# Col. Richard Black: U.S. Leading World to Nuclear War



## Baron

The guy is according to western presstitutes paid by Putin Kremlin troll



The full Transcript

Mike Billington with _Executive Intelligence Review_ interviews Col. Richard Black (ret.).

*BILLINGTON*: Hi, this is this is Mike Billington with _Executive Intelligence Review_ and the Schiller Institute. I am here today with Col. Richard Black, Sen. Richard Black, who, after serving 31 years in the Marines and in the Army, then served in the Virginia House of Delegates from 1998 to 2006, and in the Virginia Senate from 2012 to 2020. I’ll also allow Colonel Black to describe his military service himself. 

So, Colonel Black, welcome. With the with the U.S. and U.K. and NATO surrogate war with Russia, which is taking place in Ukraine, and the economic warfare being carried out directly against Russia, this has been accompanied by an information war which is intended to demonize Russia and especially President Vladimir Putin. One repeated theme is that the Russian military is carrying out ruthless campaigns of murder against civilians and destruction of residential areas, often referring to the Russian military operations in Syria, claiming that they had done the same thing in Syria, especially against Aleppo. These are supposedly examples of their war crimes and crimes against humanity. 

You have been a leading spokesman internationally for many years, exposing the lies about what took place in Syria and the war on Syria. So first, let me ask: How and why did Russia get involved in Syria militarily? And how does that contrast with the U.S. and NATO supposed justification for their military intervention in Syria?

*BLACK*: Well, let me begin, if I could, by telling our listeners that I’m very patriotic: I volunteered to join the Marines and I volunteered to go to Vietnam. I fought in the bloodiest Marine campaign of the entire war. And I was a helicopter pilot who flew 269 combat missions. My aircraft was hit by ground fire on four missions. I, then, fought on the ground with the First Marine Division, and during one of the 70 combat patrols that I made, my radioman were both killed, and I was wounded while we were attacking and trying to rescue a surrounded Marine outpost. 

So I’m very pro-American. I actually was a part of NATO and was prepared to die in Germany, to defend against an attack by the Soviet Union. 

But Russia is not the Soviet Union at all. People don’t understand that because the media have not made it clear. But Russia is not a communist state; the Soviet Union was a communist state. 

Now, one of the things that I’ve seen claimed, that has been particularly irritating to me because of my experience with Syria: I have I have been in Aleppo city. Aleppo city is the biggest city in Syria, or it was at least before the war began. And there was a tremendous battle. Some some call it the “Stalingrad of the Syrian war,” which is not a bad comparison. It was a terribly bitter battle that went on from 2012 until 2016. In the course of urban combat, any forces that are fighting are forced to destroy buildings. Buildings are blown down on a massive scale. And this happens any time that you have urban combat. So I have walked the streets of Aleppo, while combat was still in progress. I have looked across, through a slit in the sandbags at enemy controlled territory; I’ve stood on tanks that were blown out and this type of thing. 

What I do know, and I can tell you about Aleppo is that Russia was extremely reluctant to get involved in combat in Syria. The war began in 2011, when the United States landed Central Intelligence operatives to begin coordinating with Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups. And we had been unwavering supporters of Al Qaeda, since before the war formally began. We are supporters of Al Qaeda today, where they’re bottled up in Idlib province. The CIA supplied them under secret Operation Timber Sycamore. We gave them all of their anti-tank weapons, all of their anti air- missiles. And Al Qaeda has always been our proxy force on the ground. They, together with ISIS, have carried out the mission of the United States, together with a great number of affiliates that really are kind of interchangeable. You have the Free Syrian Army soldiers move from ISIS to Al Qaeda to Free Syrian Army, rather fluidly. And so we started that war. 

But the United States has a strategic policy of using proxies to engage in war. And our objective was to overthrow the legitimate government of Syria, and in order to do that, we employed proxy soldiers who were the most vile of all terrorists. Something very similar is happening right now in in Ukraine. 

But going back to Aleppo, the Syrian army, together with Hezbollah, which was very effective; there were some troops that were organized by Iran also, but it was pretty much a Syrian show, certainly directed by Syrian generals. And they had fought this bitter urban combat, very brutal, very deadly. And they had fought it for four years, before Russia ever joined the battle. So after four years, the city of Aleppo had enormous destruction. And at that point, the Russians, at the invitation of the legitimate government of Syria, entered the war. But unlike many of the media reports, they did not enter the war as a ground force.  Now, they had some small ground forces. They had military police, they had a few artillery units, a few special operations people, and quite a number of advisers and that sort of thing. But they were not a significant ground force. 

On the other hand, they were a significant and very effective air force, that supplemented the Syrian Air Force. But it really was just the last year of the war, the battle for Aleppo, just the last year, that they entered and their air power was very effective. And by this time, the Syrians had pretty well worn down the terrorist forces. And the Russian assistance was able to tip the balance, and Aleppo was _the_ grand victory of the entire Syrian war. 

But to blame the Russians for the massive destruction that took place within Aleppo, it’s bizarre: Because they were not there, they were not even present when this happened. So this is simply another part of the propaganda narrative, which is which hasbeen very effective for the West, demonizing Russia, and making claims that have no substance. But people don’t remember the history of these things—they’re rather complex. So, no: Russia was not in any respect responsible for the massive destruction of the city of Aleppo.

*BILLINGTON*: How would you contrast the methods of warfare followed by Russia, as opposed to the U.S. and allied forces in Syria?

*BLACK*: Well, first of all, the American involvement, the United States war against Syria is a war of aggression. We put a highly secretive CIA special activities center—these are kind of the James Bond guys of the Central Intelligence Agency, total Machiavellian; they will do anything, there’s no it’s no holds barred with these guys. We sent them in and we started the war in Syria. The war didn’t exist until we sent the CIA to coordinate with Al Qaeda elements. So we began the war and we were not invited into Syria. 

In fact, the United States has seized, two significant parts of Syria. One is a very major part, the Euphrates River, carves off about a third of the northern part of Syria: The United States invaded that portion. We actually put troops on the ground, illegal—against any standard international law of war—it was it was a just a seizure. And this was this was something that was referred to by John Kerry, who was then the Secretary of State, and he was frustrated at the tremendous victory by the Syrian Armed Forces against Al Qaeda and ISIS. And he said, well, we probably need to move to Plan B. He didn’t announce what Plan B was, but it had it unfolded over time: Plan B was the American seizure of that northern portion of Syria. The importance of taking that part of Syria is, that it is the bread basket for all of the Syrian people. That is where the wheat—Syria actually had a significant wheat surplus and the people were very well fed in Syria, before the war. We wanted to take the wheat away, to cause famine among the Syrian people. 

The other thing we were able to do, is to seize the major part of the oil and natural gas fields. Those also were produced in that northern portion beyond the Euphrates River. And the idea was that, by stealing the oil and then the gas, we would be able to shut down the transportation system, and at the same time, during the Syrian winters, we could freeze to death the Syrian civilian population, which in many cases were living in rubble, where these terrorist armies, with mechanized divisions had attacked and just totally destroyed these cities, and left people just living in little pockets of rubble. 

We wanted to starve and we wanted to freeze to death the people of Syria, and that was Plan B. 

Now, we became frustrated at a certain point that somehow these Syrians, these darned Syrians—it’s a tiny little country, and why are these people resilient? They’re fighting against two-thirds of the entire military and industrial force of the world. How can a nation of 23 million people possibly withstand this for over a decade? And so we decided we had to take action or we were going totally lose Syria. And so the U.S. Congress imposed the Caesar sanctions. The Caesar sanctions were the most brutal sanctions ever imposed on any nation. During the Second World War, sanctions were not nearly as strict as they were on Syria. 

We weren’t at war with Syria! And yet we had a naval blockade around the country. We devalued their currency through the SWIFT system for international payments, making it impossible for them to purchase medications. So you had Syrian women who would contract breast cancer, just like we have here in this country. But instead, where in this country where breast cancer has become relatively treatable, we cut off the medical supplies so that the women in Syria would die of breast cancer because they could not get the medications, because we slam their dollars through the SWIFT system. 

One of the last things that we did and the evidence is vague on it, but there was a mysterious explosion in the harbor in Lebanon, and it was a massive explosion of a shipload of ammonium nitrate fertilizer. It killed hundreds of Lebanese people. It wounded thousands and thousands, destroyed the economy of Lebanon. And, most importantly, it destroyed the banking system of Lebanon, which was one of the few lifelines remaining to Syria. I don’t think that explosion was accidental. I think it was orchestrated, and I suspect that the Central Intelligence Agency was aware of the nation that carried out that action to destroy Beirut Harbor. 

But throughout you see this this Machiavellian approach, where we use unlimited force and violence. And at the same time, we control the global media, to where we erase all discussions of what’s truly happening. So, to the man or the woman in the street, they think things are fine. Everything is being done for altruistic reasons, but it’s not.

*BILLINGTON*: Part of your military service was as a JAG officer, and for a period of time, you were the Army’s head of the criminal law division at the Pentagon. And in that light, what do you see as of how these Caesar sanctions—how would you look at those from the perspective of international law and military law?

*BLACK*: Well, now, I was not the international law expert. I was the criminal law expert. But I would say that making war on a civilian population is a crime of grave significance in the law of war. 

One of the things that we did as we as we allied ourselves with Al Qaeda, and on and off with ISIS; I mean, we fought ISIS in a very serious way, but at the same time, we often employed them to use against the Syrian government. So it’s kind of a love-hate. But we have always worked with the terrorists. They were the core. 

One of the policies that was followed was that under this extreme version of Islam, this Wahhabism, there was this notion that you possess a woman that you seize with your strong right arm in battle. And this goes back to the seventh century. And so we facilitated the movement of Islamic terrorists from 100 countries, and they came and they joined ISIS, they joined Al Qaeda, they joined the Free Syrian Army, all of these different ones. And one of the things that they knew when they arrived is that they were lawfully entitled to murder the husbands—I’m not talking about military people, I’m talking about civilians—they could murder the husbands, they could kill them, and then they could possess and own their wives and their children. And they did it in vast numbers. 

And so there was there was a campaign of rape, it was an organized campaign of rape across the nation of Syria. And there actually were slave markets that that arose in certain of these rebel areas where they actually had price lists of the different women. And interestingly, the highest prices went to the youngest children, because there were a great number of pedophiles. And the pedophiles wanted to possess small children, because under the laws that were applied, they were permitted to rape these children repeatedly. They were able to rape the widows of the slain soldiers or the slain civilians, and possess them and buy them and sell them among themselves. This went on. 

I’m not saying that the CIA created this policy, but they understood that it was a widespread policy, and they condoned it. They never criticized it in any way. 

This was so bad, that I spoke with President Assad, who shared with me that they were in the process—when I visited in 2016; I was in a number of battle zones, and in the capital. And I met with the President, and he said that at that time, they were working on legislation in the parliament, to change the law of citizenship. They had always followed the Islamic law, which was that that a child citizenship derived from the father. But there were so many tens, hundreds of thousands of Syrian women impregnated by these terrorists who were imported into Syria, that it was necessary to change the law, so that they would have Syrian citizenship and they wouldn’t have to be returned to their ISIS father in Saudi Arabia, or in Tunisia. They could be retained in Syria. And I checked later and that law was passed and was implemented. 

But it just shows the utter cruelty. When we fight these wars, we have no limits on the cruelty and the inhumanity that we’re prepared to impose on the people, making them suffer, so that somehow that will translate into overthrowing the government, and perhaps taking their oil, taking their resources.

*BILLINGTON*: Clearly, the policy against Russia today, by the current administration.

*BLACK*: Yes. Yes. You know, Russia is, perhaps more blessed with natural resources than any other nation on Earth. They are a major producer of grain, of oil, of aluminum, of fertilizers, of an immense number of things that tie into the whole global economy. And no doubt there are people who look at this and say, “if we could somehow break up Russia itself, there will be fortunes made, to where trillionaires will be made by the dozens.” And there’s some attraction to that. Certainly you’ve seen some of this taking place already, with foreign interests taking over Ukraine, and taking their vast resources. 

But, we began a drive towards Russia, almost immediately after the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991. The Soviet Union dissolved, the Warsaw Pact dissolved. And unfortunately, one of the great tragedies of history is that we failed to dissolve NATO. The sole purpose of NATO was to defend against the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union no longer existed. NATO went toe toe with the Warsaw Pact. The Warsaw Pact was gone; it no longer existed. There was no purpose in NATO’s continuing to exist. However, we retained it, and it could not exist unless it had an enemy. Russia was _desperate_ to become part of the West. 

I met with the head of Gazprom, the largest corporation in Russia, And this was shortly after the demise of the Soviet Union, and he described for me how they were struggling to have their media be as free as it was in the West. And they perceived us as being much more free and open than we were. And he said, you know, we’ve got this problem because we have this uprising in Chechnya, which is part of Russia. And he said the Chechnyan rebels send videos to Russian television and we play them on Russian television, because that’s the way freedom of speech works.

And I said, “Are you kidding me?” I said, “You’re publishing the enemy propaganda films?” He said, “Yeah.” He said, “Isn’t that the way you do it in the United States?” I said, “No.  In the Second World War, we took the head of the Associated Press and we put him in charge of wartime censorship, and it was very strict.” 

So but this is just an example of how they were struggling. They went from being an officially atheist country, to where they became the most Christianized major nation in Europe, by far. Not only were the people, the most Christianized people in any major country in Europe, but the government itself was very supportive of the church, of the Christian faith. They altered their Constitution to say that marriage was the union of one man and one woman. They became very restrictive on the practice of abortion. They ended the practice of overseas adoptions, where some people were going to Russia and adopting little boys for immoral purposes. So they became a totally different culture and. 

In any event, the United States has this long-standing strategy, this political-military strategy, of expanding the empire. We did it in the Middle East, where we attempted to create a massive neocolonial empire. It’s it became rather frayed. The people did not want it. And it seems to be doomed to extinction sometime—but it may go on for another 100 years. But in any event, we are trying to do something similar, as we roll to the East, right up virtually to the Russian border.

*BILLINGTON*:  So, the U.S. and U.K. position on the war in Ukraine, just over these last few weeks has now become not only supporting the war, but victory at all costs. This has been declared by Defense Secretary Austin and others. And they are pumping in huge quantities of not only defensive but offensive military weaponry to the Kyiv regime. What do you see as the consequence of this policy?

BLACK: I think one thing that it will do is it will ensure that a tremendous number of innocent Ukrainian soldiers will die needlessly. A lot of Russian soldiers will die needlessly. These are kids. You know, kids go off to war. I went off to war as a kid. You think your country, right or wrong, everything they’re doing is fine. It just it breaks my heart, when I look at the faces of young Russian boys, who have been who have been gunned down—in some cases very criminally by Ukrainian forces. And likewise, I see Ukrainian young men, who are being slaughtered on the battlefield. 

We don’t care! The United States and NATO, we do not care how many Ukrainians die. Not civilians, not women, not children, not soldiers. _We do not care_. It’s become a great football game. You know, we’ve got our team. They’ve got their team, rah rah. We want to get the biggest score and run it up. And, you know, we don’t care how many how many of our players get crippled on the playing field, as long as we win. 

Now, we are shipping fantastic quantities of weapons, and it’s caused the stock of Raytheon, which creates missiles, and Northrop Grumman, which creates aircraft and missiles, all of these defense industries have become tremendously bloated with tax dollars. I don’t think it’s ultimately going to change the outcome. I think that Russia will prevail. The Ukrainians are in a very awkward strategic position in the East.  

But if you look at the way that this unfolded, President Putin made a desperate effort to stop the march towards war back in December of 2021. He went so far as to put specific written proposals on the table with NATO, peace proposals to defuse what was coming about. Because at this point, Ukraine was massing troops to attack the Donbas. And so, he was trying to head this off. He didn’t want war. And NATO just blew it off, just dismissed it; never took it seriously, never went into serious negotiations. 

At that point, Putin seeing that armed Ukrainians, with weapons to kill Russian troops were literally on their borders, decided he had to strike first. Now, you could see, that this was not this was not some preplanned attack. This was not like Hitler’s attack into Poland, where the standard rule of thumb, is that you always have a 3-to-1 advantage when you are the attacker. You have to mass three times as many tanks and artillery and planes and men, as the other side has. In fact, when Russia went in, they went in with what they had, what they could cobble together on short notice. And they were outnumbered by the Ukrainian forces. The Ukrainian forces had about 250,000. The Russians had perhaps 160,000. So instead of having three times as many, they actually had _fewer_ troops than the Ukrainians. But they were forced to attack, to try to preempt the battle that was looming, where the Ukrainians had massed these forces against the Donbas.

Now, the Donbas is adjacent to Russia. It is a portion of Ukraine that did not join with the revolutionary government that conducted the coup in 2014 and overthrew the government of Ukraine. They refused to become a part of the new revolutionary government of Ukraine. And so they declared their independence. And Ukraine had massed this enormous army to attack against the Donbas. And so Russia was forced to go in to preempt that planned attack by Ukraine. And you could see that Russia very much hoped that they could conduct this special operation without unduly causing casualties for the Ukrainians, because they think of the Ukrainians, or at least they did think of the Ukrainians as brother Slavs; that they wanted to have good relations. But there is a famous picture with a Russian tank, that had been stopped by a gathering of maybe 40 civilians who just walked out in the road and blocked the road and the tank stopped. I can tell you, in Vietnam, if we had had a bunch of people who stood in the way of an American tank, going through, that tank would not have slowed down, in the slightest! It wouldn’t honk the horn, it wouldn’t have done anything; wouldn’t have fired a warning shot. It would have just gone on. And I think that’s more typical—I’m not I’m not criticizing the Americans. I was there and I was fighting, and I probably would have would have driven the tank straight through myself.

But what I’m saying is that the rules of engagement for the Russians were very, very cautious. They didn’t want to create a great deal of hatred and animosity. The Russians did not go in—they did not bomb the electrical system, the media systems, the water systems, the bridges and so forth. They tried to retain the infrastructure of Ukraine in good shape because they wanted it to get back. They just wanted this to be over with and get back to normal. It didn’t work. The Ukrainians, the resistance was unexpectedly hard. The Ukrainian soldiers fought with great, great valor, great heroism. And. And so now the game has been upped and it’s become much more serious. 

But it is amazing to look and to see that Russia dominates the air. They haven’t knocked out the train systems. They haven’t knocked out power plants. They haven’t knocked out so many things. They’ve never bombed the buildings in the center of Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine; they haven’t bombed the buildings where the parliament meets. They’ve been incredibly reserved about these things, hoping against hope that peace could be achieved. 

But I don’t think I don’t think Ukraine has anything to do with the decision about peace or war. I think the decision about peace or war is made in Washington, D.C. As long as we want the war to continue, we will fight that war, using Ukrainians as proxies, and we will fight it to the last Ukrainian death.

*BILLINGTON*: How do you project the potential of a war breaking out directly between the United States and Russia? And what would that be like?

*BLACK*: You know, if you go back to the First World War in 1914, you had the assassination of the Archduke of Austria-Hungary. He and his wife were killed. As a result of those two people being killed, you had a domino effect of all of these alliances, and anger, and media hysteria. And before it was over, I think it was 14 million people had been killed. It’s always hard to get true numbers, but anyway, it was an enormous number of millions of people who died as a result of that. 

We need to recognize the risk of playing these games of chicken. Where, for example, the Turkish media just published an article saying that at Mariupol, where there was a great siege, that the Russians ultimately won. The one area they haven’t taken over is this tremendous steel plant. There are a lot of Ukrainian soldiers who are holed up there. And now it has come to light that apparently there are 50 French senior officers, who are trapped in that steel plant along with the Ukrainians. The French soldiers have been on the ground fighting, directing the battle. And this was kept under wraps, ultra-secret, because of the French elections that just occurred. Had the French people known that there were a large number of French officers trapped and probably going to die in that steel plant, the elections would have gone the other way: Marine Le Pen would have won. And so it was very important that for the entire deep state, that it not come to light that these French officers were there.

We know that there are NATO officers who are present on the ground in Ukraine as advisors and so forth. We run the risk. Now, my guess is—and this is this is a guess, I could be wrong—but the flagship of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, the _Moskva_, was sunk as a result of being struck by anti-ship missiles. My guess is that those missiles, I think there’s a good chance they were fired by the French. Now, I could be wrong, but those missiles are so ultra-sensitive and so dangerous to our ships, that I don’t think that NATO would trust the missiles to Ukrainians, or to anybody else. I think I think they have to be maintained under NATO control and operation. So I think that it was probably NATO forces that actually sunk the _Moskva_. 

And you can see we’re taking these very reckless actions, and each time we sort of up the ante—I happen to be a Republican—but we have two Republican U.S. senators who have said that, “well, we might just need to use nuclear weapons against Russia.” That is insane. I think it’s important that people begin to discuss what a thermonuclear war would mean. 

Now, we need to understand, we think, “oh, we’re big, and we’re bad, and we have all this stuff.” Russia is roughly comparable to the United States in nuclear power. They have hypersonic missiles, that we do not have. They can absolutely evade any timely detection, and they can fire missiles from Russia and reach San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Detroit, Baltimore, Washington, D.C., New York City. 

And if you think about just Virginia, where I happen to live, if there were a nuclear war—and keep in mind, they also have a very large and effective fleet of nuclear submarines that lie off the coast of the United States. They have a great number of nuclear-tipped missiles, and they can evade any defenses we have. So just in Virginia, if you look at it, all of Northern Virginia would be essentially annihilated. There would hardly be any human life remaining in Loudoun County, Prince William County, Fairfax County, Arlington, Alexandria. The Pentagon lies in in Arlington County: The Pentagon would simply be a glowing mass of molten sand. There would be no human life there. And there would be no human life for many miles around it. Just across the Potomac, the nation’s capital, there would be no life remaining in the nation’s capital. The Capitol building would disappear forever. All of the monuments, all of these glorious things—nothing would remain. 

If you go to the coast of Virginia, you have the Norfolk Naval Shipyard, you have the Port of Norfolk. You have you have the greatest accumulation of naval power on the face of the Earth. This is where we park all of our aircraft carriers, our nuclear submarines, all of those things. There would be nothing remaining. There would be _nothing remaining_ of any of those shipping industries there. 

And you can carry this on. You talk about New York City, probably New York City itself, not only would everybody be killed, but it would probably be impossible for people to inhabit New York City for hundreds of years afterwards. But not only would it cease to be a place of vibrant human life, but probably going out for maybe half a millennium, it would not recover any sort of civilization. 

We need to understand the gravity of what we’re doing. Perhaps if it were a matter of life and death for the United States, what happens in Ukraine, that would be one thing. Certainly when the Soviet Union put missiles in Cuba, that targeted the United States, that was worth taking the risk, because it was right on our border and it threatened us. And it was it was a battle worth fighting for and a risk worth taking. The Russians are in this in exactly the mirror image of that situation, because for them, the life of Russia depends on stopping NATO from advancing further right into Ukraine, right to their borders. They cannot afford _not_ to fight this war. They cannot afford not to win this war. 

So I think, toying with this constant escalation in a war that, really, in a place that has no significance to Americans—Ukraine is meaningless to Americans; it has no impact on our day-to-day lives. And yet we’re playing this reckless game that risks the lives of all people in the United States and Western Europe for nothing! Just absolutely for nothing!

*BILLINGTON*: Many flag grade officers certainly understand the consequences that you just described in a rather hair-raising way. Why is it that, while there are some generals speaking out in Italy, in France, in Germany, warning that we are pursuing a course that could lead to nuclear war, why are there not such voices from flag grade officers—retired, perhaps—saying what you’re saying here today? 

*BLACK*: You know, there’s been a tremendous deterioration in the quality of flag officers, going back to, well, certainly the 1990s. We had very, very fine flag officers, during the time I was on active duty—I left in ‘94—just superior quality people. But what happened is, subsequently, we had President Clinton take over, later, we had Obama. We’ve got Biden now. And they apply a very strict political screen to their military officers. And we now have “yes men.” These are not people whose principal devotion is to the United States and its people. Their principal devotion is to their careers and their ability to network with other military officers upon retirement. There’s a very strong network that can place military generals into think tanks, where they promote war, into organizations like Raytheon and Northrop Grumman, and all of these defense operations, where they can get on boards and things like that. So there’s quite a personal price that you pay for saying, “Hey, stop. War is not in the interests of the American people.” If we had a better quality of individual, we would have people with the courage who would say, “I don’t care what it costs me personally.” But it is very difficult to get into the senior ranks, if you are an individual guided by principle, and patriotism, and devotion to the people of this nation. That’s just not how it works. And at some point, we need a President who will go in and shake the tree, and bring a lot of these people falling down from it, because they’re dangerous. They’re very dangerous to America.

*BILLINGTON*: Helga Zepp-LaRouche and the Schiller Institute have a petition — and we held a conference on April 9th on the same theme — that the only way to really stop this descent into hell and into potential nuclear holocaust is for a new Peace of Westphalia. In this case, an international conference to secure a new security architecture and a new development architecture, the right to development for all countries. And like the Peace of Westphalia, one in which all sides sit down together, recognize their interests, their sovereign interests, as including the sovereign interests of the others, and forgiving all past crimes. Anything short of that is going to keep this division of the world into warring blocs. Just like I asked what’s keeping the generals from speaking out, why, and what will it take, to get Americans to recognize that we can and must sit down with Russians, and with Chinese, and with all other nations and establish a true, just world based on the dignity of man and the right to development and security?

*BLACK*: I think, unfortunately, there’s going to have to be enormous pain to drive that, just as there was with the Peace of Westphalia. A nuclear war would do it; an economic cataclysm of unprecedented proportions, resulting from the unbridled printing of money that we’ve engaged in over the last 20 years, there are things that could bring it about. But at this point, the media have been so totally censored and so biased that the American people really don’t have a perception of the need for anything of that sort. It’s going to be difficult. 

You know, here’s something that’s interesting that has happened. Here in this country, you would think the entire world is against Russia. It’s not. In fact, there are major countries of the world that lean towards Russia in this war, starting with China, but then Brazil, you’ve got South Africa, Saudi Arabia—a wide array of countries. India. India is tremendously supportive of Russia. The idea that somehow we have this enormously just cause, it doesn’t strike a great deal of the world that it is just, and much of the world does not accept the latest propaganda about war crimes: this thing about Bucha. That’s probably the most prominent of all the war crimes discussions. 

And what was Bucha? There was a film taken of a vehicle driving down the road in Bucha, which had been recaptured from the Russians. And every hundred feet or so there was some person with his hands, zip tied behind his back, and he’d been killed. It was not announced until four days after the Ukrainians had retaken Bucha. 

Now, we knew almost nothing about it. We actually didn’t even have proof that people had been killed. But assuming they had, we didn’t know where they had been killed. We did not know who they were. We did not know who killed them. We did not know why they were killed. No one could provide an adequate motive for the Russians to have killed them. The Russians held Bucha for a month. If they were going to kill them, why didn’t they kill them during that month? And if you’re going to slaughter a bunch of people, wouldn’t they all be in one place and wouldn’t you gun them all down there? Why would they be distributed along a roadside, a mile along the way? It makes no sense! 

What we do know is that four days after the mayor of Bucha joyously announced that the city was liberated, four days after the Ukrainian army had moved in, and their special propaganda arm of the Ukrainian military were there, all of a sudden there were these dead people on the road. How come they weren’t there when the Russians were there? How come they only appeared after the Russians were gone? 

If I were looking at it as simply a standard criminal case, and I was talking to Criminal Investigation Division or the FBI, or military police or something, I’d say, “OK, the first thing, let’s take a look at the Ukrainians.” My guess would be, and you start with a hunch when you’re investigating a crime—my hunch is that the Ukrainians killed off these people after they moved in, and after they looked around, and said, “OK, who was friendly towards the Russian troops while the Russians were here? We’re going to execute them.” That would be my guess. Because I don’t see any motive for the Russians to have just killed a few people on their way out of town. 

And nobody questions this, because the corporate media are so monolithic. We know for a fact, from the mouth of the head of a Ukrainian hospital, the guy who ran the hospital, he boasted that he had given strict orders to all of his doctors, that when wounded Russian POWs, when casualties were brought in, they were to be _castrated._ Now, this is a horrific war crime, admitted from the mouth of the hospital administrator, and the Ukrainian government said, “we’ll kind of look into that,” Like it’s no big thing. I can’t think of a more horrific, horrific war crime, ever. Where did you hear about it, on ABC and MSNBC and CNN and FOX News? Not a whisper. And yet the proof is undeniable. We had another clip where there was a POW gathering point, where the Ukrainians would bring POWs to a central point for processing—and this is about a seven-minute video—and the Ukrainian soldiers simply gunned them all down. And they had probably 30 of these wounded Russian soldiers lying on the ground, some of them clearly dying from their wounds. Some of them, they put plastic bags over their heads. Now, these are these are guys who are laying there, sometimes fatally wounded with their hands zip-tied behind their backs, and they’ve got plastic bags over their heads, making it difficult to breathe. And because they can’t raise their hands, they can’t take the bags off, so that they can breathe. At the end of the video, the Ukrainians bring in a van, and there are three unwounded Russian POWs. Without the slightest thought or hesitation, as the three come off, and their hands are bound behind their backs, they gunned down two of them, right on camera and they fall over. And the third one gets on his knees, and begs that they won’t hurt him. And then they gun him down! These are crimes. And these were not refuted by the Ukrainian government. But you’d never even know that they occurred! So far, I will tell you that the only proven—I’m not saying that there aren’t war crimes happening on both sides. I’m just telling you, that the only ones where I have seen, fairly irrefutable proof of war crimes, have been on the Ukrainian side. 

Now, often you hear it said, well, the Russians have destroyed this or destroyed that. Well, I’ve got to tell you, you go back to the wars that we fought when we invaded Iraq, the “Shock and Awe,” we destroyed virtually everything in Iraq, everything of significance. We bombed military and civilian targets without much discrimination. The coalition flew 100,000 sorties in 42 days. You compare that to the Russians, who have only flown 8,000 sorties in about the same period of time. 100,000 American sorties versus 8,000, in about the same time.  I think the Russians have tended to be more selective. Whereas we went out — the philosophy of Shock and Awe is that you destroy everything that is needed to sustain human life and for a city to function. You knock out the water supply, the electrical supply, the heat, the oil, the gasoline; so that you knock out all of the major bridges. And then you just continue to destroy everything. 

So it’s really ironic. And keep in mind, Iraq is a relatively small country. Ukraine is a huge country. 100,000 sorties in 42 days, 8,000 sorties in about the same time. A tremendous difference in violence between what we did in Iraq, and what they have done in Ukraine. So there’s simply no credibility when you actually get down to the facts and you look at the way that the war has been conducted.

*BILLINGTON*: Well. Senator Black, Colonel Black.  I think the way you have described the horror that’s already taking place, and considering that we can’t wait for a nuclear war to provoke a new a Peace of Westphalia, I would suggest that what you have described is already horrific enough. And when combined with the hyperinflationary breakdown now sweeping the Western world, with everybody being affected, we believe that we have to take that as the adequate horror, and a recognition of a descent into a dark age, to motivate citizens in Europe, in the United States. 

We are finding that there is a waking up of people who have not wanted to look at their responsibility to the human race as a whole in the past, but who now are forced to consider that, which is the basis on which we’ve called for this, in this petition, for an international conference of all nations, with the U.S., Russia, China, India and so forth, sitting down to end this horror; but to also bring about a true peace for mankind and an era of peace through development. 

And we thank you for giving this breath of ugly truth to a population which needs to hear it. If you have any final thoughts, I ask you to give your final greetings.

*BLACK*:  I’ll just add one thing, and I thank the Schiller Institute for the tremendous effort that you’ve made towards achieving world peace. It is one of the most important efforts ever made, and I certainly applaud that. 

If you look at Russia, the Russian troops that went into battle in Ukraine, for the most part had never experienced combat. This is a peacetime army. Russia doesn’t fight overseas wars. Syria is the only significant overseas engagement that they have had. You compare that with the United States, where literally speaking, if a soldier retires today after a 30-year career in the military, he will not have served a single day when the United States was at peace. Kind of an amazing thing. And you contrast that with the Russian military, where, with few exceptions, the country has been at peace. 

So we really need to start thinking about peace and about the limits of warfare, this idea that somehow we need a zero sum game where we take from you and that enhances us. We’re in a world where everyone can gain and prosper by peace. But I’m concerned that the hyperinflation may be the wake-up call that jolts the world into a recognition that we must have a new paradigm for the future, and I think the Peace of Westphalia at that point might become a possibility. 

So thank you again for the opportunity to be here. There’s always hope and I think there’ll be good things in the future, with the blessings of God.

*BILLINGTON*: And thank you very much from Schiller Institute, The LaRouche Organization, and _EIR_.  We’ll get this posted as quickly as we possibly can, because it’s going to have a tremendous impact. Thank you.

*BLACK*: Thank you very much.






						Video: Col. Richard Black — U.S. Leading World to Nuclear War | The Schiller Institute
					






					schillerinstitute.com


----------



## Confederate Soldier

The U.S. isn't the one who keeps using Nuclear threats. Russia is. If Russia acts on those threats, we will respond in kind. Admitting that we will respond, isn't making us the bad guy.


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## Baron

Confederate Soldier said:


> The U.S. isn't the one who keeps using Nuclear threats. Russia is.



Russia doesn't threat but warn.


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## Confederate Soldier

Baron said:


> Russia doesn't threat but warn.




Warning that if we meddle with their plans, they'll nuke us sounds a lot like a threat.



If a guy starts touching your wife, and you go up to give him what for, and the guy says "don't interrupt me, or I'll shoot you". That's a threat. That's when you pull out your gun and say that you will respond in kind. That's a warning. Your gun will scare the guy off. It's no different between Russia and the U.S. only more lives at stake.


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## Donald H

Well, that's the whole story! 

But when have the facts ever changed minds of Americans in the heat of a war?


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## Donald H

Baron said:


> Russia doesn't threat but warn.


Stick to the story that was told by Black. Don't let them distract from that.


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## g5000

Yeah...I remember when the lefties used to whine in the 80s that Reagan was going to get us all nuked, especially if he put MX missiles in Europe.

Putin is the leader of a third world country.  He's a pig. Fuck him.  Hopefully, this idiotic war HE started will end him.

Putin started the war.  Ukraine and NATO will end it.


----------



## miketx

Baron said:


