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Ukraine IV

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droodzilla said:
One of the worst things about Trump's presidency was the rehabilitation of GWB as an "elder statesman".

The best thing you can see about him is that he was a useful idiot for the likes of Cheney and Rumsfeld.

Murderers, all.
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The world is still paying for the mistakes of GWB's reign.

The thing that puzzles me most about it is that so many Americans did not perceive or understand, either at the time or subsequently, the massive harm he did to the reputation of their country abroad. I would bring this up as tactfully as possible during casual conversations with business colleagues, and just get blank stares.
 
PsB said:
The world is still paying for the mistakes of GWB's reign.

The thing that puzzles me most about it is that so many Americans did not perceive or understand, either at the time or subsequently, the massive harm he did to the reputation of their country abroad. I would bring this up as tactfully as possible during casual conversations with business colleagues, and just get blank stares.
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Yes, the idea of the US as 'the Great Satan' which has gained traction in the ME is not something that a dispassionate external observer can dismiss as rhetoric any more.
 
PsB said:
The world is still paying for the mistakes of GWB's reign.

The thing that puzzles me most about it is that so many Americans did not perceive or understand, either at the time or subsequently, the massive harm he did to the reputation of their country abroad. I would bring this up as tactfully as possible during casual conversations with business colleagues, and just get blank stares.
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Most Americans don't think that way. That's not a dig rather a function of hegemony and the make-up of the country.
 
Kirk said:
Most Americans don't think that way. That's not a dig rather a function of hegemony and the make-up of the country.
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True: such a large place and largely self-sufficient. All credit, then, to those Americans that are able to maintain a broader perspective on the world.
 
PsB said:
The world is still paying for the mistakes of GWB's reign.

The thing that puzzles me most about it is that so many Americans did not perceive or understand, either at the time or subsequently, the massive harm he did to the reputation of their country abroad. I would bring this up as tactfully as possible during casual conversations with business colleagues, and just get blank stares.
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To be fair I think a good percentage of the British are equally poor at viewing the actions of their country through the eyes of the rest of the world, or through the eyes of those in certain other nations. That percentage may be higher in the US due to the limited opportunity for foreign travel, the relatively poor media reporting on the rest of the world, and the ever present greatest-country-ever propaganda pushed by a corporate media who don't want many Americans to realize that they have a worse deal and a worse life than most other rich nations. (The British have the opposite problem of tending to assume that everything is worse in Britain than elsewhere).

Agree strongly that the GWB administration's response to 9/11 was a catastrophe - probably the biggest foreign policy catastrophe of my lifetime.
 
I heard an unusual aeroplane high up over the office earlier, and checked in on FlightRadar. It was a C-130J out of Brize Norton.

When I turned my phone on just now it was still on the screen. It landed at Rzeszow in Poland half an hour ago, a similar distance the other side of the Polish border to Lviv.

I should imagine that it goes without saying that there's plenty of air defence kit between Rzeszow and the border!
 
anubisgrau said:
During my time in Kansas City, the most often mentioned and certainly by far the most popular POTUS was Ronald Reagan.
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Many decades ago I spent a couple of weeks staying with a familiy in a small town in the middle of Kansas. I took the opportunity to walk about it to see what it was like, and met various people. Wonderful people, very friendly and open. I even got a free chicken burger one day when I went into a burger bar - because I was recognised as "that English guy in town". Really enjoyed it. But came to feel that it was out of touch with a lot of the world outwith the USA. They simply had no real interest in it.

Understandable given the size of the USA and that people were generally happy to get on with their lives and behave well. And it was as far from the sea as I've ever been!
 
eternumviti said:
I heard an unusual aeroplane high up over the office earlier, and checked in on FlightRadar. It was a C-130J out of Brize Norton.

When I turned my phone on just now it was still on the screen. It landed at Rzeszow in Poland half an hour ago, a similar distance the other side of the Polish border to Lviv.

I should imagine that it goes without saying that there's plenty of air defence kit between Rzeszow and the border!
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I imagine there are quite a few young men from Hereford in that part of the world also.
 
