. They just changed their 'religion' that justified their rule.

Yep. And there were Commie sympathizers here in US, way back when, just as we’re seeing here in these threads today.

 

[GunMonkeyIntl]

One danger I see happening for the USA is that we are in a proxy war with Russia. When this is all over Russia will have the Donbass Region. At that point MY GUESS is they will call it good but..
In the meantime the Ukraine people will figure out that the powers that be in the US were just using the Ukrainian people in our war with Russia. The US gov knew they would lose but let them waste their fathers and brothers for Russia to use up some of their resources.

In the meantime as we are sending all our weapons' to Ukrainian as fast as we can make them. China helps leak the info they they gathered from our Congressman for sale to help turn us into the worlds bad guy for doing such a thing. The rest of NATO said it is not our fault US made us send the weapons' and oh by the way China makes certain components for said weapons'. They decide due to supply chain they are not going to send us certain parts so we can't make more.

I just wish we had better leadership so we could stopped this whole mess.

I don’t disagree that we’re in a proxy war with Russia. We have been since 8 May 1945. We’ve not taken so much as a day off in all that time.

We fought it up and down Southeast Asia, Northern Asia, the Caribbean, and Central and South America. This time the Ukrainian people are suffering the stomping and growling of the two bears, but it’s not our fault. We were fighting a cold, mostly peaceful political war against Russia in Ukraine. We were trying to usher Ukraine into western NATO/EU-friendly stability. Russia was trying to usher Ukraine back into its status as a slave state to the Russian oligarchs. We were winning that war, handily, so Russia made it physical and tried to outright steal Ukraine.

At the end of the day, I don’t see where we should feel any guilt over the situation. Our meddling would have resulted in Ukraine being a free and productive member of the western alliance. Russia, on the other hand, has shown that it was going to settle for nothing less than getting Ukraine back into its chains.

Russia didn’t invade Ukraine because we meddled there. Russia invaded Ukraine because Ukraine had chosen to align with the west rather than their former slave master to the east.