Russia Invades Ukraine AND Chinese Aircraft Enter Taiwan Airspace

[BlkGS]

Cluster munitions are in a gray area. They're technically not allowed... But every nation has and uses them, they just put a spin on the name for them, "dispersed area" or "multi payload" or something else that is a bit more catchy. Believe me, the US has, and uses its own variant that "isn't" a cluster munitions.

I saw an article saying zelensky had "cooled" on the idea of joining NATO and was ready to be more flexible in peace dealings, so it sounds like we are about done with this. Too bad for his people he didn't have this flash of enlightenment that he wasn't going to fight off Russia weeks ago.

 

[Quad]

Cluster munitions are in a gray area. They're technically not allowed... But every nation has and uses them, they just put a spin on the name for them, "dispersed area" or "multi payload" or something else that is a bit more catchy. Believe me, the US has, and uses its own variant that "isn't" a cluster munitions.

I saw an article saying zelensky had "cooled" on the idea of joining NATO and was ready to be more flexible in peace dealings, so it sounds like we are about done with this. Too bad for his people he didn't have this flash of enlightenment that he wasn't going to fight off Russia weeks ago.

Frankly, I don't think that would have changed much in the grand scheme of things. They might've avoided coming in from the north and only picked apart at the "breakaway" regions in the east. But even then, we'd have seen a new "breakaway" region suddenly in the spotlight a few years down the line until there wasn't much left of Ukraine itself.

 

[BlkGS]

Frankly, I don't think that would have changed much in the grand scheme of things. They might've avoided coming in from the north and only picked apart at the "breakaway" regions in the east. But even then, we'd have seen a new "breakaway" region suddenly in the spotlight a few years down the line until there wasn't much left of Ukraine itself.

Honestly, I don't think Russia wants to own Ukraine, they want it to be in their orbit. Just like we don't own Mexico or cananada, but they're "on our side". Partially because we're the best, partially because theyre economically dependent on us, partially because we provide a big sense of security being in our fold.

I think Russia wants Ukraine in there sphere, and maybe some western territory to have better black sea access, and the rest to be independent but strongly tied to them. Our media would describe them as puppet states or vassals, unless they're talking about countries in our orbit then theyre valued allies.

 

[Ohio]

Cluster munitions are in a gray area. They're technically not allowed... But every nation has and uses them, they just put a spin on the name for them, "dispersed area" or "multi payload" or something else that is a bit more catchy. Believe me, the US has, and uses its own variant that "isn't" a cluster munitions.

I saw an article saying zelensky had "cooled" on the idea of joining NATO and was ready to be more flexible in peace dealings, so it sounds like we are about done with this. Too bad for his people he didn't have this flash of enlightenment that he wasn't going to fight off Russia weeks ago.

During the first Gulf war we had enough MLRS in theater to blanket every square meter of Kuwait.

 

[ripler]

whoa! russia claims biological weapons.

U.S. dismisses Russian claims of biowarfare labs in Ukraine

The United States on Wednesday denied renewed Russian accusations that Washington was operating biowarfare labs in Ukraine, calling the claims "laughable" and suggesting Moscow may be laying the groundwork to use a chemical or biological weapon.

www.reuters.com

here is a report that give some insight to it that was deleted but recovered by the national pulse.

The National Pulse

Radically Independent

thenationalpulse.com

and now china is peddling the same crap as russia's claims

China Peddles Russia's Claim That U.S. Has Bioweapons in Ukraine

China's state broadcaster published a Russian report on the recycled conspiracy theory, which was repeated by the Chinese Foreign Ministry the next day.

www.newsweek.com

guess they really gonna look for an excuse to really take over Ukraine

Looks like Russia and China been on the Q websites.

 

[Jim_in_Delaware]

If this story posted on WION (an Indian news channel) is true, here is an off-ramp for Putin, if he so chooses it, "Zelensky gives up on joining NATO, says he does not want to lead a nation 'begging something on its knees"

"Volodymyr Zelensky has announced that Ukraine will no longer be seeking NATO membership, a delicate issue cited by Russia as a reason for invading its pro-Western neighbor.