In our county, we keep quiet about what might be going on for obvious reasons.

One may have a strong view about it, but would never talk about it publicly.

I wish less of the secret intel was being discussed actually. The Russians surely do know something of this, and that is a good thing, but sabre rattling is not so much of a good idea ... It should always be "deniable."

Just two pennies' worth from George
 
stevec67 said:
I imagine there are quite a few young men from Hereford in that part of the world also.
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There have been, over the years, many philosophical discussions about the nature of eggs, and they have invariably concluded that eggs are, beyond any doubt, always eggs.

George J said:
In our county, we keep quiet about what might be going on for obvious reasons.

One may have a strong view about it, but would never talk about it publicly.

I wish less of the secret intel was being discussed actually. The Russians surely do know something of this, and that is a good thing, but sabre rattling is not so much of a good idea ... It should always be "deniable."

Just two pennies' worth from George
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Whilst, in broader terms, I agree with you - and I did hesitate before making the post - even despite the apparently astonishing inability of Vlad's intelligence services to live up to their name, they would possess the nous to take out a free subscription to Flightradar24 rather than scour the columns of of an obscure hi-fi forum for intel on flight movements in Europe. I'm also certain that if the RAF felt there were any advantage in doing so, they would have gone 'dark'.

I'm sure that Russia is well aware of flight movements from all European air bases, and that they need neither a subscription to pfm nor flightradar24 to get it.

In a broader sense, I have expressed here before the wish that the government didn't feel the need to so loudly boast about its contributions to the war effort in Ukraine, though I don't doubt that the loud bits are designed to provide cover for plenty of significantly quieter bits.
 
George J said:
In our county, we keep quiet about what might be going on for obvious reasons.

One may have a strong view about it, but would never talk about it publicly.

I wish less of the secret intel was being discussed actually. The Russians surely do know something of this, and that is a good thing, but sabre rattling is not so much of a good idea ... It should always be "deniable."

Just two pennies' worth from George
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For sure, however we all know that anyone who is anyone in Moscow knows far more than anyone is letting on about the movement of troops from all nations in E Europe.
 
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TheDecameron said:
Detailed evidence of the civilian executions by Russia in Bucha, early in the invasion.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/19/world/europe/russia-bucha-ukraine-executions.html

The same events Russia dismissed as fake and “a provocation”. You can fully understand why Finland and Sweden moved swiftly to end decades of neutrality and join NATO.
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Same NYT article but no need to put in your email
https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2022...oops-executing-ukrainians-in-bucha-nyt-a77742
 
Amber Audio said:
Same NYT article but no need to put in your email
https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2022...oops-executing-ukrainians-in-bucha-nyt-a77742
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In all wars there are war crimes committed- murder, rape, looting of civilians but this is turning out to be on an industrial scale. I suppose when a government indoctrinates its soldiers and wider public that the country they’re invading if full of Nazis who torture children and will dismember you and burn you alive if they capture you, it bears special responsibility for this.

Then you see it in it’s wider context- Russia brazenly fabricating evidence at the UN Security Council that a Ukrainian jet had actually shot down Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17, that Germany faked evidence that Navalny had been poisoned just as Britain had when Litvinenko had been murdered using radioactive material and when a banned nerve agent was used in Salisbury. That Russia is banned from the Olympics for the state organised doping of its athletes. It’s not a pretty picture.
 
stevec67 said:
For sure, however we all know that anyone who is anyone in Moscow knows far more than anyone is letting on about the movement of troops from all nations in E Europe.
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Probably. However I do get the feeling that 'Moscow' keeps being caught out as a result of things they "don't know".

e.g. the tanning they got when trying to cross the river - because they had no idea that they had been observed, watched, and ambush forces set in place. I'd have thought it was tac 101 to ensure you *don't* get caught like that with your keks down!

(OK, maybe the people with big hats in Moscow *did* know but were told to 'advance' and their warnings dismissed. So they didn't tell the troops they were walking into a mincer in case it, erm, 'discouraged' them. People wearing big hats deciding to sacrifice PBI rather than face up to the beloved leader's wrath.)
 
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