TexasCHLforum.com

Ward Carroll is a retired Navy Commander (O-5) who served 20 years as a Radar Intercept Officer in the F14 Tomcat. He has posted a clear and concise discussion of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on his YouTube channel.

I watched the video, thanks for posting it. At face value, I'm very skeptical of all these "retired generals" (commanders, whatever) speaking on the news channels giving their expert opinions, especially when it starts with something like "EXPOSED!!!!" like some supermarket tabloid. I have to ask, how does he know what Putin's "hopes" and "plans" are, right down to battle map detail? I've watched Russian military updates (videos of their active duty commanders speaking to rooms full of officers) and battle-map explanations, and they are TOTALLY different from what this guy's saying. We have to be careful, again, about media hype (on BOTH sides). If a Russian force slows down to regroup or resupply, the western media says they're "bogged down." They did not have the objective of combining with separatist groups (although they probably did some out of expediency) just W/NW of Donbass. Their is a cluster of about 70,000 Ukranian military, mostly radicals, collected in that area, that were putting huge amount of weapons in place to shell Donbass (as they've been doing for 8 years). Instead of attacking them frontally, which would cause excessive destruction and civilian casualties, they are in the process of encircling them, after which they will obliterate them, with local ethnic Russians cheering them on.

https://www.fairobserver.com/region/eur ... ion-89292/

"Truth is the first casualty of war."

Tucker Carlson knocks it out of the ballpark. Again.

Paladin wrote: ↑Mon Mar 21, 2022 12:44 pm Falsehood In War Time (1928) is more true today than ever before, and is of course being used on all sides:

1. We do not want war.
2. The opposite party alone is guilty of war.
3. The enemy is inherently evil and resembles the devil.
4. We defend a noble cause, not our own interests.
5. The enemy commits atrocities on purpose; our mishaps are involuntary.
6. The enemy uses forbidden weapons.
7. We suffer small losses, those of the enemy are enormous.
8. Recognized artists and intellectuals back our cause.
9. Our cause is sacred.
10. All who doubt our propaganda are traitors.

Prayers for a return to sanity and an end to this preventable conflict.

Good list. One thing about this is that it was written in 1928, when by the time you read news in a newspaper, it was already a month old. Now, though, anything on that list, true or false, can be propagated to hundreds of millions of people in seconds.

Lara Logan speaks on Ukraine:


Here's the Zelinsky video she refers to:

How do you know they're "shelling maternity hospitals"? Did you see it on the news?

Yes, a building that was once used as a maternity hospital was shelled. Regardless of who's doing what in this conflict, I find it a little hard to swallow that they would deliberately, willingly, knowlingly bomb a hospital full of women giving birth. Makes a juicy story, though - kinda like inflation being Putin's fault.

This whole thing is just looking stranger and stranger....

It's gotten to the point where I don't believe ANYTHING in the media. Yeah, we talk about sources like Pravda and RT being "just propaganda," but isn't ours just as bad or worse?

As foreword, it is frustrating trying to sort out the facts from the reality in the media. So Pravda (which I've never read) is a Russian propaganda rag. So then we should turn to objective, unbiased sources like Time, Salon, MSNBC and Washington Post?

Had another brief conversation with my wife's cousin last night in east central Kharkov. No change. All is quiet except for some distant shooting. People walking around outside, going to stores, etc. and they still have all communications and utilities.

Sumy, where the parents of a family friend live, is being evacuated. Russia opened up a corridor as such, and they're desperate to leave, but the Ukrainian radicals are preventing people from accessing the evacuation route, forcing them to go to western Ukraine.

I ran across a great interview with John Mearsheimer, a well known political scientist who is critical of U.S. foreign policy since the Cold War. It's the clearest, most objective content I've seen yet about this Russian-Ukrainian conflict. He favors none of the principal parties, but focuses on the geopolitical forces at work on the larger scale. I strongly, strongly recommend reading it.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/ ... in-ukraine

I certainly believe there is propaganda on BOTH sides. That's what the media does: it paints a certain picture to support the "correct" narrative. If you don't belive that, let me tell you about a man named Donald Trump.