> The guy is according to western presstitutes paid by Putin Kremlin troll
> 
> 
> 
> The full Transcript
> 
> Mike Billington with _Executive Intelligence Review_ interviews Col. Richard Black (ret.).
> 
> *BILLINGTON*: Hi, this is this is Mike Billington with _Executive Intelligence Review_ and the Schiller Institute. I am here today with Col. Richard Black, Sen. Richard Black, who, after serving 31 years in the Marines and in the Army, then served in the Virginia House of Delegates from 1998 to 2006, and in the Virginia Senate from 2012 to 2020. I’ll also allow Colonel Black to describe his military service himself.
> 
> So, Colonel Black, welcome. With the with the U.S. and U.K. and NATO surrogate war with Russia, which is taking place in Ukraine, and the economic warfare being carried out directly against Russia, this has been accompanied by an information war which is intended to demonize Russia and especially President Vladimir Putin. One repeated theme is that the Russian military is carrying out ruthless campaigns of murder against civilians and destruction of residential areas, often referring to the Russian military operations in Syria, claiming that they had done the same thing in Syria, especially against Aleppo. These are supposedly examples of their war crimes and crimes against humanity.
> 
> You have been a leading spokesman internationally for many years, exposing the lies about what took place in Syria and the war on Syria. So first, let me ask: How and why did Russia get involved in Syria militarily? And how does that contrast with the U.S. and NATO supposed justification for their military intervention in Syria?
> 
> *BLACK*: Well, let me begin, if I could, by telling our listeners that I’m very patriotic: I volunteered to join the Marines and I volunteered to go to Vietnam. I fought in the bloodiest Marine campaign of the entire war. And I was a helicopter pilot who flew 269 combat missions. My aircraft was hit by ground fire on four missions. I, then, fought on the ground with the First Marine Division, and during one of the 70 combat patrols that I made, my radioman were both killed, and I was wounded while we were attacking and trying to rescue a surrounded Marine outpost.
> 
> So I’m very pro-American. I actually was a part of NATO and was prepared to die in Germany, to defend against an attack by the Soviet Union.
> 
> But Russia is not the Soviet Union at all. People don’t understand that because the media have not made it clear. But Russia is not a communist state; the Soviet Union was a communist state.
> 
> Now, one of the things that I’ve seen claimed, that has been particularly irritating to me because of my experience with Syria: I have I have been in Aleppo city. Aleppo city is the biggest city in Syria, or it was at least before the war began. And there was a tremendous battle. Some some call it the “Stalingrad of the Syrian war,” which is not a bad comparison. It was a terribly bitter battle that went on from 2012 until 2016. In the course of urban combat, any forces that are fighting are forced to destroy buildings. Buildings are blown down on a massive scale. And this happens any time that you have urban combat. So I have walked the streets of Aleppo, while combat was still in progress. I have looked across, through a slit in the sandbags at enemy controlled territory; I’ve stood on tanks that were blown out and this type of thing.
> 
> What I do know, and I can tell you about Aleppo is that Russia was extremely reluctant to get involved in combat in Syria. The war began in 2011, when the United States landed Central Intelligence operatives to begin coordinating with Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups. And we had been unwavering supporters of Al Qaeda, since before the war formally began. We are supporters of Al Qaeda today, where they’re bottled up in Idlib province. The CIA supplied them under secret Operation Timber Sycamore. We gave them all of their anti-tank weapons, all of their anti air- missiles. And Al Qaeda has always been our proxy force on the ground. They, together with ISIS, have carried out the mission of the United States, together with a great number of affiliates that really are kind of interchangeable. You have the Free Syrian Army soldiers move from ISIS to Al Qaeda to Free Syrian Army, rather fluidly. And so we started that war.
> 
> But the United States has a strategic policy of using proxies to engage in war. And our objective was to overthrow the legitimate government of Syria, and in order to do that, we employed proxy soldiers who were the most vile of all terrorists. Something very similar is happening right now in in Ukraine.
> 
> But going back to Aleppo, the Syrian army, together with Hezbollah, which was very effective; there were some troops that were organized by Iran also, but it was pretty much a Syrian show, certainly directed by Syrian generals. And they had fought this bitter urban combat, very brutal, very deadly. And they had fought it for four years, before Russia ever joined the battle. So after four years, the city of Aleppo had enormous destruction. And at that point, the Russians, at the invitation of the legitimate government of Syria, entered the war. But unlike many of the media reports, they did not enter the war as a ground force.  Now, they had some small ground forces. They had military police, they had a few artillery units, a few special operations people, and quite a number of advisers and that sort of thing. But they were not a significant ground force.
> 
> On the other hand, they were a significant and very effective air force, that supplemented the Syrian Air Force. But it really was just the last year of the war, the battle for Aleppo, just the last year, that they entered and their air power was very effective. And by this time, the Syrians had pretty well worn down the terrorist forces. And the Russian assistance was able to tip the balance, and Aleppo was _the_ grand victory of the entire Syrian war.
> 
> But to blame the Russians for the massive destruction that took place within Aleppo, it’s bizarre: Because they were not there, they were not even present when this happened. So this is simply another part of the propaganda narrative, which is which hasbeen very effective for the West, demonizing Russia, and making claims that have no substance. But people don’t remember the history of these things—they’re rather complex. So, no: Russia was not in any respect responsible for the massive destruction of the city of Aleppo.
> 
> *BILLINGTON*: How would you contrast the methods of warfare followed by Russia, as opposed to the U.S. and allied forces in Syria?
> 
> *BLACK*: Well, first of all, the American involvement, the United States war against Syria is a war of aggression. We put a highly secretive CIA special activities center—these are kind of the James Bond guys of the Central Intelligence Agency, total Machiavellian; they will do anything, there’s no it’s no holds barred with these guys. We sent them in and we started the war in Syria. The war didn’t exist until we sent the CIA to coordinate with Al Qaeda elements. So we began the war and we were not invited into Syria.
> 
> In fact, the United States has seized, two significant parts of Syria. One is a very major part, the Euphrates River, carves off about a third of the northern part of Syria: The United States invaded that portion. We actually put troops on the ground, illegal—against any standard international law of war—it was it was a just a seizure. And this was this was something that was referred to by John Kerry, who was then the Secretary of State, and he was frustrated at the tremendous victory by the Syrian Armed Forces against Al Qaeda and ISIS. And he said, well, we probably need to move to Plan B. He didn’t announce what Plan B was, but it had it unfolded over time: Plan B was the American seizure of that northern portion of Syria. The importance of taking that part of Syria is, that it is the bread basket for all of the Syrian people. That is where the wheat—Syria actually had a significant wheat surplus and the people were very well fed in Syria, before the war. We wanted to take the wheat away, to cause famine among the Syrian people.
> 
> The other thing we were able to do, is to seize the major part of the oil and natural gas fields. Those also were produced in that northern portion beyond the Euphrates River. And the idea was that, by stealing the oil and then the gas, we would be able to shut down the transportation system, and at the same time, during the Syrian winters, we could freeze to death the Syrian civilian population, which in many cases were living in rubble, where these terrorist armies, with mechanized divisions had attacked and just totally destroyed these cities, and left people just living in little pockets of rubble.
> 
> We wanted to starve and we wanted to freeze to death the people of Syria, and that was Plan B.
> 
> Now, we became frustrated at a certain point that somehow these Syrians, these darned Syrians—it’s a tiny little country, and why are these people resilient? They’re fighting against two-thirds of the entire military and industrial force of the world. How can a nation of 23 million people possibly withstand this for over a decade? And so we decided we had to take action or we were going totally lose Syria. And so the U.S. Congress imposed the Caesar sanctions. The Caesar sanctions were the most brutal sanctions ever imposed on any nation. During the Second World War, sanctions were not nearly as strict as they were on Syria.
> 
> We weren’t at war with Syria! And yet we had a naval blockade around the country. We devalued their currency through the SWIFT system for international payments, making it impossible for them to purchase medications. So you had Syrian women who would contract breast cancer, just like we have here in this country. But instead, where in this country where breast cancer has become relatively treatable, we cut off the medical supplies so that the women in Syria would die of breast cancer because they could not get the medications, because we slam their dollars through the SWIFT system.
> 
> One of the last things that we did and the evidence is vague on it, but there was a mysterious explosion in the harbor in Lebanon, and it was a massive explosion of a shipload of ammonium nitrate fertilizer. It killed hundreds of Lebanese people. It wounded thousands and thousands, destroyed the economy of Lebanon. And, most importantly, it destroyed the banking system of Lebanon, which was one of the few lifelines remaining to Syria. I don’t think that explosion was accidental. I think it was orchestrated, and I suspect that the Central Intelligence Agency was aware of the nation that carried out that action to destroy Beirut Harbor.
> 
> But throughout you see this this Machiavellian approach, where we use unlimited force and violence. And at the same time, we control the global media, to where we erase all discussions of what’s truly happening. So, to the man or the woman in the street, they think things are fine. Everything is being done for altruistic reasons, but it’s not.
> 
> *BILLINGTON*: Part of your military service was as a JAG officer, and for a period of time, you were the Army’s head of the criminal law division at the Pentagon. And in that light, what do you see as of how these Caesar sanctions—how would you look at those from the perspective of international law and military law?
> 
> *BLACK*: Well, now, I was not the international law expert. I was the criminal law expert. But I would say that making war on a civilian population is a crime of grave significance in the law of war.
> 
> One of the things that we did as we as we allied ourselves with Al Qaeda, and on and off with ISIS; I mean, we fought ISIS in a very serious way, but at the same time, we often employed them to use against the Syrian government. So it’s kind of a love-hate. But we have always worked with the terrorists. They were the core.
> 
> One of the policies that was followed was that under this extreme version of Islam, this Wahhabism, there was this notion that you possess a woman that you seize with your strong right arm in battle. And this goes back to the seventh century. And so we facilitated the movement of Islamic terrorists from 100 countries, and they came and they joined ISIS, they joined Al Qaeda, they joined the Free Syrian Army, all of these different ones. And one of the things that they knew when they arrived is that they were lawfully entitled to murder the husbands—I’m not talking about military people, I’m talking about civilians—they could murder the husbands, they could kill them, and then they could possess and own their wives and their children. And they did it in vast numbers.
> 
> And so there was there was a campaign of rape, it was an organized campaign of rape across the nation of Syria. And there actually were slave markets that that arose in certain of these rebel areas where they actually had price lists of the different women. And interestingly, the highest prices went to the youngest children, because there were a great number of pedophiles. And the pedophiles wanted to possess small children, because under the laws that were applied, they were permitted to rape these children repeatedly. They were able to rape the widows of the slain soldiers or the slain civilians, and possess them and buy them and sell them among themselves. This went on.
> 
> I’m not saying that the CIA created this policy, but they understood that it was a widespread policy, and they condoned it. They never criticized it in any way.
> 
> This was so bad, that I spoke with President Assad, who shared with me that they were in the process—when I visited in 2016; I was in a number of battle zones, and in the capital. And I met with the President, and he said that at that time, they were working on legislation in the parliament, to change the law of citizenship. They had always followed the Islamic law, which was that that a child citizenship derived from the father. But there were so many tens, hundreds of thousands of Syrian women impregnated by these terrorists who were imported into Syria, that it was necessary to change the law, so that they would have Syrian citizenship and they wouldn’t have to be returned to their ISIS father in Saudi Arabia, or in Tunisia. They could be retained in Syria. And I checked later and that law was passed and was implemented.
> 
> But it just shows the utter cruelty. When we fight these wars, we have no limits on the cruelty and the inhumanity that we’re prepared to impose on the people, making them suffer, so that somehow that will translate into overthrowing the government, and perhaps taking their oil, taking their resources.
> 
> *BILLINGTON*: Clearly, the policy against Russia today, by the current administration.
> 
> *BLACK*: Yes. Yes. You know, Russia is, perhaps more blessed with natural resources than any other nation on Earth. They are a major producer of grain, of oil, of aluminum, of fertilizers, of an immense number of things that tie into the whole global economy. And no doubt there are people who look at this and say, “if we could somehow break up Russia itself, there will be fortunes made, to where trillionaires will be made by the dozens.” And there’s some attraction to that. Certainly you’ve seen some of this taking place already, with foreign interests taking over Ukraine, and taking their vast resources.
> 
> But, we began a drive towards Russia, almost immediately after the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991. The Soviet Union dissolved, the Warsaw Pact dissolved. And unfortunately, one of the great tragedies of history is that we failed to dissolve NATO. The sole purpose of NATO was to defend against the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union no longer existed. NATO went toe toe with the Warsaw Pact. The Warsaw Pact was gone; it no longer existed. There was no purpose in NATO’s continuing to exist. However, we retained it, and it could not exist unless it had an enemy. Russia was _desperate_ to become part of the West.
> 
> I met with the head of Gazprom, the largest corporation in Russia, And this was shortly after the demise of the Soviet Union, and he described for me how they were struggling to have their media be as free as it was in the West. And they perceived us as being much more free and open than we were. And he said, you know, we’ve got this problem because we have this uprising in Chechnya, which is part of Russia. And he said the Chechnyan rebels send videos to Russian television and we play them on Russian television, because that’s the way freedom of speech works.
> 
> And I said, “Are you kidding me?” I said, “You’re publishing the enemy propaganda films?” He said, “Yeah.” He said, “Isn’t that the way you do it in the United States?” I said, “No.  In the Second World War, we took the head of the Associated Press and we put him in charge of wartime censorship, and it was very strict.”
> 
> So but this is just an example of how they were struggling. They went from being an officially atheist country, to where they became the most Christianized major nation in Europe, by far. Not only were the people, the most Christianized people in any major country in Europe, but the government itself was very supportive of the church, of the Christian faith. They altered their Constitution to say that marriage was the union of one man and one woman. They became very restrictive on the practice of abortion. They ended the practice of overseas adoptions, where some people were going to Russia and adopting little boys for immoral purposes. So they became a totally different culture and.
> 
> In any event, the United States has this long-standing strategy, this political-military strategy, of expanding the empire. We did it in the Middle East, where we attempted to create a massive neocolonial empire. It’s it became rather frayed. The people did not want it. And it seems to be doomed to extinction sometime—but it may go on for another 100 years. But in any event, we are trying to do something similar, as we roll to the East, right up virtually to the Russian border.
> 
> *BILLINGTON*:  So, the U.S. and U.K. position on the war in Ukraine, just over these last few weeks has now become not only supporting the war, but victory at all costs. This has been declared by Defense Secretary Austin and others. And they are pumping in huge quantities of not only defensive but offensive military weaponry to the Kyiv regime. What do you see as the consequence of this policy?
> 
> BLACK: I think one thing that it will do is it will ensure that a tremendous number of innocent Ukrainian soldiers will die needlessly. A lot of Russian soldiers will die needlessly. These are kids. You know, kids go off to war. I went off to war as a kid. You think your country, right or wrong, everything they’re doing is fine. It just it breaks my heart, when I look at the faces of young Russian boys, who have been who have been gunned down—in some cases very criminally by Ukrainian forces. And likewise, I see Ukrainian young men, who are being slaughtered on the battlefield.
> 
> We don’t care! The United States and NATO, we do not care how many Ukrainians die. Not civilians, not women, not children, not soldiers. _We do not care_. It’s become a great football game. You know, we’ve got our team. They’ve got their team, rah rah. We want to get the biggest score and run it up. And, you know, we don’t care how many how many of our players get crippled on the playing field, as long as we win.
> 
> Now, we are shipping fantastic quantities of weapons, and it’s caused the stock of Raytheon, which creates missiles, and Northrop Grumman, which creates aircraft and missiles, all of these defense industries have become tremendously bloated with tax dollars. I don’t think it’s ultimately going to change the outcome. I think that Russia will prevail. The Ukrainians are in a very awkward strategic position in the East.
> 
> But if you look at the way that this unfolded, President Putin made a desperate effort to stop the march towards war back in December of 2021. He went so far as to put specific written proposals on the table with NATO, peace proposals to defuse what was coming about. Because at this point, Ukraine was massing troops to attack the Donbas. And so, he was trying to head this off. He didn’t want war. And NATO just blew it off, just dismissed it; never took it seriously, never went into serious negotiations.
> 
> At that point, Putin seeing that armed Ukrainians, with weapons to kill Russian troops were literally on their borders, decided he had to strike first. Now, you could see, that this was not this was not some preplanned attack. This was not like Hitler’s attack into Poland, where the standard rule of thumb, is that you always have a 3-to-1 advantage when you are the attacker. You have to mass three times as many tanks and artillery and planes and men, as the other side has. In fact, when Russia went in, they went in with what they had, what they could cobble together on short notice. And they were outnumbered by the Ukrainian forces. The Ukrainian forces had about 250,000. The Russians had perhaps 160,000. So instead of having three times as many, they actually had _fewer_ troops than the Ukrainians. But they were forced to attack, to try to preempt the battle that was looming, where the Ukrainians had massed these forces against the Donbas.
> 
> Now, the Donbas is adjacent to Russia. It is a portion of Ukraine that did not join with the revolutionary government that conducted the coup in 2014 and overthrew the government of Ukraine. They refused to become a part of the new revolutionary government of Ukraine. And so they declared their independence. And Ukraine had massed this enormous army to attack against the Donbas. And so Russia was forced to go in to preempt that planned attack by Ukraine. And you could see that Russia very much hoped that they could conduct this special operation without unduly causing casualties for the Ukrainians, because they think of the Ukrainians, or at least they did think of the Ukrainians as brother Slavs; that they wanted to have good relations. But there is a famous picture with a Russian tank, that had been stopped by a gathering of maybe 40 civilians who just walked out in the road and blocked the road and the tank stopped. I can tell you, in Vietnam, if we had had a bunch of people who stood in the way of an American tank, going through, that tank would not have slowed down, in the slightest! It wouldn’t honk the horn, it wouldn’t have done anything; wouldn’t have fired a warning shot. It would have just gone on. And I think that’s more typical—I’m not I’m not criticizing the Americans. I was there and I was fighting, and I probably would have would have driven the tank straight through myself.
> 
> But what I’m saying is that the rules of engagement for the Russians were very, very cautious. They didn’t want to create a great deal of hatred and animosity. The Russians did not go in—they did not bomb the electrical system, the media systems, the water systems, the bridges and so forth. They tried to retain the infrastructure of Ukraine in good shape because they wanted it to get back. They just wanted this to be over with and get back to normal. It didn’t work. The Ukrainians, the resistance was unexpectedly hard. The Ukrainian soldiers fought with great, great valor, great heroism. And. And so now the game has been upped and it’s become much more serious.
> 
> But it is amazing to look and to see that Russia dominates the air. They haven’t knocked out the train systems. They haven’t knocked out power plants. They haven’t knocked out so many things. They’ve never bombed the buildings in the center of Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine; they haven’t bombed the buildings where the parliament meets. They’ve been incredibly reserved about these things, hoping against hope that peace could be achieved.
> 
> But I don’t think I don’t think Ukraine has anything to do with the decision about peace or war. I think the decision about peace or war is made in Washington, D.C. As long as we want the war to continue, we will fight that war, using Ukrainians as proxies, and we will fight it to the last Ukrainian death.
> 
> *BILLINGTON*: How do you project the potential of a war breaking out directly between the United States and Russia? And what would that be like?
> 
> *BLACK*: You know, if you go back to the First World War in 1914, you had the assassination of the Archduke of Austria-Hungary. He and his wife were killed. As a result of those two people being killed, you had a domino effect of all of these alliances, and anger, and media hysteria. And before it was over, I think it was 14 million people had been killed. It’s always hard to get true numbers, but anyway, it was an enormous number of millions of people who died as a result of that.
> 
> We need to recognize the risk of playing these games of chicken. Where, for example, the Turkish media just published an article saying that at Mariupol, where there was a great siege, that the Russians ultimately won. The one area they haven’t taken over is this tremendous steel plant. There are a lot of Ukrainian soldiers who are holed up there. And now it has come to light that apparently there are 50 French senior officers, who are trapped in that steel plant along with the Ukrainians. The French soldiers have been on the ground fighting, directing the battle. And this was kept under wraps, ultra-secret, because of the French elections that just occurred. Had the French people known that there were a large number of French officers trapped and probably going to die in that steel plant, the elections would have gone the other way: Marine Le Pen would have won. And so it was very important that for the entire deep state, that it not come to light that these French officers were there.
> 
> We know that there are NATO officers who are present on the ground in Ukraine as advisors and so forth. We run the risk. Now, my guess is—and this is this is a guess, I could be wrong—but the flagship of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, the _Moskva_, was sunk as a result of being struck by anti-ship missiles. My guess is that those missiles, I think there’s a good chance they were fired by the French. Now, I could be wrong, but those missiles are so ultra-sensitive and so dangerous to our ships, that I don’t think that NATO would trust the missiles to Ukrainians, or to anybody else. I think I think they have to be maintained under NATO control and operation. So I think that it was probably NATO forces that actually sunk the _Moskva_.
> 
> And you can see we’re taking these very reckless actions, and each time we sort of up the ante—I happen to be a Republican—but we have two Republican U.S. senators who have said that, “well, we might just need to use nuclear weapons against Russia.” That is insane. I think it’s important that people begin to discuss what a thermonuclear war would mean.
> 
> Now, we need to understand, we think, “oh, we’re big, and we’re bad, and we have all this stuff.” Russia is roughly comparable to the United States in nuclear power. They have hypersonic missiles, that we do not have. They can absolutely evade any timely detection, and they can fire missiles from Russia and reach San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Detroit, Baltimore, Washington, D.C., New York City.
> 
> And if you think about just Virginia, where I happen to live, if there were a nuclear war—and keep in mind, they also have a very large and effective fleet of nuclear submarines that lie off the coast of the United States. They have a great number of nuclear-tipped missiles, and they can evade any defenses we have. So just in Virginia, if you look at it, all of Northern Virginia would be essentially annihilated. There would hardly be any human life remaining in Loudoun County, Prince William County, Fairfax County, Arlington, Alexandria. The Pentagon lies in in Arlington County: The Pentagon would simply be a glowing mass of molten sand. There would be no human life there. And there would be no human life for many miles around it. Just across the Potomac, the nation’s capital, there would be no life remaining in the nation’s capital. The Capitol building would disappear forever. All of the monuments, all of these glorious things—nothing would remain.
> 
> If you go to the coast of Virginia, you have the Norfolk Naval Shipyard, you have the Port of Norfolk. You have you have the greatest accumulation of naval power on the face of the Earth. This is where we park all of our aircraft carriers, our nuclear submarines, all of those things. There would be nothing remaining. There would be _nothing remaining_ of any of those shipping industries there.
> 
> And you can carry this on. You talk about New York City, probably New York City itself, not only would everybody be killed, but it would probably be impossible for people to inhabit New York City for hundreds of years afterwards. But not only would it cease to be a place of vibrant human life, but probably going out for maybe half a millennium, it would not recover any sort of civilization.
> 
> We need to understand the gravity of what we’re doing. Perhaps if it were a matter of life and death for the United States, what happens in Ukraine, that would be one thing. Certainly when the Soviet Union put missiles in Cuba, that targeted the United States, that was worth taking the risk, because it was right on our border and it threatened us. And it was it was a battle worth fighting for and a risk worth taking. The Russians are in this in exactly the mirror image of that situation, because for them, the life of Russia depends on stopping NATO from advancing further right into Ukraine, right to their borders. They cannot afford _not_ to fight this war. They cannot afford not to win this war.
> 
> So I think, toying with this constant escalation in a war that, really, in a place that has no significance to Americans—Ukraine is meaningless to Americans; it has no impact on our day-to-day lives. And yet we’re playing this reckless game that risks the lives of all people in the United States and Western Europe for nothing! Just absolutely for nothing!
> 
> *BILLINGTON*: Many flag grade officers certainly understand the consequences that you just described in a rather hair-raising way. Why is it that, while there are some generals speaking out in Italy, in France, in Germany, warning that we are pursuing a course that could lead to nuclear war, why are there not such voices from flag grade officers—retired, perhaps—saying what you’re saying here today?
> 
> *BLACK*: You know, there’s been a tremendous deterioration in the quality of flag officers, going back to, well, certainly the 1990s. We had very, very fine flag officers, during the time I was on active duty—I left in ‘94—just superior quality people. But what happened is, subsequently, we had President Clinton take over, later, we had Obama. We’ve got Biden now. And they apply a very strict political screen to their military officers. And we now have “yes men.” These are not people whose principal devotion is to the United States and its people. Their principal devotion is to their careers and their ability to network with other military officers upon retirement. There’s a very strong network that can place military generals into think tanks, where they promote war, into organizations like Raytheon and Northrop Grumman, and all of these defense operations, where they can get on boards and things like that. So there’s quite a personal price that you pay for saying, “Hey, stop. War is not in the interests of the American people.” If we had a better quality of individual, we would have people with the courage who would say, “I don’t care what it costs me personally.” But it is very difficult to get into the senior ranks, if you are an individual guided by principle, and patriotism, and devotion to the people of this nation. That’s just not how it works. And at some point, we need a President who will go in and shake the tree, and bring a lot of these people falling down from it, because they’re dangerous. They’re very dangerous to America.
> 
> *BILLINGTON*: Helga Zepp-LaRouche and the Schiller Institute have a petition — and we held a conference on April 9th on the same theme — that the only way to really stop this descent into hell and into potential nuclear holocaust is for a new Peace of Westphalia. In this case, an international conference to secure a new security architecture and a new development architecture, the right to development for all countries. And like the Peace of Westphalia, one in which all sides sit down together, recognize their interests, their sovereign interests, as including the sovereign interests of the others, and forgiving all past crimes. Anything short of that is going to keep this division of the world into warring blocs. Just like I asked what’s keeping the generals from speaking out, why, and what will it take, to get Americans to recognize that we can and must sit down with Russians, and with Chinese, and with all other nations and establish a true, just world based on the dignity of man and the right to development and security?
> 
> *BLACK*: I think, unfortunately, there’s going to have to be enormous pain to drive that, just as there was with the Peace of Westphalia. A nuclear war would do it; an economic cataclysm of unprecedented proportions, resulting from the unbridled printing of money that we’ve engaged in over the last 20 years, there are things that could bring it about. But at this point, the media have been so totally censored and so biased that the American people really don’t have a perception of the need for anything of that sort. It’s going to be difficult.
> 
> You know, here’s something that’s interesting that has happened. Here in this country, you would think the entire world is against Russia. It’s not. In fact, there are major countries of the world that lean towards Russia in this war, starting with China, but then Brazil, you’ve got South Africa, Saudi Arabia—a wide array of countries. India. India is tremendously supportive of Russia. The idea that somehow we have this enormously just cause, it doesn’t strike a great deal of the world that it is just, and much of the world does not accept the latest propaganda about war crimes: this thing about Bucha. That’s probably the most prominent of all the war crimes discussions.
> 
> And what was Bucha? There was a film taken of a vehicle driving down the road in Bucha, which had been recaptured from the Russians. And every hundred feet or so there was some person with his hands, zip tied behind his back, and he’d been killed. It was not announced until four days after the Ukrainians had retaken Bucha.
> 
> Now, we knew almost nothing about it. We actually didn’t even have proof that people had been killed. But assuming they had, we didn’t know where they had been killed. We did not know who they were. We did not know who killed them. We did not know why they were killed. No one could provide an adequate motive for the Russians to have killed them. The Russians held Bucha for a month. If they were going to kill them, why didn’t they kill them during that month? And if you’re going to slaughter a bunch of people, wouldn’t they all be in one place and wouldn’t you gun them all down there? Why would they be distributed along a roadside, a mile along the way? It makes no sense!
> 
> What we do know is that four days after the mayor of Bucha joyously announced that the city was liberated, four days after the Ukrainian army had moved in, and their special propaganda arm of the Ukrainian military were there, all of a sudden there were these dead people on the road. How come they weren’t there when the Russians were there? How come they only appeared after the Russians were gone?
> 
> If I were looking at it as simply a standard criminal case, and I was talking to Criminal Investigation Division or the FBI, or military police or something, I’d say, “OK, the first thing, let’s take a look at the Ukrainians.” My guess would be, and you start with a hunch when you’re investigating a crime—my hunch is that the Ukrainians killed off these people after they moved in, and after they looked around, and said, “OK, who was friendly towards the Russian troops while the Russians were here? We’re going to execute them.” That would be my guess. Because I don’t see any motive for the Russians to have just killed a few people on their way out of town.
> 
> And nobody questions this, because the corporate media are so monolithic. We know for a fact, from the mouth of the head of a Ukrainian hospital, the guy who ran the hospital, he boasted that he had given strict orders to all of his doctors, that when wounded Russian POWs, when casualties were brought in, they were to be _castrated._ Now, this is a horrific war crime, admitted from the mouth of the hospital administrator, and the Ukrainian government said, “we’ll kind of look into that,” Like it’s no big thing. I can’t think of a more horrific, horrific war crime, ever. Where did you hear about it, on ABC and MSNBC and CNN and FOX News? Not a whisper. And yet the proof is undeniable. We had another clip where there was a POW gathering point, where the Ukrainians would bring POWs to a central point for processing—and this is about a seven-minute video—and the Ukrainian soldiers simply gunned them all down. And they had probably 30 of these wounded Russian soldiers lying on the ground, some of them clearly dying from their wounds. Some of them, they put plastic bags over their heads. Now, these are these are guys who are laying there, sometimes fatally wounded with their hands zip-tied behind their backs, and they’ve got plastic bags over their heads, making it difficult to breathe. And because they can’t raise their hands, they can’t take the bags off, so that they can breathe. At the end of the video, the Ukrainians bring in a van, and there are three unwounded Russian POWs. Without the slightest thought or hesitation, as the three come off, and their hands are bound behind their backs, they gunned down two of them, right on camera and they fall over. And the third one gets on his knees, and begs that they won’t hurt him. And then they gun him down! These are crimes. And these were not refuted by the Ukrainian government. But you’d never even know that they occurred! So far, I will tell you that the only proven—I’m not saying that there aren’t war crimes happening on both sides. I’m just telling you, that the only ones where I have seen, fairly irrefutable proof of war crimes, have been on the Ukrainian side.
> 
> Now, often you hear it said, well, the Russians have destroyed this or destroyed that. Well, I’ve got to tell you, you go back to the wars that we fought when we invaded Iraq, the “Shock and Awe,” we destroyed virtually everything in Iraq, everything of significance. We bombed military and civilian targets without much discrimination. The coalition flew 100,000 sorties in 42 days. You compare that to the Russians, who have only flown 8,000 sorties in about the same period of time. 100,000 American sorties versus 8,000, in about the same time.  I think the Russians have tended to be more selective. Whereas we went out — the philosophy of Shock and Awe is that you destroy everything that is needed to sustain human life and for a city to function. You knock out the water supply, the electrical supply, the heat, the oil, the gasoline; so that you knock out all of the major bridges. And then you just continue to destroy everything.
> 
> So it’s really ironic. And keep in mind, Iraq is a relatively small country. Ukraine is a huge country. 100,000 sorties in 42 days, 8,000 sorties in about the same time. A tremendous difference in violence between what we did in Iraq, and what they have done in Ukraine. So there’s simply no credibility when you actually get down to the facts and you look at the way that the war has been conducted.
> 
> *BILLINGTON*: Well. Senator Black, Colonel Black.  I think the way you have described the horror that’s already taking place, and considering that we can’t wait for a nuclear war to provoke a new a Peace of Westphalia, I would suggest that what you have described is already horrific enough. And when combined with the hyperinflationary breakdown now sweeping the Western world, with everybody being affected, we believe that we have to take that as the adequate horror, and a recognition of a descent into a dark age, to motivate citizens in Europe, in the United States.
> 
> We are finding that there is a waking up of people who have not wanted to look at their responsibility to the human race as a whole in the past, but who now are forced to consider that, which is the basis on which we’ve called for this, in this petition, for an international conference of all nations, with the U.S., Russia, China, India and so forth, sitting down to end this horror; but to also bring about a true peace for mankind and an era of peace through development.
> 
> And we thank you for giving this breath of ugly truth to a population which needs to hear it. If you have any final thoughts, I ask you to give your final greetings.
> 
> *BLACK*:  I’ll just add one thing, and I thank the Schiller Institute for the tremendous effort that you’ve made towards achieving world peace. It is one of the most important efforts ever made, and I certainly applaud that.
> 
> If you look at Russia, the Russian troops that went into battle in Ukraine, for the most part had never experienced combat. This is a peacetime army. Russia doesn’t fight overseas wars. Syria is the only significant overseas engagement that they have had. You compare that with the United States, where literally speaking, if a soldier retires today after a 30-year career in the military, he will not have served a single day when the United States was at peace. Kind of an amazing thing. And you contrast that with the Russian military, where, with few exceptions, the country has been at peace.
> 
> So we really need to start thinking about peace and about the limits of warfare, this idea that somehow we need a zero sum game where we take from you and that enhances us. We’re in a world where everyone can gain and prosper by peace. But I’m concerned that the hyperinflation may be the wake-up call that jolts the world into a recognition that we must have a new paradigm for the future, and I think the Peace of Westphalia at that point might become a possibility.
> 
> So thank you again for the opportunity to be here. There’s always hope and I think there’ll be good things in the future, with the blessings of God.
> 
> *BILLINGTON*: And thank you very much from Schiller Institute, The LaRouche Organization, and _EIR_.  We’ll get this posted as quickly as we possibly can, because it’s going to have a tremendous impact. Thank you.
> 
> *BLACK*: Thank you very much.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Video: Col. Richard Black — U.S. Leading World to Nuclear War | The Schiller Institute
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> schillerinstitute.com


US ain't leading no one.


----------



## alexa

g5000 said:


> Yeah...I remember when the lefties used to whine in the 80s that Reagan was going to get us all nuked, especially if he put MX missiles in Europe.
> 
> Putin is the leader of a third world country.  He's a pig. Fuck him.  Hopefully, this idiotic war HE started will end him.
> 
> Putin started the war.  Ukraine and NATO will end it.


Putin would say the West started the War by going against agreements which were made when it was agreed to allow Germany to join again and not be part of the Warsaw Pact.  In the 80's I would say the people were much more sensible.  They simply did not want to tread on paths which could lead to nuclear war.  Now every time Russia makes a threat NATO says 'Nanananana tough luck.  we are going to do it anyway.'  It is playing with fire. A game of Russian Roulette and it does not matter who is right, if it ends in Nuclear war.


----------



## toomuchtime_

alexa said:


> Putin would say the West started the War by going against agreements which were made when it was agreed to allow Germany to join again and not be part of the Warsaw Pact.  In the 80's I would say the people were much more sensible.  They simply did not want to tread on paths which could lead to nuclear war.  Now every time Russia makes a threat NATO says 'Nanananana tough luck.  we are going to do it anyway.'  It is playing with fire. A game of Russian Roulette and it does not matter who is right, if it ends in Nuclear war.


It would be a terrible thing if Russia and the civilized world had a nuclear war but it would also be a terrible thing to allow the little Russian gangster to gobble up eastern Europe again by making insane threats of nuclear war.  The only way out of this situation is for Putin to learn to be content with terrorizing the Russian people instead of seeking to terrorize the rest of the world.


----------



## alexa

toomuchtime_ said:


> It would be a terrible thing if Russia and the civilized world had a nuclear war but it would also be a terrible thing to allow the little Russian gangster to gobble up eastern Europe again by making insane threats of nuclear war.  The only way out of this situation is for Putin to learn to be content with terrorizing the Russian people instead of seeking to terrorize the rest of the world.


It's difficult.  Russia is still a nuclear power and from what I have heard they are much more ready for the population to survive nuclear war than we are.


----------



## toomuchtime_

alexa said:


> It's difficult.  Russia is still a nuclear power and from what I have heard they are much more ready for the population to survive nuclear war than we are.


You know you're supposed to call your doctor when you start hearing those voices again.


----------



## alexa

toomuchtime_ said:


> You know you're supposed to call your doctor when you start hearing those voices again.


I see you use your ignorance to abuse.
Russia builds huge underground shelters in Moscow as it prepares for NUCLEAR WAR with West​
for the rest of her people.








						Russia Has Constructed Massive Underground Shelters In Anticipation Of Nuclear War
					

Russia Has Constructed Massive Underground Shelters In Anticipation Of Nuclear War Did you know that the Russians have a massive underground complex in the



					www.prepperfortress.com
				




Russia had nuclear shelters for her population during the cold war


----------



## toomuchtime_

alexa said:


> I see you use your ignorance to abuse.
> Russia builds huge underground shelters in Moscow as it prepares for NUCLEAR WAR with West​
> for the rest of her people.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Russia Has Constructed Massive Underground Shelters In Anticipation Of Nuclear War
> 
> 
> Russia Has Constructed Massive Underground Shelters In Anticipation Of Nuclear War Did you know that the Russians have a massive underground complex in the
> 
> 
> 
> www.prepperfortress.com
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Russia had nuclear shelters for her population during the cold war


Well, there you go.  You've just proven Russia has no reason to fear nuclear war.


----------



## José

> Originally posted by *toomuchtime*
> It would be a terrible thing if Russia and the civilized world had a nuclear war but it would also be a terrible thing to allow the little Russian gangster to gobble up eastern Europe again by making insane threats of nuclear war. The only way out of this situation is for Putin to learn to be content with terrorizing the Russian people instead of seeking to terrorize the rest of the world.



Russia gobbling up Eastern Europe in the last 3 decades is a drug induced hallucination that exists only inside your head.

But a military alliance that serves US interests using neighboring countries to surround Russia's western borders, breaking all the promises it made to Gorbachev, is an undeniable historical fact.

Talk about total inability to distinguish fact from fiction.


----------



## toomuchtime_

José said:


> Russia gobbling up Eastern Europe in the last 3 decades is a drug induced hallucination that exists only inside your head.
> 
> But a military alliance that serves US interests using neighboring countries to surround Russia's western borders, breaking all the promises it made to Gorbachev, is an undeniable historical fact.
> 
> Talk about total inability to distinguish fact from fiction.


The only agreement regarding NATO concerned the Russian withdrawal from east Germany:


Until Soviet forces had completed their withdrawal from the former GDR, only German territorial defense units not integrated into NATO would be deployed in that territory.
There would be no increase in the numbers of troops or equipment of U.S., British and French forces stationed in Berlin.
Once Soviet forces had withdrawn, German forces assigned to NATO could be deployed in the former GDR, but foreign forces and nuclear weapons systems would not be deployed there.









						Did NATO Promise Not to Enlarge? Gorbachev Says “No”
					

Russian President Vladimir Putin has made it well known his antipathy towards NATO, claiming the Alliance took advantage of Russian weakness after the collapse of the Soviet Union in violation of promises allegedly made to Moscow by Western leaders. Steven Pifer argues that no such promises were...




					www.brookings.edu
				




That agreement was never broken.  That is the "undeniable historical fact."

In 2005, Putin laid out the reasons for his future invasions of Ukraine:

Russian President Vladimir Putin told the nation Monday that the collapse of the Soviet empire “was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century” and had fostered separatist movements inside Russia.

In his annual state of the nation address to parliament and the country’s top political leaders, Putin said the Soviet collapse also was a tragedy for Russians.


“First and foremost it is worth acknowledging that the demise of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century,” Putin said. “As for the Russian people, it became a genuine tragedy. Tens of millions of our fellow citizens and countrymen found themselves beyond the fringes of Russian territory.

“The epidemic of collapse has spilled over to Russia itself,” he said, referring to separatist movements such as those in Chechnya."









						Putin: Soviet collapse a 'genuine tragedy'
					

In his annual state of the nation address on Monday, Russian President Vladimir Putin called the collapse of the Soviet empire “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.”




					www.nbcnews.com
				




Putin is saying that it is intolerable to him and a threat to Russian security that the people of former soviet states should make decisions based on what is best for them rather than what is best for Russia.  That is the one and only reason Russia has invaded Ukraine.


----------



## beautress

Baron said:


> Russia doesn't threat but warn.


Thank you, Baron for sharing Col. Black's viewpoint. My viewpoint is a little different because on the outside, Russia is no longer a communist state. However, from Putin's "warnings," it is clear to me that he would like to enjoy the same privileges as former President of the USSR, Nikita Kruschev, he would like to take his shoe and whack his podium smartly a few times to warn that "we will bury you," baloney that I saw Kruschev saying on tv when I was a teenager at Aldine High School in Houston. I didn't like his attitude. So the more things change in Russia, the more they stay the same. They just wanna beat up on anyone who stands in their cruel way. Because nothing could be more cruel than vaporizing an orphanage on the first day of a war by an agressor nation against a sovereign state they "used to own" under Communistic circumstance. Just my opinion that Putin was wishing to have the power he perceived is more pleasurable than giving a damn about the innocent people he just put through his malicious and inhumane meatgrinder weaponry.  
Oh, and no disrespect intended toward your post of excellence and Col. Black's experience delivered, none.


----------



## Dragonlady

Baron said:


> Russia doesn't threat but warn.



You seem to have confused the meaning of these two words.  

The Weather Network issues "warnings" - Strong storm cell in your area, high winds expected.  The Weather Network doesn't control the storm, and is giving you a warning of possible risks but has no way to divert the risk or stop the storm.  So they warn everyone in the path of its potential.

When Putin says "I have nuclear weapons and I may have to use them, that's a threat because Putin is in control of said weapons. Whether or not he uses said weapons is entirely in his control and no one else.

The old abuser's line "Look what you made me do" is a lie.  No one makes you do anything.  You always have a choice.


----------



## JoeB131

I'm kind of horrified so many ex-Army officers are willing to sell out to the Russians..


----------



## Ringo

Ex-PM of Japan Abe: "If Zelensky refused to join NATO, gave Donbass autonomy, there would be no fighting"
It's easy and pleasant to tell the truth. But, only when nothing depends on the speaker anymore


----------



## alexa

Confederate Soldier said:


> The U.S. isn't the one who keeps using Nuclear threats. Russia is. If Russia acts on those threats, we will respond in kind. Admitting that we will respond, isn't making us the bad guy.


Except if Russia strikes first giving you no warning then gone New York for about 500 years and gone most cities in the US and Nuclear bunkers or wherever you keep them.


----------



## alexa

Confederate Soldier said:


> Warning that if we meddle with their plans, they'll nuke us sounds a lot like a threat.
> 
> 
> 
> If a guy starts touching your wife, and you go up to give him what for, and the guy says "don't interrupt me, or I'll shoot you". That's a threat. That's when you pull out your gun and say that you will respond in kind. That's a warning. Your gun will scare the guy off. It's no different between Russia and the U.S. only more lives at stake.


Russia has been no threat to you.  Worse still the US has no need of Ukraine but you are willing to risk your life and that of all your offspring who would have been for that?  Why?  You are also willing to plunge the world into famine for that.  Why?


----------



## JoeB131

Ringo said:


> Ex-PM of Japan Abe: "If Zelensky refused to join NATO, gave Donbass autonomy, there would be no fighting"
> It's easy and pleasant to tell the truth. But, only when nothing depends on the speaker anymore



Okay, that's like saying "I had to shoot my neighbor, his dog kept shitting on my lawn!" 

The complaints Russia had about NATO and Donbass were legitimate.  Invading Ukraine to achieve them was not.  

The problem is that Putin's advisors told him this would be an easy win, instead it's been a humiliating defeat that has cost Russia far more than any value of it's goals.


----------



## alexa

beautress said:


> Thank you, Baron for sharing Col. Black's viewpoint. My viewpoint is a little different because on the outside, Russia is no longer a communist state. However, from Putin's "warnings," it is clear to me that he would like to enjoy the same privileges as former President of the USSR, Nikita Kruschev, he would like to take his shoe and whack his podium smartly a few times to warn that "we will bury you," baloney that I saw Kruschev saying on tv when I was a teenager at Aldine High School in Houston. I didn't like his attitude. So the more things change in Russia, the more they stay the same. They just wanna beat up on anyone who stands in their cruel way. Because nothing could be more cruel than vaporizing an orphanage on the first day of a war by an agressor nation against a sovereign state they "used to own" under Communistic circumstance. Just my opinion that Putin was wishing to have the power he perceived is more pleasurable than giving a damn about the innocent people he just put through his malicious and inhumane meatgrinder weaponry.
> Oh, and no disrespect intended toward your post of excellence and Col. Black's experience delivered, none.


I hear from Col Black that there have been calls from US Politicians (republicans) to nuke Russia.  Given that Russia has nukes which it would be impossible for the US to detect, the  wants to make sure it does not get Russia thinking it is going to fire them.


----------



## alexa

toomuchtime_ said:


> Well, there you go.  You've just proven Russia has no reason to fear nuclear war.


Russia has less reason than the entire west is true and when you add that to the reality that Russia has first strike capability you better hope they never think the west is thinking about nuking them.


----------



## alexa

JoeB131 said:


> I'm kind of horrified so many ex-Army officers are willing to sell out to the Russians..


I was born just after the war and the only time before I have known of us playing with nuclear war with Russia was Cuba...as for war, no we never did that. That enough is sufficient to worry some people who know what they are talking about.


----------



## alexa

Ringo said:


> Ex-PM of Japan Abe: "If Zelensky refused to join NATO, gave Donbass autonomy, there would be no fighting"
> It's easy and pleasant to tell the truth. But, only when nothing depends on the speaker anymore


He has suggested they be a neutral country but he is determined Ukraine keep all its territory including Crimea.  I think that might cause some problems in peace negotiations....why fight and lose so many people for nothing.  It does not make sense.


----------



## Ringo

alexa said:


> why fight and lose so many people for nothing.  It does not make sense.


The fact is that there is no independent Ukraine. Ukraine is completely under the external control of the Anglo-Saxon Reich. 
To tolerate such a thing on their borders, on territories that have been part of a single Russian state for centuries is unthinkable. Imagine that Wells has seceded and is ruled by, for example, the Taliban, backed by Iran. Surely in London they would have been very concerned about such a picture and even probably, as in the case of the Falkland Islands in 1982, they would have launched a military operation. 
Is it hard to imagine? But existence of 57 sexes is not difficult for you to imagine, the wedding of same-sex beings too...


----------



## Confederate Soldier

alexa said:


> Russia has been no threat to you.  Worse still the US has no need of Ukraine but you are willing to risk your life and that of all your offspring who would have been for that?  Why?  You are also willing to plunge the world into famine for that.  Why?




I am not willing to do anything like this. The LAST thing I want is a direct conflict with Russia, Nuclear or otherwise. Ukraine isn't worth it. But I am NOT for rolling over and exposing our underbelly. America is the worlds greatest nation and strongest nation. The minute we turn a blind eye on a situation that can get out of hand is the minute our greatness is threatened.


----------



## alexa

Confederate Soldier said:


> I am not willing to do anything like this. The LAST thing I want is a direct conflict with Russia, Nuclear or otherwise. Ukraine *isn't worth it.*



That is the funny thing.  Ukraine isn't worth it to the US. It is strange that the US is all but fighting this war.



Confederate Soldier said:


> But I am NOT for rolling over and exposing our underbelly. America is the worlds greatest nation and strongest nation. The minute we turn a blind eye on a situation that can get out of hand is the minute our greatness is threatened.



then why are you fighting a war with Russia which could turn nuclear.  You're surely not fighting it just to show Russia how tough you can be.


----------



## alexa

Ringo said:


> The fact is that there is no independent Ukraine. Ukraine is completely under the external control of the Anglo-Saxon Reich.
> To tolerate such a thing on their borders, on territories that have been part of a single Russian state for centuries is unthinkable. Imagine that Wells has seceded and is ruled by, for example, the Taliban, backed by Iran. Surely in London they would have been very concerned about such a picture and even probably, as in the case of the Falkland Islands in 1982, they would have launched a military operation.
> Is it hard to imagine? But existence of 57 sexes is not difficult for you to imagine, the wedding of same-sex beings too...


The picture you describe has the feeling of Cuba.  Do you mean Wales not Wells.  England was worried Scotland would become friendly with Russia when we were thinking of Independence.  They feared Russian ships coming in in the dead of night. Yes you are right it is similar.  If I think just of Russia it is possible to wonder if that is the case but thinking about it the opposite way round, Russia coming into my country and how surrounding countries would react it is easier to see.


----------



## Confederate Soldier

alexa said:


> That is the funny thing.  Ukraine isn't worth it to the US. It is strange that the US is all but fighting this war.
> 
> 
> 
> then why are you fighting a war with Russia which could turn nuclear.  You're surely not fighting it just to show Russia how tough you can be.