Zelensky also said he is open to "compromise" over the status of two breakaway pro-Russian territories that Putin recognized as independent just before the invasion, on February 24."

Jim

 

[Can0n11]

During the first Gulf war we had enough MLRS in theater to blanket every square meter of Kuwait.

Prior to GW2 start we were dropping the CBU-58 version leaflet bombs telling the opp to stay put and not engage the Warthogs/EF forces by the dozens... a lot of the CBU‘s can be used as anti armor/personnel munitions. We had enough during GW2 to neutralize op forces as well. Dropping cluster munitions on civilians is pretty f*’d up if confirmed.

 

[Julian]

The asshole hit a maternity and children's hospital today.....and we just watch and say they should surrender. Sad.

Russian airstrike ravages children's hospital; House passes massive spending bill with Ukraine aid: March 9 recap

A Russian assault devastated a maternity and children's hospital complex in the besieged Ukrainian city of Mariupol. Here is Wednesday's recap.

www.usatoday.com

 

[Liveto99]

In my opinion there’s about 1 million places to do this on the web. We really stayed out of it for a long time, we let that coronavirus thread go on this message board and we’re getting more things on here that do not have to do with jet boats.
coronavirus, politics wars,religion are all stuff that just not be on this board.
But that’s just my opinion.?Have a nice day, just putting this out there.

 

[mwalker4]

War is hell, always has been. Putin is aging KGB agent turned dictator, invading a weaker nation. To watch it makes you sick to your stomach, but don't get too high and mighty on moral grounds. I'm old enough to remember the chant. "Hey, Hey LBJ, how many kids did you kill today". We worked real hard to bomb North Vietnam back to the stone age.

Or this quote from Gen Curtis Lemay who set the Japanese islands on fire and the founder of Strategic Air Command: "Killing Japanese didn't bother me very much at that time... I suppose if I had lost the war, I would have been tried as a war criminal... Every soldier thinks something of the moral aspects of what he is doing. But all war is immoral and if you let that bother you, you're not a good soldier."

----I am editing this because it sounds too much like establishing a moral equivalence between us and the Russians. This is not the case, I do feel our way of life and modern way of prosecuting wars are "better" than the Russians. My thoughts on this topic are way too complicated and conflicted to discuss on a forum and therefore I will stop with my last high level thought: wars get out of control very quickly and I generally support they way we have handled the post invasion situation. I do think we could have been stronger or weaker pre-invasion, the middle ground got us here. That is a long discussion for another time. Thanks for listening.

 

[BlkGS]

The asshole hit a maternity and children's hospital today.....and we just watch and say they should surrender. Sad.

Russian airstrike ravages children's hospital; House passes massive spending bill with Ukraine aid: March 9 recap

A Russian assault devastated a maternity and children's hospital complex in the besieged Ukrainian city of Mariupol. Here is Wednesday's recap.

www.usatoday.com

That's an absolutely horrible atrocity. There's no way to justify, sugar coat, or make it any less bad. I think there should be an investigation and if it was intentional, execute the whole lot of them.

That said, it's unlikely they targeted it, both from a practical and tactical point. Moreover, there's no reason for the US to get dragged INTO WW3 over this. Zelensky could end this at any moment by just having talks aboutt the terms of their surrender instead of posturing and asking the rest of the world to start ww3 for him.

And let's not be outraged by this. China has engaged in genocide for decade and we sat back and do more business with them. Before that, they funded and armed communist groups to do it fr them.

Bottom line, it's not our place to start ww3 for a Ukrainian diplomatic failure. Zelensky should have ended this a long time ago, instead of posturing while his people suffer.

 

[I_squared_r]

The russian government's propaganda machine, sputnik news, caters news depending on the demographic. Their spanish news is propaganda heavy, english news is propaganda light, and brazil gets propaganda heavy: framing president bolsanaro as being pro-russia (the truth being that he doesn't want to upset putin and brazil's economic benefits of staying neutral). I discovered that the author on spanish sputnik, has a linkedin with his location in mexico, was hired 4 months ago, and has no prior experience in journalism. This leads me to believe that Russia started their propaganda machine months ago with the knowledge that this invasion would happen. They are encouraging people to download Telegram so they can avoid government censorships. Russia is on the wrong side of history because an innocent agenda wouldn't require so much propaganda!