An example is the nuclear power plant. Russia says they took over it to protect it from the radicals, who would happily blow it up, and to protect the source of energy for the rest of the country. Ukraine and the western media, on the other hand, scream about how Russia "attacked" the plant and took over it, and now they can hold Europe hostage with it, etc. etc.

But I put a lot of stake in what my wife's cousin says. She's right there in the middle of Kharkov, an educated professional woman in her 50s. She's not even remotely involved in politics, and has no reason to falsify anything. If she says they're scared of radical Nazis roaming the streets, I believe her.

USA Today has published a LONG list of photos from Ukraine that were fake, taken from battle scenes years ago in other countries.

I think a lot of this will simply have to unfold over time. Reasons given for war are seldom truthful. Remember Desert Storm? Remember Bush saying, "this isn't about oil." Yeah, sure. Whatever works.

Why hasn't Putin steamrolled over Keiv? Because that's not the objective. He might HAVE to steamroll over it, though, the way things are going.

There's been a lot of talk about "Nazis" in this story. Russians tend to use that term more frequently than we do, given that Nazi Germany killed tens of millions of them in WW II. "Nazis" in this context refers to Ukrainian radicals, which proliferate in the Ukrainian military: at least 3 whole divisions, plus many others scattered throughout the force. That's why Crimea detached itself from Ukraine and 98% of them voted to join Russia.

I just wish everybody would calm the eff down and stop pouring gasoline on this fire. Zelensky can keep his job, Ukraine can stay where it is, and become a happy, prosperous country. Instead, they're going to run it into the ground.

Ukrainian "Nazis"

Crimeans celebrating unification with Russia

The Annoyed Man wrote: ↑Mon Feb 28, 2022 10:04 pm Peter Santenello has a YouTube channel where he investigates different types of communities and does human interest reports on the people who live there, and what their daily lives are like. He’s covered the Amish and Mennonites in Ohio, Muslims in Detroit, NYC gang life, Chicano culture in East L.A., immigration and the Texas/Mexico border, etc.

He lived in Ukraine for 4 years, reporting on things there, and returned to the US about a year ago. His wife is Ukrainian, and they have a number of friends both there, and in Russia. One gets the impression that he’s maybe a little bit left of center, but he’s not a whack job, and he scrupulously keeps politics out of his videos…which I have enjoyed and found interesting.

Interesting comments from him, thanks for posting it. A couple of points did sort of jump out. He talked about most Ukrainians being against the Russian presence - EXCEPT for people from some parts of the south and the east. Exactly. Those are the ethnic Russians, 14,000+ of whom have been killed over the past 8 years by Ukrainian radicals.

He also said "if Russia wins, there will be no Ukraine." Not true. Russia's mission in Ukraine is twofold: to stop the persecution of ethnic Russians in the south and east, which continues as you read this, and to demilitarize the country, because of the threat it poses if it ever joins NATO. The goal is for Ukraine to become a neutral country politically, without militaristic aspirations like it has today. Zelensky is horribly inflaming the situation, pretending to be some valiant Joan of Arc hero, and making everything worse and increasing the destruction and suffering.

If Russia wanted to "conquer" Ukraine, they could have easily steamrolled over it in a few days. They could have bombed Kiev into the stone age in a couple of hours. They haven't, simply because they're not interested in "acquiring" Ukraine in any way, shape or form. Russia wouldn't have Ukraine if you handed it to them on a silver platter.

We skyped with my wife's cousin in Kharkov again today. Not much has changed in her east central Kharkov apartment. They hear guns and whatnot far in the distance. But they have all their utilities, internet, phones, and go grocery shopping as usual. Everybody is hoping it won't take much longer for the Russian forces to clear out the neo-Nazi radicals, of which the Ukrainian army is infested. They're the ones causing most of these problems in Donbass - shooting at people trying to leave, firing from apartment roofs, etc. In fact, some Ukrainian army troops are actually shooting at them, for all the trouble they're causing.
She also said everybody's angry with Zelensky, not just because he hasnt' lifted a finger the past 8 years to suppress the radicals, but how he's fanning the flames of the conflict, making it worse and worse, and trying to beg his way into the EU and NATO. That's the latest.