The U.S. Isn't fighting the war, it is merely helping out a nation that is struggling against another nation that hates us. We've done it before. 


Your fear of nukes is Laughable. Our arsenal is more than enough to wipe  out Russia and the world many times over and Putin knows this. I wouldn't be concerned over a nuclear conflict.


----------



## toomuchtime_

alexa said:


> Russia has less reason than the entire west is true and when you add that to the reality that Russia has first strike capability you better hope they never think the west is thinking about nuking them.


You continue to post nonsense about nuclear war.  Each side is able to see the instant and nuclear weapon is launched and can launch its own long before the first missile reaches it.  Both sides would be destroyed; even Putin, with his very limited intelligence is able to understand that, but apparently it is too much for our poor little brain to grasp.


----------



## alexa

Confederate Soldier said:


> The U.S. Isn't fighting the war, it is merely helping out a nation that is struggling against another nation that hates us. We've done it before.




Well that is one of the big questions.  In that interview Black talks about French Military who are in there.  He believes that they are responsible for at least the explosion of one of the the Russian boats or submarines.  The US seems to have the ultimate say about what Ukraine gets. Whether there are US Military there we do not know at the moment.

I have heard several people talking about how it is crazy for the US to be so involved in a war that they risk nuclear annihilation just because they have a score to settle with another country but the fact that you would fight a war just to get at Russia surely says that Russia's argument that it does not want Nato next door because that is a threat to them is correct.


Confederate Soldier said:


> Your fear of nukes is Laughable. Our arsenal is more than enough to wipe  out Russia and the world many times over and Putin knows this. I wouldn't be concerned over a nuclear conflict.


No, Russia has first strike nukes.  You would not see them coming.  You would just be gone.


----------



## Confederate Soldier

alexa said:


> Well that is one of the big questions.  In that interview Black talks about French Military who are in there.  He believes that they are responsible for at least the explosion of one of the the Russian boats or submarines.  The US seems to have the ultimate say about what Ukraine gets. Whether there are US Military there we do not know at the moment.
> 
> I have heard several people talking about how it is crazy for the US to be so involved in a war that they risk nuclear annihilation just because they have a score to settle with another country but the fact that you would fight a war just to get at Russia surely says that Russia's argument that it does not want Nato next door because that is a threat to them is correct.
> 
> No, Russia has first strike nukes.  You would not see them coming.  You would just be gone.




So what are you afraid of? Why are you so concerned? How can you call yourself American? Americans are not cowardly, they don't lie down and let bullies have their way. If their nukes were so great and unstoppable, they would have used them by now. They hate us. If they had the power, they'd use it. If their nukes are so great, and you'd be gone in a flash, so what would you care? You wouldn't know what hit you.


----------



## Ringo

Confederate Soldier said:


> Why are you so concerned? How can you call yourself American? Americans are not cowardly, they don't lie down and let bullies have their way.


Social advertising in the New York subway... 
US train is going to Нell. Russia just needs to wait


----------



## JoeB131

Ringo said:


> The fact is that there is no independent Ukraine. Ukraine is completely under the external control of the Anglo-Saxon Reich.
> To tolerate such a thing on their borders, on territories that have been part of a single Russian state for centuries is unthinkable. Imagine that Wells has seceded and is ruled by, for example, the Taliban, backed by Iran. Surely in London they would have been very concerned about such a picture and even probably, as in the case of the Falkland Islands in 1982, they would have launched a military operation.
> Is it hard to imagine? But existence of 57 sexes is not difficult for you to imagine, the wedding of same-sex beings too...



Holy shit, is this the kind of stuff you guys are repeating in the St. Petersburg Troll Farm?


----------



## Ringo




----------



## toomuchtime_

Ringo said:


> Social advertising in the New York subway...
> US train is going to Нell. Russia just needs to wait


Right, in Russia the government encourages the abuse of drug addicts by officials who are drinking themselves to death at an early age.


----------



## JoeB131

Ringo said:


>


Oh, bullshit, this sort of back and forth has been going on since 2014.   

Russia was still out of line... and incompetent.


----------



## Ringo




----------



## gipper

Ringo said:


>


Putin may have screwed up. Had he waited a little longer and Ukraine‘s army invaded Donbass then Putin goes in, the world might look at this a bit differently.

However most Americans know nothing about the coup by Obama, Biden, and Nuland in 2014 and the murdering of 14,000 ethnic Russians in the Donbass by Ukraine since the coup.  So it’s likely the western media would twist any action by Putin as bad.


----------



## alexa

Confederate Soldier said:


> So what are you afraid of? Why are you so concerned? How can you call yourself American? Americans are not cowardly, they don't lie down and let bullies have their way. If their nukes were so great and unstoppable, they would have used them by now. They hate us. If they had the power, they'd use it. If their nukes are so great, and you'd be gone in a flash, so what would you care? You wouldn't know what hit you.


I'm not afraid of anything.  I know there is the possibility of nuclear extinction but then we are also sitting on that with our messing of the climate.  You are the one choosing to believe my arguments are formed by fear or now cowardice.  The question is what is the truth? There are two good stories being given one of which is roughly Blacks which I had just been watching and was why I was interested - what you call cowardice and the other is the propaganda the West is getting.  I am not American.  You claim the reason for you fighting for a country which makes no difference to you who rules it, is because you do not like Russia - no other reason.  You call Russia a bully but that is it.  The other argument is given by the left - I didn't listen to the end of Black so do not know if he said this but the other reason given is you, the US wanting to be sitting on and breathing down Russia's throat and that that is the reason for this war which you , the US has been pushing for from the beginning.  The way you talk pushes the reason far more towards that.  Russia says that that way is not a safe one for them and that is the reason for this war.  In this argument far from the US being helpful to Ukraine you are using them to get what you want.  You do not care at all about what happens to them apart from damaging your enemy Russia.


----------



## Confederate Soldier

alexa said:


> I'm not afraid of anything.  I know there is the possibility of nuclear extinction but then we are also sitting on that with our messing of the climate.  You are the one choosing to believe my arguments are formed by fear or now cowardice.  The question is what is the truth? There are two good stories being given one of which is roughly Blacks which I had just been watching and was why I was interested - what you call cowardice and the other is the propaganda the West is getting.  I am not American.  You claim the reason for you fighting for a country which makes no difference to you who rules it, is because you do not like Russia - no other reason.  You call Russia a bully but that is it.  The other argument is given by the left - I didn't listen to the end of Black so do not know if he said this but the other reason given is you, the US wanting to be sitting on and breathing down Russia's throat and that that is the reason for this war which you , the US has been pushing for from the beginning.  The way you talk pushes the reason far more towards that.  Russia says that that way is not a safe one for them and that is the reason for this war.  In this argument far from the US being helpful to Ukraine you are using them to get what you want.  You do not care at all about what happens to them apart from damaging your enemy Russia.




I know who rules my country right now, and he is an idiot. But I know what my nation stands for, and what it has done in the past. I know who Russias leader is, and I know what he has done. He is a butcher of freedom. To defeat Russia indirectly or directly, can do nothing but benefit us.


----------



## alexa

Confederate Soldier said:


> I know who rules my country right now, and he is an idiot. But I know what my nation stands for, and what it has done in the past. I know who Russias leader is, and I know what he has done. He is a butcher of freedom. To defeat Russia indirectly or directly, can do nothing but benefit us.
> 
> 
> View attachment 651604


Why can you not see that if your country is doing what you say above, never mind Russia, you  are certainly a butcher.  The 'freedom' that the US has is highly questionable.  You believe your country has the right to decide who is right and who is wrong and to kill as many people as you need to to get what you want.  You have no ability to self reflect and see that in trying to kill a Dictator you murder  possibly hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians or in this situation possible millions even human extinction.  You should allow the people of the country you do not like decide for itself when it is right to free itself rather than believing that you can use their lives to try and obtain your desires.


----------



## Confederate Soldier

alexa said:


> Why can you not see that if your country is doing what you say above, never mind Russia, you  are certainly a butcher.  The 'freedom' that the US has is highly questionable.  You believe your country has the right to decide who is right and who is wrong and to kill as many people as you need to to get what you want.  You have no ability to self reflect and see that in trying to kill a Dictator you murder  possibly hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians or in this situation possible millions even human extinction.  You should allow the people of the country you do not like decide for itself when it is right to free itself rather than believing that you can use their lives to try and obtain your desires.





So says you, a scotsman who still hasn't learned that theres more to life than fucking and shearing sheep.


----------



## alexa

Confederate Soldier said:


> So says you, a scotsman who still hasn't learned that theres more to life than fucking and shearing sheep.


I see incapable of discussion.  When you have lost just insults.  I am not a man.  Your fantasies not mine.


----------



## Confederate Soldier

alexa said:


> I see incapable of discussion.  When you have lost just insults.  I am not a man.  Your fantasies not mine.




And yours either. Taking Russias side when Russia has historically been the enemy of all that is free shows me that you are not good to debate either.


----------



## EvilCat Breath

Confederate Soldier said:


> So what are you afraid of? Why are you so concerned? How can you call yourself American? Americans are not cowardly, they don't lie down and let bullies have their way. If their nukes were so great and unstoppable, they would have used them by now. They hate us. If they had the power, they'd use it. If their nukes are so great, and you'd be gone in a flash, so what would you care? You wouldn't know what hit you.


Americans aren't cowardly.  Democrats are cowardly.   They would sell us out to the nearest cartel for a kilo of meth.

Russians are better than democrats.


----------



## Ringo

Confederate Soldier said:


> I know who rules my country right now, and he is an idiot. But I know what my nation stands for, and what it has done in the past. I know who Russias leader is, and I know what he has done. He is a butcher of freedom. To defeat Russia indirectly or directly, can do nothing but benefit us.
> 
> 
> View attachment 651604


Do you want me to throw you similar photos, only with tougher police actions, only from France or the USA, for example? 
You need to squeeze out of yourself a hypocrite drop by drop


----------



## sparky

Baron said:


> We put a highly secretive CIA special activities center—these are kind of the James Bond guys of the Central Intelligence Agency, total Machiavellian; they will do anything, there’s no it’s no holds barred with these guys



those guys sure get around!

~S~


----------



## JoeB131

Ringo said:


>



Wow, this is how you can tell the war is going badly for Putin when he tries to claim he didn't start it.


----------



## Confederate Soldier

EvilCat Breath said:


> Americans aren't cowardly.  Democrats are cowardly.   They would sell us out to the nearest cartel for a kilo of meth.
> 
> Russians are better than democrats.




So Murdering political opposition and jailing all political protestors/opponents is somehow better than being a democrat?


----------



## EvilCat Breath

Confederate Soldier said:


> So Murdering political opposition and jailing all political protestors/opponents is somehow better than being a democrat?


That IS being a democrat.


----------



## badbob85037

Nuclear weapons have a shelf life. Do you really think this third world country has been updating their nukes?


----------



## alexa

Confederate Soldier said:


> And yours either. Taking Russias side when Russia has historically been the enemy of all that is free shows me that you are not good to debate either.


I didn't take Russia's side at all.  I just told you that there are two versions of events one which I have seen from the left of the US and is spoken about in this thread or another and another which is the propaganda we get in the West.  Your belief that you have put several times is that we are fighting this war simply because your country does not like Russia and so that is the right thing to do. Your stance shows a total lack of morality.


----------



## para bellum

alexa said:


> I didn't take Russia's side at all.  I just told you that there are two versions of events one which I have seen from the left of the US and is spoken about in this thread or another and another which is the propaganda we get in the West.  Your belief that you have put several times is that we are fighting this war simply because your country does not like Russia and so that is the right thing to do. Your stance shows a total lack of morality.


Well, yes you do take the Russian side when you push the Russian narrative that this is a NATO war, and call the US "butchers".

Look at some aerial views of Popasna, Lyman, Rubizhne. Those people have been "liberated". You think they are happy now?

There are not "two versions" of events. There is only one, and that is what's really happening. Russia is raping Ukraine, full stop. There is no alternate version. Maybe you are trying not to see, I don't know.

And "we" are not fighting this war. Ukraine is doing the fighting. The Western aid provided to Ukraine so far does not even replace their losses. If Ukraine can hold on for another month, the trajectory will shift in their favor- the pipeline is full now and reserve brigades are forming up. But it's going to get worse for Ukraine before it gets better because the West has been too stingy, and slow to step up to the plate.

I do not care if Ukraine is "corrupt" at the moment. All those former WarPac countries are going through transformation and that takes time. 

The people living in those cities are not to blame- they are regular ordinary people who just want to go about their lives. But their towns are bombed to the foundations and depopulated because Putin thought he could exploit the weakness and division in the West.

It may still turn out that he was correct.


----------



## Ringo

para bellum said:


> Look at some aerial views of Popasna, Lyman, Rubizhne. Those people have been "liberated". You think they are happy now?


It is Dresden, 1945. You think they were happy being liberated?


----------



## alexa

para bellum said:


> Well, yes you do take the Russian side when you push the Russian narrative that this is a NATO war, and call the US "butchers".
> 
> Look at some aerial views of Popasna, Lyman, Rubizhne. Those people have been "liberated". You think they are happy now?
> 
> There are not "two versions" of events. There is only one, and that is what's really happening. Russia is raping Ukraine, full stop. There is no alternate version. Maybe you are trying not to see, I don't know.




You need to take the word 'butchered' within context which you have not done.


para bellum said:


> And "we" are not fighting this war. Ukraine is doing the fighting.




That depends on how you look at it.  Would the US be providing for Ukraine if it did not want it to fight the war?  Of course not.  Could Ukraine fight this war without the aid of weapons coming again and again and again.  Despite their well recognised skill and valour of course not.  Are Ukrainians doing the physical fighting - yes but they are not the only people.  Is their country being totally destroyed.  Yes.  Is this what they knew would happen?




para bellum said:


> The Western aid provided to Ukraine so far does not even replace their losses. If Ukraine can hold on for another month, the trajectory will shift in their favor- the pipeline is full now and reserve brigades are forming up. But it's going to get worse for Ukraine before it gets better because the West has been too stingy, and slow to step up to the plate.
> 
> I do not care if Ukraine is "corrupt" at the moment. All those former WarPac countries are going through transformation and that takes time.



If you don't care if Ukraine is corrupt.  What are you wanting them fighting and killed for.



para bellum said:


> The people living in those cities are not to blame- they are regular ordinary people who just want to go about their lives. But their towns are bombed to the foundations and depopulated because Putin thought he could exploit the weakness and division in the West.




 Was not all that was needed from Ukraine to avoid the war an agreement not to join nato and to be a neutral country - something which Zelensky promised within two or three weeks of war. You say'  Putin believed that he could exploit the weakness and division in the West.' So basically you appear to be saying exactly what I said before. This is a war between the West and Russia.  That is all you have mentioned.  No reasons at all why Ukraine might feel a need to go to war with Russia.

Para bellum


> It may still turn out that he was correct.


----------



## para bellum

alexa said:


> You need to take the word 'butchered' within context which you have not done.


The context is your post. You accuse us of killing as many people as we need to get what we want. That we can decide what is right or wrong, and we murdered (or are in the process of murdering) hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians and possibly extincting the human race.

That is complete bullshit. Do you know the last time the US used an unguided munition in battle? It was 2004.

We do not target civilians, and we make every effort to avoid civilian casualties. We blew up an ISIS cement factory in the middle of the night, because we wanted the workers to be at home in bed.

Russia has been indiscriminately bombing Ukrainian cities and residential areas for 3 months now. 

Did you look at the aerial photos of those places? There is nothing to go back to.

"Why can you not see that if your country is doing what you say above, never mind Russia, you  are certainly a butcher.   The 'freedom' that the US has is highly questionable.  You believe your country has the right to decide who is right and who is wrong and to kill as many people as you need to to get what you want.  You have no ability to self reflect and see that in trying to kill a Dictator you murder  possibly hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians or in this situation possible millions even human extinction.  You should allow the people of the country you do not like decide for itself when it is right to free itself rather than believing that you can use their lives to try and obtain your desires."


alexa said:


> If you don't care if Ukraine is corrupt.  What are you wanting them fighting and killed for.


If they don't want to fight for their freedom they are free to surrender to Russia. I want the decision to be theirs, and not have it imposed on them at the barrel of a gun.

They made the decision, not us. We offered to evacuate Zelensky on Feb 25. He declined in no uncertain terms, and his people rallied behind him. 

HE turned to the west for HELP- this is not the west forcing him into a war.

Yes, I support giving them whatever they need to win. I would not hesitate to give them longer range and more powerful weapons to strike deep into Russia. Russians should feel the hurt of this war just as much as Ukrainians are made to.


alexa said:


> Was not all that was needed from Ukraine to avoid the war an agreement not to join nato and to be a neutral country - something which Zelensky promised within two or three weeks of war.


That was _not_ all that was was needed. Putin's demands also included the removal of the NATO security umbrella over Southern Europe and the Balts.

Russia does not get a vote in NATO's alliances, or dictate who can or cannot be a member.

NATO for Ukraine was off the table in 2014 when Russia annexed Crimea. Putin was completely aware of that. The only way NATO would even consider membership for Ukraine would have been if Zelensky had recognized Crimea and the L/DNR's as Russian territory. 

Ukraine is a sovereign nation and is entitled to a say in their own security alliances.

You know what? I don't think their #1 threat does, or should have a say.


alexa said:


> You say'  Putin believed that he could exploit the weakness and division in the West.' So basically you appear to be saying exactly what I said before. This is a war between the West and Russia.  That is all you have mentioned.  No reasons at all why Ukraine might feel a need to go to war with Russia.


I said we are not fighting in this war. Putin started it, not the West. I'm saying the weakness and division in the west emboldens him. And he has good reason to think that way.

Ukraine did not "feel the need" to go to war with Russia. The need was impressed upon them when 100,000 Russian soldiers rolled into their country in tanks and armored vehicles, and Russian cruise missiles started raining down on Ukrainian cities.

You want to cede Ukraine and hope Putin will be happy? He might not want to do Poland next? Maybe just a "piece"? For a "buffer"? You know, to protect Russia from "NATO agression"?


----------



## para bellum

alexa said:


> If you don't care if Ukraine is corrupt. What are you wanting them fighting and killed for.


I want to further this. I am not wanting anyone fighting and killing. I blame Russia for the fighting and killing, because those were Russian tanks driving into Ukraine without provocation.

What I was talking about wrt the corruption- Ukraine is not a western liberal democracy. They are trying to move in that direction. The country is run by oligarchs, the system is a devolution of the former State-owned enterprises which were privatized, and they went to people who were powerful and influential in the previous order.

It has to take time for that system to further devolve. Those big enterprises are not particularly productive or competitive against modern western companies so they need political favors. A lot of the wealth gets siphoned off, same thing the Russian oligarchs do. 

If there is political will- and in Ukraine they have shown it, that kind of structure will self-reform. It will take a generation or two, but it has only one direction to go. The companies will modernize, etc. Ukraine was well on that path, Kiev was a popular center for high-tech companies before the war.

That's why I don't just write Ukraine off as hopelessly corrupt, who cares what happen to them. I think they deserve a chance to realize a better future. I never saw Ukraine bullying their neighbors, or threatening anyone. 

I know they were used as pawns by Obama and the dems (and the UK was in on it), and that was not right. But that was before Zelensky's time, whatever water went under that bridge is past. If anyone was a western pawn, it was Poroshenko, and Zelensky beat him in an election (that at least the US, did not meddle in).


----------



## para bellum

Ringo said:


> It is Dresden, 1945. You think they were happy being liberated?


That's exactly what Russia is doing. _You_ are the one that says it's good for Ukraine.


----------



## ESay

gipper said:


> However most Americans know nothing about the coup by Obama, Biden, and Nuland in 2014 and the murdering of 14,000 ethnic Russians in the Donbass by Ukraine since the coup. So it’s likely the western media would twist any action by Putin as bad


I already showed you that this figure is not correct in the context you present it. But nevertheless you keep repeating Russian propaganda. And you accuse someone in ignorance? Just look at the mirror and realize that you are full of shit.


----------



## gipper

ESay said:


> I already showed you that this figure is not correct in the context you present it. But nevertheless you keep repeating Russian propaganda. And you accuse someone in ignorance? Just look at the mirror and realize that you are full of shit.


What figure is not correct in the context I’m using?


----------



## ESay

para bellum said:


> NATO for Ukraine was off the table in 2014 when Russia annexed Crimea. Putin was completely aware of that. The only way NATO would even consider membership for Ukraine would have been if Zelensky had recognized Crimea and the L/DNR's as Russian territory


No, this wouldn't be enough. For most of Europe, taking Ukraine to NATO means crossing a red line in their security paradigm.


----------



## ESay

gipper said:


> What figure is not correct in the context I’m using?


14000 is not 'ethnic Russians'. At least a third of it was Ukrainian servicemen. This figure shows the casualties from both sides and that includes 'ethnic Ukrainians' killed by pro-Russian proxies' shelling. Is this explanation enough for your so clear mind?


----------



## gipper

ESay said:


> 14000 is not 'ethnic Russians'. At least a third of it was Ukrainian servicemen. This figure shows the casualties from both sides and that includes 'ethnic Ukrainians' killed by pro-Russian proxies' shelling. Is this explanation enough for your so clear mind?


Cool. I’m fine with that, but it changes nothing. Ukraine was clearly prosecuting a war against ethnic Russians. This occurred after O and Joe committed their coup overthrowing the democratically elected government of Ukraine. Then picking the country’s next leader.


----------



## para bellum

ESay said:


> No, this wouldn't be enough. For most of Europe, taking Ukraine to NATO means crossing a red line in their security paradigm.


I agree, it still wouldn't have been enough. But NATO for sure will _not_ take a new member if there is a territorial dispute on their lands. Even if all NATO states agreed on Ukraine, the territorial dispute would still have to be settled first.

Putin invaded Crimea 2 days after Poroshenko won in 2014. That fixed the status of Ukraine wrt NATO. There was no need to further invade Ukraine to block NATO accession.


----------



## Ringo

para bellum said:


> That's exactly what Russia is doing. _You_ are the one that says it's good for Ukraine.


No, that's what the Allies did. The Russians are liberating cities whose populations have been taken hostage by Ukrainian nationalists.


----------



## Ringo




----------



## Ringo




----------



## JoeB131

Ringo said:


>



I am not sure why you think this is a compelling argument.  

Also, the poster got his facts wrong.  The Department of War was not renamed the Department of Defense.   The Department of War and the Department of the Navy were CONSOLIDATED into the Department of Defense,  and the Department of war was divided between the Army and the Air Force... 

The thing is, Russia does have some valid issues in it's dispute with Ukraine.  Invading Ukraine in a halfass way was not the way to go about it.


----------



## ESay

gipper said:


> Cool. I’m fine with that, but it changes nothing. Ukraine was clearly prosecuting a war against ethnic Russians. This occurred after O and Joe committed their coup overthrowing the democratically elected government of Ukraine. Then picking the country’s next leader.


There isn't war against ethnic Russians. It is another narrative of Russian propaganda.


----------



## gipper

ESay said:


> There isn't war against ethnic Russians. It is another narrative of Russian propaganda.


So who were the Ukrainians shelling in the Donbas?


----------



## ESay

para bellum said:


> I agree, it still wouldn't have been enough. But NATO for sure will _not_ take a new member if there is a territorial dispute on their lands. Even if all NATO states agreed on Ukraine, the territorial dispute would still have to be settled first.
> 
> Putin invaded Crimea 2 days after Poroshenko won in 2014. That fixed the status of Ukraine wrt NATO. There was no need to further invade Ukraine to block NATO accession.


Not exactly correct. Russian military operation in Crimea began in February. Poroshenko was elected in May.

If NATO had guaranteed membership to Ukraine after resolving territorial disputes, it would have been possible to 'sell' to Ukrainian society the idea of giving up Crimea and Donbas in exchange for that. But that hadn't happened, because too many countries were afraid of Russia and tried not to provoke it.


----------



## ESay

gipper said:


> So who were the Ukrainians shelling in the Donbas?


It is the same people who are now under Russian shelling.


----------



## para bellum

ESay said:


> Not exactly correct. Russian military operation in Crimea began in February. Poroshenko was elected in May.


You're right. It wasn't right after after the election it was right after Yanukovych fled the country and the Ukrainian Parliament voted to remove him from office.

"On 22–23 February 2014, Russian president Vladimir Putin convened an all-night meeting with security service chiefs to discuss assisting the deposed Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych with leaving the country. At the end of the meeting, Putin remarked that "we must start working on returning Crimea to Russia".[4] On 23 February, pro-Russian demonstrations were held in the Crimean city of Sevastopol. On 27 February, masked Russian troops without insignia[41] took over the Supreme Council (parliament) of Crimea[42][43] and captured strategic sites across Crimea."









						Annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation - Wikipedia
					






					en.wikipedia.org


----------



## para bellum

ESay said:


> If NATO had guaranteed membership to Ukraine after resolving territorial disputes, it would have been possible to 'sell' to Ukrainian society the idea of giving up Crimea and Donbas in exchange for that. But that hadn't happened, because too many countries were afraid of Russia and tried not to provoke it.


That wasn't on the table, and I wouldn't advocate for Ukraine to surrender any territory in any case. Crimea is rightfully part of Ukraine, so is the Donbas.

The only reason I mentioned the disputed territory is because it illustrates that Putin's NATO boogeyman is a fiction. Ukraine was not being considered for NATO membership in February 2022 and no one was making threats to Putin about anything.

The framing of this war as a conflict between NATO and Russia is to deflect from the Russian Army's abysmal performance. There must be a reason, and that reason _must_ be NATO because Ukraine just _couldn't possibly_ defeat Russia on their own. Beyond a handful of Stingers and Javelins, Ukraine had virtually no NATO weapons until April, and that was just a trickle.

Even now, the list of "to be delivered" is a lot longer than "delivered". IOW, such successes as Ukraine has had, are due to Ukrainians fighting with what they already had, not the NATO weapons in the pipeline today.


----------



## ESay

para bellum said:


> That wasn't on the table, and I wouldn't advocate for Ukraine to surrender any territory in any case. Crimea is rightfully part of Ukraine, so is the Donbas.
> 
> The only reason I mentioned the disputed territory is because it illustrates that Putin's NATO boogeyman is a fiction. Ukraine was not being considered for NATO membership in February 2022 and no one was making threats to Putin about anything.
> 
> The framing of this war as a conflict between NATO and Russia is to deflect from the Russian Army's abysmal performance. There must be a reason, and that reason _must_ be NATO because Ukraine just _couldn't possibly_ defeat Russia on their own. Beyond a handful of Stingers and Javelins, Ukraine had virtually no NATO weapons until April, and that was just a trickle.
> 
> Even now, the list of "to be delivered" is a lot longer than "delivered". IOW, such successes as Ukraine has had, are due to Ukrainians fighting with what they already had, not the NATO weapons in the pipeline today.


Of course all Russian premise was a lie. About the lost territories, I don't think they will be returned anytime soon. Only political changes in Russia can bring this question on the table again.

Now, the main question is where Russia will be stopped. Their main goal now is a whole of Donbas, and I think they will reach it. There are some rumours that Ukrainian forces will have to abandon Zaporizhia at some point. And so on.


----------



## gipper

ESay said:


> It is the same people who are now under Russian shelling.


No. Russia has already taken most of the Donbas. Do you not know this?


----------



## ESay

gipper said:


> No. Russia has already taken most of the Donbas. Do you not know this?


Severodonetsk, Lysychansk, Slaviansk, Kramatorsk, Bahmut, Avdeevka. And now try to find these cities on a map and get to know what is going on there.


----------



## gipper

ESay said:


> Severodonetsk, Lysychansk, Slaviansk, Kramatorsk, Bahmut, Avdeevka. And now try to find these cities on a map and get to know what is going on there.


If this can be believed, it looks like Russia has taken much of the Donbass.






Institute for the Study of War


----------



## ESay

gipper said:


> If this can be believed, it looks like Russia has taken much of the Donbass.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Institute for the Study of War


Don't change the talking points. Russia is heavily shelling cities in Donbas which it is trying to take. The names of them I already provided.


----------



## para bellum

The UK is offering to provide M270 tracked launchers to go with the HIMARS from the US. They use the same pods but double stacked so they carry 12 rockets vs. HIMARS 6.

Reuters is reporting the MQ-1C drone is coming. This is a high endurance package with a lot of SIGINT and image processing capability plus 8 x hellfire missile. These would be significant force multipliers for the GPS guided artillery because they can collect precise targeting data over a huge area.









						EXCLUSIVE U.S. plans to sell armed drones to Ukraine in coming days -sources
					

The Biden administration plans to sell Ukraine four MQ-1C Gray Eagle drones that can be armed with Hellfire missiles for battlefield use against Russia, three people familiar with the situation said.




					www.reuters.com


----------



## para bellum

ESay said:


> Severodonetsk, Lysychansk, Slaviansk, Kramatorsk, Bahmut, Avdeevka. And now try to find these cities on a map and get to know what is going on there.


The Ukraine General staff has followed a "bend but don't break" strategy, and they're sticking to it. It's hard, but they can give ground and shorten their defensive lines right now. The Russia side isn't getting anything for free.

It was clear in the start that the immediate need was the WarPac equipment and ammunition. It was also known that there was no supply for new ammunition, and the switchover was going to take a few months to gain some steam.

The ammunition for the soviet era stuff is basically expended except for a little bit that trickles in from eastern European countries. That's prevented the Ukrainians from hitting back like they otherwise could.

The NATO standard stuff starting to get rolling now, and the pace is the training pace.

Back when the US agreed to eliminate intermediate range missiles, we needed to fill the gap. We poured a huge amount of resources into modernizing our artillery. What's entering the fight in the coming weeks, each piece can cover a large area of land. There's going to be at least a dozen of the long range M30/M31 GMRLS launchers, and much better military-grade drones to work with them. Plus a whole bunch of Self propelled howitzers with GPS guided munitions.

These are long range sniper systems- 98% first shot hits within 3m at any range. That's going to make all those massed Russian artillery positions completely untenable, and put the northern and southern MSR's in range.

It's as you ask- how far will the Russians get? That's the big question- it's all about how fast the Ukrainian crews can be trained up. I like the change in tone from Germany, but I am cautious. We'll see if it translates to deliveries, there is still a lot of fear of 'too-much Ukrainian success' among the surrender caucus...


----------



## ESay

para bellum said:


> The Ukraine General staff has followed a "bend but don't break" strategy, and they're sticking to it. It's hard, but they can give ground and shorten their defensive lines right now. The Russia side isn't getting anything for free.
> 
> It was clear in the start that the immediate need was the WarPac equipment and ammunition. It was also known that there was no supply for new ammunition, and the switchover was going to take a few months to gain some steam.
> 
> The ammunition for the soviet era stuff is basically expended except for a little bit that trickles in from eastern European countries. That's prevented the Ukrainians from hitting back like they otherwise could.
> 
> The NATO standard stuff starting to get rolling now, and the pace is the training pace.
> 
> Back when the US agreed to eliminate intermediate range missiles, we needed to fill the gap. We poured a huge amount of resources into modernizing our artillery. What's entering the fight in the coming weeks, each piece can cover a large area of land. There's going to be at least a dozen of the long range M30/M31 GMRLS launchers, and much better military-grade drones to work with them. Plus a whole bunch of Self propelled howitzers with GPS guided munitions.
> 
> These are long range sniper systems- 98% first shot hits within 3m at any range. That's going to make all those massed Russian artillery positions completely untenable, and put the northern and southern MSR's in range.
> 
> It's as you ask- how far will the Russians get? That's the big question- it's all about how fast the Ukrainian crews can be trained up. I like the change in tone from Germany, but I am cautious. We'll see if it translates to deliveries, there is still a lot  fear of 'too-much Ukrainian success' among the surrender caucus...


Yes, MLR systems have been approved to be delivered. At the first stage, four MLRS will be delivered as a some sort of training devices for Ukrainian army. Maybe, in the coming month the first results will present themselves.


----------



## gipper

ESay said:


> Don't change the talking points. Russia is heavily shelling cities in Donbas which it is trying to take. The names of them I already provided.


Got any proof to back that statement?


----------



## ESay

gipper said:


> Got any proof to back that statement?


Are you kidding me, dude? Just use Google search.


----------



## gipper

ESay said:


> Are you kidding me, dude? Just use Google search.


Uh no. The msm has proven itself entirely unreliable and promotes propaganda on this war. Nearly everything they report is lies.


----------



## ESay

gipper said:


> Uh no. The msm has proven itself entirely unreliable and promotes propaganda on this war. Nearly everything they report is lies.


Sure, mate. Try RT. It will suit you better.


----------



## gipper

ESay said:


> Sure, mate. Try RT. It will suit you better.


Lol. Sure thing.


----------



## para bellum

ESay said:


> Yes, MLR systems have been approved to be delivered. At the first stage, four MLRS will be delivered as a some sort of training devices for Ukrainian army. Maybe, in the coming month the first results will present themselves.


What's coming online now are the self propelled howitzers and GPS guided munitions. 40km, not 70km like the missiles, but they are deadly accurate. There are M109's in Ukraine from the US that aren't on any list. The ammunition is also compatible with the towed M777's that have the digital fire control computers.

None of that was there a month ago.

The recently announced MRLS:

4 ea. M142 HIMARS from the US. 4 ea. M270 from the UK. 4 ea. MARS II (improved M270) from Germany. Training and acquisition/sustainment for HIMARS was funded in the Lend-Lease bill. The USMC went to all HIMARS so there are 200 more M270's available in US inventory.

They all use the same missile pack. The M270 tracked launcher carry two packs of 6, the HIMARS wheeled launcher carries one pack. They all have self-loaders, so reloading is just changing the empty pack out for a full one.

Training on HIMARS takes one week (so they say, but that must be pretty rudimentary) and should be underway in Poland already. I know that the follow-on missiles for the MRLS systems will probably have to be pulled from Lockheed's production allocated to Poland and/or Australia. With all that, the first HIMARS should be deployable in June. (Germany's 4 pcs. will take longer than that...)

plus:

4 ea. MQ-1C Drones that can carry 4 ea, Hellfire or 8 ea. Stinger missile. Organic ELINT and ECM/EW capability, laser designator, and can geolocate any electronic emitter in it's area of regard. Kills tanks and helicopters and drones, ID's targets and can stay aloft for ~30 hours. Not confirmed, but it was written specifically into the bill so it should not be a problem in the Congress. These will take a little time to train the Ukrainian pilots and handlers, but not months if they already know how to fly TB2's.

The other eastern European countries take years, even decades to switch over to NATO standard- we're trying to do this in Ukraine practically overnite. _Everything _ is different, and the whole thing is a logistical nightmare.

I think people in the west are seeing what the delays have meant for Ukraine, and there is a doubling down on the effort. Ukraine's success in March made some people complacent (and others frightened).


----------



## para bellum

ESay said:


> Yes, MLR systems have been approved to be delivered. At the first stage, four MLRS will be delivered as a some sort of training devices for Ukrainian army. Maybe, in the coming month the first results will present themselves.


Just saw this tweet from an ABC reporter Esay. Saying the training is already underway at an "undisclosed location" outside the USA (likely Poland).


----------



## ESay

para bellum said:


> What's coming online now are the self propelled howitzers and GPS guided munitions. 40km, not 70km like the missiles, but they are deadly accurate. There are M109's in Ukraine from the US that aren't on any list. The ammunition is also compatible with the towed M777's that have the digital fire control computers.
> 
> None of that was there a month ago.
> 
> The recently announced MRLS:
> 
> 4 ea. M142 HIMARS from the US. 4 ea. M270 from the UK. 4 ea. MARS II (improved M270) from Germany. Training and acquisition/sustainment for HIMARS was funded in the Lend-Lease bill. The USMC went to all HIMARS so there are 200 more M270's available in US inventory.
> 
> They all use the same missile pack. The M270 tracked launcher carry two packs of 6, the HIMARS wheeled launcher carries one pack. They all have self-loaders, so reloading is just changing the empty pack out for a full one.
> 
> Training on HIMARS takes one week (so they say, but that must be pretty rudimentary) and should be underway in Poland already. I know that the follow-on missiles for the MRLS systems will probably have to be pulled from Lockheed's production allocated to Poland and/or Australia. With all that, the first HIMARS should be deployable in June. (Germany's 4 pcs. will take longer than that...)
> 
> plus:
> 
> 4 ea. MQ-1C Drones that can carry 4 ea, Hellfire or 8 ea. Stinger missile. Organic ELINT and ECM/EW capability, laser designator, and can geolocate any electronic emitter in it's area of regard. Kills tanks and helicopters and drones, ID's targets and can stay aloft for ~30 hours. Not confirmed, but it was written specifically into the bill so it should not be a problem in the Congress. These will take a little time to train the Ukrainian pilots and handlers, but not months if they already know how to fly TB2's.
> 
> The other eastern European countries take years, even decades to switch over to NATO standard- we're trying to do this in Ukraine practically overnite. _Everything _ is different, and the whole thing is a logistical nightmare.
> 
> I think people in the west are seeing what the delays have meant for Ukraine, and there is a doubling down on the effort. Ukraine's success in March made some people complacent (and others frightened).


Yeah, thanks for explanation. I have read about the British MLRS and about the drones. I am a bit sceptical about the German ones, though. Also, it is hard for me to distinguish between the Western types of hardware, I am more used to the Soviet ones.


----------



## para bellum

ESay said:


> Yeah, thanks for explanation. I have read about the British MLRS and about the drones. I am a bit sceptical about the German ones, though. Also, it is hard for me to distinguish between the Western types of hardware, I am more used to the Soviet ones.


You have every reason to be skeptical wrt Germany. I think that Scholz and Macron came away from their call with Putin disappointed- The other day Scholz went out of his way to emphasize the "heavy" in heavy weapons for Ukraine, so maybe the message has finally made it through his thick skull. Hope springs eternal...

I forgot about the Polish SPH's. AHS Krab uses a British 155mm turret on a South Korean chassis. 18 of those in Ukraine and something like 60 more on order. 12 x PzH2000 from the Netherlands and Germany (training is completed on those), 12 x Caesar from France (6 already in theater, 6 on the way), 20 x M109's from Norway plus unknown qty from the US.

These all have different fire control systems, but they are interoperable through a NATO standard called ASCA. That allows them to pass targeting information digitally and coordinate fires. The drones tie this all together into a cohesive network.






						Partner nations evaluate digital call-for-fires at Bold Quest - USAASC
					

By Mrs. Nancy Jones-Bonbrest FORT BLISS, Texas (Oct. 13, 2015) -- The thunder of artillery echoed across the New Mexico desert, but this was not a normal Army training mission. Instead artillery units representing seven countries were participating in a live-fire event.  For the first time...




					asc.army.mil
				




The MQ-1C drones were developed specifically to embed with artillery divisions and are tailored to that role. In addition to the tactical strike, they can jam enemy radars and communications, perform precise target mapping and show changes in terrain. They can flyover one day, then do another flyover the next day, and by comparing the images they can detect recent activity. They can locate buried mines and IED's, spot vehicle tracks, etc. Very useful for advancing forces and BDA on high-value targets.

I have been very impressed with Ukraine's artillery forces- they are really, really good. The weapons they are receiving are light years ahead of the soviet era stuff. They may look the same on paper, but in effectiveness the NATO stuff is way out front.

When the Ukrainians get dialed in on these new systems it's going to be a wild ride for the Russian side.

*** There are 4 HIMARS sitting on the ramp at Joint Base Lewis-McChord this morning....


----------



## para bellum

ESay said:


> Severodonetsk, Lysychansk, Slaviansk, Kramatorsk, Bahmut, Avdeevka. And now try to find these cities on a map and get to know what is going on there.


Esay, it seems your side isn't going to walk away from SDonetsk without extracting a pound of flesh.


----------



## ESay

para bellum said:


> Esay, it seems your side isn't going to walk away from SDonetsk without extracting a pound of flesh.


Yes, I have read about that. Of course, I wish them further successes. Another good information comes from the Kherson direction. Ukrainian troops have made some advances there on the right bank of the Dnieper.


----------



## the other mike

alexa said:


> Except if Russia strikes first giving you no warning then gone New York for about 500 years and gone most cities in the US and Nuclear bunkers or wherever you keep them.


Very eye-opening ....thank you for posting.


----------



## gipper

Good column here 'Not A Justification But A Provocation': Chomsky On Root Causes Of The Russia-Ukraine War | ZeroHedge

It includes the reasons why most Americans know nothing about the reasons and causes of this war. As always in war, our government is lying to us. They are playing nuclear brinkmanship with Russia, but the American people don’t know it.


----------



## the other mike

gipper said:


> Putin may have screwed up. Had he waited a little longer and Ukraine‘s army invaded Donbass then Putin goes in, the world might look at this a bit differently.
> 
> However most Americans know nothing about the coup by Obama, Biden, and Nuland in 2014 and the murdering of 14,000 ethnic Russians in the Donbass by Ukraine since the coup.  So it’s likely the western media would twist any action by Putin as bad.


Most Americans are kept in the dark by a well-controlled media about the entire history of the world , especially the Middle East going back to Iran in 1953.