 

[Mesa50]

I must say it’s been really interesting watching all the anti-war people from the last 25 years suddenly flip the script. It’s pretty bizarre. It’s also weird that they think they were lied to about all the causes and necessities of previous wars, but this one would be pure, and just, and deserving of their benevolent outreach. We convinced the Ukraine to give up their weapons, now everyone wants us to arm them. They couldn’t be trusted with arms, but now they can. Guess no one has learned anything from all our interdiction policies in the Middle East.

 

[BlkGS]

The russian government's propaganda machine, sputnik news, caters news depending on the demographic. Their spanish news is propaganda heavy, english news is propaganda light, and brazil gets propaganda heavy: framing president bolsanaro as being pro-russia (the truth being that he doesn't want to upset putin and brazil's economic benefits of staying neutral). I discovered that the author on spanish sputnik, has a linkedin with his location in mexico, was hired 4 months ago, and has no prior experience in journalism. This leads me to believe that Russia started their propaganda machine months ago with the knowledge that this invasion would happen. They are encouraging people to download Telegram so they can avoid government censorships. Russia is on the wrong side of history because an innocent agenda wouldn't require so much propaganda!

We have constant propaganda internally too. That's how the media works nowdays. Pander propaganda to your demographic of choice. You watch fox news and they talk about saving babies from being killed. You watch CNN and it's a woman's right to choose about her body.

All governments and causes engage in propaganda. You just call it "spreading your message" or "marketing" if you win enough.

 

[Julian]

And let's not be outraged by this.

Uh....no. We should be outraged, but because gas prices are climbing it seems that is more important than the invasion of a democratic country. No different than Kuwait - but with Kuwait we knew we could kick the aggressors ass. With Russia we are justifiably concerned about a larger escalation - so we stick to sanctions out of fear.

We convinced the Ukraine to give up their weapons

We convinced them to give up their Nukes. We didn't give them other advanced weapons because, until 8 years ago, it was a puppet regime of Russia's. And if we do nothing, it will be a puppet regime again.

The sanctions are huge, but Putin himself isn't hurt by them (yet). He is whining that these sanctions are akin to declaring war on Russia - probably to mollify and delude us into thinking he gives a shit.

I still say we (NATO) should move into Western Ukraine (invited by Zelensky) in a "peacekeeping" mission (The Russians are not in Western Ukraine) and divide the country into "East/West" and see how it turns out - worked well for Germany.....repeat it.

 

[Mesa50]

Uh....no. We should be outraged, but because gas prices are climbing it seems that is more important than the invasion of a democratic country. No different than Kuwait - but with Kuwait we knew we could kick the aggressors ass. With Russia we are justifiably concerned about a larger escalation - so we stick to sanctions out of fear.


We convinced them to give up their Nukes. We didn't give them other advanced weapons because, until 8 years ago, it was a puppet regime of Russia's. And if we do nothing, it will be a puppet regime again.

The sanctions are huge, but Putin himself isn't hurt by them (yet). He is whining that these sanctions are akin to declaring war on Russia - probably to mollify and delude us into thinking he gives a shit.

I still say we (NATO) should move into Western Ukraine (invited by Zelensky) in a "peacekeeping" mission (The Russians are not in Western Ukraine) and divide the country into "East/West" and see how it turns out - worked well for Germany.....repeat it.

I agree that the only resolution that prevents a long drawn out war, is a two zone solution. No one wants for Putin to feel like he won anything though. I think those who were in East Germany at the time probably would argue over how great it worked for them, but unfortunately everyone on the planet doesn’t get to be free. We are the lucky ones.

 

[BlkGS]

Uh....no. We should be outraged, but because gas prices are climbing it seems that is more important than the invasion of a democratic country. No different than Kuwait - but with Kuwait we knew we could kick the aggressors ass. With Russia we are justifiably concerned about a larger escalation - so we stick to sanctions out of fear.


