Late last week, many folks were disconcerted by Joe Biden’s warmth and friendliness in welcoming President Trump to the White House. It seemed … unreal that Biden would happily help Trump’s transition. This weekend, the other orthopedic slipper dropped. A 100% anonymously sourced story appeared in Sunday’s New York Times headlined, “
Biden Allows Ukraine to Strike Russia With Long-Range U.S. Missiles.” Nice transition you had there!
Get ready for constant media talking heads chattering about the dumbest military acronym ever formulated (which is saying
a lot):
ATACMS (pronounced gleefully as “attack-ems”). Biden’s secret order, or something, “authorized” martial law commander Zelensky to fire U.S.-supplied ATACMS missiles at Russia, using real-time US satellite guidance intel, which the Russians have warned
in writing would be a declaration of war.
“Mr. Biden’s decision,” the Times understatedly explained, “is a
major change in U.S. policy.” And right as Biden was on his way out, too. Was this the deep state’s way of using ATACMS to FUBAR Trump’s peace deal, by making it as hard as possible to end the Proxy War? Is
war itself the goal? To give you some idea of the sky-high stakes, yesterday
Robert Kennedy captured the moment in a tweet:
(On the other hand, shortly after that, RFK tweeted about playing with his cute granddaughters and a small but feisty ghost crab on the beach, so it isn’t
exactly time to panic yet. Maybe in a few more minutes.)
ATACMS stands for Army TACtical Missile System. The highly mobile system fires surface-to-surface precision-targeted missiles up to 200 miles away —from New York to DC— and then drives away to a new safe spot, which the Army neatly calls “shoot and scoot.” The Ukrainians first got hold of ATACMS in March.
Headline from Politico, April 24:
Russia’s capital, Moscow, lies within the 200-mile ATACMS range, when launched from Ukraine.
In March, the first thing Zelensky did with his new, secretly supplied ATACMS was launch them at defenseless civilian targets in Russia, like the apartment buildings pictured above, a war crime under international rules, and worse, a target with zero strategic value except bad optics. Zelensky’s retarded misfire created great excitement at the Pentagon, and caused flummoxed US generals to put down their eyeliner pens and rethink whether Zelensky could be trusted with a child’s BB gun much less an advanced missile system.
Logic finally penetrated the Pentagon’s ever-present fog of injected estrogen, and they strapped a bunch of new rules on the ATACMS, stopping the uncontrollable and unpredictable Ukrainians from blasting away at everything in sight.
We gave you those missiles to fight a war, not knock over apartment buildings, the generals scolded.
Despite enthusiastic application and a pronounced generosity with its dwindling supplies of missiles, the ATACMS never measurably benefited the Ukrainians. When they are used by Americans against non-peer adversaries, ATACMS are probably pretty devastating. But when used against an experienced, rival military like Russia’s, which enjoys top-notch air defenses, ATACMS has been notably much less effective.
Even when firing at undefended civilian targets, ATACMS still requires high-precision satellite targeting data. Ukraine, a failed state, lacks its own satellites. So after relentless nagging by the Ukrainians, to avoid going crazy, the US now supplies the satellite location digits whenever Ukraine wants to shoot at something. The Pentagon must have some kind of a hotline, 1-800-CF-SNAFU or something.
Anyway, since the Ukrainians couldn’t hit a barn door without American help,
that is why —as certainly as Vladimir Zelensky has secret offshore bank accounts— the Russians will just as certainly blame the United States for the war crimes Ukraine commits using our ATACMS, since we provide all the targeting data, not to mention the tech support hotlines.
The extra-long article —it prints to 7 pages, single-spaced— contained only
one attributed quotation. Everything else was anonymous. And that single named quote was just a throwaway line attributed to hawkish Republican Representative Michael Turner (R-Oh.), who
dares Russia to start World War III.
As a critical news consumer, always inventory the sources for any news claims. The bigger the claim, the more sources you usually want. This particular article coughed up seven full pages of information without even
once saying where the information came from. Fail.
Even if it actually came from an inside source, no responsible journalist would agree to stenograph all this information without
some kind of external confirmation. Otherwise, what makes these reporters any different from being secretaries?
In other words, since the three reporters —apparently, nobody wanted the full credit (or blame)— all soiled their midwit reputations to deliver a steaming pile of non-journalism, it seems most likely this article was a deep-state press release. So, based on evidence from the article, the deep state stirred the Proxy War pot this weekend by releasing this “news” through its pet media outlet, the New York Times.
We simply cannot know
why they did it. There may be some great, secret reason. Since
they aren’t saying,
we can speculate. My best guess is they are trying to poison the peace well by making the Russians madder than wet Siberian huskies, in a snowstorm, even if doing so risks full-on nuclear war.
But it’s late in the game, and these kinds of maneuvers are unpredictable. They can just as easily create new possibilities as bollux things up. I note that President Trump himself posted nothing responding to the now widely-reported Times exclusive, which is a solid negotiating tactic.
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