Afghanistan is technically Southeast Asia and then we have troops in 150 some odd other countries in Africa and everywhere else.
Libya was the richest African nation until we f***** them up


----------



## gipper

the other mike said:


> Most Americans are kept in the dark by a well-controlled media about the entire history of the world , especially the Middle East going back to Iran in 1953.
> 
> Afghanistan is technically Southeast Asia and then we have troops in 150 some odd other countries in Africa and everywhere else.
> Libya was the richest African nation until we f***** them up


This is very true. Dumb Americans condemn Putin’s war of aggression, but think their country’s multiple wars of aggression are perfectly acceptable. WTF?

The American public knows almost nothing about why this war started, thanks to a media and government that controls what they are told.

We just might be allowing our corrupt government officials to sleep walk us into a nuclear holocaust.


----------



## the other mike

gipper said:


> This is very true. Dumb Americans condemn Putin’s war of aggression, but think their country’s multiple wars of aggression are perfectly acceptable. WTF?
> 
> The American public knows almost nothing about why this war started, thanks to a media and government that controls what they are told.
> 
> We just might be allowing our corrupt government officials to sleep walk us into a nuclear holocaust.


Even if most of us know the truth they have so much control we now have no real means of communicating it...... social media and the internet ?

Let's just say Big Brother's practice round was the Arab Spring when they shut it all down


----------



## surada

alexa said:


> I hear from Col Black that there have been calls from US Politicians (republicans) to nuke Russia.  Given that Russia has nukes which it would be impossible for the US to detect, the  wants to make sure it does not get Russia thinking it is going to fire them.



Are you impressed with Colonel Black?









						One of the loudest Republican supporters of Russia and Assad announces his retirement
					

Dick Black bent over backwards to defend Syria’s dictator.




					archive.thinkprogress.org


----------



## surada

the other mike said:


> Most Americans are kept in the dark by a well-controlled media about the entire history of the world , especially the Middle East going back to Iran in 1953.
> 
> Afghanistan is technically Southeast Asia and then we have troops in 150 some odd other countries in Africa and everywhere else.
> Libya was the richest African nation until we f***** them up



Libya has suffered since Gaddafi threw out the Idris constitution in 1970. He was very much like Trump. The US had nothing to do with the Arab Spring in Libya. The Eastern tribes hated Gaddafi for the past 40 years. Why do you think Gaddafi's police and military were all foreign nationals?


----------



## gipper

surada said:


> Libya has suffered since Gaddafi threw out the Idris constitution in 1970. He was very much like Trump. The US had nothing to do with the Arab Spring in Libya. The Eastern tribes hated Gaddafi for the past 40 years. Why do you think Gaddafi's police and military were all foreign nationals?


Is that a justification for O’s invasion and the resulting destruction of Libya?


----------



## surada

gipper said:


> Is that a justification for O’s invasion and the resulting destruction of Libya?
> View attachment 662436



The US didn't invade Libya. By the time the US caved to NATO and the Arabs all foreign embassies had left.. all the oil companies had left and Libyan refugees were pouring into Italy. Gadaffi promised the streets would run with blood.


----------



## the other mike

Speaking of deep State goons like John Kerry


----------



## the other mike

surada said:


> The US didn't invade Libya. By the time the US caved to NATO and the Arabs all foreign embassies had left.. all the oil companies had left and Libyan refugees were pouring into Italy. Gadaffi promised the streets would run with blood.


CIA false flag op in Tripoli ....look it up


----------



## surada

the other mike said:


> CIA false flag op in Tripoli ....look it up



Colonel Black isn't too sharp.

I lived in Tripoli.









						2011 military intervention in Libya - Wikipedia
					






					en.m.wikipedia.org


----------



## gipper

surada said:


> The US didn't invade Libya. By the time the US caved to NATO and the Arabs all foreign embassies had left.. all the oil companies had left and Libyan refugees were pouring into Italy. Gadaffi promised the streets would run with blood.


We didn’t?  Really?  How do you define invade?  Does it not include bombing the place and stationing troops and other personnel there?


----------



## surada

gipper said:


> We didn’t?  Really?  How do you define invade?  Does it not include bombing the place and stationing troops and other personnel there?



It was the enforcement of a no fly zone. You guys want to blame Obama. Truth is the US was happy with the status quo. But, maybe you need another crackpot conspiracy.


----------



## surada

gipper said:


> We didn’t?  Really?  How do you define invade?  Does it not include bombing the place and stationing troops and other personnel there?



We didn't station any troops in Libya. We couldn't have changed the course of events in Libya without a massive occupation force.. say 400,000.


----------



## gipper

surada said:


> We didn't station any troops in Libya. We couldn't have changed the course of events in Libya without a massive occupation force.. say 400,000.


Wrong. There were troops there. The whole Benghazi thing proved we had military personnel on the ground in several places.

What was going on there was none of our business. Our government’s involvement as always, only made matters worse.


----------



## alexa

surada said:


> Are you impressed with Colonel Black?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> One of the loudest Republican supporters of Russia and Assad announces his retirement
> 
> 
> Dick Black bent over backwards to defend Syria’s dictator.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> archive.thinkprogress.org


To be honest it was sometime ago I listened to that video and I did not know the man before.  I can remember it was interesting.  I think at the time it was about the first alternative point of view I had heard. Today I am listening to John  Mearsheimer.   I am going to have to listen to it again because I kept falling asleep!!!!! He has spoken about the US and Ukraine before.  I understand what he is saying.  It is pretty much the accepted alternative view.


----------



## Donald H

alexa said:


> To be honest it was sometime ago I listened to that video and I did not know the man before.  I can remember it was interesting.  I think at the time it was about the first alternative point of view I had heard. Today I am listening to John  Mearsheimer.   I am going to have to listen to it again because I kept falling asleep!!!!! He has spoken about the US and Ukraine before.  I understand what he is saying.  It is pretty much the accepted alternative view.


Noam Chomsky too. 
But the US barrage of propaganda won't be dispelled quickly.


----------



## Rigby5

Confederate Soldier said:


> The U.S. isn't the one who keeps using Nuclear threats. Russia is. If Russia acts on those threats, we will respond in kind. Admitting that we will respond, isn't making us the bad guy.



Wrong.
The whole war in the Ukraine was about the Ukraine trying to join NATO, which means putting NATO nukes on Russia's border.

Trying to claim that Russia then started the nuclear threat is silly.
That would be like claiming the US started the nuclear threat with the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1964.
That is true, but it was the US missiles we put in Turkey that were the start, not Cuba.
Clearly now it is the US that is threatening nuclear war by trying to put an unstoppable first strike nuclear force on Russia's border, in the Ukraine.

Russia has no choice but to respond with nuclear weapons if the US continues to try to put NATO nukes in the Ukraine.
That does not make Russia the one starting this, or the bad guy.
Clearly the US started this, is the bad guy, and has to stop arming the Ukraine with missiles.


----------



## Rigby5

Confederate Soldier said:


> Warning that if we meddle with their plans, they'll nuke us sounds a lot like a threat.
> 
> 
> 
> If a guy starts touching your wife, and you go up to give him what for, and the guy says "don't interrupt me, or I'll shoot you". That's a threat. That's when you pull out your gun and say that you will respond in kind. That's a warning. Your gun will scare the guy off. It's no different between Russia and the U.S. only more lives at stake.



There is no question the US started this first.
It started before 2014 really, but that is when the US bribed the military coup that took over, prevented elections, imprisoned or poisoned any opposition, etc.

The stated goal of Zelensky is to join NATO and put nukes on Russia's border.
So then it is Kyiv who is committing acts of war and started this conflict.
Russia is the victim and has no choice at all.


----------



## Rigby5

JoeB131 said:


> I'm kind of horrified so many ex-Army officers are willing to sell out to the Russians..



That is silly.
The Russians have ZERO history of colonial imperialism like the US has.
The Russians did not at all start this, and Kyiv was warned as early as 2006 that any attempt to join NATO was a treaty violation that would force an invasion.


----------



## Rigby5

Dragonlady said:


> When Putin says "I have nuclear weapons and I may have to use them, that's a threat because Putin is in control of said weapons. Whether or not he uses said weapons is entirely in his control and no one else.



Wrong.
Russia has repeatedly explained that as long as the Ukraine did not violate treaties, then there would no violence.
But if Kyiv ever tries to join NATO or any alliance hostile to Russia, they would have to be invaded.
So then whether or not the invasion of the Ukraine happened was NOT at all under the control of Putin.
It was entirely and completely up to the Ukraine if they were going to violate treaties or not.


----------



## Rigby5

beautress said:


> Thank you, Baron for sharing Col. Black's viewpoint. My viewpoint is a little different because on the outside, Russia is no longer a communist state. However, from Putin's "warnings," it is clear to me that he would like to enjoy the same privileges as former President of the USSR, Nikita Kruschev, he would like to take his shoe and whack his podium smartly a few times to warn that "we will bury you," baloney that I saw Kruschev saying on tv when I was a teenager at Aldine High School in Houston. I didn't like his attitude. So the more things change in Russia, the more they stay the same. They just wanna beat up on anyone who stands in their cruel way. Because nothing could be more cruel than vaporizing an orphanage on the first day of a war by an agressor nation against a sovereign state they "used to own" under Communistic circumstance. Just my opinion that Putin was wishing to have the power he perceived is more pleasurable than giving a damn about the innocent people he just put through his malicious and inhumane meatgrinder weaponry.
> Oh, and no disrespect intended toward your post of excellence and Col. Black's experience delivered, none.



Wrong.
That is uninformed propaganda.

Khrushchev was "banging his shoe on the table" because the US had put nuclear missiles in Turkey, near the Russian border.
So Khrushchev was NOT the bad guy.
It was the US who was the bad guy.
And Khrushchev proved that by doing the same thing, putting nukes near the US, in Cuba, (Cuban Missile Crisis of 1964).

The result was that the US removed our missiles from Turkey, and only then did Russia remove their missiles from Cuba.

Russia has never "beat up" on anyone.
Russia has always been a defender, with nothing to gain.
Such as in China, Korea, Vietnam, Cuba, Syria, etc.
It is the US that is out for the colonial imperialism, profit, exploitation, etc.

This war was caused entirely by the US, who encouraged, bribed, and armed Zelensky, so that the US could test Russian weapons.


----------



## Rigby5

toomuchtime_ said:


> Putin is saying that it is intolerable to him and a threat to Russian security that the people of former soviet states should make decisions based on what is best for them rather than what is best for Russia. That is the one and only reason Russia has invaded Ukraine.



The Ukraine agreed to NEVER join any alliance hostile to Russia, when they were granted independence from the Soviet Union in 1992.
This treaty violation is a deliberate act of war by the Ukraine.


----------



## Rigby5

toomuchtime_ said:


> Well, there you go.  You've just proven Russia has no reason to fear nuclear war.



You totally ignore fact.
If the Ukraine were to be allowed to join NATO and put nukes on Russia's border, there no longer would be enough time for anyone to get into the safety of any of these shelters.
The ONLY reason for wanting the Ukraine in NATO is to be able to successfully wipe out Russia's retaliatory capability in the first strike.
That can never be allowed.
It would be better to start the nuclear war now, before this NATO first strike capability can be installed.


----------



## Rigby5

toomuchtime_ said:


> It would be a terrible thing if Russia and the civilized world had a nuclear war but it would also be a terrible thing to allow the little Russian gangster to gobble up eastern Europe again by making insane threats of nuclear war.  The only way out of this situation is for Putin to learn to be content with terrorizing the Russian people instead of seeking to terrorize the rest of the world.



Wrong.
It is a lie to claim the Soviet Union "gobbled up eastern Europe".
The Soviet Unions rebuilt eastern Europe, and spent far more on it than it got back from it.
That is totally unlike the US than only makes a profit on everything we do.
We are the colonial imperialist and steal from every country we can, like the oil profits we stole from Iraq.
Russia has never done that to anyone.


----------



## Rigby5

surada said:


> Libya has suffered since Gaddafi threw out the Idris constitution in 1970. He was very much like Trump. The US had nothing to do with the Arab Spring in Libya. The Eastern tribes hated Gaddafi for the past 40 years. Why do you think Gaddafi's police and military were all foreign nationals?



I disagree.
The dissidents in Benghazi were not even mostly Libyan.
We utterly wiped out Qaddafi's forces as they moved towards Benghazi.
And it was this utter destruction of Qaddafi's forces and the arming of al Qaeda in Benghazi by the US, that cause the defeat and murder of Qaddafi.
The eastern tribes were not Libyan or Berber, but Palestinian, Egyptian, Syrian, Saudi Arabian, etc.


----------



## Rigby5

surada said:


> The US didn't invade Libya. By the time the US caved to NATO and the Arabs all foreign embassies had left.. all the oil companies had left and Libyan refugees were pouring into Italy. Gadaffi promised the streets would run with blood.



But the US weapons depots in Benghazi were proof we were the ones arming al Qaeda in Benghazi.
And the US participated in the aerial destruction of Qaddafi's forces.
Qaddafi may have been bad, but what the US did to Libya was even worse.


----------



## Rigby5

surada said:


> It was the enforcement of a no fly zone. You guys want to blame Obama. Truth is the US was happy with the status quo. But, maybe you need another crackpot conspiracy.



No-fly-zones are totally illegal.
Italy and France likely wanted to murder Qaddafi even more than the US did, but it was the US that gave the go ahead and made it all happen.


----------



## Rigby5

surada said:


> We didn't station any troops in Libya. We couldn't have changed the course of events in Libya without a massive occupation force.. say 400,000.



The force in Benghazi the US armed and bribed, was estimated at around 400,000.


----------



## Confederate Soldier

Rigby5 said:


> There is no question the US started this first.
> It started before 2014 really, but that is when the US bribed the military coup that took over, prevented elections, imprisoned or poisoned any opposition, etc.
> 
> The stated goal of Zelensky is to join NATO and put nukes on Russia's border.
> So then it is Kyiv who is committing acts of war and started this conflict.
> Russia is the victim and has no choice at all.





Go fuck yourself, slav lover. The Russians have been nothing but a threat to us since the communists took over. Nato isn't the cause, NATO is the effect. Russian aggression and brutality has caused this. Russian aggression will escalate shit, not us. Period.


----------



## Soupnazi630

Rigby5 said:


> Wrong.
> Russia has repeatedly explained that as long as the Ukraine did not violate treaties, then there would no violence.
> But if Kyiv ever tries to join NATO or any alliance hostile to Russia, they would have to be invaded.
> So then whether or not the invasion of the Ukraine happened was NOT at all under the control of Putin.
> It was entirely and completely up to the Ukraine if they were going to violate treaties or not.


They violated no treaty


----------



## Soupnazi630

Rigby5 said:


> That is silly.
> The Russians have ZERO history of colonial imperialism like the US has.
> The Russians did not at all start this, and Kyiv was warned as early as 2006 that any attempt to join NATO was a treaty violation that would force an invasion.


Yes they do and yes they did liar

You ignore afghanistan

There was no such treaty liar


----------



## Soupnazi630

Rigby5 said:


> There is no question the US started this first.
> It started before 2014 really, but that is when the US bribed the military coup that took over, prevented elections, imprisoned or poisoned any opposition, etc.
> 
> The stated goal of Zelensky is to join NATO and put nukes on Russia's border.
> So then it is Kyiv who is committing acts of war and started this conflict.
> Russia is the victim and has no choice at all.


All proven lies,.

Putin started this.

There was no such brobery from the US and Zelensky never tried or wanted to put nukes on Russias border

Thjose are facts your claims are proven lies


----------



## Soupnazi630

Rigby5 said:


> Wrong.
> The whole war in the Ukraine was about the Ukraine trying to join NATO, which means putting NATO nukes on Russia's border.
> 
> Trying to claim that Russia then started the nuclear threat is silly.
> That would be like claiming the US started the nuclear threat with the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1964.
> That is true, but it was the US missiles we put in Turkey that were the start, not Cuba.
> Clearly now it is the US that is threatening nuclear war by trying to put an unstoppable first strike nuclear force on Russia's border, in the Ukraine.
> 
> Russia has no choice but to respond with nuclear weapons if the US continues to try to put NATO nukes in the Ukraine.
> That does not make Russia the one starting this, or the bad guy.
> Clearly the US started this, is the bad guy, and has to stop arming the Ukraine with missiles.


Once again this nukes on Russias border claim of yours is a delusional lie.


----------



## Soupnazi630

Rigby5 said:


> Wrong.
> That is uninformed propaganda.
> 
> Khrushchev was "banging his shoe on the table" because the US had put nuclear missiles in Turkey, near the Russian border.
> So Khrushchev was NOT the bad guy.
> It was the US who was the bad guy.
> And Khrushchev proved that by doing the same thing, putting nukes near the US, in Cuba, (Cuban Missile Crisis of 1964).
> 
> The result was that the US removed our missiles from Turkey, and only then did Russia remove their missiles from Cuba.
> 
> Russia has never "beat up" on anyone.
> Russia has always been a defender, with nothing to gain.
> Such as in China, Korea, Vietnam, Cuba, Syria, etc.
> It is the US that is out for the colonial imperialism, profit, exploitation, etc.
> 
> This war was caused entirely by the US,



Wrong and you are lhying again.

The shoe baning incident had nothing to do with US nukes in Turkey.

Kruschev HIMSELF stated this in his memoirs


----------



## Soupnazi630

Rigby5 said:


> Wrong.
> It is a lie to claim the Soviet Union "gobbled up eastern Europe".
> The Soviet Unions rebuilt eastern Europe, and spent far more on it than it got back from it.
> That is totally unlike the US than only makes a profit on everything we do.
> We are the colonial imperialist and steal from every country we can, like the oil profits we stole from Iraq.
> Russia has never done that to anyone.


Wrong.

It is not a lie,

They enslaved eastern europe

We made profit and enriched the lives of western eruopean peoples.


----------



## toomuchtime_

Rigby5 said:


> Wrong.
> The whole war in the Ukraine was about the Ukraine trying to join NATO, which means putting NATO nukes on Russia's border.
> 
> Trying to claim that Russia then started the nuclear threat is silly.
> That would be like claiming the US started the nuclear threat with the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1964.
> That is true, but it was the US missiles we put in Turkey that were the start, not Cuba.
> Clearly now it is the US that is threatening nuclear war by trying to put an unstoppable first strike nuclear force on Russia's border, in the Ukraine.
> 
> Russia has no choice but to respond with nuclear weapons if the US continues to try to put NATO nukes in the Ukraine.
> That does not make Russia the one starting this, or the bad guy.
> Clearly the US started this, is the bad guy, and has to stop arming the Ukraine with missiles.


Perhaps this is true on your planet, but here on Earth there are no nukes in any former Warsaw Pact nation and although Ukraine did apply for membership in NATO after Russia's invasion of Georgia NATO has consistently refused to consider Ukraine's application.  Clearly the Russian invasion of Ukraine had nothing to do with NATO or NATO nukes.  

Perhaps on your planet, there is still some advantage to a first nuclear strike, but here on Earth both sides possess technology to detect missile launches' almost instantly a launch a counterstrike long before the first strike has landed so there is no longer any advantage to launching a first strike.

Russia's many nuclear threats are terroristic in nature, intended to destroy the will of the Ukrainian forces to resist Russian imperialist aggression and the will of civilized nations to support Ukraine, but clearly no one is paying attention to these stunts.  There is absolutely no defensive dimension to Russia's invasion of Ukraine.


----------



## toomuchtime_

Rigby5 said:


> The Ukraine agreed to NEVER join any alliance hostile to Russia, when they were granted independence from the Soviet Union in 1992.
> This treaty violation is a deliberate act of war by the Ukraine.


That's a lie.  There was never such an agreement.  The USSR did not grant independence to Ukraine, it simply collapsed and then recognized the independence of Ukraine, and in 1994 in the Budapest Memorandum pledged to never attack Ukraine unless Ukraine attacked it first, in order to persuade Ukraine to give up its nuclear arsenal, then the third largest in the world.  The lesson here is, never trust Russia because it has no respect for laws or treaties or any of the principles by which civilized nations try to live.


----------



## para bellum

toomuchtime_ said:


> Russia's many nuclear threats are terroristic in nature, intended to destroy the will of the Ukrainian forces to resist Russian imperialist aggression and the will of civilized nations to support Ukraine, but clearly no one is paying attention to these stunts.


And I would just add that when Russian ambitions for Kiev were thwarted by the Territorial Defense Forces of Ukraine, Russia did not go nuclear- Putin chose to withdraw instead. 

He scaled back his objective to the Donbas, and his rhetoric today about increasing their territory in the east recognizes that the post-war Ukraine will still have Zelensky at the helm.

That is a straight-up de-escalation. The exact opposite of the "escalate to de-escalate" (fictional) doctrine that everyone is hyperventilating over.


----------



## alexa

para bellum said:


> And I would just add that when Russian ambitions for Kiev were thwarted by the Territorial Defense Forces of Ukraine, Russia did not go nuclear- Putin chose to withdraw instead.
> 
> *He scaled back his objective to the Donbas, and his rhetoric today about increasing their territory in the east recognizes that the post-war Ukraine will still have Zelensky at the helm.*
> 
> That is a straight-up de-escalation. The exact opposite of the "escalate to de-escalate" (fictional) doctrine that everyone is hyperventilating over.



Wow. we both received the opposite news.  Lavrov we are told has said Russia wants more territory *and intends to get rid of Zelensky is what I was told last night.*




> *Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Sunday said that it's Moscow's goal to oust Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, making it clear that the Kremlin's objectives in the Ukraine war extend well beyond conquering the eastern Donbas region.*





			Russia's top diplomat says the Kremlin wants to 'get rid of' Zelenskyy in a blunt admission of its devastating war aims


----------



## Likkmee

Baron said:


> The guy is according to western presstitutes paid by Putin Kremlin troll
> 
> 
> 
> The full Transcript
> 
> Mike Billington with _Executive Intelligence Review_ interviews Col. Richard Black (ret.).
> 
> *BILLINGTON*: Hi, this is this is Mike Billington with _Executive Intelligence Review_ and the Schiller Institute. I am here today with Col. Richard Black, Sen. Richard Black, who, after serving 31 years in the Marines and in the Army, then served in the Virginia House of Delegates from 1998 to 2006, and in the Virginia Senate from 2012 to 2020. I’ll also allow Colonel Black to describe his military service himself.
> 
> So, Colonel Black, welcome. With the with the U.S. and U.K. and NATO surrogate war with Russia, which is taking place in Ukraine, and the economic warfare being carried out directly against Russia, this has been accompanied by an information war which is intended to demonize Russia and especially President Vladimir Putin. One repeated theme is that the Russian military is carrying out ruthless campaigns of murder against civilians and destruction of residential areas, often referring to the Russian military operations in Syria, claiming that they had done the same thing in Syria, especially against Aleppo. These are supposedly examples of their war crimes and crimes against humanity.
> 
> You have been a leading spokesman internationally for many years, exposing the lies about what took place in Syria and the war on Syria. So first, let me ask: How and why did Russia get involved in Syria militarily? And how does that contrast with the U.S. and NATO supposed justification for their military intervention in Syria?
> 
> *BLACK*: Well, let me begin, if I could, by telling our listeners that I’m very patriotic: I volunteered to join the Marines and I volunteered to go to Vietnam. I fought in the bloodiest Marine campaign of the entire war. And I was a helicopter pilot who flew 269 combat missions. My aircraft was hit by ground fire on four missions. I, then, fought on the ground with the First Marine Division, and during one of the 70 combat patrols that I made, my radioman were both killed, and I was wounded while we were attacking and trying to rescue a surrounded Marine outpost.
> 
> So I’m very pro-American. I actually was a part of NATO and was prepared to die in Germany, to defend against an attack by the Soviet Union.
> 
> But Russia is not the Soviet Union at all. People don’t understand that because the media have not made it clear. But Russia is not a communist state; the Soviet Union was a communist state.
> 
> Now, one of the things that I’ve seen claimed, that has been particularly irritating to me because of my experience with Syria: I have I have been in Aleppo city. Aleppo city is the biggest city in Syria, or it was at least before the war began. And there was a tremendous battle. Some some call it the “Stalingrad of the Syrian war,” which is not a bad comparison. It was a terribly bitter battle that went on from 2012 until 2016. In the course of urban combat, any forces that are fighting are forced to destroy buildings. Buildings are blown down on a massive scale. And this happens any time that you have urban combat. So I have walked the streets of Aleppo, while combat was still in progress. I have looked across, through a slit in the sandbags at enemy controlled territory; I’ve stood on tanks that were blown out and this type of thing.
> 
> What I do know, and I can tell you about Aleppo is that Russia was extremely reluctant to get involved in combat in Syria. The war began in 2011, when the United States landed Central Intelligence operatives to begin coordinating with Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups. And we had been unwavering supporters of Al Qaeda, since before the war formally began. We are supporters of Al Qaeda today, where they’re bottled up in Idlib province. The CIA supplied them under secret Operation Timber Sycamore. We gave them all of their anti-tank weapons, all of their anti air- missiles. And Al Qaeda has always been our proxy force on the ground. They, together with ISIS, have carried out the mission of the United States, together with a great number of affiliates that really are kind of interchangeable. You have the Free Syrian Army soldiers move from ISIS to Al Qaeda to Free Syrian Army, rather fluidly. And so we started that war.
> 
> But the United States has a strategic policy of using proxies to engage in war. And our objective was to overthrow the legitimate government of Syria, and in order to do that, we employed proxy soldiers who were the most vile of all terrorists. Something very similar is happening right now in in Ukraine.
> 
> But going back to Aleppo, the Syrian army, together with Hezbollah, which was very effective; there were some troops that were organized by Iran also, but it was pretty much a Syrian show, certainly directed by Syrian generals. And they had fought this bitter urban combat, very brutal, very deadly. And they had fought it for four years, before Russia ever joined the battle. So after four years, the city of Aleppo had enormous destruction. And at that point, the Russians, at the invitation of the legitimate government of Syria, entered the war. But unlike many of the media reports, they did not enter the war as a ground force.  Now, they had some small ground forces. They had military police, they had a few artillery units, a few special operations people, and quite a number of advisers and that sort of thing. But they were not a significant ground force.
> 
> On the other hand, they were a significant and very effective air force, that supplemented the Syrian Air Force. But it really was just the last year of the war, the battle for Aleppo, just the last year, that they entered and their air power was very effective. And by this time, the Syrians had pretty well worn down the terrorist forces. And the Russian assistance was able to tip the balance, and Aleppo was _the_ grand victory of the entire Syrian war.
> 
> But to blame the Russians for the massive destruction that took place within Aleppo, it’s bizarre: Because they were not there, they were not even present when this happened. So this is simply another part of the propaganda narrative, which is which hasbeen very effective for the West, demonizing Russia, and making claims that have no substance. But people don’t remember the history of these things—they’re rather complex. So, no: Russia was not in any respect responsible for the massive destruction of the city of Aleppo.
> 
> *BILLINGTON*: How would you contrast the methods of warfare followed by Russia, as opposed to the U.S. and allied forces in Syria?
> 
> *BLACK*: Well, first of all, the American involvement, the United States war against Syria is a war of aggression. We put a highly secretive CIA special activities center—these are kind of the James Bond guys of the Central Intelligence Agency, total Machiavellian; they will do anything, there’s no it’s no holds barred with these guys. We sent them in and we started the war in Syria. The war didn’t exist until we sent the CIA to coordinate with Al Qaeda elements. So we began the war and we were not invited into Syria.
> 
> In fact, the United States has seized, two significant parts of Syria. One is a very major part, the Euphrates River, carves off about a third of the northern part of Syria: The United States invaded that portion. We actually put troops on the ground, illegal—against any standard international law of war—it was it was a just a seizure. And this was this was something that was referred to by John Kerry, who was then the Secretary of State, and he was frustrated at the tremendous victory by the Syrian Armed Forces against Al Qaeda and ISIS. And he said, well, we probably need to move to Plan B. He didn’t announce what Plan B was, but it had it unfolded over time: Plan B was the American seizure of that northern portion of Syria. The importance of taking that part of Syria is, that it is the bread basket for all of the Syrian people. That is where the wheat—Syria actually had a significant wheat surplus and the people were very well fed in Syria, before the war. We wanted to take the wheat away, to cause famine among the Syrian people.
> 
> The other thing we were able to do, is to seize the major part of the oil and natural gas fields. Those also were produced in that northern portion beyond the Euphrates River. And the idea was that, by stealing the oil and then the gas, we would be able to shut down the transportation system, and at the same time, during the Syrian winters, we could freeze to death the Syrian civilian population, which in many cases were living in rubble, where these terrorist armies, with mechanized divisions had attacked and just totally destroyed these cities, and left people just living in little pockets of rubble.
> 
> We wanted to starve and we wanted to freeze to death the people of Syria, and that was Plan B.
> 
> Now, we became frustrated at a certain point that somehow these Syrians, these darned Syrians—it’s a tiny little country, and why are these people resilient? They’re fighting against two-thirds of the entire military and industrial force of the world. How can a nation of 23 million people possibly withstand this for over a decade? And so we decided we had to take action or we were going totally lose Syria. And so the U.S. Congress imposed the Caesar sanctions. The Caesar sanctions were the most brutal sanctions ever imposed on any nation. During the Second World War, sanctions were not nearly as strict as they were on Syria.
> 
> We weren’t at war with Syria! And yet we had a naval blockade around the country. We devalued their currency through the SWIFT system for international payments, making it impossible for them to purchase medications. So you had Syrian women who would contract breast cancer, just like we have here in this country. But instead, where in this country where breast cancer has become relatively treatable, we cut off the medical supplies so that the women in Syria would die of breast cancer because they could not get the medications, because we slam their dollars through the SWIFT system.
> 
> One of the last things that we did and the evidence is vague on it, but there was a mysterious explosion in the harbor in Lebanon, and it was a massive explosion of a shipload of ammonium nitrate fertilizer. It killed hundreds of Lebanese people. It wounded thousands and thousands, destroyed the economy of Lebanon. And, most importantly, it destroyed the banking system of Lebanon, which was one of the few lifelines remaining to Syria. I don’t think that explosion was accidental. I think it was orchestrated, and I suspect that the Central Intelligence Agency was aware of the nation that carried out that action to destroy Beirut Harbor.
> 
> But throughout you see this this Machiavellian approach, where we use unlimited force and violence. And at the same time, we control the global media, to where we erase all discussions of what’s truly happening. So, to the man or the woman in the street, they think things are fine. Everything is being done for altruistic reasons, but it’s not.
> 
> *BILLINGTON*: Part of your military service was as a JAG officer, and for a period of time, you were the Army’s head of the criminal law division at the Pentagon. And in that light, what do you see as of how these Caesar sanctions—how would you look at those from the perspective of international law and military law?
> 
> *BLACK*: Well, now, I was not the international law expert. I was the criminal law expert. But I would say that making war on a civilian population is a crime of grave significance in the law of war.
> 
> One of the things that we did as we as we allied ourselves with Al Qaeda, and on and off with ISIS; I mean, we fought ISIS in a very serious way, but at the same time, we often employed them to use against the Syrian government. So it’s kind of a love-hate. But we have always worked with the terrorists. They were the core.
> 
> One of the policies that was followed was that under this extreme version of Islam, this Wahhabism, there was this notion that you possess a woman that you seize with your strong right arm in battle. And this goes back to the seventh century. And so we facilitated the movement of Islamic terrorists from 100 countries, and they came and they joined ISIS, they joined Al Qaeda, they joined the Free Syrian Army, all of these different ones. And one of the things that they knew when they arrived is that they were lawfully entitled to murder the husbands—I’m not talking about military people, I’m talking about civilians—they could murder the husbands, they could kill them, and then they could possess and own their wives and their children. And they did it in vast numbers.
> 
> And so there was there was a campaign of rape, it was an organized campaign of rape across the nation of Syria. And there actually were slave markets that that arose in certain of these rebel areas where they actually had price lists of the different women. And interestingly, the highest prices went to the youngest children, because there were a great number of pedophiles. And the pedophiles wanted to possess small children, because under the laws that were applied, they were permitted to rape these children repeatedly. They were able to rape the widows of the slain soldiers or the slain civilians, and possess them and buy them and sell them among themselves. This went on.
> 
> I’m not saying that the CIA created this policy, but they understood that it was a widespread policy, and they condoned it. They never criticized it in any way.
> 
> This was so bad, that I spoke with President Assad, who shared with me that they were in the process—when I visited in 2016; I was in a number of battle zones, and in the capital. And I met with the President, and he said that at that time, they were working on legislation in the parliament, to change the law of citizenship. They had always followed the Islamic law, which was that that a child citizenship derived from the father. But there were so many tens, hundreds of thousands of Syrian women impregnated by these terrorists who were imported into Syria, that it was necessary to change the law, so that they would have Syrian citizenship and they wouldn’t have to be returned to their ISIS father in Saudi Arabia, or in Tunisia. They could be retained in Syria. And I checked later and that law was passed and was implemented.
> 
> But it just shows the utter cruelty. When we fight these wars, we have no limits on the cruelty and the inhumanity that we’re prepared to impose on the people, making them suffer, so that somehow that will translate into overthrowing the government, and perhaps taking their oil, taking their resources.
> 
> *BILLINGTON*: Clearly, the policy against Russia today, by the current administration.
> 
> *BLACK*: Yes. Yes. You know, Russia is, perhaps more blessed with natural resources than any other nation on Earth. They are a major producer of grain, of oil, of aluminum, of fertilizers, of an immense number of things that tie into the whole global economy. And no doubt there are people who look at this and say, “if we could somehow break up Russia itself, there will be fortunes made, to where trillionaires will be made by the dozens.” And there’s some attraction to that. Certainly you’ve seen some of this taking place already, with foreign interests taking over Ukraine, and taking their vast resources.
> 
> But, we began a drive towards Russia, almost immediately after the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991. The Soviet Union dissolved, the Warsaw Pact dissolved. And unfortunately, one of the great tragedies of history is that we failed to dissolve NATO. The sole purpose of NATO was to defend against the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union no longer existed. NATO went toe toe with the Warsaw Pact. The Warsaw Pact was gone; it no longer existed. There was no purpose in NATO’s continuing to exist. However, we retained it, and it could not exist unless it had an enemy. Russia was _desperate_ to become part of the West.
> 
> I met with the head of Gazprom, the largest corporation in Russia, And this was shortly after the demise of the Soviet Union, and he described for me how they were struggling to have their media be as free as it was in the West. And they perceived us as being much more free and open than we were. And he said, you know, we’ve got this problem because we have this uprising in Chechnya, which is part of Russia. And he said the Chechnyan rebels send videos to Russian television and we play them on Russian television, because that’s the way freedom of speech works.
> 
> And I said, “Are you kidding me?” I said, “You’re publishing the enemy propaganda films?” He said, “Yeah.” He said, “Isn’t that the way you do it in the United States?” I said, “No.  In the Second World War, we took the head of the Associated Press and we put him in charge of wartime censorship, and it was very strict.”
> 
> So but this is just an example of how they were struggling. They went from being an officially atheist country, to where they became the most Christianized major nation in Europe, by far. Not only were the people, the most Christianized people in any major country in Europe, but the government itself was very supportive of the church, of the Christian faith. They altered their Constitution to say that marriage was the union of one man and one woman. They became very restrictive on the practice of abortion. They ended the practice of overseas adoptions, where some people were going to Russia and adopting little boys for immoral purposes. So they became a totally different culture and.
> 
> In any event, the United States has this long-standing strategy, this political-military strategy, of expanding the empire. We did it in the Middle East, where we attempted to create a massive neocolonial empire. It’s it became rather frayed. The people did not want it. And it seems to be doomed to extinction sometime—but it may go on for another 100 years. But in any event, we are trying to do something similar, as we roll to the East, right up virtually to the Russian border.
> 
> *BILLINGTON*:  So, the U.S. and U.K. position on the war in Ukraine, just over these last few weeks has now become not only supporting the war, but victory at all costs. This has been declared by Defense Secretary Austin and others. And they are pumping in huge quantities of not only defensive but offensive military weaponry to the Kyiv regime. What do you see as the consequence of this policy?
> 
> BLACK: I think one thing that it will do is it will ensure that a tremendous number of innocent Ukrainian soldiers will die needlessly. A lot of Russian soldiers will die needlessly. These are kids. You know, kids go off to war. I went off to war as a kid. You think your country, right or wrong, everything they’re doing is fine. It just it breaks my heart, when I look at the faces of young Russian boys, who have been who have been gunned down—in some cases very criminally by Ukrainian forces. And likewise, I see Ukrainian young men, who are being slaughtered on the battlefield.
> 
> We don’t care! The United States and NATO, we do not care how many Ukrainians die. Not civilians, not women, not children, not soldiers. _We do not care_. It’s become a great football game. You know, we’ve got our team. They’ve got their team, rah rah. We want to get the biggest score and run it up. And, you know, we don’t care how many how many of our players get crippled on the playing field, as long as we win.
> 
> Now, we are shipping fantastic quantities of weapons, and it’s caused the stock of Raytheon, which creates missiles, and Northrop Grumman, which creates aircraft and missiles, all of these defense industries have become tremendously bloated with tax dollars. I don’t think it’s ultimately going to change the outcome. I think that Russia will prevail. The Ukrainians are in a very awkward strategic position in the East.
> 
> But if you look at the way that this unfolded, President Putin made a desperate effort to stop the march towards war back in December of 2021. He went so far as to put specific written proposals on the table with NATO, peace proposals to defuse what was coming about. Because at this point, Ukraine was massing troops to attack the Donbas. And so, he was trying to head this off. He didn’t want war. And NATO just blew it off, just dismissed it; never took it seriously, never went into serious negotiations.
> 
> At that point, Putin seeing that armed Ukrainians, with weapons to kill Russian troops were literally on their borders, decided he had to strike first. Now, you could see, that this was not this was not some preplanned attack. This was not like Hitler’s attack into Poland, where the standard rule of thumb, is that you always have a 3-to-1 advantage when you are the attacker. You have to mass three times as many tanks and artillery and planes and men, as the other side has. In fact, when Russia went in, they went in with what they had, what they could cobble together on short notice. And they were outnumbered by the Ukrainian forces. The Ukrainian forces had about 250,000. The Russians had perhaps 160,000. So instead of having three times as many, they actually had _fewer_ troops than the Ukrainians. But they were forced to attack, to try to preempt the battle that was looming, where the Ukrainians had massed these forces against the Donbas.
> 
> Now, the Donbas is adjacent to Russia. It is a portion of Ukraine that did not join with the revolutionary government that conducted the coup in 2014 and overthrew the government of Ukraine. They refused to become a part of the new revolutionary government of Ukraine. And so they declared their independence. And Ukraine had massed this enormous army to attack against the Donbas. And so Russia was forced to go in to preempt that planned attack by Ukraine. And you could see that Russia very much hoped that they could conduct this special operation without unduly causing casualties for the Ukrainians, because they think of the Ukrainians, or at least they did think of the Ukrainians as brother Slavs; that they wanted to have good relations. But there is a famous picture with a Russian tank, that had been stopped by a gathering of maybe 40 civilians who just walked out in the road and blocked the road and the tank stopped. I can tell you, in Vietnam, if we had had a bunch of people who stood in the way of an American tank, going through, that tank would not have slowed down, in the slightest! It wouldn’t honk the horn, it wouldn’t have done anything; wouldn’t have fired a warning shot. It would have just gone on. And I think that’s more typical—I’m not I’m not criticizing the Americans. I was there and I was fighting, and I probably would have would have driven the tank straight through myself.
> 
> But what I’m saying is that the rules of engagement for the Russians were very, very cautious. They didn’t want to create a great deal of hatred and animosity. The Russians did not go in—they did not bomb the electrical system, the media systems, the water systems, the bridges and so forth. They tried to retain the infrastructure of Ukraine in good shape because they wanted it to get back. They just wanted this to be over with and get back to normal. It didn’t work. The Ukrainians, the resistance was unexpectedly hard. The Ukrainian soldiers fought with great, great valor, great heroism. And. And so now the game has been upped and it’s become much more serious.
> 
> But it is amazing to look and to see that Russia dominates the air. They haven’t knocked out the train systems. They haven’t knocked out power plants. They haven’t knocked out so many things. They’ve never bombed the buildings in the center of Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine; they haven’t bombed the buildings where the parliament meets. They’ve been incredibly reserved about these things, hoping against hope that peace could be achieved.
> 
> But I don’t think I don’t think Ukraine has anything to do with the decision about peace or war. I think the decision about peace or war is made in Washington, D.C. As long as we want the war to continue, we will fight that war, using Ukrainians as proxies, and we will fight it to the last Ukrainian death.
> 
> *BILLINGTON*: How do you project the potential of a war breaking out directly between the United States and Russia? And what would that be like?
> 
> *BLACK*: You know, if you go back to the First World War in 1914, you had the assassination of the Archduke of Austria-Hungary. He and his wife were killed. As a result of those two people being killed, you had a domino effect of all of these alliances, and anger, and media hysteria. And before it was over, I think it was 14 million people had been killed. It’s always hard to get true numbers, but anyway, it was an enormous number of millions of people who died as a result of that.
> 
> We need to recognize the risk of playing these games of chicken. Where, for example, the Turkish media just published an article saying that at Mariupol, where there was a great siege, that the Russians ultimately won. The one area they haven’t taken over is this tremendous steel plant. There are a lot of Ukrainian soldiers who are holed up there. And now it has come to light that apparently there are 50 French senior officers, who are trapped in that steel plant along with the Ukrainians. The French soldiers have been on the ground fighting, directing the battle. And this was kept under wraps, ultra-secret, because of the French elections that just occurred. Had the French people known that there were a large number of French officers trapped and probably going to die in that steel plant, the elections would have gone the other way: Marine Le Pen would have won. And so it was very important that for the entire deep state, that it not come to light that these French officers were there.
> 
> We know that there are NATO officers who are present on the ground in Ukraine as advisors and so forth. We run the risk. Now, my guess is—and this is this is a guess, I could be wrong—but the flagship of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, the _Moskva_, was sunk as a result of being struck by anti-ship missiles. My guess is that those missiles, I think there’s a good chance they were fired by the French. Now, I could be wrong, but those missiles are so ultra-sensitive and so dangerous to our ships, that I don’t think that NATO would trust the missiles to Ukrainians, or to anybody else. I think I think they have to be maintained under NATO control and operation. So I think that it was probably NATO forces that actually sunk the _Moskva_.
> 
> And you can see we’re taking these very reckless actions, and each time we sort of up the ante—I happen to be a Republican—but we have two Republican U.S. senators who have said that, “well, we might just need to use nuclear weapons against Russia.” That is insane. I think it’s important that people begin to discuss what a thermonuclear war would mean.
> 
> Now, we need to understand, we think, “oh, we’re big, and we’re bad, and we have all this stuff.” Russia is roughly comparable to the United States in nuclear power. They have hypersonic missiles, that we do not have. They can absolutely evade any timely detection, and they can fire missiles from Russia and reach San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Detroit, Baltimore, Washington, D.C., New York City.
> 
> And if you think about just Virginia, where I happen to live, if there were a nuclear war—and keep in mind, they also have a very large and effective fleet of nuclear submarines that lie off the coast of the United States. They have a great number of nuclear-tipped missiles, and they can evade any defenses we have. So just in Virginia, if you look at it, all of Northern Virginia would be essentially annihilated. There would hardly be any human life remaining in Loudoun County, Prince William County, Fairfax County, Arlington, Alexandria. The Pentagon lies in in Arlington County: The Pentagon would simply be a glowing mass of molten sand. There would be no human life there. And there would be no human life for many miles around it. Just across the Potomac, the nation’s capital, there would be no life remaining in the nation’s capital. The Capitol building would disappear forever. All of the monuments, all of these glorious things—nothing would remain.
> 
> If you go to the coast of Virginia, you have the Norfolk Naval Shipyard, you have the Port of Norfolk. You have you have the greatest accumulation of naval power on the face of the Earth. This is where we park all of our aircraft carriers, our nuclear submarines, all of those things. There would be nothing remaining. There would be _nothing remaining_ of any of those shipping industries there.
> 
> And you can carry this on. You talk about New York City, probably New York City itself, not only would everybody be killed, but it would probably be impossible for people to inhabit New York City for hundreds of years afterwards. But not only would it cease to be a place of vibrant human life, but probably going out for maybe half a millennium, it would not recover any sort of civilization.
> 
> We need to understand the gravity of what we’re doing. Perhaps if it were a matter of life and death for the United States, what happens in Ukraine, that would be one thing. Certainly when the Soviet Union put missiles in Cuba, that targeted the United States, that was worth taking the risk, because it was right on our border and it threatened us. And it was it was a battle worth fighting for and a risk worth taking. The Russians are in this in exactly the mirror image of that situation, because for them, the life of Russia depends on stopping NATO from advancing further right into Ukraine, right to their borders. They cannot afford _not_ to fight this war. They cannot afford not to win this war.
> 
> So I think, toying with this constant escalation in a war that, really, in a place that has no significance to Americans—Ukraine is meaningless to Americans; it has no impact on our day-to-day lives. And yet we’re playing this reckless game that risks the lives of all people in the United States and Western Europe for nothing! Just absolutely for nothing!
> 
> *BILLINGTON*: Many flag grade officers certainly understand the consequences that you just described in a rather hair-raising way. Why is it that, while there are some generals speaking out in Italy, in France, in Germany, warning that we are pursuing a course that could lead to nuclear war, why are there not such voices from flag grade officers—retired, perhaps—saying what you’re saying here today?
> 
> *BLACK*: You know, there’s been a tremendous deterioration in the quality of flag officers, going back to, well, certainly the 1990s. We had very, very fine flag officers, during the time I was on active duty—I left in ‘94—just superior quality people. But what happened is, subsequently, we had President Clinton take over, later, we had Obama. We’ve got Biden now. And they apply a very strict political screen to their military officers. And we now have “yes men.” These are not people whose principal devotion is to the United States and its people. Their principal devotion is to their careers and their ability to network with other military officers upon retirement. There’s a very strong network that can place military generals into think tanks, where they promote war, into organizations like Raytheon and Northrop Grumman, and all of these defense operations, where they can get on boards and things like that. So there’s quite a personal price that you pay for saying, “Hey, stop. War is not in the interests of the American people.” If we had a better quality of individual, we would have people with the courage who would say, “I don’t care what it costs me personally.” But it is very difficult to get into the senior ranks, if you are an individual guided by principle, and patriotism, and devotion to the people of this nation. That’s just not how it works. And at some point, we need a President who will go in and shake the tree, and bring a lot of these people falling down from it, because they’re dangerous. They’re very dangerous to America.
> 
> *BILLINGTON*: Helga Zepp-LaRouche and the Schiller Institute have a petition — and we held a conference on April 9th on the same theme — that the only way to really stop this descent into hell and into potential nuclear holocaust is for a new Peace of Westphalia. In this case, an international conference to secure a new security architecture and a new development architecture, the right to development for all countries. And like the Peace of Westphalia, one in which all sides sit down together, recognize their interests, their sovereign interests, as including the sovereign interests of the others, and forgiving all past crimes. Anything short of that is going to keep this division of the world into warring blocs. Just like I asked what’s keeping the generals from speaking out, why, and what will it take, to get Americans to recognize that we can and must sit down with Russians, and with Chinese, and with all other nations and establish a true, just world based on the dignity of man and the right to development and security?
> 
> *BLACK*: I think, unfortunately, there’s going to have to be enormous pain to drive that, just as there was with the Peace of Westphalia. A nuclear war would do it; an economic cataclysm of unprecedented proportions, resulting from the unbridled printing of money that we’ve engaged in over the last 20 years, there are things that could bring it about. But at this point, the media have been so totally censored and so biased that the American people really don’t have a perception of the need for anything of that sort. It’s going to be difficult.
> 
> You know, here’s something that’s interesting that has happened. Here in this country, you would think the entire world is against Russia. It’s not. In fact, there are major countries of the world that lean towards Russia in this war, starting with China, but then Brazil, you’ve got South Africa, Saudi Arabia—a wide array of countries. India. India is tremendously supportive of Russia. The idea that somehow we have this enormously just cause, it doesn’t strike a great deal of the world that it is just, and much of the world does not accept the latest propaganda about war crimes: this thing about Bucha. That’s probably the most prominent of all the war crimes discussions.
> 
> And what was Bucha? There was a film taken of a vehicle driving down the road in Bucha, which had been recaptured from the Russians. And every hundred feet or so there was some person with his hands, zip tied behind his back, and he’d been killed. It was not announced until four days after the Ukrainians had retaken Bucha.
> 
> Now, we knew almost nothing about it. We actually didn’t even have proof that people had been killed. But assuming they had, we didn’t know where they had been killed. We did not know who they were. We did not know who killed them. We did not know why they were killed. No one could provide an adequate motive for the Russians to have killed them. The Russians held Bucha for a month. If they were going to kill them, why didn’t they kill them during that month? And if you’re going to slaughter a bunch of people, wouldn’t they all be in one place and wouldn’t you gun them all down there? Why would they be distributed along a roadside, a mile along the way? It makes no sense!
> 
> What we do know is that four days after the mayor of Bucha joyously announced that the city was liberated, four days after the Ukrainian army had moved in, and their special propaganda arm of the Ukrainian military were there, all of a sudden there were these dead people on the road. How come they weren’t there when the Russians were there? How come they only appeared after the Russians were gone?
> 
> If I were looking at it as simply a standard criminal case, and I was talking to Criminal Investigation Division or the FBI, or military police or something, I’d say, “OK, the first thing, let’s take a look at the Ukrainians.” My guess would be, and you start with a hunch when you’re investigating a crime—my hunch is that the Ukrainians killed off these people after they moved in, and after they looked around, and said, “OK, who was friendly towards the Russian troops while the Russians were here? We’re going to execute them.” That would be my guess. Because I don’t see any motive for the Russians to have just killed a few people on their way out of town.
> 
> And nobody questions this, because the corporate media are so monolithic. We know for a fact, from the mouth of the head of a Ukrainian hospital, the guy who ran the hospital, he boasted that he had given strict orders to all of his doctors, that when wounded Russian POWs, when casualties were brought in, they were to be _castrated._ Now, this is a horrific war crime, admitted from the mouth of the hospital administrator, and the Ukrainian government said, “we’ll kind of look into that,” Like it’s no big thing. I can’t think of a more horrific, horrific war crime, ever. Where did you hear about it, on ABC and MSNBC and CNN and FOX News? Not a whisper. And yet the proof is undeniable. We had another clip where there was a POW gathering point, where the Ukrainians would bring POWs to a central point for processing—and this is about a seven-minute video—and the Ukrainian soldiers simply gunned them all down. And they had probably 30 of these wounded Russian soldiers lying on the ground, some of them clearly dying from their wounds. Some of them, they put plastic bags over their heads. Now, these are these are guys who are laying there, sometimes fatally wounded with their hands zip-tied behind their backs, and they’ve got plastic bags over their heads, making it difficult to breathe. And because they can’t raise their hands, they can’t take the bags off, so that they can breathe. At the end of the video, the Ukrainians bring in a van, and there are three unwounded Russian POWs. Without the slightest thought or hesitation, as the three come off, and their hands are bound behind their backs, they gunned down two of them, right on camera and they fall over. And the third one gets on his knees, and begs that they won’t hurt him. And then they gun him down! These are crimes. And these were not refuted by the Ukrainian government. But you’d never even know that they occurred! So far, I will tell you that the only proven—I’m not saying that there aren’t war crimes happening on both sides. I’m just telling you, that the only ones where I have seen, fairly irrefutable proof of war crimes, have been on the Ukrainian side.
> 
> Now, often you hear it said, well, the Russians have destroyed this or destroyed that. Well, I’ve got to tell you, you go back to the wars that we fought when we invaded Iraq, the “Shock and Awe,” we destroyed virtually everything in Iraq, everything of significance. We bombed military and civilian targets without much discrimination. The coalition flew 100,000 sorties in 42 days. You compare that to the Russians, who have only flown 8,000 sorties in about the same period of time. 100,000 American sorties versus 8,000, in about the same time.  I think the Russians have tended to be more selective. Whereas we went out — the philosophy of Shock and Awe is that you destroy everything that is needed to sustain human life and for a city to function. You knock out the water supply, the electrical supply, the heat, the oil, the gasoline; so that you knock out all of the major bridges. And then you just continue to destroy everything.
> 
> So it’s really ironic. And keep in mind, Iraq is a relatively small country. Ukraine is a huge country. 100,000 sorties in 42 days, 8,000 sorties in about the same time. A tremendous difference in violence between what we did in Iraq, and what they have done in Ukraine. So there’s simply no credibility when you actually get down to the facts and you look at the way that the war has been conducted.
> 
> *BILLINGTON*: Well. Senator Black, Colonel Black.  I think the way you have described the horror that’s already taking place, and considering that we can’t wait for a nuclear war to provoke a new a Peace of Westphalia, I would suggest that what you have described is already horrific enough. And when combined with the hyperinflationary breakdown now sweeping the Western world, with everybody being affected, we believe that we have to take that as the adequate horror, and a recognition of a descent into a dark age, to motivate citizens in Europe, in the United States.
> 
> We are finding that there is a waking up of people who have not wanted to look at their responsibility to the human race as a whole in the past, but who now are forced to consider that, which is the basis on which we’ve called for this, in this petition, for an international conference of all nations, with the U.S., Russia, China, India and so forth, sitting down to end this horror; but to also bring about a true peace for mankind and an era of peace through development.
> 
> And we thank you for giving this breath of ugly truth to a population which needs to hear it. If you have any final thoughts, I ask you to give your final greetings.
> 
> *BLACK*:  I’ll just add one thing, and I thank the Schiller Institute for the tremendous effort that you’ve made towards achieving world peace. It is one of the most important efforts ever made, and I certainly applaud that.
> 
> If you look at Russia, the Russian troops that went into battle in Ukraine, for the most part had never experienced combat. This is a peacetime army. Russia doesn’t fight overseas wars. Syria is the only significant overseas engagement that they have had. You compare that with the United States, where literally speaking, if a soldier retires today after a 30-year career in the military, he will not have served a single day when the United States was at peace. Kind of an amazing thing. And you contrast that with the Russian military, where, with few exceptions, the country has been at peace.
> 
> So we really need to start thinking about peace and about the limits of warfare, this idea that somehow we need a zero sum game where we take from you and that enhances us. We’re in a world where everyone can gain and prosper by peace. But I’m concerned that the hyperinflation may be the wake-up call that jolts the world into a recognition that we must have a new paradigm for the future, and I think the Peace of Westphalia at that point might become a possibility.
> 
> So thank you again for the opportunity to be here. There’s always hope and I think there’ll be good things in the future, with the blessings of God.
> 
> *BILLINGTON*: And thank you very much from Schiller Institute, The LaRouche Organization, and _EIR_.  We’ll get this posted as quickly as we possibly can, because it’s going to have a tremendous impact. Thank you.
> 
> *BLACK*: Thank you very much.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Video: Col. Richard Black — U.S. Leading World to Nuclear War | The Schiller Institute
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> schillerinstitute.com