We convinced them to give up their Nukes. We didn't give them other advanced weapons because, until 8 years ago, it was a puppet regime of Russia's. And if we do nothing, it will be a puppet regime again.

The sanctions are huge, but Putin himself isn't hurt by them (yet). He is whining that these sanctions are akin to declaring war on Russia - probably to mollify and delude us into thinking he gives a shit.

I still say we (NATO) should move into Western Ukraine (invited by Zelensky) in a "peacekeeping" mission (The Russians are not in Western Ukraine) and divide the country into "East/West" and see how it turns out - worked well for Germany.....repeat it.

If we're going to do that we may as well just declare WW3 on and let it rip, because that's what we would be doing.

There are plenty of local powers that could do something if they feel the need. Germany, France, UK, are all large and powerful countries that aren't lifting a finger to help. The US doesn't need to send our people in to die for someone else's war.

So Ukraine becomes a Russian puppet, who cares? They'll still be a democracy, the citizens lives won't change much, and they stop getting blown up. The only thing that changes is a few guys at the top get rich from Russia and not from us.

If we are going to be outraged by this, we should be outraged by China 1000 fold, and we should have sanctioned them decades ago and only done more. But we don't, we keep cozying up to China more and more, despite their innocent civilian kill count being upwards of 100 million.

 

[BlkGS]

I agree that the only resolution that prevents a long drawn out war, is a two zone solution. No one wants for Putin to feel like he won anything though. I think those who were in East Germany at the time probably would argue over how great it worked for them, but unfortunately everyone on the planet doesn’t get to be free. We are the lucky ones.

If we did this, it would absolutely trigger a much larger conflict. One that would hurt the US as well,.

The US is extremely vulnerable to non conventional warfare. In our quest to "improve" we've put our infrastructure online making it vulnerable to cyber attacks. Any conflict with a major power would likely result in massive cyber casualties. Imagine if hackers were to trigger emergency releases at hydroelectric dams and waste water treatment facilities. Imagine if they shut down the servers that run credit card transactions. What if they shut down cellular networks?

I don't think many Americans would support getting us into a war over this, nor should they. If Europe wants to deal with it, that's on them. But this doesn't affect the US in any way, and we would only make things worse if we got involved.

 

[Julian]

If we're going to do that we may as well just declare WW3 on and let it rip, because that's what we would be doing.

There are plenty of local powers that could do something if they feel the need. Germany, France, UK, are all large and powerful countries that aren't lifting a finger to help. The US doesn't need to send our people in to die for someone else's war.

So Ukraine becomes a Russian puppet, who cares? They'll still be a democracy, the citizens lives won't change much, and they stop getting blown up. The only thing that changes is a few guys at the top get rich from Russia and not from us.

If we are going to be outraged by this, we should be outraged by China 1000 fold, and we should have sanctioned them decades ago and only done more. But we don't, we keep cozying up to China more and more, despite their innocent civilian kill count being upwards of 100 million.

Wrong on so many counts as I've said before, we should agree to disagree.

The EU has done a TON to support the Ukraine - including taking Millions of refugees, supplying 500 MILLION Euros worth of support (arms), and enacting sanctions.

Your "So Ukraine becomes a Russian puppet, who cares?" - sums your perspective up entirely. Fuck the Ukraine - I don't live there. I want to be an isolationist nation.

Astonishing really. Fortunately that is a minority perspective in the US. Unfortunately that is a growing sentiment among Americans. But perhaps it will result in a massive reduction in "Defense" spending as we'd only need to focus on DEFENSE and we could withdraw to our borders and screw the rest of the world? Huh.....

 

[BlkGS]

I don't see EU nations lining up to send forces in to Ukraine...

We don't need to be the world police. We tried that and it didn't work. It'd work even worse in today's landscape with everyone having a camera and being outraged. What you could do clandestine in the 60s would be captured by 1000 people with cell phones today.

Personally, I think that Ukraine is better off surrendering to Russia and giving them whatever they want (assurances to not join nato, etc) than to become even more of a war zone.