Racial slurrist !
Always blaming everything on Blacks !


----------



## Soupnazi630

Rigby5 said:


> The Ukraine agreed to NEVER join any alliance hostile to Russia, when they were granted independence from the Soviet Union in 1992.
> This treaty violation is a deliberate act of war by the Ukraine.


There was no such treaty moron.


----------



## Soupnazi630

Rigby5 said:


> You totally ignore fact.
> If the Ukraine were to be allowed to join NATO and put nukes on Russia's border, there no longer would be enough time for anyone to get into the safety of any of these shelters.
> The ONLY reason for wanting the Ukraine in NATO is to be able to successfully wipe out Russia's retaliatory capability in the first strike.
> That can never be allowed.
> It would be better to start the nuclear war now, before this NATO first strike capability can be installed.


There was never any effort or intention to put nukes on Ukraine. Your premise is based on an outright lie


----------



## Soupnazi630

Rigby5 said:


> Wrong.
> It is a lie to claim the Soviet Union "gobbled up eastern Europe".
> The Soviet Unions rebuilt eastern Europe, and spent far more on it than it got back from it.
> That is totally unlike the US than only makes a profit on everything we do.
> We are the colonial imperialist and steal from every country we can, like the oil profits we stole from Iraq.
> Russia has never done that to anyone.


It is fact that trhety gobbled up and ENSLAVED eastern europe.

Making a profit is not a bad thing and what we did elevated western europe to first world status while eastern europe remained in slavery and destitution.


----------



## para bellum

alexa said:


> Wow. we both received the opposite news.  Lavrov we are told has said Russia wants more territory *and intends to get rid of Zelensky is what I was told last night.*
> 
> 
> 
> Russia's top diplomat says the Kremlin wants to 'get rid of' Zelenskyy in a blunt admission of its devastating war aims


What Lavrov wants doesn't matter. What he said in his interview with Ria Novosti and RT on July 20 was:

"Russia cannot accept that in the parts of Ukraine that [President Volodomyr] Zelensky or the one who will replace him will control, there are weapons that will pose a direct threat to our territory and the territory of those [eastern Ukrainian] republics that have announced their independence.

If Western countries supply long-range weapons to Ukraine, [these goals] will move even further.”

It does not matter if it's Zelensky the person, or someone else (that Russia does not install). The comment describes a Ukraine that is not under Russia's control.


----------



## alexa

para bellum said:


> What Lavrov wants doesn't matter. What he said in his interview with Ria Novosti and RT on July 20 was:
> 
> "Russia cannot accept that in the parts of Ukraine that [President Volodomyr] Zelensky or the one who will replace him will control, there are weapons that will pose a direct threat to our territory and the territory of those [eastern Ukrainian] republics that have announced their independence.
> 
> If Western countries supply long-range weapons to Ukraine, [these goals] will move even further.”
> 
> It does not matter if it's Zelensky the person, or someone else (that Russia does not install). The comment describes a Ukraine that is not under Russia's control.


Why does what Lavrov say not matter?  I didn't get from your last post that it was Zelensky or whoever followed him.  I thought you were saying there would be no regime change which that is.  It clearly makes a difference whether they go through regime change.  My article says that Russia.s desires are now much more than Eastern Donbas and he even talks about Ukraine being Russian.  I think Russia will take what she can get.  Of course they may change their minds but that Business Insider article suggests they now want regime change and more of Ukraine becoming Russian.


----------



## para bellum

alexa said:


> Why does what Lavrov say not matter?  I didn't get from your last post that it was Zelensky or whoever followed him.  I thought you were saying there would be no regime change which that is.  It clearly makes a difference whether they go through regime change.  My article says that Russia.s desires are now much more than Eastern Donbas and he even talks about Ukraine being Russian.  I think Russia will take what she can get.  Of course they may change their minds but that Business Insider article suggests they now want regime change and more of Ukraine becoming Russian.


Of course Russia would like to kill Zelensky. If they succeed at that, they would like to kill whoever replaces him too. That is a no-brainer and does not deserve explanation.

What Lavrov wants and what Lavrov gets are not the same thing. I don't care about words, I care about actions.

Did I say Russia is giving up? FFS.

*My post was to illustrate that a nuclear escalation is NOT a viable option for Russia- I don't care what the propagandists say.*

When faced with losing in Kiev, Russia chose to scale back their strategic objective. Taking the entire country was no longer an option. If the gov't in Ukraine is an existential threat to Russia, they could have just nuked Kiev and been done with it. They didn't do that.

P.S. Business Insider is mostly hype.


----------



## alexa

para bellum said:


> Of course Russia would like to kill Zelensky. If they succeed at that, they would like to kill whoever replaces him too. That is a no-brainer and does not deserve explanation.
> 
> What Lavrov wants and what Lavrov gets are not the same thing. I don't care about words, I care about actions.
> 
> Did I say Russia is giving up? FFS.
> 
> *My post was to illustrate that a nuclear escalation is NOT a viable option for Russia- I don't care what the propagandists say.*
> 
> When faced with losing in Kiev, Russia chose to scale back their strategic objective. Taking the entire country was no longer an option. If the gov't in Ukraine is an existential threat to Russia, they could have just nuked Kiev and been done with it. They didn't do that.
> 
> P.S. Business Insider is mostly hype.


OK I wasn't reading things through the range of a nuclear war being started.  Just for what they said.  Bye the way I am pretty sure that Russia's new nukes could get to the US without them being able to detect them but I think this war has shown that even if two nuclear powers go to war, they don't use nukes.  If they do that's it.  I wish there was just the tiniest bit of people wanting to promote peace.  There is a lot which could be done at the moment.


----------



## para bellum

alexa said:


> OK I wasn't reading things through the range of a nuclear war being started.  Just for what they said.  Bye the way I am pretty sure that Russia's new nukes could get to the US without them being able to detect them but I think this war has shown that even if two nuclear powers go to war, they don't use nukes.  If they do that's it.  I wish there was just the tiniest bit of people wanting to promote peace.  There is a lot which could be done at the moment.


So the reason I posted that comment on this thread was because that is the subject of this thread. "The US is leading the world into nuclear war". It's utter nonsense, I suspect the author is completely aware of that. And if he isn't aware of it, he shouldn't be commenting on it because he is stoking an irrational fear.

If you want to be afraid of something, be afraid mistakes. There have been several false alarms from the early warning systems on both sides. That's a much higher risk, especially for Russian nukes. Russia's early warning network is in dismal condition, and had been ever since the collapse of the USSR.

If NATO really wanted to eliminate Russia, that could have been accomplished in 1992 with a NATO first strike. We knew that, and Russia knew that. What we _did_ was bring Russian observers into _our_ early warning network, to show them that was not our intent.

If Russia, a nuclear weapon state (NWS), conducts a nuclear first-use against Ukraine, a non-nuclear weapon state (NNWS), it would mean the dismantling of the NPT, and it would eliminate nuclear weapons as a deterrent for Russia. The taboo would be broken, and everyone would know that Russia was willing to use nuclear weapons in a conventional war. _That increases the risk of a first strike against Russia by NATO or China._

Russia knows this. They aren't stupid.

Even some NATO members would be forced to acquire nukes, because they couldn't be sure NATO would respond in kind after they were destroyed. The 186 NNWS signatories of the NPT would no longer trust the non-proliferation regime because the assurances are worthless. There would be a massive nuclear buildup all over the world. Russia does not want this any more than we do...


----------



## BackAgain

Off hand, to the degree we are being led to a nuclear war, I’d suggest it ain’t the US doing the “leading.”  Two other presently top candidate are Russia and Iran.


----------



## para bellum

BackAgain said:


> ... and Iran


If Iran gets nukes, at a bare minimum Saudi Arabia and Egypt follow. 

A MENA full of nukes is not a very good prospect for anyone.


----------



## BackAgain

para bellum said:


> If Iran gets nukes, at a bare minimum Saudi Arabia and Egypt follow.
> 
> A MENA full of nukes is not a very good prospect for anyone.


I agree.


----------



## alexa

para bellum said:


> So the reason I posted that comment on this thread was because that is the subject of this thread. "The US is leading the world into nuclear war". It's utter nonsense, I suspect the author is completely aware of that. And if he isn't aware of it, he shouldn't be commenting on it because he is stoking an irrational fear.
> 
> If you want to be afraid of something, be afraid mistakes. There have been several false alarms from the early warning systems on both sides. That's a much higher risk, especially for Russian nukes. Russia's early warning network is in dismal condition, and had been ever since the collapse of the USSR.
> 
> If NATO really wanted to eliminate Russia, that could have been accomplished in 1992 with a NATO first strike. We knew that, and Russia knew that. What we _did_ was bring Russian observers into _our_ early warning network, to show them that was not our intent.
> 
> If Russia, a nuclear weapon state (NWS), conducts a nuclear first-use against Ukraine, a non-nuclear weapon state (NNWS), it would mean the dismantling of the NPT, and it would eliminate nuclear weapons as a deterrent for Russia. The taboo would be broken, and everyone would know that Russia was willing to use nuclear weapons in a conventional war. _That increases the risk of a first strike against Russia by NATO or China._
> 
> Russia knows this. They aren't stupid.
> 
> Even some NATO members would be forced to acquire nukes, because they couldn't be sure NATO would respond in kind after they were destroyed. The 186 NNWS signatories of the NPT would no longer trust the non-proliferation regime because the assurances are worthless. There would be a massive nuclear buildup all over the world. Russia does not want this any more than we do...


yes, I only came into the thread because I had skimmed before and noticed that what you said was the opposite of what I was being told.  I think we have dealt with it now.


----------



## ESay

alexa said:


> Why does what Lavrov say not matter?  I didn't get from your last post that it was Zelensky or whoever followed him.  I thought you were saying there would be no regime change which that is.  It clearly makes a difference whether they go through regime change.  My article says that Russia.s desires are now much more than Eastern Donbas and he even talks about Ukraine being Russian.  I think Russia will take what she can get.  Of course they may change their minds but that Business Insider article suggests they now want regime change and more of Ukraine becoming Russian.


There is a quite good article about this. Maybe it will help to clear things up a bit.









						Have Putin’s Ukraine Goals Shrunk or Expanded?
					

The seeming expansion of Russia’s territorial ambitions comes as a sign of relative military weakness, not strength.




					www.bloomberg.com


----------



## themirrorthief

Ringo said:


> Ex-PM of Japan Abe: "If Zelensky refused to join NATO, gave Donbass autonomy, there would be no fighting"
> It's easy and pleasant to tell the truth. But, only when nothing depends on the speaker anymore


you know someone is lying if he says he has the truth


----------



## Rigby5

Confederate Soldier said:


> The U.S. isn't the one who keeps using Nuclear threats. Russia is. If Russia acts on those threats, we will respond in kind. Admitting that we will respond, isn't making us the bad guy.



Totally wrong.
The MAIN point of this whole war in the Ukraine is that the US wants the Ukraine to join NATO, so that the US can put nukes on Russia's border.
So it is the US that keeps the nuclear threat constant.
Russia only talks about preventive strikes so that the US won't be able to put first strike nukes in the Ukraine.

We ARE the bad guy, and have always been the bad guy, like Manifest Destiny, the Mexican wars, the Spanish American War, the Monroe Doctrine, Treaty of 5-5-2, WWI, supporting the dictator Khaing Kai Shek, supporting the dictator Syngman Rhee, supporting the dictator Diem, supporting the dictator Batista, supporting the dictator Samosa, Grenada, Panama, Nicaragua, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Egypt, Palestine, Syria, etc.


----------



## Rigby5

ESay said:


> There is a quite good article about this. Maybe it will help to clear things up a bit.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Have Putin’s Ukraine Goals Shrunk or Expanded?
> 
> 
> The seeming expansion of Russia’s territorial ambitions comes as a sign of relative military weakness, not strength.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.bloomberg.com



I disagree.
Moscow has never had any territorial ambitions in the Ukraine at all, in any way.
All Moscow wants is what is absolutely needs, and that is a government in Kyiv that is NOT going to keep trying to put NATO nukes on Russia's border.
And now that also means a government that will not accept US, French, or Polish weapons.
Its very simple.
Russia has absolutely no need for anything the Ukraine has.
Russia has always had more territory and resources then they ever knew what to do with.
So all Kyiv has to do is not be a threat.
Very simple.


----------



## Rigby5

Ringo said:


> Ex-PM of Japan Abe: "If Zelensky refused to join NATO, gave Donbass autonomy, there would be no fighting"
> It's easy and pleasant to tell the truth. But, only when nothing depends on the speaker anymore



Correct.
Abe is absolutely right.
The problem is all deliberate provocation by the US, through Kyiv.


----------



## miketx

Rigby5 said:


> Totally wrong.
> The MAIN point of this whole war in the Ukraine is that the US wants the Ukraine to join NATO, so that the US can put nukes on Russia's border.
> So it is the US that keeps the nuclear threat constant.
> Russia only talks about preventive strikes so that the US won't be able to put first strike nukes in the Ukraine.
> 
> We ARE the bad guy, and have always been the bad guy, like Manifest Destiny, the Mexican wars, the Spanish American War, the Monroe Doctrine, Treaty of 5-5-2, WWI, supporting the dictator Khaing Kai Shek, supporting the dictator Syngman Rhee, supporting the dictator Diem, supporting the dictator Batista, supporting the dictator Samosa, Grenada, Panama, Nicaragua, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Egypt, Palestine, Syria, etc.


Traitor.


----------



## Rigby5

Confederate Soldier said:


> Go fuck yourself, slav lover. The Russians have been nothing but a threat to us since the communists took over. Nato isn't the cause, NATO is the effect. Russian aggression and brutality has caused this. Russian aggression will escalate shit, not us. Period.



Nonsense.
Russia has never once tried to steal the resources from any other country.
In fact, all the countries they have helped, like Poland, Hungary, East Germany, China, Korea, Vietnam, Cuba, Venezuela, Egypt, Syria, etc., have cost them far more than they could ever have gotten from them.
It is the US that invades, steals, enslaves, etc.
And in fact, all of NATO are just old colonial imperialists, with the coalition to enslave the entire world.
Spain, France, England, and the US have always been the big colonial imperialist of the last 200 years.


----------



## Rigby5

miketx said:


> Traitor.



Traitor to whom?
The people running the US and deliberately starting all these wars are traitors to the original US revolution.
This is supposed to be a republic based on inherent individual rights, but is clearly is a dictatorship instead, with evil things like Prohibition and the War on Drugs, which make the US have the largest % incarcerated in the world.


----------



## Rigby5

Soupnazi630 said:


> They violated no treaty



Gorbachev just died, but the main thing the Ukraine promised Gorbachev in 1992 was to NEVER JOIN NATO.
Kyiv committed multiple acts of war, that could no longer be ignored.


----------



## themirrorthief

Ringo said:


> Ex-PM of Japan Abe: "If Zelensky refused to join NATO, gave Donbass autonomy, there would be no fighting"
> It's easy and pleasant to tell the truth. But, only when nothing depends on the speaker anymore


nuclear war will be quick...you melt in two seconds or less...virtually painless...lets go brandon!!!!!!!!!


----------



## Rigby5

Soupnazi630 said:


> Yes they do and yes they did liar
> 
> You ignore afghanistan
> 
> There was no such treaty liar



Afghanistan was an attempt by Russia to modernize a neighboring country so that it would be more stable.
But the US financed and armed the Mujahideen, a through back 1400 years to religious fanaticism.
Face facts.
Russia has always been the only good guy in the whole world really.
The US is the most greedy and evil country in the whole world.


----------



## Rigby5

Soupnazi630 said:


> Wrong and you are lhying again.
> 
> The shoe baning incident had nothing to do with US nukes in Turkey.
> 
> Kruschev HIMSELF stated this in his memoirs



The reality is, there was NEVER any actual shoe banging incident at the UN,
The image of that was faked.

But the POINT was that the main conflict between the US and Russia, was the Cuban Missile Crisis, which the US started by putting US nukes in Turkey, on the Russian border.


----------



## Rigby5

Soupnazi630 said:


> Wrong.
> 
> It is not a lie,
> 
> They enslaved eastern europe
> 
> We made profit and enriched the lives of western eruopean peoples.



Wrong.
Russia liberated eastern Europe from Hitler and the US both.
Russia lost money on Europe, and unlike the US, stole nothing.


----------



## Rigby5

toomuchtime_ said:


> Perhaps this is true on your planet, but here on Earth there are no nukes in any former Warsaw Pact nation and although Ukraine did apply for membership in NATO after Russia's invasion of Georgia NATO has consistently refused to consider Ukraine's application.  Clearly the Russian invasion of Ukraine had nothing to do with NATO or NATO nukes.
> 
> Perhaps on your planet, there is still some advantage to a first nuclear strike, but here on Earth both sides possess technology to detect missile launches' almost instantly a launch a counterstrike long before the first strike has landed so there is no longer any advantage to launching a first strike.
> 
> Russia's many nuclear threats are terroristic in nature, intended to destroy the will of the Ukrainian forces to resist Russian imperialist aggression and the will of civilized nations to support Ukraine, but clearly no one is paying attention to these stunts.  There is absolutely no defensive dimension to Russia's invasion of Ukraine.



Wrong.
Neither side can instantly launch nukes.
The incoming have to be detected, analyzed, permission has to be granted, they have to have targets programmed, charging cables disconnected, etc.  
Takes over half an hour to launch a retaliatory strike.
And since missiles launched from the Ukraine could hit Russian missile silos in less than 15 minutes, then we could prevent a Russian retaliatory strike.
Which would encourage a US first strike.
Why else would we have taken over the Ukraine in 2014, and why else did we put nukes in Turkey in 1957?

There is zero evidence of any aggressive Russian intents in the Ukraine.

As to the claim there is no defensive dimention to the Russian position, that is obviously falst.
In 2012 the world court verified that the Ukraine has been stealing Russian oil and gas from Russian pipelines running through the Ukraine.   Russia has the right defend its resource from that ongoing threat.


----------



## miketx

Rigby5 said:


> Traitor to whom?
> The people running the US and deliberately starting all these wars are traitors to the original US revolution.
> This is supposed to be a republic based on inherent individual rights, but is clearly is a dictatorship instead, with evil things like Prohibition and the War on Drugs, which make the US have the largest % incarcerated in the world.


Liar.


----------



## Rigby5

Soupnazi630 said:


> There was no such treaty moron.



The Ukraine was not independent before 1992, and then under Gorbachev it became independent.
Do you think Gorbachev would have allow that is he knew the Ukraine was going to install NATO nukes?


----------



## miketx

Rigby5 said:


> Nonsense.
> Russia has never once tried to steal the resources from any other country.
> In fact, all the countries they have helped, like Poland, Hungary, East Germany, China, Korea, Vietnam, Cuba, Venezuela, Egypt, Syria, etc., have cost them far more than they could ever have gotten from them.
> It is the US that invades, steals, enslaves, etc.
> And in fact, all of NATO are just old colonial imperialists, with the coalition to enslave the entire world.
> Spain, France, England, and the US have always been the big colonial imperialist of the last 200 years.


Traitor.


----------



## Rigby5

themirrorthief said:


> nuclear war will be quick...you melt in two seconds or less...virtually painless...lets go brandon!!!!!!!!!



Actually over half the populations would survive.
What would not survive in the US is any infrastructure, since all cars, cellphone, utilities, etc., would be out, forever.
Russia is much better prepared, and its infrastructure more divers and harderned.
Russia also has a 10 to 1 advantage in nukes.


----------



## Rigby5

miketx said:


> Traitor.



The traitors are in DC, lying about everything, like WMD in Iraq, the US trying to put NATO nukes in on Russia's border, etc.


----------



## Rigby5

para bellum said:


> So the reason I posted that comment on this thread was because that is the subject of this thread. "The US is leading the world into nuclear war". It's utter nonsense, I suspect the author is completely aware of that. And if he isn't aware of it, he shouldn't be commenting on it because he is stoking an irrational fear.
> 
> If you want to be afraid of something, be afraid mistakes. There have been several false alarms from the early warning systems on both sides. That's a much higher risk, especially for Russian nukes. Russia's early warning network is in dismal condition, and had been ever since the collapse of the USSR.
> 
> If NATO really wanted to eliminate Russia, that could have been accomplished in 1992 with a NATO first strike. We knew that, and Russia knew that. What we _did_ was bring Russian observers into _our_ early warning network, to show them that was not our intent.
> 
> If Russia, a nuclear weapon state (NWS), conducts a nuclear first-use against Ukraine, a non-nuclear weapon state (NNWS), it would mean the dismantling of the NPT, and it would eliminate nuclear weapons as a deterrent for Russia. The taboo would be broken, and everyone would know that Russia was willing to use nuclear weapons in a conventional war. _That increases the risk of a first strike against Russia by NATO or China._
> 
> Russia knows this. They aren't stupid.
> 
> Even some NATO members would be forced to acquire nukes, because they couldn't be sure NATO would respond in kind after they were destroyed. The 186 NNWS signatories of the NPT would no longer trust the non-proliferation regime because the assurances are worthless. There would be a massive nuclear buildup all over the world. Russia does not want this any more than we do...



Wrong.
The US could not survive a first strike against Russia in 1992, because the Russians could launch retaliation before the US missiles hit.
The ONLY way to launch a first strike successfully against the US is if the missiles are so close that they can hit before a retaliatory strike can launch.
And that is where the Ukraine comes in.
It is close enough to the Russian missile sites for a successful first strike.
Therefore, it can not be allowed to join NATO.

And for those who claim NATO would not put nukes on Russia's border, that is an obvious like since the US already did it in Turkey and Poland, in the past.


----------



## Toddsterpatriot

Rigby5 said:


> Totally wrong.
> The MAIN point of this whole war in the Ukraine is that the US wants the Ukraine to join NATO, so that the US can put nukes on Russia's border.
> So it is the US that keeps the nuclear threat constant.
> Russia only talks about preventive strikes so that the US won't be able to put first strike nukes in the Ukraine.
> 
> We ARE the bad guy, and have always been the bad guy, like Manifest Destiny, the Mexican wars, the Spanish American War, the Monroe Doctrine, Treaty of 5-5-2, WWI, supporting the dictator Khaing Kai Shek, supporting the dictator Syngman Rhee, supporting the dictator Diem, supporting the dictator Batista, supporting the dictator Samosa, Grenada, Panama, Nicaragua, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Egypt, Palestine, Syria, etc.



*The MAIN point of this whole war in the Ukraine is that the US wants the Ukraine to join NATO, so that the US can put nukes on Russia's border.*

The US can hit Russia with nukes without them being on the Russian border.

*We ARE the bad guy, and have always been the bad guy*

Has Russia ever been the bad guy? What about China?


----------



## Toddsterpatriot

Rigby5 said:


> All Moscow wants is what is absolutely needs, and that is a government in Kyiv that is NOT going to keep trying to put NATO nukes on Russia's border.



Can NATO put nukes in Poland?
What about Finland? Norway?
Latvia? Estonia? Lithuania?


----------



## Rigby5

Toddsterpatriot said:


> *The MAIN point of this whole war in the Ukraine is that the US wants the Ukraine to join NATO, so that the US can put nukes on Russia's border.*
> 
> The US can hit Russia with nukes without them being on the Russian border.
> 
> *We ARE the bad guy, and have always been the bad guy*
> 
> Has Russia ever been the bad guy? What about China?



You can not normally launch a first strike against Russia without causing a massive retaliatory strike in return.
The only way you can launch a successful first strike against Russia is if it is launched from so close that there is no time to get a retaliatory strike into the air before incoming impact.
And the Ukraine is perfect for a first strike capability.

In China, the Russians were the good guys supporting the majority who also fought the Japanese.
The US was the bad guys, supporting the military dictatorship of general Khaing Kai Shek, who was known to be a Japanese collaborator.

In Korea, we supported the dictator Syngman Rhee, who had been chased out of China a decade before, for bank fraud.  

In Vietnam, we supported the dictator Diem, who wanted to prevent elections because the majority would have voted for Ho Chi Minh.


----------



## miketx

Rigby5 said:


> The traitors are in DC, lying about everything, like WMD in Iraq, the US trying to put NATO nukes in on Russia's border, etc.


Join them.


----------



## Toddsterpatriot

Rigby5 said:


> Nonsense.
> Russia has never once tried to steal the resources from any other country.
> In fact, all the countries they have helped, like Poland, Hungary, East Germany, China, Korea, Vietnam, Cuba, Venezuela, Egypt, Syria, etc., have cost them far more than they could ever have gotten from them.
> It is the US that invades, steals, enslaves, etc.
> And in fact, all of NATO are just old colonial imperialists, with the coalition to enslave the entire world.
> Spain, France, England, and the US have always been the big colonial imperialist of the last 200 years.


*
In fact, all the countries they have helped, like Poland, Hungary, East Germany*

They enslaved Eastern Europe after WW2, to help them? LOL!

*Spain, France, England, and the US have always been the big colonial imperialist of the last 200 years.*

When did Russia stop being an imperialist power?


----------



## Toddsterpatriot

Rigby5 said:


> The only way you can launch a successful first strike against Russia is if it is launched from so close that there is no time to get a retaliatory strike into the air before incoming impact.
> And the Ukraine is perfect for a first strike capability.



Plenty of possible launch sites just as close.


----------



## Rigby5

Toddsterpatriot said:


> Can NATO put nukes in Poland?
> What about Finland? Norway?
> Latvia? Estonia? Lithuania?



NATO did put nukes in Poland.
They were short range ABMs, but nuclear and could be used against Russia.
But Russia is demanding they be removed, and Poland is complying.
The ridiculous claim was they were to defend against an attack by Iran.
Finland, Norway, Latvia, etc., refuse nukes.
Zelensky said he wanted NATO nukes.


----------



## Rigby5

Toddsterpatriot said:


> *In fact, all the countries they have helped, like Poland, Hungary, East Germany*
> 
> They enslaved Eastern Europe after WW2, to help them? LOL!
> 
> *Spain, France, England, and the US have always been the big colonial imperialist of the last 200 years.*
> 
> When did Russia stop being an imperialist power?



Russia was never remotely imperialist since the revolution.
The Warsaw Pact was not to steal money like the US or other imperialists do.
The Warsaw Pact cost Russia money.
Why do you think the USSR went bankrupt?


----------



## Rigby5

Toddsterpatriot said:


> Plenty of possible launch sites just as close.



No there are not, and if the US did try to put nukes close by, the same thing would have to happen.
Its identical to the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Close first strike nukes can never be allowed.


----------



## Toddsterpatriot

Rigby5 said:


> NATO did put nukes in Poland.
> They were short range ABMs, but nuclear and could be used against Russia.
> But Russia is demanding they be removed, and Poland is complying.
> The ridiculous claim was they were to defend against an attack by Iran.
> Finland, Norway, Latvia, etc., refuse nukes.
> Zelensky said he wanted NATO nukes.



*NATO did put nukes in Poland.
They were short range ABMs, but nuclear and could be used against Russia.*

Link?

*Zelensky said he wanted NATO nukes.*

Can you blame him? Russia sucks.


----------



## Toddsterpatriot

Rigby5 said:


> Russia was never remotely imperialist since the revolution.
> The Warsaw Pact was not to steal money like the US or other imperialists do.
> The Warsaw Pact cost Russia money.
> Why do you think the USSR went bankrupt?



*Russia was never remotely imperialist since the revolution.*

That wasn't my question.

*The Warsaw Pact was not to steal money like the US or other imperialists do.*

Which profitable US occupations can you list?

*The Warsaw Pact cost Russia money.*

Well, duh. Communism sucks.

*Why do you think the USSR went bankrupt?*

See above.


----------



## Toddsterpatriot

Rigby5 said:


> No there are not, and if the US did try to put nukes close by, the same thing would have to happen.
> Its identical to the Cuban Missile Crisis.
> Close first strike nukes can never be allowed.



*No there are not, *

Sure there are. Which parts of Russia do we have to hit?


----------



## toomuchtime_

Rigby5 said:


> Wrong.
> Neither side can instantly launch nukes.
> The incoming have to be detected, analyzed, permission has to be granted, they have to have targets programmed, charging cables disconnected, etc.
> Takes over half an hour to launch a retaliatory strike.
> And since missiles launched from the Ukraine could hit Russian missile silos in less than 15 minutes, then we could prevent a Russian retaliatory strike.
> Which would encourage a US first strike.
> Why else would we have taken over the Ukraine in 2014, and why else did we put nukes in Turkey in 1957?
> 
> There is zero evidence of any aggressive Russian intents in the Ukraine.
> 
> As to the claim there is no defensive dimention to the Russian position, that is obviously falst.
> In 2012 the world court verified that the Ukraine has been stealing Russian oil and gas from Russian pipelines running through the Ukraine.   Russia has the right defend its resource from that ongoing threat.


Wrong, the launch of enemy nukes will be detected by satellites almost instantly and the US is prepared to launch a counterstrike 5 minutes after the President gives the ok.  For reasons I don't understand, it is estimated it will take Russia 15 minutes to do the same thing.  Are you really stupid enough to think that after 70 years of planning a counterstrike would be organized at the last minute?  

There is no advantage to launching a first strike for either side.  Strategic nukes have value only as deterrents.

We are way past Russian propaganda efforts to justify the invasion.  This war ends only when Russia withdraws completely from Ukraine.


----------



## Soupnazi630

Rigby5 said:


> Totally wrong.
> The MAIN point of this whole war in the Ukraine is that the US wants the Ukraine to join NATO, so that the US can put nukes on Russia's border.
> So it is the US that keeps the nuclear threat constant.
> Russia only talks about preventive strikes so that the US won't be able to put first strike nukes in the Ukraine.
> 
> We ARE the bad guy, and have always been the bad guy, like Manifest Destiny, the Mexican wars, the Spanish American War, the Monroe Doctrine, Treaty of 5-5-2, WWI, supporting the dictator Khaing Kai Shek, supporting the dictator Syngman Rhee, supporting the dictator Diem, supporting the dictator Batista, supporting the dictator Samosa, Grenada, Panama, Nicaragua, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Egypt, Palestine, Syria, etc.


Absolute lie.

NATO is no threat to Russiaa and the US does not want to put nukes there

We were the good guys in all of those events


----------



## Soupnazi630

Rigby5 said:


> I disagree.
> Moscow has never had any territorial ambitions in the Ukraine at all, in any way.
> All Moscow wants is what is absolutely needs, and that is a government in Kyiv that is NOT going to keep trying to put NATO nukes on Russia's border.
> And now that also means a government that will not accept US, French, or Polish weapons.
> Its very simple.
> Russia has absolutely no need for anything the Ukraine has.
> Russia has always had more territory and resources then they ever knew what to do with.
> So all Kyiv has to do is not be a threat.
> Very simple.


No government has tried or wanted to put nukes on the russian border proving you the liar.

This is an aggressive war for territory which russia started without provocation


----------



## Soupnazi630

Rigby5 said:


> Gorbachev just died, but the main thing the Ukraine promised Gorbachev in 1992 was to NEVER JOIN NATO.
> Kyiv committed multiple acts of war, that could no longer be ignored.


They commited no act of war and made no such promise.

You dreamed that promise up


----------



## Soupnazi630

Rigby5 said:


> Nonsense.
> Russia has never once tried to steal the resources from any other country.
> In fact, all the countries they have helped, like Poland, Hungary, East Germany, China, Korea, Vietnam, Cuba, Venezuela, Egypt, Syria, etc., have cost them far more than they could ever have gotten from them.
> It is the US that invades, steals, enslaves, etc.
> And in fact, all of NATO are just old colonial imperialists, with the coalition to enslave the entire world.
> Spain, France, England, and the US have always been the big colonial imperialist of the last 200 years.


They helped no nation.

They enslabved those nations and imposed communism on them


----------



## Soupnazi630

Rigby5 said:


> Correct.
> Abe is absolutely right.
> The problem is all deliberate provocation by the US, through Kyiv.


You are absolutely wrong there was no provocation


----------



## Soupnazi630

Rigby5 said:


> Afghanistan was an attempt by Russia to modernize a neighboring country so that it would be more stable.
> But the US financed and armed the Mujahideen, a through back 1400 years to religious fanaticism.
> Face facts.
> Russia has always been the only good guy in the whole world really.
> The US is the most greedy and evil country in the whole world.


Afghanistan was a conquest to enslave people not help them.

Russia is a mess recovering from years of evil communism which the US rightesously destroyed making us the better nation


----------



## Soupnazi630

Rigby5 said:


> No there are not, and if the US did try to put nukes close by, the same thing would have to happen.
> Its identical to the Cuban Missile Crisis.
> Close first strike nukes can never be allowed.


No one has tried to put nukes there nor do they want to


----------



## Soupnazi630

Rigby5 said:


> Russia was never remotely imperialist since the revolution.
> The Warsaw Pact was not to steal money like the US or other imperialists do.
> The Warsaw Pact cost Russia money.
> Why do you think the USSR went bankrupt?


Reagan pushed them into it and it would have happened eventually anyways because they were a communist nation which is always evil and never works


----------



## Soupnazi630

Rigby5 said:


> NATO did put nukes in Poland.
> They were short range ABMs, but nuclear and could be used against Russia.
> But Russia is demanding they be removed, and Poland is complying.
> The ridiculous claim was they were to defend against an attack by Iran.
> Finland, Norway, Latvia, etc., refuse nukes.
> Zelensky said he wanted NATO nukes.


You are a liar NATO never put nukes in Poland.


----------



## Soupnazi630

Rigby5 said:


> You can not normally launch a first strike against Russia without causing a massive retaliatory strike in return.
> The only way you can launch a successful first strike against Russia is if it is launched from so close that there is no time to get a retaliatory strike into the air before incoming impact.
> And the Ukraine is perfect for a first strike capability.
> 
> In China, the Russians were the good guys supporting the majority who also fought the Japanese.
> The US was the bad guys, supporting the military dictatorship of general Khaing Kai Shek, who was known to be a Japanese collaborator.
> 
> In Korea, we supported the dictator Syngman Rhee, who had been chased out of China a decade before, for bank fraud.
> 
> In Vietnam, we supported the dictator Diem, who wanted to prevent elections because the majority would have voted for Ho Chi Minh.


No one wants or needs nukes in Ukraine.

In CHina they were the bad guys supporting communism which is the worlds most evil ideology.

In Korea we opposed communism.

Diem was far better than Minh who siezed power and launched a war of aggression


----------



## Soupnazi630

Rigby5 said:


> Wrong.
> The US could not survive a first strike against Russia in 1992, because the Russians could launch retaliation before the US missiles hit.
> The ONLY way to launch a first strike successfully against the US is if the missiles are so close that they can hit before a retaliatory strike can launch.
> And that is where the Ukraine comes in.
> It is close enough to the Russian missile sites for a successful first strike.
> Therefore, it can not be allowed to join NATO.
> 
> And for those who claim NATO would not put nukes on Russia's border, that is an obvious like since the US already did it in Turkey and Poland, in the past.


We pulled the missiles out of Turkey decades ago because they were no longer neede.d

We never put nukes in Poland

Ukraine is irrelevant when it comes to US nukes no one wants to put them there


----------



## Soupnazi630

Rigby5 said:


> The Ukraine was not independent before 1992, and then under Gorbachev it became independent.
> Do you think Gorbachev would have allow that is he knew the Ukraine was going to install NATO nukes?


He could not stop it

Ukraine does not want Us nukes and the US does not want to put them there


----------



## Soupnazi630

Rigby5 said:


> The traitors are in DC, lying about everything, like WMD in Iraq, the US trying to put NATO nukes in on Russia's border, etc.


The US not trying and has never tried to put nukes in Ukraine


----------



## Soupnazi630

Rigby5 said:


> The reality is, there was NEVER any actual shoe banging incident at the UN,
> The image of that was faked.
> 
> But the POINT was that the main conflict between the US and Russia, was the Cuban Missile Crisis, which the US started by putting US nukes in Turkey, on the Russia


It was real not faked and they were the aggressors as they are here


----------



## Toddsterpatriot

Rigby5 said:


> Afghanistan was an attempt by Russia to modernize a neighboring country so that it would be more stable.
> But the US financed and armed the Mujahideen, a through back 1400 years to religious fanaticism.
> Face facts.
> Russia has always been the only good guy in the whole world really.
> The US is the most greedy and evil country in the whole world.



*Afghanistan was an attempt by Russia to modernize a neighboring country so that it would be more stable.*

LOL!

*Russia has always been the only good guy in the whole world really.*

Of course, that's why they killed all those Polish officers in the Katyn forest.
Because that's what good guys do.

*The US is the most greedy and evil country in the whole world.*

And we kicked Russia's ass in the Cold War.


----------



## Confederate Soldier

Rigby5 said:


> Totally wrong.
> The MAIN point of this whole war in the Ukraine is that the US wants the Ukraine to join NATO, so that the US can put nukes on Russia's border.
> So it is the US that keeps the nuclear threat constant.
> Russia only talks about preventive strikes so that the US won't be able to put first strike nukes in the Ukraine.
> 
> We ARE the bad guy, and have always been the bad guy, like Manifest Destiny, the Mexican wars, the Spanish American War, the Monroe Doctrine, Treaty of 5-5-2, WWI, supporting the dictator Khaing Kai Shek, supporting the dictator Syngman Rhee, supporting the dictator Diem, supporting the dictator Batista, supporting the dictator Samosa, Grenada, Panama, Nicaragua, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Egypt, Palestine, Syria, etc.





Wow, what a liberal faggot. "We'Re ThE bAd GuY!"  Please, leave the U.S. we don't want apologists pussies like you here.


----------



## Toddsterpatriot

Confederate Soldier said:


> Wow, what a liberal faggot. "We'Re ThE bAd GuY!"  Please, leave the U.S. we don't want apologists pussies like you here.



He's a commie.


----------



## Mac-7

Baron said:


> The guy is according to western presstitutes paid by Putin Kremlin troll
> 
> 
> 
> The full Transcript
> 
> Mike Billington with _Executive Intelligence Review_ interviews Col. Richard Black (ret.).
> 
> *BILLINGTON*: Hi, this is this is Mike Billington with _Executive Intelligence Review_ and the Schiller Institute. I am here today with Col. Richard Black, Sen. Richard Black, who, after serving 31 years in the Marines and in the Army, then served in the Virginia House of Delegates from 1998 to 2006, and in the Virginia Senate from 2012 to 2020. I’ll also allow Colonel Black to describe his military service himself.
> 
> So, Colonel Black, welcome. With the with the U.S. and U.K. and NATO surrogate war with Russia, which is taking place in Ukraine, and the economic warfare being carried out directly against Russia, this has been accompanied by an information war which is intended to demonize Russia and especially President Vladimir Putin. One repeated theme is that the Russian military is carrying out ruthless campaigns of murder against civilians and destruction of residential areas, often referring to the Russian military operations in Syria, claiming that they had done the same thing in Syria, especially against Aleppo. These are supposedly examples of their war crimes and crimes against humanity.
> 
> You have been a leading spokesman internationally for many years, exposing the lies about what took place in Syria and the war on Syria. So first, let me ask: How and why did Russia get involved in Syria militarily? And how does that contrast with the U.S. and NATO supposed justification for their military intervention in Syria?
> 
> *BLACK*: Well, let me begin, if I could, by telling our listeners that I’m very patriotic: I volunteered to join the Marines and I volunteered to go to Vietnam. I fought in the bloodiest Marine campaign of the entire war. And I was a helicopter pilot who flew 269 combat missions. My aircraft was hit by ground fire on four missions. I, then, fought on the ground with the First Marine Division, and during one of the 70 combat patrols that I made, my radioman were both killed, and I was wounded while we were attacking and trying to rescue a surrounded Marine outpost.
> 
> So I’m very pro-American. I actually was a part of NATO and was prepared to die in Germany, to defend against an attack by the Soviet Union.
> 
> But Russia is not the Soviet Union at all. People don’t understand that because the media have not made it clear. But Russia is not a communist state; the Soviet Union was a communist state.
> 
> Now, one of the things that I’ve seen claimed, that has been particularly irritating to me because of my experience with Syria: I have I have been in Aleppo city. Aleppo city is the biggest city in Syria, or it was at least before the war began. And there was a tremendous battle. Some some call it the “Stalingrad of the Syrian war,” which is not a bad comparison. It was a terribly bitter battle that went on from 2012 until 2016. In the course of urban combat, any forces that are fighting are forced to destroy buildings. Buildings are blown down on a massive scale. And this happens any time that you have urban combat. So I have walked the streets of Aleppo, while combat was still in progress. I have looked across, through a slit in the sandbags at enemy controlled territory; I’ve stood on tanks that were blown out and this type of thing.
> 
> What I do know, and I can tell you about Aleppo is that Russia was extremely reluctant to get involved in combat in Syria. The war began in 2011, when the United States landed Central Intelligence operatives to begin coordinating with Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups. And we had been unwavering supporters of Al Qaeda, since before the war formally began. We are supporters of Al Qaeda today, where they’re bottled up in Idlib province. The CIA supplied them under secret Operation Timber Sycamore. We gave them all of their anti-tank weapons, all of their anti air- missiles. And Al Qaeda has always been our proxy force on the ground. They, together with ISIS, have carried out the mission of the United States, together with a great number of affiliates that really are kind of interchangeable. You have the Free Syrian Army soldiers move from ISIS to Al Qaeda to Free Syrian Army, rather fluidly. And so we started that war.
> 
> But the United States has a strategic policy of using proxies to engage in war. And our objective was to overthrow the legitimate government of Syria, and in order to do that, we employed proxy soldiers who were the most vile of all terrorists. Something very similar is happening right now in in Ukraine.
> 
> But going back to Aleppo, the Syrian army, together with Hezbollah, which was very effective; there were some troops that were organized by Iran also, but it was pretty much a Syrian show, certainly directed by Syrian generals. And they had fought this bitter urban combat, very brutal, very deadly. And they had fought it for four years, before Russia ever joined the battle. So after four years, the city of Aleppo had enormous destruction. And at that point, the Russians, at the invitation of the legitimate government of Syria, entered the war. But unlike many of the media reports, they did not enter the war as a ground force.  Now, they had some small ground forces. They had military police, they had a few artillery units, a few special operations people, and quite a number of advisers and that sort of thing. But they were not a significant ground force.
> 
> On the other hand, they were a significant and very effective air force, that supplemented the Syrian Air Force. But it really was just the last year of the war, the battle for Aleppo, just the last year, that they entered and their air power was very effective. And by this time, the Syrians had pretty well worn down the terrorist forces. And the Russian assistance was able to tip the balance, and Aleppo was _the_ grand victory of the entire Syrian war.
> 
> But to blame the Russians for the massive destruction that took place within Aleppo, it’s bizarre: Because they were not there, they were not even present when this happened. So this is simply another part of the propaganda narrative, which is which hasbeen very effective for the West, demonizing Russia, and making claims that have no substance. But people don’t remember the history of these things—they’re rather complex. So, no: Russia was not in any respect responsible for the massive destruction of the city of Aleppo.
> 
> *BILLINGTON*: How would you contrast the methods of warfare followed by Russia, as opposed to the U.S. and allied forces in Syria?
> 
> *BLACK*: Well, first of all, the American involvement, the United States war against Syria is a war of aggression. We put a highly secretive CIA special activities center—these are kind of the James Bond guys of the Central Intelligence Agency, total Machiavellian; they will do anything, there’s no it’s no holds barred with these guys. We sent them in and we started the war in Syria. The war didn’t exist until we sent the CIA to coordinate with Al Qaeda elements. So we began the war and we were not invited into Syria.
> 
> In fact, the United States has seized, two significant parts of Syria. One is a very major part, the Euphrates River, carves off about a third of the northern part of Syria: The United States invaded that portion. We actually put troops on the ground, illegal—against any standard international law of war—it was it was a just a seizure. And this was this was something that was referred to by John Kerry, who was then the Secretary of State, and he was frustrated at the tremendous victory by the Syrian Armed Forces against Al Qaeda and ISIS. And he said, well, we probably need to move to Plan B. He didn’t announce what Plan B was, but it had it unfolded over time: Plan B was the American seizure of that northern portion of Syria. The importance of taking that part of Syria is, that it is the bread basket for all of the Syrian people. That is where the wheat—Syria actually had a significant wheat surplus and the people were very well fed in Syria, before the war. We wanted to take the wheat away, to cause famine among the Syrian people.
> 
> The other thing we were able to do, is to seize the major part of the oil and natural gas fields. Those also were produced in that northern portion beyond the Euphrates River. And the idea was that, by stealing the oil and then the gas, we would be able to shut down the transportation system, and at the same time, during the Syrian winters, we could freeze to death the Syrian civilian population, which in many cases were living in rubble, where these terrorist armies, with mechanized divisions had attacked and just totally destroyed these cities, and left people just living in little pockets of rubble.
> 
> We wanted to starve and we wanted to freeze to death the people of Syria, and that was Plan B.
> 
> Now, we became frustrated at a certain point that somehow these Syrians, these darned Syrians—it’s a tiny little country, and why are these people resilient? They’re fighting against two-thirds of the entire military and industrial force of the world. How can a nation of 23 million people possibly withstand this for over a decade? And so we decided we had to take action or we were going totally lose Syria. And so the U.S. Congress imposed the Caesar sanctions. The Caesar sanctions were the most brutal sanctions ever imposed on any nation. During the Second World War, sanctions were not nearly as strict as they were on Syria.
> 
> We weren’t at war with Syria! And yet we had a naval blockade around the country. We devalued their currency through the SWIFT system for international payments, making it impossible for them to purchase medications. So you had Syrian women who would contract breast cancer, just like we have here in this country. But instead, where in this country where breast cancer has become relatively treatable, we cut off the medical supplies so that the women in Syria would die of breast cancer because they could not get the medications, because we slam their dollars through the SWIFT system.
> 
> One of the last things that we did and the evidence is vague on it, but there was a mysterious explosion in the harbor in Lebanon, and it was a massive explosion of a shipload of ammonium nitrate fertilizer. It killed hundreds of Lebanese people. It wounded thousands and thousands, destroyed the economy of Lebanon. And, most importantly, it destroyed the banking system of Lebanon, which was one of the few lifelines remaining to Syria. I don’t think that explosion was accidental. I think it was orchestrated, and I suspect that the Central Intelligence Agency was aware of the nation that carried out that action to destroy Beirut Harbor.
> 
> But throughout you see this this Machiavellian approach, where we use unlimited force and violence. And at the same time, we control the global media, to where we erase all discussions of what’s truly happening. So, to the man or the woman in the street, they think things are fine. Everything is being done for altruistic reasons, but it’s not.
> 
> *BILLINGTON*: Part of your military service was as a JAG officer, and for a period of time, you were the Army’s head of the criminal law division at the Pentagon. And in that light, what do you see as of how these Caesar sanctions—how would you look at those from the perspective of international law and military law?
> 
> *BLACK*: Well, now, I was not the international law expert. I was the criminal law expert. But I would say that making war on a civilian population is a crime of grave significance in the law of war.
> 
> One of the things that we did as we as we allied ourselves with Al Qaeda, and on and off with ISIS; I mean, we fought ISIS in a very serious way, but at the same time, we often employed them to use against the Syrian government. So it’s kind of a love-hate. But we have always worked with the terrorists. They were the core.
> 
> One of the policies that was followed was that under this extreme version of Islam, this Wahhabism, there was this notion that you possess a woman that you seize with your strong right arm in battle. And this goes back to the seventh century. And so we facilitated the movement of Islamic terrorists from 100 countries, and they came and they joined ISIS, they joined Al Qaeda, they joined the Free Syrian Army, all of these different ones. And one of the things that they knew when they arrived is that they were lawfully entitled to murder the husbands—I’m not talking about military people, I’m talking about civilians—they could murder the husbands, they could kill them, and then they could possess and own their wives and their children. And they did it in vast numbers.
> 
> And so there was there was a campaign of rape, it was an organized campaign of rape across the nation of Syria. And there actually were slave markets that that arose in certain of these rebel areas where they actually had price lists of the different women. And interestingly, the highest prices went to the youngest children, because there were a great number of pedophiles. And the pedophiles wanted to possess small children, because under the laws that were applied, they were permitted to rape these children repeatedly. They were able to rape the widows of the slain soldiers or the slain civilians, and possess them and buy them and sell them among themselves. This went on.
> 
> I’m not saying that the CIA created this policy, but they understood that it was a widespread policy, and they condoned it. They never criticized it in any way.
> 
> This was so bad, that I spoke with President Assad, who shared with me that they were in the process—when I visited in 2016; I was in a number of battle zones, and in the capital. And I met with the President, and he said that at that time, they were working on legislation in the parliament, to change the law of citizenship. They had always followed the Islamic law, which was that that a child citizenship derived from the father. But there were so many tens, hundreds of thousands of Syrian women impregnated by these terrorists who were imported into Syria, that it was necessary to change the law, so that they would have Syrian citizenship and they wouldn’t have to be returned to their ISIS father in Saudi Arabia, or in Tunisia. They could be retained in Syria. And I checked later and that law was passed and was implemented.
> 
> But it just shows the utter cruelty. When we fight these wars, we have no limits on the cruelty and the inhumanity that we’re prepared to impose on the people, making them suffer, so that somehow that will translate into overthrowing the government, and perhaps taking their oil, taking their resources.
> 
> *BILLINGTON*: Clearly, the policy against Russia today, by the current administration.
> 
> *BLACK*: Yes. Yes. You know, Russia is, perhaps more blessed with natural resources than any other nation on Earth. They are a major producer of grain, of oil, of aluminum, of fertilizers, of an immense number of things that tie into the whole global economy. And no doubt there are people who look at this and say, “if we could somehow break up Russia itself, there will be fortunes made, to where trillionaires will be made by the dozens.” And there’s some attraction to that. Certainly you’ve seen some of this taking place already, with foreign interests taking over Ukraine, and taking their vast resources.
> 
> But, we began a drive towards Russia, almost immediately after the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991. The Soviet Union dissolved, the Warsaw Pact dissolved. And unfortunately, one of the great tragedies of history is that we failed to dissolve NATO. The sole purpose of NATO was to defend against the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union no longer existed. NATO went toe toe with the Warsaw Pact. The Warsaw Pact was gone; it no longer existed. There was no purpose in NATO’s continuing to exist. However, we retained it, and it could not exist unless it had an enemy. Russia was _desperate_ to become part of the West.
> 
> I met with the head of Gazprom, the largest corporation in Russia, And this was shortly after the demise of the Soviet Union, and he described for me how they were struggling to have their media be as free as it was in the West. And they perceived us as being much more free and open than we were. And he said, you know, we’ve got this problem because we have this uprising in Chechnya, which is part of Russia. And he said the Chechnyan rebels send videos to Russian television and we play them on Russian television, because that’s the way freedom of speech works.
> 
> And I said, “Are you kidding me?” I said, “You’re publishing the enemy propaganda films?” He said, “Yeah.” He said, “Isn’t that the way you do it in the United States?” I said, “No.  In the Second World War, we took the head of the Associated Press and we put him in charge of wartime censorship, and it was very strict.”
> 
> So but this is just an example of how they were struggling. They went from being an officially atheist country, to where they became the most Christianized major nation in Europe, by far. Not only were the people, the most Christianized people in any major country in Europe, but the government itself was very supportive of the church, of the Christian faith. They altered their Constitution to say that marriage was the union of one man and one woman. They became very restrictive on the practice of abortion. They ended the practice of overseas adoptions, where some people were going to Russia and adopting little boys for immoral purposes. So they became a totally different culture and.
> 
> In any event, the United States has this long-standing strategy, this political-military strategy, of expanding the empire. We did it in the Middle East, where we attempted to create a massive neocolonial empire. It’s it became rather frayed. The people did not want it. And it seems to be doomed to extinction sometime—but it may go on for another 100 years. But in any event, we are trying to do something similar, as we roll to the East, right up virtually to the Russian border.
> 
> *BILLINGTON*:  So, the U.S. and U.K. position on the war in Ukraine, just over these last few weeks has now become not only supporting the war, but victory at all costs. This has been declared by Defense Secretary Austin and others. And they are pumping in huge quantities of not only defensive but offensive military weaponry to the Kyiv regime. What do you see as the consequence of this policy?
> 
> BLACK: I think one thing that it will do is it will ensure that a tremendous number of innocent Ukrainian soldiers will die needlessly. A lot of Russian soldiers will die needlessly. These are kids. You know, kids go off to war. I went off to war as a kid. You think your country, right or wrong, everything they’re doing is fine. It just it breaks my heart, when I look at the faces of young Russian boys, who have been who have been gunned down—in some cases very criminally by Ukrainian forces. And likewise, I see Ukrainian young men, who are being slaughtered on the battlefield.
> 
> We don’t care! The United States and NATO, we do not care how many Ukrainians die. Not civilians, not women, not children, not soldiers. _We do not care_. It’s become a great football game. You know, we’ve got our team. They’ve got their team, rah rah. We want to get the biggest score and run it up. And, you know, we don’t care how many how many of our players get crippled on the playing field, as long as we win.
> 
> Now, we are shipping fantastic quantities of weapons, and it’s caused the stock of Raytheon, which creates missiles, and Northrop Grumman, which creates aircraft and missiles, all of these defense industries have become tremendously bloated with tax dollars. I don’t think it’s ultimately going to change the outcome. I think that Russia will prevail. The Ukrainians are in a very awkward strategic position in the East.
> 
> But if you look at the way that this unfolded, President Putin made a desperate effort to stop the march towards war back in December of 2021. He went so far as to put specific written proposals on the table with NATO, peace proposals to defuse what was coming about. Because at this point, Ukraine was massing troops to attack the Donbas. And so, he was trying to head this off. He didn’t want war. And NATO just blew it off, just dismissed it; never took it seriously, never went into serious negotiations.
> 
> At that point, Putin seeing that armed Ukrainians, with weapons to kill Russian troops were literally on their borders, decided he had to strike first. Now, you could see, that this was not this was not some preplanned attack. This was not like Hitler’s attack into Poland, where the standard rule of thumb, is that you always have a 3-to-1 advantage when you are the attacker. You have to mass three times as many tanks and artillery and planes and men, as the other side has. In fact, when Russia went in, they went in with what they had, what they could cobble together on short notice. And they were outnumbered by the Ukrainian forces. The Ukrainian forces had about 250,000. The Russians had perhaps 160,000. So instead of having three times as many, they actually had _fewer_ troops than the Ukrainians. But they were forced to attack, to try to preempt the battle that was looming, where the Ukrainians had massed these forces against the Donbas.
> 
> Now, the Donbas is adjacent to Russia. It is a portion of Ukraine that did not join with the revolutionary government that conducted the coup in 2014 and overthrew the government of Ukraine. They refused to become a part of the new revolutionary government of Ukraine. And so they declared their independence. And Ukraine had massed this enormous army to attack against the Donbas. And so Russia was forced to go in to preempt that planned attack by Ukraine. And you could see that Russia very much hoped that they could conduct this special operation without unduly causing casualties for the Ukrainians, because they think of the Ukrainians, or at least they did think of the Ukrainians as brother Slavs; that they wanted to have good relations. But there is a famous picture with a Russian tank, that had been stopped by a gathering of maybe 40 civilians who just walked out in the road and blocked the road and the tank stopped. I can tell you, in Vietnam, if we had had a bunch of people who stood in the way of an American tank, going through, that tank would not have slowed down, in the slightest! It wouldn’t honk the horn, it wouldn’t have done anything; wouldn’t have fired a warning shot. It would have just gone on. And I think that’s more typical—I’m not I’m not criticizing the Americans. I was there and I was fighting, and I probably would have would have driven the tank straight through myself.
> 
> But what I’m saying is that the rules of engagement for the Russians were very, very cautious. They didn’t want to create a great deal of hatred and animosity. The Russians did not go in—they did not bomb the electrical system, the media systems, the water systems, the bridges and so forth. They tried to retain the infrastructure of Ukraine in good shape because they wanted it to get back. They just wanted this to be over with and get back to normal. It didn’t work. The Ukrainians, the resistance was unexpectedly hard. The Ukrainian soldiers fought with great, great valor, great heroism. And. And so now the game has been upped and it’s become much more serious.
> 
> But it is amazing to look and to see that Russia dominates the air. They haven’t knocked out the train systems. They haven’t knocked out power plants. They haven’t knocked out so many things. They’ve never bombed the buildings in the center of Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine; they haven’t bombed the buildings where the parliament meets. They’ve been incredibly reserved about these things, hoping against hope that peace could be achieved.
> 
> But I don’t think I don’t think Ukraine has anything to do with the decision about peace or war. I think the decision about peace or war is made in Washington, D.C. As long as we want the war to continue, we will fight that war, using Ukrainians as proxies, and we will fight it to the last Ukrainian death.
> 
> *BILLINGTON*: How do you project the potential of a war breaking out directly between the United States and Russia? And what would that be like?
> 
> *BLACK*: You know, if you go back to the First World War in 1914, you had the assassination of the Archduke of Austria-Hungary. He and his wife were killed. As a result of those two people being killed, you had a domino effect of all of these alliances, and anger, and media hysteria. And before it was over, I think it was 14 million people had been killed. It’s always hard to get true numbers, but anyway, it was an enormous number of millions of people who died as a result of that.
> 
> We need to recognize the risk of playing these games of chicken. Where, for example, the Turkish media just published an article saying that at Mariupol, where there was a great siege, that the Russians ultimately won. The one area they haven’t taken over is this tremendous steel plant. There are a lot of Ukrainian soldiers who are holed up there. And now it has come to light that apparently there are 50 French senior officers, who are trapped in that steel plant along with the Ukrainians. The French soldiers have been on the ground fighting, directing the battle. And this was kept under wraps, ultra-secret, because of the French elections that just occurred. Had the French people known that there were a large number of French officers trapped and probably going to die in that steel plant, the elections would have gone the other way: Marine Le Pen would have won. And so it was very important that for the entire deep state, that it not come to light that these French officers were there.
> 
> We know that there are NATO officers who are present on the ground in Ukraine as advisors and so forth. We run the risk. Now, my guess is—and this is this is a guess, I could be wrong—but the flagship of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, the _Moskva_, was sunk as a result of being struck by anti-ship missiles. My guess is that those missiles, I think there’s a good chance they were fired by the French. Now, I could be wrong, but those missiles are so ultra-sensitive and so dangerous to our ships, that I don’t think that NATO would trust the missiles to Ukrainians, or to anybody else. I think I think they have to be maintained under NATO control and operation. So I think that it was probably NATO forces that actually sunk the _Moskva_.
> 
> And you can see we’re taking these very reckless actions, and each time we sort of up the ante—I happen to be a Republican—but we have two Republican U.S. senators who have said that, “well, we might just need to use nuclear weapons against Russia.” That is insane. I think it’s important that people begin to discuss what a thermonuclear war would mean.
> 
> Now, we need to understand, we think, “oh, we’re big, and we’re bad, and we have all this stuff.” Russia is roughly comparable to the United States in nuclear power. They have hypersonic missiles, that we do not have. They can absolutely evade any timely detection, and they can fire missiles from Russia and reach San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Detroit, Baltimore, Washington, D.C., New York City.
> 
> And if you think about just Virginia, where I happen to live, if there were a nuclear war—and keep in mind, they also have a very large and effective fleet of nuclear submarines that lie off the coast of the United States. They have a great number of nuclear-tipped missiles, and they can evade any defenses we have. So just in Virginia, if you look at it, all of Northern Virginia would be essentially annihilated. There would hardly be any human life remaining in Loudoun County, Prince William County, Fairfax County, Arlington, Alexandria. The Pentagon lies in in Arlington County: The Pentagon would simply be a glowing mass of molten sand. There would be no human life there. And there would be no human life for many miles around it. Just across the Potomac, the nation’s capital, there would be no life remaining in the nation’s capital. The Capitol building would disappear forever. All of the monuments, all of these glorious things—nothing would remain.
> 
> If you go to the coast of Virginia, you have the Norfolk Naval Shipyard, you have the Port of Norfolk. You have you have the greatest accumulation of naval power on the face of the Earth. This is where we park all of our aircraft carriers, our nuclear submarines, all of those things. There would be nothing remaining. There would be _nothing remaining_ of any of those shipping industries there.
> 
> And you can carry this on. You talk about New York City, probably New York City itself, not only would everybody be killed, but it would probably be impossible for people to inhabit New York City for hundreds of years afterwards. But not only would it cease to be a place of vibrant human life, but probably going out for maybe half a millennium, it would not recover any sort of civilization.
> 
> We need to understand the gravity of what we’re doing. Perhaps if it were a matter of life and death for the United States, what happens in Ukraine, that would be one thing. Certainly when the Soviet Union put missiles in Cuba, that targeted the United States, that was worth taking the risk, because it was right on our border and it threatened us. And it was it was a battle worth fighting for and a risk worth taking. The Russians are in this in exactly the mirror image of that situation, because for them, the life of Russia depends on stopping NATO from advancing further right into Ukraine, right to their borders. They cannot afford _not_ to fight this war. They cannot afford not to win this war.
> 
> So I think, toying with this constant escalation in a war that, really, in a place that has no significance to Americans—Ukraine is meaningless to Americans; it has no impact on our day-to-day lives. And yet we’re playing this reckless game that risks the lives of all people in the United States and Western Europe for nothing! Just absolutely for nothing!
> 
> *BILLINGTON*: Many flag grade officers certainly understand the consequences that you just described in a rather hair-raising way. Why is it that, while there are some generals speaking out in Italy, in France, in Germany, warning that we are pursuing a course that could lead to nuclear war, why are there not such voices from flag grade officers—retired, perhaps—saying what you’re saying here today?
> 
> *BLACK*: You know, there’s been a tremendous deterioration in the quality of flag officers, going back to, well, certainly the 1990s. We had very, very fine flag officers, during the time I was on active duty—I left in ‘94—just superior quality people. But what happened is, subsequently, we had President Clinton take over, later, we had Obama. We’ve got Biden now. And they apply a very strict political screen to their military officers. And we now have “yes men.” These are not people whose principal devotion is to the United States and its people. Their principal devotion is to their careers and their ability to network with other military officers upon retirement. There’s a very strong network that can place military generals into think tanks, where they promote war, into organizations like Raytheon and Northrop Grumman, and all of these defense operations, where they can get on boards and things like that. So there’s quite a personal price that you pay for saying, “Hey, stop. War is not in the interests of the American people.” If we had a better quality of individual, we would have people with the courage who would say, “I don’t care what it costs me personally.” But it is very difficult to get into the senior ranks, if you are an individual guided by principle, and patriotism, and devotion to the people of this nation. That’s just not how it works. And at some point, we need a President who will go in and shake the tree, and bring a lot of these people falling down from it, because they’re dangerous. They’re very dangerous to America.
> 
> *BILLINGTON*: Helga Zepp-LaRouche and the Schiller Institute have a petition — and we held a conference on April 9th on the same theme — that the only way to really stop this descent into hell and into potential nuclear holocaust is for a new Peace of Westphalia. In this case, an international conference to secure a new security architecture and a new development architecture, the right to development for all countries. And like the Peace of Westphalia, one in which all sides sit down together, recognize their interests, their sovereign interests, as including the sovereign interests of the others, and forgiving all past crimes. Anything short of that is going to keep this division of the world into warring blocs. Just like I asked what’s keeping the generals from speaking out, why, and what will it take, to get Americans to recognize that we can and must sit down with Russians, and with Chinese, and with all other nations and establish a true, just world based on the dignity of man and the right to development and security?
> 
> *BLACK*: I think, unfortunately, there’s going to have to be enormous pain to drive that, just as there was with the Peace of Westphalia. A nuclear war would do it; an economic cataclysm of unprecedented proportions, resulting from the unbridled printing of money that we’ve engaged in over the last 20 years, there are things that could bring it about. But at this point, the media have been so totally censored and so biased that the American people really don’t have a perception of the need for anything of that sort. It’s going to be difficult.
> 
> You know, here’s something that’s interesting that has happened. Here in this country, you would think the entire world is against Russia. It’s not. In fact, there are major countries of the world that lean towards Russia in this war, starting with China, but then Brazil, you’ve got South Africa, Saudi Arabia—a wide array of countries. India. India is tremendously supportive of Russia. The idea that somehow we have this enormously just cause, it doesn’t strike a great deal of the world that it is just, and much of the world does not accept the latest propaganda about war crimes: this thing about Bucha. That’s probably the most prominent of all the war crimes discussions.
> 
> And what was Bucha? There was a film taken of a vehicle driving down the road in Bucha, which had been recaptured from the Russians. And every hundred feet or so there was some person with his hands, zip tied behind his back, and he’d been killed. It was not announced until four days after the Ukrainians had retaken Bucha.
> 
> Now, we knew almost nothing about it. We actually didn’t even have proof that people had been killed. But assuming they had, we didn’t know where they had been killed. We did not know who they were. We did not know who killed them. We did not know why they were killed. No one could provide an adequate motive for the Russians to have killed them. The Russians held Bucha for a month. If they were going to kill them, why didn’t they kill them during that month? And if you’re going to slaughter a bunch of people, wouldn’t they all be in one place and wouldn’t you gun them all down there? Why would they be distributed along a roadside, a mile along the way? It makes no sense!
> 
> What we do know is that four days after the mayor of Bucha joyously announced that the city was liberated, four days after the Ukrainian army had moved in, and their special propaganda arm of the Ukrainian military were there, all of a sudden there were these dead people on the road. How come they weren’t there when the Russians were there? How come they only appeared after the Russians were gone?
> 
> If I were looking at it as simply a standard criminal case, and I was talking to Criminal Investigation Division or the FBI, or military police or something, I’d say, “OK, the first thing, let’s take a look at the Ukrainians.” My guess would be, and you start with a hunch when you’re investigating a crime—my hunch is that the Ukrainians killed off these people after they moved in, and after they looked around, and said, “OK, who was friendly towards the Russian troops while the Russians were here? We’re going to execute them.” That would be my guess. Because I don’t see any motive for the Russians to have just killed a few people on their way out of town.
> 
> And nobody questions this, because the corporate media are so monolithic. We know for a fact, from the mouth of the head of a Ukrainian hospital, the guy who ran the hospital, he boasted that he had given strict orders to all of his doctors, that when wounded Russian POWs, when casualties were brought in, they were to be _castrated._ Now, this is a horrific war crime, admitted from the mouth of the hospital administrator, and the Ukrainian government said, “we’ll kind of look into that,” Like it’s no big thing. I can’t think of a more horrific, horrific war crime, ever. Where did you hear about it, on ABC and MSNBC and CNN and FOX News? Not a whisper. And yet the proof is undeniable. We had another clip where there was a POW gathering point, where the Ukrainians would bring POWs to a central point for processing—and this is about a seven-minute video—and the Ukrainian soldiers simply gunned them all down. And they had probably 30 of these wounded Russian soldiers lying on the ground, some of them clearly dying from their wounds. Some of them, they put plastic bags over their heads. Now, these are these are guys who are laying there, sometimes fatally wounded with their hands zip-tied behind their backs, and they’ve got plastic bags over their heads, making it difficult to breathe. And because they can’t raise their hands, they can’t take the bags off, so that they can breathe. At the end of the video, the Ukrainians bring in a van, and there are three unwounded Russian POWs. Without the slightest thought or hesitation, as the three come off, and their hands are bound behind their backs, they gunned down two of them, right on camera and they fall over. And the third one gets on his knees, and begs that they won’t hurt him. And then they gun him down! These are crimes. And these were not refuted by the Ukrainian government. But you’d never even know that they occurred! So far, I will tell you that the only proven—I’m not saying that there aren’t war crimes happening on both sides. I’m just telling you, that the only ones where I have seen, fairly irrefutable proof of war crimes, have been on the Ukrainian side.
> 
> Now, often you hear it said, well, the Russians have destroyed this or destroyed that. Well, I’ve got to tell you, you go back to the wars that we fought when we invaded Iraq, the “Shock and Awe,” we destroyed virtually everything in Iraq, everything of significance. We bombed military and civilian targets without much discrimination. The coalition flew 100,000 sorties in 42 days. You compare that to the Russians, who have only flown 8,000 sorties in about the same period of time. 100,000 American sorties versus 8,000, in about the same time.  I think the Russians have tended to be more selective. Whereas we went out — the philosophy of Shock and Awe is that you destroy everything that is needed to sustain human life and for a city to function. You knock out the water supply, the electrical supply, the heat, the oil, the gasoline; so that you knock out all of the major bridges. And then you just continue to destroy everything.
> 
> So it’s really ironic. And keep in mind, Iraq is a relatively small country. Ukraine is a huge country. 100,000 sorties in 42 days, 8,000 sorties in about the same time. A tremendous difference in violence between what we did in Iraq, and what they have done in Ukraine. So there’s simply no credibility when you actually get down to the facts and you look at the way that the war has been conducted.
> 
> *BILLINGTON*: Well. Senator Black, Colonel Black.  I think the way you have described the horror that’s already taking place, and considering that we can’t wait for a nuclear war to provoke a new a Peace of Westphalia, I would suggest that what you have described is already horrific enough. And when combined with the hyperinflationary breakdown now sweeping the Western world, with everybody being affected, we believe that we have to take that as the adequate horror, and a recognition of a descent into a dark age, to motivate citizens in Europe, in the United States.
> 
> We are finding that there is a waking up of people who have not wanted to look at their responsibility to the human race as a whole in the past, but who now are forced to consider that, which is the basis on which we’ve called for this, in this petition, for an international conference of all nations, with the U.S., Russia, China, India and so forth, sitting down to end this horror; but to also bring about a true peace for mankind and an era of peace through development.
> 
> And we thank you for giving this breath of ugly truth to a population which needs to hear it. If you have any final thoughts, I ask you to give your final greetings.
> 
> *BLACK*:  I’ll just add one thing, and I thank the Schiller Institute for the tremendous effort that you’ve made towards achieving world peace. It is one of the most important efforts ever made, and I certainly applaud that.
> 
> If you look at Russia, the Russian troops that went into battle in Ukraine, for the most part had never experienced combat. This is a peacetime army. Russia doesn’t fight overseas wars. Syria is the only significant overseas engagement that they have had. You compare that with the United States, where literally speaking, if a soldier retires today after a 30-year career in the military, he will not have served a single day when the United States was at peace. Kind of an amazing thing. And you contrast that with the Russian military, where, with few exceptions, the country has been at peace.
> 
> So we really need to start thinking about peace and about the limits of warfare, this idea that somehow we need a zero sum game where we take from you and that enhances us. We’re in a world where everyone can gain and prosper by peace. But I’m concerned that the hyperinflation may be the wake-up call that jolts the world into a recognition that we must have a new paradigm for the future, and I think the Peace of Westphalia at that point might become a possibility.
> 
> So thank you again for the opportunity to be here. There’s always hope and I think there’ll be good things in the future, with the blessings of God.
> 
> *BILLINGTON*: And thank you very much from Schiller Institute, The LaRouche Organization, and _EIR_.  We’ll get this posted as quickly as we possibly can, because it’s going to have a tremendous impact. Thank you.
> 
> *BLACK*: Thank you very much.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Video: Col. Richard Black — U.S. Leading World to Nuclear War | The Schiller Institute
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> schillerinstitute.com


When was this interview posted?

It think its at least 5-7 years old

The issue with russia today is aggression against ukraine

Where the US and NATO are correct to resist the russians


----------



## Toddsterpatriot

Mac-7 said:


> When was this interview posted?
> 
> It think its at least 5-7 years old
> 
> The issue with russia today is aggression against ukraine
> 
> Where the US and NATO are correct to resist the russians


 
Posted April of this year.


----------



## Mac-7

Toddsterpatriot said:


> Posted April of this year.


Why does he spend half the time talking about syria with ukraine as just an afterthought?


----------



## Mac-7

Toddsterpatriot said:


> *No there are not, *
> 
> Sure there are. Which parts of Russia do we have to hit?


Why is Switzerland not complaining about NATO nukes on their border?

Is there a lesson for the russians to be learned from the Swiss?


----------



## Toddsterpatriot

Mac-7 said:


> Why does he spend half the time talking about syria with ukraine as just an afterthought?



Don't bother, it's a LaRouchie website.


----------



## gipper

Confederate Soldier said:


> Wow, what a liberal faggot. "We'Re ThE bAd GuY!"  Please, leave the U.S. we don't want apologists pussies like you here.


If you could think, you’d know his statements are accurate.


----------



## Confederate Soldier

gipper said:


> If you could think, you’d know his statements are accurate.


You an apologist scum too?


----------



## gipper

Confederate Soldier said:


> You an apologist scum too?


You’re an idiot. You can only make personal attacks because your IQ is that of the dumbest breed of dog.


----------



## Confederate Soldier

gipper said:


> You’re an idiot. You can only make personal attacks because your IQ is that of the dumbest breed of dog.


Says you, king of personal attacks and Russian troll worshipping.


----------



## gipper

Confederate Soldier said:


> Says you, king of personal attacks and Russian troll worshipping.


Like I said, you have the IQ of a dog.


----------



## Confederate Soldier

gipper said:


> Like I said, you have the IQ of a dog.




That seems like a personal attack....


----------



## gipper

Confederate Soldier said:


> That seems like a personal attack....


You started it you dumb pussy.


----------



## LA RAM FAN

José said:


> Russia gobbling up Eastern Europe in the last 3 decades is a drug induced hallucination that exists only inside your head.
> 
> But a military alliance that serves US interests using neighboring countries to surround Russia's western borders, breaking all the promises it made to Gorbachev, is an undeniable historical fact.
> 
> Talk about total inability to distinguish fact from fiction.


  Best damn post on this thread,well done José


----------



## LA RAM FAN

gipper said:


> Putin may have screwed up. Had he waited a little longer and Ukraine‘s army invaded Donbass then Putin goes in, the world might look at this a bit differently.
> 
> However most Americans know nothing about the coup by Obama, Biden, and Nuland in 2014 and the murdering of 14,000 ethnic Russians in the Donbass by Ukraine since the coup.  So it’s likely the western media would twist any action by Putin as bad.


Yeah the majority of Americans are sheep who don’t know any of that happened under those two commies Obama and Biden.


----------



## LA RAM FAN

ESay said:


> There isn't war against ethnic Russians. It is another narrative of Russian propaganda.


Man your a dimbass,he has taken you to school,you listen way too much to what the cia controlled media tells you.


----------



## LA RAM FAN

gipper said:


> No. Russia has already taken most of the Donbas. Do you not know this?


Obviously not.


----------



## LA RAM FAN

gipper said:


> Uh no. The msm has proven itself entirely unreliable and promotes propaganda on this war. Nearly everything they report is lies.


Google search? this dude is the biggest dumbass hands down.


----------



## BothWings

Confederate Soldier said:


> The U.S. isn't the one who keeps using Nuclear threats. Russia is. If Russia acts on those threats, we will respond in kind. Admitting that we will respond, isn't making us the bad guy.


The nuclear threats ARE already a response.


----------



## LA RAM FAN

gipper said:


> Good column here 'Not A Justification But A Provocation': Chomsky On Root Causes Of The Russia-Ukraine War | ZeroHedge
> 
> It includes the reasons why most Americans know nothing about the reasons and causes of this war. As always in war, our government is lying to us. They are playing nuclear brinkmanship with Russia, but the American people don’t know it.


Sheep like him well never read that article or be able to contemplate it.


----------



## ESay

LA RAM FAN said:


> Man your a dimbass,he has taken you to school,you listen way too much to what the cia controlled media tells you.


Sure. Better tell me how Russian SMO is going according to a plan. Feint in the North and around Kiev, planned regrouping from Kharkiv oblast. 

What about Kherson? What are their master plans about the city and the Dnieper west riverbank?


----------



## gipper

ESay said:


> Sure. Better tell me how Russian SMO is going according to a plan. Feint in the North and around Kiev, planned regrouping from Kharkiv oblast.
> 
> What about Kherson? What are their master plans about the city and the Dnieper west riverbank?


Your post means nothing as it relates to your ignorance of how this war began. You claim to be Ukrainian, yet know nothing about your country’s history. 

Are you a neo-Nazi?  Azov? Do you sing songs about Bandera?


----------



## ESay

gipper said:


> Your post means nothing as it relates to your ignorance of how this war began. You claim to be Ukrainian, yet know nothing about your country’s history.
> 
> Are you a neo-Nazi?  Azov? Do you sing songs about Bandera?


No, it is just you being an ignorant idiot.


----------



## the other mike

the other mike said:


> Most Americans are kept in the dark by a well-controlled media about the entire history of the world , especially the Middle East going back to Iran in 1953.
> 
> Afghanistan is technically Southeast Asia and then we have troops in 150 some odd other countries in Africa and everywhere else.
> Libya was the richest African nation until we f***** them up


Check out the protests in Ethiopia going on right now... they're turning to Russia and China because they want us out.


----------



## the other mike




----------



## the other mike

Good old Uncle Sam.
Funding neonazi radicals and now recruiting alQaeda from Syria to fight in Ukraine.


----------



## Litwin

Baron said:


> Kremlin


LAPIN LOST HIS JOB. LOL, *MUSLIMS DOMINATE* YOU IVAN 100% . YOU ARE SUCH SLAVES


----------



## surada

Baron said:


> The guy is according to western presstitutes paid by Putin Kremlin troll
> 
> 
> 
> The full Transcript
> 
> Mike Billington with _Executive Intelligence Review_ interviews Col. Richard Black (ret.).
> 
> *BILLINGTON*: Hi, this is this is Mike Billington with _Executive Intelligence Review_ and the Schiller Institute. I am here today with Col. Richard Black, Sen. Richard Black, who, after serving 31 years in the Marines and in the Army, then served in the Virginia House of Delegates from 1998 to 2006, and in the Virginia Senate from 2012 to 2020. I’ll also allow Colonel Black to describe his military service himself.
> 
> So, Colonel Black, welcome. With the with the U.S. and U.K. and NATO surrogate war with Russia, which is taking place in Ukraine, and the economic warfare being carried out directly against Russia, this has been accompanied by an information war which is intended to demonize Russia and especially President Vladimir Putin. One repeated theme is that the Russian military is carrying out ruthless campaigns of murder against civilians and destruction of residential areas, often referring to the Russian military operations in Syria, claiming that they had done the same thing in Syria, especially against Aleppo. These are supposedly examples of their war crimes and crimes against humanity.
> 
> You have been a leading spokesman internationally for many years, exposing the lies about what took place in Syria and the war on Syria. So first, let me ask: How and why did Russia get involved in Syria militarily? And how does that contrast with the U.S. and NATO supposed justification for their military intervention in Syria?
> 
> *BLACK*: Well, let me begin, if I could, by telling our listeners that I’m very patriotic: I volunteered to join the Marines and I volunteered to go to Vietnam. I fought in the bloodiest Marine campaign of the entire war. And I was a helicopter pilot who flew 269 combat missions. My aircraft was hit by ground fire on four missions. I, then, fought on the ground with the First Marine Division, and during one of the 70 combat patrols that I made, my radioman were both killed, and I was wounded while we were attacking and trying to rescue a surrounded Marine outpost.
> 
> So I’m very pro-American. I actually was a part of NATO and was prepared to die in Germany, to defend against an attack by the Soviet Union.
> 
> But Russia is not the Soviet Union at all. People don’t understand that because the media have not made it clear. But Russia is not a communist state; the Soviet Union was a communist state.
> 
> Now, one of the things that I’ve seen claimed, that has been particularly irritating to me because of my experience with Syria: I have I have been in Aleppo city. Aleppo city is the biggest city in Syria, or it was at least before the war began. And there was a tremendous battle. Some some call it the “Stalingrad of the Syrian war,” which is not a bad comparison. It was a terribly bitter battle that went on from 2012 until 2016. In the course of urban combat, any forces that are fighting are forced to destroy buildings. Buildings are blown down on a massive scale. And this happens any time that you have urban combat. So I have walked the streets of Aleppo, while combat was still in progress. I have looked across, through a slit in the sandbags at enemy controlled territory; I’ve stood on tanks that were blown out and this type of thing.
> 
> What I do know, and I can tell you about Aleppo is that Russia was extremely reluctant to get involved in combat in Syria. The war began in 2011, when the United States landed Central Intelligence operatives to begin coordinating with Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups. And we had been unwavering supporters of Al Qaeda, since before the war formally began. We are supporters of Al Qaeda today, where they’re bottled up in Idlib province. The CIA supplied them under secret Operation Timber Sycamore. We gave them all of their anti-tank weapons, all of their anti air- missiles. And Al Qaeda has always been our proxy force on the ground. They, together with ISIS, have carried out the mission of the United States, together with a great number of affiliates that really are kind of interchangeable. You have the Free Syrian Army soldiers move from ISIS to Al Qaeda to Free Syrian Army, rather fluidly. And so we started that war.
> 
> But the United States has a strategic policy of using proxies to engage in war. And our objective was to overthrow the legitimate government of Syria, and in order to do that, we employed proxy soldiers who were the most vile of all terrorists. Something very similar is happening right now in in Ukraine.
> 
> But going back to Aleppo, the Syrian army, together with Hezbollah, which was very effective; there were some troops that were organized by Iran also, but it was pretty much a Syrian show, certainly directed by Syrian generals. And they had fought this bitter urban combat, very brutal, very deadly. And they had fought it for four years, before Russia ever joined the battle. So after four years, the city of Aleppo had enormous destruction. And at that point, the Russians, at the invitation of the legitimate government of Syria, entered the war. But unlike many of the media reports, they did not enter the war as a ground force.  Now, they had some small ground forces. They had military police, they had a few artillery units, a few special operations people, and quite a number of advisers and that sort of thing. But they were not a significant ground force.
> 
> On the other hand, they were a significant and very effective air force, that supplemented the Syrian Air Force. But it really was just the last year of the war, the battle for Aleppo, just the last year, that they entered and their air power was very effective. And by this time, the Syrians had pretty well worn down the terrorist forces. And the Russian assistance was able to tip the balance, and Aleppo was _the_ grand victory of the entire Syrian war.
> 
> But to blame the Russians for the massive destruction that took place within Aleppo, it’s bizarre: Because they were not there, they were not even present when this happened. So this is simply another part of the propaganda narrative, which is which hasbeen very effective for the West, demonizing Russia, and making claims that have no substance. But people don’t remember the history of these things—they’re rather complex. So, no: Russia was not in any respect responsible for the massive destruction of the city of Aleppo.
> 
> *BILLINGTON*: How would you contrast the methods of warfare followed by Russia, as opposed to the U.S. and allied forces in Syria?
> 
> *BLACK*: Well, first of all, the American involvement, the United States war against Syria is a war of aggression. We put a highly secretive CIA special activities center—these are kind of the James Bond guys of the Central Intelligence Agency, total Machiavellian; they will do anything, there’s no it’s no holds barred with these guys. We sent them in and we started the war in Syria. The war didn’t exist until we sent the CIA to coordinate with Al Qaeda elements. So we began the war and we were not invited into Syria.
> 
> In fact, the United States has seized, two significant parts of Syria. One is a very major part, the Euphrates River, carves off about a third of the northern part of Syria: The United States invaded that portion. We actually put troops on the ground, illegal—against any standard international law of war—it was it was a just a seizure. And this was this was something that was referred to by John Kerry, who was then the Secretary of State, and he was frustrated at the tremendous victory by the Syrian Armed Forces against Al Qaeda and ISIS. And he said, well, we probably need to move to Plan B. He didn’t announce what Plan B was, but it had it unfolded over time: Plan B was the American seizure of that northern portion of Syria. The importance of taking that part of Syria is, that it is the bread basket for all of the Syrian people. That is where the wheat—Syria actually had a significant wheat surplus and the people were very well fed in Syria, before the war. We wanted to take the wheat away, to cause famine among the Syrian people.
> 
> The other thing we were able to do, is to seize the major part of the oil and natural gas fields. Those also were produced in that northern portion beyond the Euphrates River. And the idea was that, by stealing the oil and then the gas, we would be able to shut down the transportation system, and at the same time, during the Syrian winters, we could freeze to death the Syrian civilian population, which in many cases were living in rubble, where these terrorist armies, with mechanized divisions had attacked and just totally destroyed these cities, and left people just living in little pockets of rubble.
> 
> We wanted to starve and we wanted to freeze to death the people of Syria, and that was Plan B.
> 
> Now, we became frustrated at a certain point that somehow these Syrians, these darned Syrians—it’s a tiny little country, and why are these people resilient? They’re fighting against two-thirds of the entire military and industrial force of the world. How can a nation of 23 million people possibly withstand this for over a decade? And so we decided we had to take action or we were going totally lose Syria. And so the U.S. Congress imposed the Caesar sanctions. The Caesar sanctions were the most brutal sanctions ever imposed on any nation. During the Second World War, sanctions were not nearly as strict as they were on Syria.
> 
> We weren’t at war with Syria! And yet we had a naval blockade around the country. We devalued their currency through the SWIFT system for international payments, making it impossible for them to purchase medications. So you had Syrian women who would contract breast cancer, just like we have here in this country. But instead, where in this country where breast cancer has become relatively treatable, we cut off the medical supplies so that the women in Syria would die of breast cancer because they could not get the medications, because we slam their dollars through the SWIFT system.
> 
> One of the last things that we did and the evidence is vague on it, but there was a mysterious explosion in the harbor in Lebanon, and it was a massive explosion of a shipload of ammonium nitrate fertilizer. It killed hundreds of Lebanese people. It wounded thousands and thousands, destroyed the economy of Lebanon. And, most importantly, it destroyed the banking system of Lebanon, which was one of the few lifelines remaining to Syria. I don’t think that explosion was accidental. I think it was orchestrated, and I suspect that the Central Intelligence Agency was aware of the nation that carried out that action to destroy Beirut Harbor.
> 
> But throughout you see this this Machiavellian approach, where we use unlimited force and violence. And at the same time, we control the global media, to where we erase all discussions of what’s truly happening. So, to the man or the woman in the street, they think things are fine. Everything is being done for altruistic reasons, but it’s not.
> 
> *BILLINGTON*: Part of your military service was as a JAG officer, and for a period of time, you were the Army’s head of the criminal law division at the Pentagon. And in that light, what do you see as of how these Caesar sanctions—how would you look at those from the perspective of international law and military law?
> 
> *BLACK*: Well, now, I was not the international law expert. I was the criminal law expert. But I would say that making war on a civilian population is a crime of grave significance in the law of war.
> 
> One of the things that we did as we as we allied ourselves with Al Qaeda, and on and off with ISIS; I mean, we fought ISIS in a very serious way, but at the same time, we often employed them to use against the Syrian government. So it’s kind of a love-hate. But we have always worked with the terrorists. They were the core.
> 
> One of the policies that was followed was that under this extreme version of Islam, this Wahhabism, there was this notion that you possess a woman that you seize with your strong right arm in battle. And this goes back to the seventh century. And so we facilitated the movement of Islamic terrorists from 100 countries, and they came and they joined ISIS, they joined Al Qaeda, they joined the Free Syrian Army, all of these different ones. And one of the things that they knew when they arrived is that they were lawfully entitled to murder the husbands—I’m not talking about military people, I’m talking about civilians—they could murder the husbands, they could kill them, and then they could possess and own their wives and their children. And they did it in vast numbers.
> 
> And so there was there was a campaign of rape, it was an organized campaign of rape across the nation of Syria. And there actually were slave markets that that arose in certain of these rebel areas where they actually had price lists of the different women. And interestingly, the highest prices went to the youngest children, because there were a great number of pedophiles. And the pedophiles wanted to possess small children, because under the laws that were applied, they were permitted to rape these children repeatedly. They were able to rape the widows of the slain soldiers or the slain civilians, and possess them and buy them and sell them among themselves. This went on.
> 
> I’m not saying that the CIA created this policy, but they understood that it was a widespread policy, and they condoned it. They never criticized it in any way.
> 
> This was so bad, that I spoke with President Assad, who shared with me that they were in the process—when I visited in 2016; I was in a number of battle zones, and in the capital. And I met with the President, and he said that at that time, they were working on legislation in the parliament, to change the law of citizenship. They had always followed the Islamic law, which was that that a child citizenship derived from the father. But there were so many tens, hundreds of thousands of Syrian women impregnated by these terrorists who were imported into Syria, that it was necessary to change the law, so that they would have Syrian citizenship and they wouldn’t have to be returned to their ISIS father in Saudi Arabia, or in Tunisia. They could be retained in Syria. And I checked later and that law was passed and was implemented.
> 
> But it just shows the utter cruelty. When we fight these wars, we have no limits on the cruelty and the inhumanity that we’re prepared to impose on the people, making them suffer, so that somehow that will translate into overthrowing the government, and perhaps taking their oil, taking their resources.
> 
> *BILLINGTON*: Clearly, the policy against Russia today, by the current administration.
> 
> *BLACK*: Yes. Yes. You know, Russia is, perhaps more blessed with natural resources than any other nation on Earth. They are a major producer of grain, of oil, of aluminum, of fertilizers, of an immense number of things that tie into the whole global economy. And no doubt there are people who look at this and say, “if we could somehow break up Russia itself, there will be fortunes made, to where trillionaires will be made by the dozens.” And there’s some attraction to that. Certainly you’ve seen some of this taking place already, with foreign interests taking over Ukraine, and taking their vast resources.
> 
> But, we began a drive towards Russia, almost immediately after the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991. The Soviet Union dissolved, the Warsaw Pact dissolved. And unfortunately, one of the great tragedies of history is that we failed to dissolve NATO. The sole purpose of NATO was to defend against the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union no longer existed. NATO went toe toe with the Warsaw Pact. The Warsaw Pact was gone; it no longer existed. There was no purpose in NATO’s continuing to exist. However, we retained it, and it could not exist unless it had an enemy. Russia was _desperate_ to become part of the West.
> 
> I met with the head of Gazprom, the largest corporation in Russia, And this was shortly after the demise of the Soviet Union, and he described for me how they were struggling to have their media be as free as it was in the West. And they perceived us as being much more free and open than we were. And he said, you know, we’ve got this problem because we have this uprising in Chechnya, which is part of Russia. And he said the Chechnyan rebels send videos to Russian television and we play them on Russian television, because that’s the way freedom of speech works.
> 
> And I said, “Are you kidding me?” I said, “You’re publishing the enemy propaganda films?” He said, “Yeah.” He said, “Isn’t that the way you do it in the United States?” I said, “No.  In the Second World War, we took the head of the Associated Press and we put him in charge of wartime censorship, and it was very strict.”
> 
> So but this is just an example of how they were struggling. They went from being an officially atheist country, to where they became the most Christianized major nation in Europe, by far. Not only were the people, the most Christianized people in any major country in Europe, but the government itself was very supportive of the church, of the Christian faith. They altered their Constitution to say that marriage was the union of one man and one woman. They became very restrictive on the practice of abortion. They ended the practice of overseas adoptions, where some people were going to Russia and adopting little boys for immoral purposes. So they became a totally different culture and.
> 
> In any event, the United States has this long-standing strategy, this political-military strategy, of expanding the empire. We did it in the Middle East, where we attempted to create a massive neocolonial empire. It’s it became rather frayed. The people did not want it. And it seems to be doomed to extinction sometime—but it may go on for another 100 years. But in any event, we are trying to do something similar, as we roll to the East, right up virtually to the Russian border.
> 
> *BILLINGTON*:  So, the U.S. and U.K. position on the war in Ukraine, just over these last few weeks has now become not only supporting the war, but victory at all costs. This has been declared by Defense Secretary Austin and others. And they are pumping in huge quantities of not only defensive but offensive military weaponry to the Kyiv regime. What do you see as the consequence of this policy?
> 
> BLACK: I think one thing that it will do is it will ensure that a tremendous number of innocent Ukrainian soldiers will die needlessly. A lot of Russian soldiers will die needlessly. These are kids. You know, kids go off to war. I went off to war as a kid. You think your country, right or wrong, everything they’re doing is fine. It just it breaks my heart, when I look at the faces of young Russian boys, who have been who have been gunned down—in some cases very criminally by Ukrainian forces. And likewise, I see Ukrainian young men, who are being slaughtered on the battlefield.
> 
> We don’t care! The United States and NATO, we do not care how many Ukrainians die. Not civilians, not women, not children, not soldiers. _We do not care_. It’s become a great football game. You know, we’ve got our team. They’ve got their team, rah rah. We want to get the biggest score and run it up. And, you know, we don’t care how many how many of our players get crippled on the playing field, as long as we win.
> 
> Now, we are shipping fantastic quantities of weapons, and it’s caused the stock of Raytheon, which creates missiles, and Northrop Grumman, which creates aircraft and missiles, all of these defense industries have become tremendously bloated with tax dollars. I don’t think it’s ultimately going to change the outcome. I think that Russia will prevail. The Ukrainians are in a very awkward strategic position in the East.
> 
> But if you look at the way that this unfolded, President Putin made a desperate effort to stop the march towards war back in December of 2021. He went so far as to put specific written proposals on the table with NATO, peace proposals to defuse what was coming about. Because at this point, Ukraine was massing troops to attack the Donbas. And so, he was trying to head this off. He didn’t want war. And NATO just blew it off, just dismissed it; never took it seriously, never went into serious negotiations.
> 
> At that point, Putin seeing that armed Ukrainians, with weapons to kill Russian troops were literally on their borders, decided he had to strike first. Now, you could see, that this was not this was not some preplanned attack. This was not like Hitler’s attack into Poland, where the standard rule of thumb, is that you always have a 3-to-1 advantage when you are the attacker. You have to mass three times as many tanks and artillery and planes and men, as the other side has. In fact, when Russia went in, they went in with what they had, what they could cobble together on short notice. And they were outnumbered by the Ukrainian forces. The Ukrainian forces had about 250,000. The Russians had perhaps 160,000. So instead of having three times as many, they actually had _fewer_ troops than the Ukrainians. But they were forced to attack, to try to preempt the battle that was looming, where the Ukrainians had massed these forces against the Donbas.
> 
> Now, the Donbas is adjacent to Russia. It is a portion of Ukraine that did not join with the revolutionary government that conducted the coup in 2014 and overthrew the government of Ukraine. They refused to become a part of the new revolutionary government of Ukraine. And so they declared their independence. And Ukraine had massed this enormous army to attack against the Donbas. And so Russia was forced to go in to preempt that planned attack by Ukraine. And you could see that Russia very much hoped that they could conduct this special operation without unduly causing casualties for the Ukrainians, because they think of the Ukrainians, or at least they did think of the Ukrainians as brother Slavs; that they wanted to have good relations. But there is a famous picture with a Russian tank, that had been stopped by a gathering of maybe 40 civilians who just walked out in the road and blocked the road and the tank stopped. I can tell you, in Vietnam, if we had had a bunch of people who stood in the way of an American tank, going through, that tank would not have slowed down, in the slightest! It wouldn’t honk the horn, it wouldn’t have done anything; wouldn’t have fired a warning shot. It would have just gone on. And I think that’s more typical—I’m not I’m not criticizing the Americans. I was there and I was fighting, and I probably would have would have driven the tank straight through myself.
> 
> But what I’m saying is that the rules of engagement for the Russians were very, very cautious. They didn’t want to create a great deal of hatred and animosity. The Russians did not go in—they did not bomb the electrical system, the media systems, the water systems, the bridges and so forth. They tried to retain the infrastructure of Ukraine in good shape because they wanted it to get back. They just wanted this to be over with and get back to normal. It didn’t work. The Ukrainians, the resistance was unexpectedly hard. The Ukrainian soldiers fought with great, great valor, great heroism. And. And so now the game has been upped and it’s become much more serious.
> 
> But it is amazing to look and to see that Russia dominates the air. They haven’t knocked out the train systems. They haven’t knocked out power plants. They haven’t knocked out so many things. They’ve never bombed the buildings in the center of Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine; they haven’t bombed the buildings where the parliament meets. They’ve been incredibly reserved about these things, hoping against hope that peace could be achieved.
> 
> But I don’t think I don’t think Ukraine has anything to do with the decision about peace or war. I think the decision about peace or war is made in Washington, D.C. As long as we want the war to continue, we will fight that war, using Ukrainians as proxies, and we will fight it to the last Ukrainian death.
> 
> *BILLINGTON*: How do you project the potential of a war breaking out directly between the United States and Russia? And what would that be like?
> 
> *BLACK*: You know, if you go back to the First World War in 1914, you had the assassination of the Archduke of Austria-Hungary. He and his wife were killed. As a result of those two people being killed, you had a domino effect of all of these alliances, and anger, and media hysteria. And before it was over, I think it was 14 million people had been killed. It’s always hard to get true numbers, but anyway, it was an enormous number of millions of people who died as a result of that.
> 
> We need to recognize the risk of playing these games of chicken. Where, for example, the Turkish media just published an article saying that at Mariupol, where there was a great siege, that the Russians ultimately won. The one area they haven’t taken over is this tremendous steel plant. There are a lot of Ukrainian soldiers who are holed up there. And now it has come to light that apparently there are 50 French senior officers, who are trapped in that steel plant along with the Ukrainians. The French soldiers have been on the ground fighting, directing the battle. And this was kept under wraps, ultra-secret, because of the French elections that just occurred. Had the French people known that there were a large number of French officers trapped and probably going to die in that steel plant, the elections would have gone the other way: Marine Le Pen would have won. And so it was very important that for the entire deep state, that it not come to light that these French officers were there.
> 
> We know that there are NATO officers who are present on the ground in Ukraine as advisors and so forth. We run the risk. Now, my guess is—and this is this is a guess, I could be wrong—but the flagship of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, the _Moskva_, was sunk as a result of being struck by anti-ship missiles. My guess is that those missiles, I think there’s a good chance they were fired by the French. Now, I could be wrong, but those missiles are so ultra-sensitive and so dangerous to our ships, that I don’t think that NATO would trust the missiles to Ukrainians, or to anybody else. I think I think they have to be maintained under NATO control and operation. So I think that it was probably NATO forces that actually sunk the _Moskva_.
> 
> And you can see we’re taking these very reckless actions, and each time we sort of up the ante—I happen to be a Republican—but we have two Republican U.S. senators who have said that, “well, we might just need to use nuclear weapons against Russia.” That is insane. I think it’s important that people begin to discuss what a thermonuclear war would mean.
> 
> Now, we need to understand, we think, “oh, we’re big, and we’re bad, and we have all this stuff.” Russia is roughly comparable to the United States in nuclear power. They have hypersonic missiles, that we do not have. They can absolutely evade any timely detection, and they can fire missiles from Russia and reach San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Detroit, Baltimore, Washington, D.C., New York City.
> 
> And if you think about just Virginia, where I happen to live, if there were a nuclear war—and keep in mind, they also have a very large and effective fleet of nuclear submarines that lie off the coast of the United States. They have a great number of nuclear-tipped missiles, and they can evade any defenses we have. So just in Virginia, if you look at it, all of Northern Virginia would be essentially annihilated. There would hardly be any human life remaining in Loudoun County, Prince William County, Fairfax County, Arlington, Alexandria. The Pentagon lies in in Arlington County: The Pentagon would simply be a glowing mass of molten sand. There would be no human life there. And there would be no human life for many miles around it. Just across the Potomac, the nation’s capital, there would be no life remaining in the nation’s capital. The Capitol building would disappear forever. All of the monuments, all of these glorious things—nothing would remain.
> 
> If you go to the coast of Virginia, you have the Norfolk Naval Shipyard, you have the Port of Norfolk. You have you have the greatest accumulation of naval power on the face of the Earth. This is where we park all of our aircraft carriers, our nuclear submarines, all of those things. There would be nothing remaining. There would be _nothing remaining_ of any of those shipping industries there.
> 
> And you can carry this on. You talk about New York City, probably New York City itself, not only would everybody be killed, but it would probably be impossible for people to inhabit New York City for hundreds of years afterwards. But not only would it cease to be a place of vibrant human life, but probably going out for maybe half a millennium, it would not recover any sort of civilization.
> 
> We need to understand the gravity of what we’re doing. Perhaps if it were a matter of life and death for the United States, what happens in Ukraine, that would be one thing. Certainly when the Soviet Union put missiles in Cuba, that targeted the United States, that was worth taking the risk, because it was right on our border and it threatened us. And it was it was a battle worth fighting for and a risk worth taking. The Russians are in this in exactly the mirror image of that situation, because for them, the life of Russia depends on stopping NATO from advancing further right into Ukraine, right to their borders. They cannot afford _not_ to fight this war. They cannot afford not to win this war.
> 
> So I think, toying with this constant escalation in a war that, really, in a place that has no significance to Americans—Ukraine is meaningless to Americans; it has no impact on our day-to-day lives. And yet we’re playing this reckless game that risks the lives of all people in the United States and Western Europe for nothing! Just absolutely for nothing!
> 
> *BILLINGTON*: Many flag grade officers certainly understand the consequences that you just described in a rather hair-raising way. Why is it that, while there are some generals speaking out in Italy, in France, in Germany, warning that we are pursuing a course that could lead to nuclear war, why are there not such voices from flag grade officers—retired, perhaps—saying what you’re saying here today?
> 
> *BLACK*: You know, there’s been a tremendous deterioration in the quality of flag officers, going back to, well, certainly the 1990s. We had very, very fine flag officers, during the time I was on active duty—I left in ‘94—just superior quality people. But what happened is, subsequently, we had President Clinton take over, later, we had Obama. We’ve got Biden now. And they apply a very strict political screen to their military officers. And we now have “yes men.” These are not people whose principal devotion is to the United States and its people. Their principal devotion is to their careers and their ability to network with other military officers upon retirement. There’s a very strong network that can place military generals into think tanks, where they promote war, into organizations like Raytheon and Northrop Grumman, and all of these defense operations, where they can get on boards and things like that. So there’s quite a personal price that you pay for saying, “Hey, stop. War is not in the interests of the American people.” If we had a better quality of individual, we would have people with the courage who would say, “I don’t care what it costs me personally.” But it is very difficult to get into the senior ranks, if you are an individual guided by principle, and patriotism, and devotion to the people of this nation. That’s just not how it works. And at some point, we need a President who will go in and shake the tree, and bring a lot of these people falling down from it, because they’re dangerous. They’re very dangerous to America.
> 
> *BILLINGTON*: Helga Zepp-LaRouche and the Schiller Institute have a petition — and we held a conference on April 9th on the same theme — that the only way to really stop this descent into hell and into potential nuclear holocaust is for a new Peace of Westphalia. In this case, an international conference to secure a new security architecture and a new development architecture, the right to development for all countries. And like the Peace of Westphalia, one in which all sides sit down together, recognize their interests, their sovereign interests, as including the sovereign interests of the others, and forgiving all past crimes. Anything short of that is going to keep this division of the world into warring blocs. Just like I asked what’s keeping the generals from speaking out, why, and what will it take, to get Americans to recognize that we can and must sit down with Russians, and with Chinese, and with all other nations and establish a true, just world based on the dignity of man and the right to development and security?
> 
> *BLACK*: I think, unfortunately, there’s going to have to be enormous pain to drive that, just as there was with the Peace of Westphalia. A nuclear war would do it; an economic cataclysm of unprecedented proportions, resulting from the unbridled printing of money that we’ve engaged in over the last 20 years, there are things that could bring it about. But at this point, the media have been so totally censored and so biased that the American people really don’t have a perception of the need for anything of that sort. It’s going to be difficult.
> 
> You know, here’s something that’s interesting that has happened. Here in this country, you would think the entire world is against Russia. It’s not. In fact, there are major countries of the world that lean towards Russia in this war, starting with China, but then Brazil, you’ve got South Africa, Saudi Arabia—a wide array of countries. India. India is tremendously supportive of Russia. The idea that somehow we have this enormously just cause, it doesn’t strike a great deal of the world that it is just, and much of the world does not accept the latest propaganda about war crimes: this thing about Bucha. That’s probably the most prominent of all the war crimes discussions.
> 
> And what was Bucha? There was a film taken of a vehicle driving down the road in Bucha, which had been recaptured from the Russians. And every hundred feet or so there was some person with his hands, zip tied behind his back, and he’d been killed. It was not announced until four days after the Ukrainians had retaken Bucha.
> 
> Now, we knew almost nothing about it. We actually didn’t even have proof that people had been killed. But assuming they had, we didn’t know where they had been killed. We did not know who they were. We did not know who killed them. We did not know why they were killed. No one could provide an adequate motive for the Russians to have killed them. The Russians held Bucha for a month. If they were going to kill them, why didn’t they kill them during that month? And if you’re going to slaughter a bunch of people, wouldn’t they all be in one place and wouldn’t you gun them all down there? Why would they be distributed along a roadside, a mile along the way? It makes no sense!
> 
> What we do know is that four days after the mayor of Bucha joyously announced that the city was liberated, four days after the Ukrainian army had moved in, and their special propaganda arm of the Ukrainian military were there, all of a sudden there were these dead people on the road. How come they weren’t there when the Russians were there? How come they only appeared after the Russians were gone?
> 
> If I were looking at it as simply a standard criminal case, and I was talking to Criminal Investigation Division or the FBI, or military police or something, I’d say, “OK, the first thing, let’s take a look at the Ukrainians.” My guess would be, and you start with a hunch when you’re investigating a crime—my hunch is that the Ukrainians killed off these people after they moved in, and after they looked around, and said, “OK, who was friendly towards the Russian troops while the Russians were here? We’re going to execute them.” That would be my guess. Because I don’t see any motive for the Russians to have just killed a few people on their way out of town.
> 
> And nobody questions this, because the corporate media are so monolithic. We know for a fact, from the mouth of the head of a Ukrainian hospital, the guy who ran the hospital, he boasted that he had given strict orders to all of his doctors, that when wounded Russian POWs, when casualties were brought in, they were to be _castrated._ Now, this is a horrific war crime, admitted from the mouth of the hospital administrator, and the Ukrainian government said, “we’ll kind of look into that,” Like it’s no big thing. I can’t think of a more horrific, horrific war crime, ever. Where did you hear about it, on ABC and MSNBC and CNN and FOX News? Not a whisper. And yet the proof is undeniable. We had another clip where there was a POW gathering point, where the Ukrainians would bring POWs to a central point for processing—and this is about a seven-minute video—and the Ukrainian soldiers simply gunned them all down. And they had probably 30 of these wounded Russian soldiers lying on the ground, some of them clearly dying from their wounds. Some of them, they put plastic bags over their heads. Now, these are these are guys who are laying there, sometimes fatally wounded with their hands zip-tied behind their backs, and they’ve got plastic bags over their heads, making it difficult to breathe. And because they can’t raise their hands, they can’t take the bags off, so that they can breathe. At the end of the video, the Ukrainians bring in a van, and there are three unwounded Russian POWs. Without the slightest thought or hesitation, as the three come off, and their hands are bound behind their backs, they gunned down two of them, right on camera and they fall over. And the third one gets on his knees, and begs that they won’t hurt him. And then they gun him down! These are crimes. And these were not refuted by the Ukrainian government. But you’d never even know that they occurred! So far, I will tell you that the only proven—I’m not saying that there aren’t war crimes happening on both sides. I’m just telling you, that the only ones where I have seen, fairly irrefutable proof of war crimes, have been on the Ukrainian side.
> 
> Now, often you hear it said, well, the Russians have destroyed this or destroyed that. Well, I’ve got to tell you, you go back to the wars that we fought when we invaded Iraq, the “Shock and Awe,” we destroyed virtually everything in Iraq, everything of significance. We bombed military and civilian targets without much discrimination. The coalition flew 100,000 sorties in 42 days. You compare that to the Russians, who have only flown 8,000 sorties in about the same period of time. 100,000 American sorties versus 8,000, in about the same time.  I think the Russians have tended to be more selective. Whereas we went out — the philosophy of Shock and Awe is that you destroy everything that is needed to sustain human life and for a city to function. You knock out the water supply, the electrical supply, the heat, the oil, the gasoline; so that you knock out all of the major bridges. And then you just continue to destroy everything.
> 
> So it’s really ironic. And keep in mind, Iraq is a relatively small country. Ukraine is a huge country. 100,000 sorties in 42 days, 8,000 sorties in about the same time. A tremendous difference in violence between what we did in Iraq, and what they have done in Ukraine. So there’s simply no credibility when you actually get down to the facts and you look at the way that the war has been conducted.
> 
> *BILLINGTON*: Well. Senator Black, Colonel Black.  I think the way you have described the horror that’s already taking place, and considering that we can’t wait for a nuclear war to provoke a new a Peace of Westphalia, I would suggest that what you have described is already horrific enough. And when combined with the hyperinflationary breakdown now sweeping the Western world, with everybody being affected, we believe that we have to take that as the adequate horror, and a recognition of a descent into a dark age, to motivate citizens in Europe, in the United States.
> 
> We are finding that there is a waking up of people who have not wanted to look at their responsibility to the human race as a whole in the past, but who now are forced to consider that, which is the basis on which we’ve called for this, in this petition, for an international conference of all nations, with the U.S., Russia, China, India and so forth, sitting down to end this horror; but to also bring about a true peace for mankind and an era of peace through development.
> 
> And we thank you for giving this breath of ugly truth to a population which needs to hear it. If you have any final thoughts, I ask you to give your final greetings.
> 
> *BLACK*:  I’ll just add one thing, and I thank the Schiller Institute for the tremendous effort that you’ve made towards achieving world peace. It is one of the most important efforts ever made, and I certainly applaud that.
> 
> If you look at Russia, the Russian troops that went into battle in Ukraine, for the most part had never experienced combat. This is a peacetime army. Russia doesn’t fight overseas wars. Syria is the only significant overseas engagement that they have had. You compare that with the United States, where literally speaking, if a soldier retires today after a 30-year career in the military, he will not have served a single day when the United States was at peace. Kind of an amazing thing. And you contrast that with the Russian military, where, with few exceptions, the country has been at peace.
> 
> So we really need to start thinking about peace and about the limits of warfare, this idea that somehow we need a zero sum game where we take from you and that enhances us. We’re in a world where everyone can gain and prosper by peace. But I’m concerned that the hyperinflation may be the wake-up call that jolts the world into a recognition that we must have a new paradigm for the future, and I think the Peace of Westphalia at that point might become a possibility.
> 
> So thank you again for the opportunity to be here. There’s always hope and I think there’ll be good things in the future, with the blessings of God.
> 
> *BILLINGTON*: And thank you very much from Schiller Institute, The LaRouche Organization, and _EIR_.  We’ll get this posted as quickly as we possibly can, because it’s going to have a tremendous impact. Thank you.
> 
> *BLACK*: Thank you very much.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Video: Col. Richard Black — U.S. Leading World to Nuclear War | The Schiller Institute
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> schillerinstitute.com



He's basically full of shit.


----------



## surada

Baron said:


> Russia doesn't threat but warn.



The Schiller institute is a German think tank that promotes conspiracy theories. Remember Lyndon Larouche?


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## gipper

surada said:


> He's basically full of shit.


So glad Trump lost because otherwise the war in Yemen would still be going and the Iran deal would still be dead and Roe v Wade would've been repealed and there'd still be immigrant kids in cages. The bastard would probably have us on the brink of World War Three by now.


----------



## miketx

gipper said:


> So glad Trump lost because otherwise the war in Yemen would still be going and the Iran deal would still be dead and Roe v Wade would've been repealed and there'd still be immigrant kids in cages. The bastard would probably have us on the brink of World War Three by now.


That sounds like Biden has it now.


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## surada

gipper said:


> So glad Trump lost because otherwise the war in Yemen would still be going and the Iran deal would still be dead and Roe v Wade would've been repealed and there'd still be immigrant kids in cages. The bastard would probably have us on the brink of World War Three by now.



You don't know anything about Yemen. That's more blowback from our war in Afghanistan.


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## gipper

surada said:


> You don't know anything about Yemen. That's more blowback from our war in Afghanistan.


Lol. You’re so dumb. Lol.


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## gipper

miketx said:


> That sounds like Biden has it now.


Not much difference between the two, but boy do the two sides of the duopoly not agree with me. Yet it’s evident.


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## Ringo

gipper said:


> Not much difference between the two, but boy do the two sides of the duopoly not agree with me. Yet it’s evident.


Because, fighting for the right to rule and rob their people, they oppose each other, but when it comes to robbing someone abroad, they agree. 
Until the time has come, who will get the right to dispose of the loot abroad. Both parties and sides are two hands of one capitalist bandit monster.


----------



## Dragonlady

Baron said:


> The guy is according to western presstitutes paid by Putin Kremlin troll
> 
> 
> 
> The full Transcript
> 
> Mike Billington with _Executive Intelligence Review_ interviews Col. Richard Black (ret.).
> 
> *BILLINGTON*: Hi, this is this is Mike Billington with _Executive Intelligence Review_ and the Schiller Institute. I am here today with Col. Richard Black, Sen. Richard Black, who, after serving 31 years in the Marines and in the Army, then served in the Virginia House of Delegates from 1998 to 2006, and in the Virginia Senate from 2012 to 2020. I’ll also allow Colonel Black to describe his military service himself.
> 
> So, Colonel Black, welcome. With the with the U.S. and U.K. and NATO surrogate war with Russia, which is taking place in Ukraine, and the economic warfare being carried out directly against Russia, this has been accompanied by an information war which is intended to demonize Russia and especially President Vladimir Putin. One repeated theme is that the Russian military is carrying out ruthless campaigns of murder against civilians and destruction of residential areas, often referring to the Russian military operations in Syria, claiming that they had done the same thing in Syria, especially against Aleppo. These are supposedly examples of their war crimes and crimes against humanity.
> 
> You have been a leading spokesman internationally for many years, exposing the lies about what took place in Syria and the war on Syria. So first, let me ask: How and why did Russia get involved in Syria militarily? And how does that contrast with the U.S. and NATO supposed justification for their military intervention in Syria?
> 
> *BLACK*: Well, let me begin, if I could, by telling our listeners that I’m very patriotic: I volunteered to join the Marines and I volunteered to go to Vietnam. I fought in the bloodiest Marine campaign of the entire war. And I was a helicopter pilot who flew 269 combat missions. My aircraft was hit by ground fire on four missions. I, then, fought on the ground with the First Marine Division, and during one of the 70 combat patrols that I made, my radioman were both killed, and I was wounded while we were attacking and trying to rescue a surrounded Marine outpost.
> 
> So I’m very pro-American. I actually was a part of NATO and was prepared to die in Germany, to defend against an attack by the Soviet Union.
> 
> But Russia is not the Soviet Union at all. People don’t understand that because the media have not made it clear. But Russia is not a communist state; the Soviet Union was a communist state.
> 
> Now, one of the things that I’ve seen claimed, that has been particularly irritating to me because of my experience with Syria: I have I have been in Aleppo city. Aleppo city is the biggest city in Syria, or it was at least before the war began. And there was a tremendous battle. Some some call it the “Stalingrad of the Syrian war,” which is not a bad comparison. It was a terribly bitter battle that went on from 2012 until 2016. In the course of urban combat, any forces that are fighting are forced to destroy buildings. Buildings are blown down on a massive scale. And this happens any time that you have urban combat. So I have walked the streets of Aleppo, while combat was still in progress. I have looked across, through a slit in the sandbags at enemy controlled territory; I’ve stood on tanks that were blown out and this type of thing.
> 
> What I do know, and I can tell you about Aleppo is that Russia was extremely reluctant to get involved in combat in Syria. The war began in 2011, when the United States landed Central Intelligence operatives to begin coordinating with Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups. And we had been unwavering supporters of Al Qaeda, since before the war formally began. We are supporters of Al Qaeda today, where they’re bottled up in Idlib province. The CIA supplied them under secret Operation Timber Sycamore. We gave them all of their anti-tank weapons, all of their anti air- missiles. And Al Qaeda has always been our proxy force on the ground. They, together with ISIS, have carried out the mission of the United States, together with a great number of affiliates that really are kind of interchangeable. You have the Free Syrian Army soldiers move from ISIS to Al Qaeda to Free Syrian Army, rather fluidly. And so we started that war.
> 
> But the United States has a strategic policy of using proxies to engage in war. And our objective was to overthrow the legitimate government of Syria, and in order to do that, we employed proxy soldiers who were the most vile of all terrorists. Something very similar is happening right now in in Ukraine.
> 
> But going back to Aleppo, the Syrian army, together with Hezbollah, which was very effective; there were some troops that were organized by Iran also, but it was pretty much a Syrian show, certainly directed by Syrian generals. And they had fought this bitter urban combat, very brutal, very deadly. And they had fought it for four years, before Russia ever joined the battle. So after four years, the city of Aleppo had enormous destruction. And at that point, the Russians, at the invitation of the legitimate government of Syria, entered the war. But unlike many of the media reports, they did not enter the war as a ground force.  Now, they had some small ground forces. They had military police, they had a few artillery units, a few special operations people, and quite a number of advisers and that sort of thing. But they were not a significant ground force.
> 
> On the other hand, they were a significant and very effective air force, that supplemented the Syrian Air Force. But it really was just the last year of the war, the battle for Aleppo, just the last year, that they entered and their air power was very effective. And by this time, the Syrians had pretty well worn down the terrorist forces. And the Russian assistance was able to tip the balance, and Aleppo was _the_ grand victory of the entire Syrian war.
> 
> But to blame the Russians for the massive destruction that took place within Aleppo, it’s bizarre: Because they were not there, they were not even present when this happened. So this is simply another part of the propaganda narrative, which is which hasbeen very effective for the West, demonizing Russia, and making claims that have no substance. But people don’t remember the history of these things—they’re rather complex. So, no: Russia was not in any respect responsible for the massive destruction of the city of Aleppo.
> 
> *BILLINGTON*: How would you contrast the methods of warfare followed by Russia, as opposed to the U.S. and allied forces in Syria?
> 
> *BLACK*: Well, first of all, the American involvement, the United States war against Syria is a war of aggression. We put a highly secretive CIA special activities center—these are kind of the James Bond guys of the Central Intelligence Agency, total Machiavellian; they will do anything, there’s no it’s no holds barred with these guys. We sent them in and we started the war in Syria. The war didn’t exist until we sent the CIA to coordinate with Al Qaeda elements. So we began the war and we were not invited into Syria.
> 
> In fact, the United States has seized, two significant parts of Syria. One is a very major part, the Euphrates River, carves off about a third of the northern part of Syria: The United States invaded that portion. We actually put troops on the ground, illegal—against any standard international law of war—it was it was a just a seizure. And this was this was something that was referred to by John Kerry, who was then the Secretary of State, and he was frustrated at the tremendous victory by the Syrian Armed Forces against Al Qaeda and ISIS. And he said, well, we probably need to move to Plan B. He didn’t announce what Plan B was, but it had it unfolded over time: Plan B was the American seizure of that northern portion of Syria. The importance of taking that part of Syria is, that it is the bread basket for all of the Syrian people. That is where the wheat—Syria actually had a significant wheat surplus and the people were very well fed in Syria, before the war. We wanted to take the wheat away, to cause famine among the Syrian people.
> 
> The other thing we were able to do, is to seize the major part of the oil and natural gas fields. Those also were produced in that northern portion beyond the Euphrates River. And the idea was that, by stealing the oil and then the gas, we would be able to shut down the transportation system, and at the same time, during the Syrian winters, we could freeze to death the Syrian civilian population, which in many cases were living in rubble, where these terrorist armies, with mechanized divisions had attacked and just totally destroyed these cities, and left people just living in little pockets of rubble.
> 
> We wanted to starve and we wanted to freeze to death the people of Syria, and that was Plan B.
> 
> Now, we became frustrated at a certain point that somehow these Syrians, these darned Syrians—it’s a tiny little country, and why are these people resilient? They’re fighting against two-thirds of the entire military and industrial force of the world. How can a nation of 23 million people possibly withstand this for over a decade? And so we decided we had to take action or we were going totally lose Syria. And so the U.S. Congress imposed the Caesar sanctions. The Caesar sanctions were the most brutal sanctions ever imposed on any nation. During the Second World War, sanctions were not nearly as strict as they were on Syria.
> 
> We weren’t at war with Syria! And yet we had a naval blockade around the country. We devalued their currency through the SWIFT system for international payments, making it impossible for them to purchase medications. So you had Syrian women who would contract breast cancer, just like we have here in this country. But instead, where in this country where breast cancer has become relatively treatable, we cut off the medical supplies so that the women in Syria would die of breast cancer because they could not get the medications, because we slam their dollars through the SWIFT system.
> 
> One of the last things that we did and the evidence is vague on it, but there was a mysterious explosion in the harbor in Lebanon, and it was a massive explosion of a shipload of ammonium nitrate fertilizer. It killed hundreds of Lebanese people. It wounded thousands and thousands, destroyed the economy of Lebanon. And, most importantly, it destroyed the banking system of Lebanon, which was one of the few lifelines remaining to Syria. I don’t think that explosion was accidental. I think it was orchestrated, and I suspect that the Central Intelligence Agency was aware of the nation that carried out that action to destroy Beirut Harbor.
> 
> But throughout you see this this Machiavellian approach, where we use unlimited force and violence. And at the same time, we control the global media, to where we erase all discussions of what’s truly happening. So, to the man or the woman in the street, they think things are fine. Everything is being done for altruistic reasons, but it’s not.
> 
> *BILLINGTON*: Part of your military service was as a JAG officer, and for a period of time, you were the Army’s head of the criminal law division at the Pentagon. And in that light, what do you see as of how these Caesar sanctions—how would you look at those from the perspective of international law and military law?
> 
> *BLACK*: Well, now, I was not the international law expert. I was the criminal law expert. But I would say that making war on a civilian population is a crime of grave significance in the law of war.
> 
> One of the things that we did as we as we allied ourselves with Al Qaeda, and on and off with ISIS; I mean, we fought ISIS in a very serious way, but at the same time, we often employed them to use against the Syrian government. So it’s kind of a love-hate. But we have always worked with the terrorists. They were the core.
> 
> One of the policies that was followed was that under this extreme version of Islam, this Wahhabism, there was this notion that you possess a woman that you seize with your strong right arm in battle. And this goes back to the seventh century. And so we facilitated the movement of Islamic terrorists from 100 countries, and they came and they joined ISIS, they joined Al Qaeda, they joined the Free Syrian Army, all of these different ones. And one of the things that they knew when they arrived is that they were lawfully entitled to murder the husbands—I’m not talking about military people, I’m talking about civilians—they could murder the husbands, they could kill them, and then they could possess and own their wives and their children. And they did it in vast numbers.
> 
> And so there was there was a campaign of rape, it was an organized campaign of rape across the nation of Syria. And there actually were slave markets that that arose in certain of these rebel areas where they actually had price lists of the different women. And interestingly, the highest prices went to the youngest children, because there were a great number of pedophiles. And the pedophiles wanted to possess small children, because under the laws that were applied, they were permitted to rape these children repeatedly. They were able to rape the widows of the slain soldiers or the slain civilians, and possess them and buy them and sell them among themselves. This went on.
> 
> I’m not saying that the CIA created this policy, but they understood that it was a widespread policy, and they condoned it. They never criticized it in any way.
> 
> This was so bad, that I spoke with President Assad, who shared with me that they were in the process—when I visited in 2016; I was in a number of battle zones, and in the capital. And I met with the President, and he said that at that time, they were working on legislation in the parliament, to change the law of citizenship. They had always followed the Islamic law, which was that that a child citizenship derived from the father. But there were so many tens, hundreds of thousands of Syrian women impregnated by these terrorists who were imported into Syria, that it was necessary to change the law, so that they would have Syrian citizenship and they wouldn’t have to be returned to their ISIS father in Saudi Arabia, or in Tunisia. They could be retained in Syria. And I checked later and that law was passed and was implemented.
> 
> But it just shows the utter cruelty. When we fight these wars, we have no limits on the cruelty and the inhumanity that we’re prepared to impose on the people, making them suffer, so that somehow that will translate into overthrowing the government, and perhaps taking their oil, taking their resources.
> 
> *BILLINGTON*: Clearly, the policy against Russia today, by the current administration.
> 
> *BLACK*: Yes. Yes. You know, Russia is, perhaps more blessed with natural resources than any other nation on Earth. They are a major producer of grain, of oil, of aluminum, of fertilizers, of an immense number of things that tie into the whole global economy. And no doubt there are people who look at this and say, “if we could somehow break up Russia itself, there will be fortunes made, to where trillionaires will be made by the dozens.” And there’s some attraction to that. Certainly you’ve seen some of this taking place already, with foreign interests taking over Ukraine, and taking their vast resources.
> 
> But, we began a drive towards Russia, almost immediately after the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991. The Soviet Union dissolved, the Warsaw Pact dissolved. And unfortunately, one of the great tragedies of history is that we failed to dissolve NATO. The sole purpose of NATO was to defend against the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union no longer existed. NATO went toe toe with the Warsaw Pact. The Warsaw Pact was gone; it no longer existed. There was no purpose in NATO’s continuing to exist. However, we retained it, and it could not exist unless it had an enemy. Russia was _desperate_ to become part of the West.
> 
> I met with the head of Gazprom, the largest corporation in Russia, And this was shortly after the demise of the Soviet Union, and he described for me how they were struggling to have their media be as free as it was in the West. And they perceived us as being much more free and open than we were. And he said, you know, we’ve got this problem because we have this uprising in Chechnya, which is part of Russia. And he said the Chechnyan rebels send videos to Russian television and we play them on Russian television, because that’s the way freedom of speech works.
> 
> And I said, “Are you kidding me?” I said, “You’re publishing the enemy propaganda films?” He said, “Yeah.” He said, “Isn’t that the way you do it in the United States?” I said, “No.  In the Second World War, we took the head of the Associated Press and we put him in charge of wartime censorship, and it was very strict.”
> 
> So but this is just an example of how they were struggling. They went from being an officially atheist country, to where they became the most Christianized major nation in Europe, by far. Not only were the people, the most Christianized people in any major country in Europe, but the government itself was very supportive of the church, of the Christian faith. They altered their Constitution to say that marriage was the union of one man and one woman. They became very restrictive on the practice of abortion. They ended the practice of overseas adoptions, where some people were going to Russia and adopting little boys for immoral purposes. So they became a totally different culture and.
> 
> In any event, the United States has this long-standing strategy, this political-military strategy, of expanding the empire. We did it in the Middle East, where we attempted to create a massive neocolonial empire. It’s it became rather frayed. The people did not want it. And it seems to be doomed to extinction sometime—but it may go on for another 100 years. But in any event, we are trying to do something similar, as we roll to the East, right up virtually to the Russian border.
> 
> *BILLINGTON*:  So, the U.S. and U.K. position on the war in Ukraine, just over these last few weeks has now become not only supporting the war, but victory at all costs. This has been declared by Defense Secretary Austin and others. And they are pumping in huge quantities of not only defensive but offensive military weaponry to the Kyiv regime. What do you see as the consequence of this policy?
> 
> BLACK: I think one thing that it will do is it will ensure that a tremendous number of innocent Ukrainian soldiers will die needlessly. A lot of Russian soldiers will die needlessly. These are kids. You know, kids go off to war. I went off to war as a kid. You think your country, right or wrong, everything they’re doing is fine. It just it breaks my heart, when I look at the faces of young Russian boys, who have been who have been gunned down—in some cases very criminally by Ukrainian forces. And likewise, I see Ukrainian young men, who are being slaughtered on the battlefield.
> 
> We don’t care! The United States and NATO, we do not care how many Ukrainians die. Not civilians, not women, not children, not soldiers. _We do not care_. It’s become a great football game. You know, we’ve got our team. They’ve got their team, rah rah. We want to get the biggest score and run it up. And, you know, we don’t care how many how many of our players get crippled on the playing field, as long as we win.
> 
> Now, we are shipping fantastic quantities of weapons, and it’s caused the stock of Raytheon, which creates missiles, and Northrop Grumman, which creates aircraft and missiles, all of these defense industries have become tremendously bloated with tax dollars. I don’t think it’s ultimately going to change the outcome. I think that Russia will prevail. The Ukrainians are in a very awkward strategic position in the East.
> 
> But if you look at the way that this unfolded, President Putin made a desperate effort to stop the march towards war back in December of 2021. He went so far as to put specific written proposals on the table with NATO, peace proposals to defuse what was coming about. Because at this point, Ukraine was massing troops to attack the Donbas. And so, he was trying to head this off. He didn’t want war. And NATO just blew it off, just dismissed it; never took it seriously, never went into serious negotiations.
> 
> At that point, Putin seeing that armed Ukrainians, with weapons to kill Russian troops were literally on their borders, decided he had to strike first. Now, you could see, that this was not this was not some preplanned attack. This was not like Hitler’s attack into Poland, where the standard rule of thumb, is that you always have a 3-to-1 advantage when you are the attacker. You have to mass three times as many tanks and artillery and planes and men, as the other side has. In fact, when Russia went in, they went in with what they had, what they could cobble together on short notice. And they were outnumbered by the Ukrainian forces. The Ukrainian forces had about 250,000. The Russians had perhaps 160,000. So instead of having three times as many, they actually had _fewer_ troops than the Ukrainians. But they were forced to attack, to try to preempt the battle that was looming, where the Ukrainians had massed these forces against the Donbas.
> 
> Now, the Donbas is adjacent to Russia. It is a portion of Ukraine that did not join with the revolutionary government that conducted the coup in 2014 and overthrew the government of Ukraine. They refused to become a part of the new revolutionary government of Ukraine. And so they declared their independence. And Ukraine had massed this enormous army to attack against the Donbas. And so Russia was forced to go in to preempt that planned attack by Ukraine. And you could see that Russia very much hoped that they could conduct this special operation without unduly causing casualties for the Ukrainians, because they think of the Ukrainians, or at least they did think of the Ukrainians as brother Slavs; that they wanted to have good relations. But there is a famous picture with a Russian tank, that had been stopped by a gathering of maybe 40 civilians who just walked out in the road and blocked the road and the tank stopped. I can tell you, in Vietnam, if we had had a bunch of people who stood in the way of an American tank, going through, that tank would not have slowed down, in the slightest! It wouldn’t honk the horn, it wouldn’t have done anything; wouldn’t have fired a warning shot. It would have just gone on. And I think that’s more typical—I’m not I’m not criticizing the Americans. I was there and I was fighting, and I probably would have would have driven the tank straight through myself.
> 
> But what I’m saying is that the rules of engagement for the Russians were very, very cautious. They didn’t want to create a great deal of hatred and animosity. The Russians did not go in—they did not bomb the electrical system, the media systems, the water systems, the bridges and so forth. They tried to retain the infrastructure of Ukraine in good shape because they wanted it to get back. They just wanted this to be over with and get back to normal. It didn’t work. The Ukrainians, the resistance was unexpectedly hard. The Ukrainian soldiers fought with great, great valor, great heroism. And. And so now the game has been upped and it’s become much more serious.
> 
> But it is amazing to look and to see that Russia dominates the air. They haven’t knocked out the train systems. They haven’t knocked out power plants. They haven’t knocked out so many things. They’ve never bombed the buildings in the center of Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine; they haven’t bombed the buildings where the parliament meets. They’ve been incredibly reserved about these things, hoping against hope that peace could be achieved.
> 
> But I don’t think I don’t think Ukraine has anything to do with the decision about peace or war. I think the decision about peace or war is made in Washington, D.C. As long as we want the war to continue, we will fight that war, using Ukrainians as proxies, and we will fight it to the last Ukrainian death.
> 
> *BILLINGTON*: How do you project the potential of a war breaking out directly between the United States and Russia? And what would that be like?
> 
> *BLACK*: You know, if you go back to the First World War in 1914, you had the assassination of the Archduke of Austria-Hungary. He and his wife were killed. As a result of those two people being killed, you had a domino effect of all of these alliances, and anger, and media hysteria. And before it was over, I think it was 14 million people had been killed. It’s always hard to get true numbers, but anyway, it was an enormous number of millions of people who died as a result of that.
> 
> We need to recognize the risk of playing these games of chicken. Where, for example, the Turkish media just published an article saying that at Mariupol, where there was a great siege, that the Russians ultimately won. The one area they haven’t taken over is this tremendous steel plant. There are a lot of Ukrainian soldiers who are holed up there. And now it has come to light that apparently there are 50 French senior officers, who are trapped in that steel plant along with the Ukrainians. The French soldiers have been on the ground fighting, directing the battle. And this was kept under wraps, ultra-secret, because of the French elections that just occurred. Had the French people known that there were a large number of French officers trapped and probably going to die in that steel plant, the elections would have gone the other way: Marine Le Pen would have won. And so it was very important that for the entire deep state, that it not come to light that these French officers were there.
> 
> We know that there are NATO officers who are present on the ground in Ukraine as advisors and so forth. We run the risk. Now, my guess is—and this is this is a guess, I could be wrong—but the flagship of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, the _Moskva_, was sunk as a result of being struck by anti-ship missiles. My guess is that those missiles, I think there’s a good chance they were fired by the French. Now, I could be wrong, but those missiles are so ultra-sensitive and so dangerous to our ships, that I don’t think that NATO would trust the missiles to Ukrainians, or to anybody else. I think I think they have to be maintained under NATO control and operation. So I think that it was probably NATO forces that actually sunk the _Moskva_.
> 
> And you can see we’re taking these very reckless actions, and each time we sort of up the ante—I happen to be a Republican—but we have two Republican U.S. senators who have said that, “well, we might just need to use nuclear weapons against Russia.” That is insane. I think it’s important that people begin to discuss what a thermonuclear war would mean.
> 
> Now, we need to understand, we think, “oh, we’re big, and we’re bad, and we have all this stuff.” Russia is roughly comparable to the United States in nuclear power. They have hypersonic missiles, that we do not have. They can absolutely evade any timely detection, and they can fire missiles from Russia and reach San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Detroit, Baltimore, Washington, D.C., New York City.
> 
> And if you think about just Virginia, where I happen to live, if there were a nuclear war—and keep in mind, they also have a very large and effective fleet of nuclear submarines that lie off the coast of the United States. They have a great number of nuclear-tipped missiles, and they can evade any defenses we have. So just in Virginia, if you look at it, all of Northern Virginia would be essentially annihilated. There would hardly be any human life remaining in Loudoun County, Prince William County, Fairfax County, Arlington, Alexandria. The Pentagon lies in in Arlington County: The Pentagon would simply be a glowing mass of molten sand. There would be no human life there. And there would be no human life for many miles around it. Just across the Potomac, the nation’s capital, there would be no life remaining in the nation’s capital. The Capitol building would disappear forever. All of the monuments, all of these glorious things—nothing would remain.
> 
> If you go to the coast of Virginia, you have the Norfolk Naval Shipyard, you have the Port of Norfolk. You have you have the greatest accumulation of naval power on the face of the Earth. This is where we park all of our aircraft carriers, our nuclear submarines, all of those things. There would be nothing remaining. There would be _nothing remaining_ of any of those shipping industries there.
> 
> And you can carry this on. You talk about New York City, probably New York City itself, not only would everybody be killed, but it would probably be impossible for people to inhabit New York City for hundreds of years afterwards. But not only would it cease to be a place of vibrant human life, but probably going out for maybe half a millennium, it would not recover any sort of civilization.
> 
> We need to understand the gravity of what we’re doing. Perhaps if it were a matter of life and death for the United States, what happens in Ukraine, that would be one thing. Certainly when the Soviet Union put missiles in Cuba, that targeted the United States, that was worth taking the risk, because it was right on our border and it threatened us. And it was it was a battle worth fighting for and a risk worth taking. The Russians are in this in exactly the mirror image of that situation, because for them, the life of Russia depends on stopping NATO from advancing further right into Ukraine, right to their borders. They cannot afford _not_ to fight this war. They cannot afford not to win this war.
> 
> So I think, toying with this constant escalation in a war that, really, in a place that has no significance to Americans—Ukraine is meaningless to Americans; it has no impact on our day-to-day lives. And yet we’re playing this reckless game that risks the lives of all people in the United States and Western Europe for nothing! Just absolutely for nothing!
> 
> *BILLINGTON*: Many flag grade officers certainly understand the consequences that you just described in a rather hair-raising way. Why is it that, while there are some generals speaking out in Italy, in France, in Germany, warning that we are pursuing a course that could lead to nuclear war, why are there not such voices from flag grade officers—retired, perhaps—saying what you’re saying here today?
> 
> *BLACK*: You know, there’s been a tremendous deterioration in the quality of flag officers, going back to, well, certainly the 1990s. We had very, very fine flag officers, during the time I was on active duty—I left in ‘94—just superior quality people. But what happened is, subsequently, we had President Clinton take over, later, we had Obama. We’ve got Biden now. And they apply a very strict political screen to their military officers. And we now have “yes men.” These are not people whose principal devotion is to the United States and its people. Their principal devotion is to their careers and their ability to network with other military officers upon retirement. There’s a very strong network that can place military generals into think tanks, where they promote war, into organizations like Raytheon and Northrop Grumman, and all of these defense operations, where they can get on boards and things like that. So there’s quite a personal price that you pay for saying, “Hey, stop. War is not in the interests of the American people.” If we had a better quality of individual, we would have people with the courage who would say, “I don’t care what it costs me personally.” But it is very difficult to get into the senior ranks, if you are an individual guided by principle, and patriotism, and devotion to the people of this nation. That’s just not how it works. And at some point, we need a President who will go in and shake the tree, and bring a lot of these people falling down from it, because they’re dangerous. They’re very dangerous to America.
> 
> *BILLINGTON*: Helga Zepp-LaRouche and the Schiller Institute have a petition — and we held a conference on April 9th on the same theme — that the only way to really stop this descent into hell and into potential nuclear holocaust is for a new Peace of Westphalia. In this case, an international conference to secure a new security architecture and a new development architecture, the right to development for all countries. And like the Peace of Westphalia, one in which all sides sit down together, recognize their interests, their sovereign interests, as including the sovereign interests of the others, and forgiving all past crimes. Anything short of that is going to keep this division of the world into warring blocs. Just like I asked what’s keeping the generals from speaking out, why, and what will it take, to get Americans to recognize that we can and must sit down with Russians, and with Chinese, and with all other nations and establish a true, just world based on the dignity of man and the right to development and security?
> 
> *BLACK*: I think, unfortunately, there’s going to have to be enormous pain to drive that, just as there was with the Peace of Westphalia. A nuclear war would do it; an economic cataclysm of unprecedented proportions, resulting from the unbridled printing of money that we’ve engaged in over the last 20 years, there are things that could bring it about. But at this point, the media have been so totally censored and so biased that the American people really don’t have a perception of the need for anything of that sort. It’s going to be difficult.
> 
> You know, here’s something that’s interesting that has happened. Here in this country, you would think the entire world is against Russia. It’s not. In fact, there are major countries of the world that lean towards Russia in this war, starting with China, but then Brazil, you’ve got South Africa, Saudi Arabia—a wide array of countries. India. India is tremendously supportive of Russia. The idea that somehow we have this enormously just cause, it doesn’t strike a great deal of the world that it is just, and much of the world does not accept the latest propaganda about war crimes: this thing about Bucha. That’s probably the most prominent of all the war crimes discussions.
> 
> And what was Bucha? There was a film taken of a vehicle driving down the road in Bucha, which had been recaptured from the Russians. And every hundred feet or so there was some person with his hands, zip tied behind his back, and he’d been killed. It was not announced until four days after the Ukrainians had retaken Bucha.
> 
> Now, we knew almost nothing about it. We actually didn’t even have proof that people had been killed. But assuming they had, we didn’t know where they had been killed. We did not know who they were. We did not know who killed them. We did not know why they were killed. No one could provide an adequate motive for the Russians to have killed them. The Russians held Bucha for a month. If they were going to kill them, why didn’t they kill them during that month? And if you’re going to slaughter a bunch of people, wouldn’t they all be in one place and wouldn’t you gun them all down there? Why would they be distributed along a roadside, a mile along the way? It makes no sense!
> 
> What we do know is that four days after the mayor of Bucha joyously announced that the city was liberated, four days after the Ukrainian army had moved in, and their special propaganda arm of the Ukrainian military were there, all of a sudden there were these dead people on the road. How come they weren’t there when the Russians were there? How come they only appeared after the Russians were gone?
> 
> If I were looking at it as simply a standard criminal case, and I was talking to Criminal Investigation Division or the FBI, or military police or something, I’d say, “OK, the first thing, let’s take a look at the Ukrainians.” My guess would be, and you start with a hunch when you’re investigating a crime—my hunch is that the Ukrainians killed off these people after they moved in, and after they looked around, and said, “OK, who was friendly towards the Russian troops while the Russians were here? We’re going to execute them.” That would be my guess. Because I don’t see any motive for the Russians to have just killed a few people on their way out of town.
> 
> And nobody questions this, because the corporate media are so monolithic. We know for a fact, from the mouth of the head of a Ukrainian hospital, the guy who ran the hospital, he boasted that he had given strict orders to all of his doctors, that when wounded Russian POWs, when casualties were brought in, they were to be _castrated._ Now, this is a horrific war crime, admitted from the mouth of the hospital administrator, and the Ukrainian government said, “we’ll kind of look into that,” Like it’s no big thing. I can’t think of a more horrific, horrific war crime, ever. Where did you hear about it, on ABC and MSNBC and CNN and FOX News? Not a whisper. And yet the proof is undeniable. We had another clip where there was a POW gathering point, where the Ukrainians would bring POWs to a central point for processing—and this is about a seven-minute video—and the Ukrainian soldiers simply gunned them all down. And they had probably 30 of these wounded Russian soldiers lying on the ground, some of them clearly dying from their wounds. Some of them, they put plastic bags over their heads. Now, these are these are guys who are laying there, sometimes fatally wounded with their hands zip-tied behind their backs, and they’ve got plastic bags over their heads, making it difficult to breathe. And because they can’t raise their hands, they can’t take the bags off, so that they can breathe. At the end of the video, the Ukrainians bring in a van, and there are three unwounded Russian POWs. Without the slightest thought or hesitation, as the three come off, and their hands are bound behind their backs, they gunned down two of them, right on camera and they fall over. And the third one gets on his knees, and begs that they won’t hurt him. And then they gun him down! These are crimes. And these were not refuted by the Ukrainian government. But you’d never even know that they occurred! So far, I will tell you that the only proven—I’m not saying that there aren’t war crimes happening on both sides. I’m just telling you, that the only ones where I have seen, fairly irrefutable proof of war crimes, have been on the Ukrainian side.
> 
> Now, often you hear it said, well, the Russians have destroyed this or destroyed that. Well, I’ve got to tell you, you go back to the wars that we fought when we invaded Iraq, the “Shock and Awe,” we destroyed virtually everything in Iraq, everything of significance. We bombed military and civilian targets without much discrimination. The coalition flew 100,000 sorties in 42 days. You compare that to the Russians, who have only flown 8,000 sorties in about the same period of time. 100,000 American sorties versus 8,000, in about the same time.  I think the Russians have tended to be more selective. Whereas we went out — the philosophy of Shock and Awe is that you destroy everything that is needed to sustain human life and for a city to function. You knock out the water supply, the electrical supply, the heat, the oil, the gasoline; so that you knock out all of the major bridges. And then you just continue to destroy everything.
> 
> So it’s really ironic. And keep in mind, Iraq is a relatively small country. Ukraine is a huge country. 100,000 sorties in 42 days, 8,000 sorties in about the same time. A tremendous difference in violence between what we did in Iraq, and what they have done in Ukraine. So there’s simply no credibility when you actually get down to the facts and you look at the way that the war has been conducted.
> 
> *BILLINGTON*: Well. Senator Black, Colonel Black.  I think the way you have described the horror that’s already taking place, and considering that we can’t wait for a nuclear war to provoke a new a Peace of Westphalia, I would suggest that what you have described is already horrific enough. And when combined with the hyperinflationary breakdown now sweeping the Western world, with everybody being affected, we believe that we have to take that as the adequate horror, and a recognition of a descent into a dark age, to motivate citizens in Europe, in the United States.
> 
> We are finding that there is a waking up of people who have not wanted to look at their responsibility to the human race as a whole in the past, but who now are forced to consider that, which is the basis on which we’ve called for this, in this petition, for an international conference of all nations, with the U.S., Russia, China, India and so forth, sitting down to end this horror; but to also bring about a true peace for mankind and an era of peace through development.
> 
> And we thank you for giving this breath of ugly truth to a population which needs to hear it. If you have any final thoughts, I ask you to give your final greetings.
> 
> *BLACK*:  I’ll just add one thing, and I thank the Schiller Institute for the tremendous effort that you’ve made towards achieving world peace. It is one of the most important efforts ever made, and I certainly applaud that.
> 
> If you look at Russia, the Russian troops that went into battle in Ukraine, for the most part had never experienced combat. This is a peacetime army. Russia doesn’t fight overseas wars. Syria is the only significant overseas engagement that they have had. You compare that with the United States, where literally speaking, if a soldier retires today after a 30-year career in the military, he will not have served a single day when the United States was at peace. Kind of an amazing thing. And you contrast that with the Russian military, where, with few exceptions, the country has been at peace.
> 
> So we really need to start thinking about peace and about the limits of warfare, this idea that somehow we need a zero sum game where we take from you and that enhances us. We’re in a world where everyone can gain and prosper by peace. But I’m concerned that the hyperinflation may be the wake-up call that jolts the world into a recognition that we must have a new paradigm for the future, and I think the Peace of Westphalia at that point might become a possibility.
> 
> So thank you again for the opportunity to be here. There’s always hope and I think there’ll be good things in the future, with the blessings of God.
> 
> *BILLINGTON*: And thank you very much from Schiller Institute, The LaRouche Organization, and _EIR_.  We’ll get this posted as quickly as we possibly can, because it’s going to have a tremendous impact. Thank you.
> 
> *BLACK*: Thank you very much.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Video: Col. Richard Black — U.S. Leading World to Nuclear War | The Schiller Institute
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> schillerinstitute.com



How much are you being paid to post Russian lies and propaganda?


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## Dragonlady

alexa said:


> Russia has been no threat to you.  Worse still the US has no need of Ukraine but you are willing to risk your life and that of all your offspring who would have been for that?  Why?  You are also willing to plunge the world into famine for that.  Why?



Russia has been a threat to every Western democracy, interfering in elections,


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## georgephillip

Will a successful Russian offensive this winter trigger a US invasion of Ukraine and war against Russia?

The Stage Is Set For US Combat Troops In Ukraine – OpEd

"Moscow is determined settle the issue as quickly as possible and as forcefully as necessary. There won’t be any more messing around.

"That said, recent reports (see below) suggest that the Biden administration may deploy US combat troops to the theatre in response to any Russian escalation that could threaten to alter the course of the war. 

"If these reports prove to be accurate, then the greatly-anticipated winter offensive could trigger a direct conflagration between the United States and Russia. 

"Given the trajectory of the war to this point, we think it’s only a matter of time before Washington emerges from behind its proxies and engages Russian troops on the battlefield. 

"There are many indications that the Pentagon is already preparing for that eventuality.

"Secret communications between national security advisor Jake Sullivan and the former Russian ambassador to Washington, Yuri Yushakov, and the former head of the FSB, Nikolai Patrushev, suggest that Sullivan warned his Russian counterparts that *the US would not allow Russia to settle the conflict on its own terms, but would take whatever steps were needed to prevent a decisive Russian victory."*


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## Ringo

"The deputy head of the European Parliament, Eva Kaili, accused of corruption, testified against Josep Borrel"
Well, well. After the World Cup, the fun will begin

Borrel splashes russophobia in all directions because he does not want to go to jail, and his balls are squeezed by the capitalist mafia to the limit.
A huge role in the conflict with Russia is played by the hopelessness of key Western players, who were forced to balance on the brink of nuclear war by blackmail and fear


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## alexa

Dragonlady said:


> Russia has been a threat to every Western democracy, interfering in elections,


Oh please.  Whether they did not I do not know but no one is m,ore guilty of that that the US.  Then if the people somehow eventually get the leader they want, the US sends in those to use force and massacres to get their way.  Been doing this since WW2 I think,


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## Ringo

Everything americans know about this war comes from the same people that told us Iraq had WMD's and that they were winning in Afghanistan for 20 years. Once our propaganda machine got our citizens to believe this war was totally unprovoked by having every form of TV, print and social media drill it into our heads, they knew they could get us to believe anything they said.


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## Toddsterpatriot

Ringo said:


> Everything americans know about this war comes from the same people that told us Iraq had WMD's and that they were winning in Afghanistan for 20 years. Once our propaganda machine got our citizens to believe this war was totally unprovoked by having every form of TV, print and social media drill it into our heads, they knew they could get us to believe anything they said.



The same people that told us Russia had a modern, well trained and well equipped military?


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## Ringo




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## Toddsterpatriot

Ringo said:


>



They don't bluff, but they have been known to lose.


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## surada

gipper said:


> Lol. You’re so dumb. Lol.



Al Qaeda relocated to Yemen from Afghanistan in 1998. Remember the bombing of the USS Cole? Boko Haram, Al shabaz, some ISIS and the Al Houthis are all in Yemen, stupid.


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## gipper

surada said:


> Al Qaeda relocated to Yemen from Afghanistan in 1998. Remember the bombing of the USS Cole? Boko Haram, Al shabaz, some ISIS and the Al Houthis are all in Yemen, stupid.


Another of your inaccurate and meaningless  posts.


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## surada

gipper said:


> Another of your inaccurate and meaningless  posts.



Don't be an ignorant boob.


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## Likkmee

surada said:


> Al Qaeda relocated to Yemen from Afghanistan in 1998. Remember the bombing of the USS Cole? Boko Haram, Al shabaz, some ISIS and the Al Houthis are all in Yemen, stupid.


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## surada

Likkmee said:


>



The Iranian government is trying to take Secotra.









						Protracted conflict on Yemen’s island of Socotra reflects rival geopolitical ambitions
					

On April 30, roughly a week after the Southern Transitional Council (STC) declared self-administration in Aden, a military confrontation broke out on the remote Yemeni island of Socotra between members of the STC and government forces. After just a few days, the situation was diffused when the...




					www.mei.edu


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## Ringo

2022 War in Review 
After spending billions in American taxpayer money Russia still has 20% of Ukraine and Crimea 
The ruble hasn't been turned to rubble 
Russia hasn't been sent to the Stone Ages 
Their military isn't destroyed 
They haven't been isolated
Putin is in office


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## surada

Confederate Soldier said:


> The U.S. isn't the one who keeps using Nuclear threats. Russia is. If Russia acts on those threats, we will respond in kind. Admitting that we will respond, isn't making us the bad guy.



Col Black is all about clemency for armed robbery.





						Dick Black (politician) - Wikipedia
					






					en.m.wikipedia.org


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## Ringo




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## Ringo

January 1 is a national holiday in Cuba – Liberation Day, in Ukraine this day is also a national holiday – the birthday of a mass murderer and a Nazi collaborator. Guess which country is supported by "civilized countries", and which one has been strangled by the blockade for 60 years?


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## Confederate Soldier

Ringo said:


> January 1 is a national holiday in Cuba – Liberation Day, in Ukraine this day is also a national holiday – the birthday of a mass murderer and a Nazi collaborator. Guess which country is supported by "civilized countries", and which one has been strangled by the blockade for 60 years?




The U.S.S.R. is dead. Get over it.


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## Toddsterpatriot

Ringo said:


> January 1 is a national holiday in Cuba – Liberation Day, in Ukraine this day is also a national holiday – the birthday of a mass murderer and a Nazi collaborator. Guess which country is supported by "civilized countries", and which one has been strangled by the blockade for 60 years?



Did you cry when the wall fell?


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