(Yesterday at 4:19 am)Thumpalumpacus Wrote:

(Yesterday at 2:34 am)Belacqua Wrote: Anybody remember the Gulf of Tonkin incident?



Also Iraqi soldiers threw babies out of incubators in Kuwait and had weapons of mass destruction, Gaddafi gave viagra to his soldiers to commit rapes, Assad used chemical weapons on his own people in Douma.

Any sentence which begins "US intelligence agencies say..." is very likely untrue.

You actually don't need to listen to US intel to see Putin's game plan. Anyone with half-a-brain can see that his end-game is to defeat and conquer Ukraine.  Of course, "anyone with half-a-brain" probably excludes you.

Many of us are skeptical of US gov't motives and propaganda. Hell, I marched against the drum-up to war in late 2002 -- and I'm a Desert Storm vet. Didn't blind me.

Somehow you find FSB dope more credible than your own eyes. Poor little fool, you.

So you agree that we shouldn't believe what US intelligence agencies say. That's good.

(Yesterday at 6:40 am)Belacqua Wrote: we shouldn't believe what US intelligence agencies say. That's good.

Hey, don't pretend like you are against the US intelligence because you distrust it, but rather it's because you are loyal to Putin.

After all, the US intelligence predicted that Russia will invade Ukraine and they were right about that, while you denied it would happen because you couldn't imagine your beloved Vlad would do something like that, although he invaded other countries before.

Oh look, the tools back. That whole inevitable defeat bit from last time didn't age well, did it.

(Yesterday at 6:40 am)Belacqua Wrote:

(Yesterday at 4:19 am)Thumpalumpacus Wrote: You actually don't need to listen to US intel to see Putin's game plan. Anyone with half-a-brain can see that his end-game is to defeat and conquer Ukraine.  Of course, "anyone with half-a-brain" probably excludes you.

Many of us are skeptical of US gov't motives and propaganda. Hell, I marched against the drum-up to war in late 2002 -- and I'm a Desert Storm vet. Didn't blind me.

Somehow you find FSB dope more credible than your own eyes. Poor little fool, you.

So you agree that we shouldn't believe what US intelligence agencies say. That's good.

Without corroboration, no.

Meanwhile, somehow you find FSB dope more credible than your own eyes. Poor little fool, you. -- don't think for a moment that your effort to slide past this went unnoticed. Even as you chastise others for believing American intel you lap up FSB drivel like it's mother's milk. Your dishonesty is painfully obvious.

Distrust of us intelligence is a non starter. The war is out there for anyone and everyone to see, the most well documented war in human history, in real time...to both ukraine and russias great consternation, because everybody has a smartphone in their pocket.

(Yesterday at 6:40 am)Belacqua Wrote: So you agree that we shouldn't believe what US intelligence agencies say. That's good.

Have a guess who predicted the russian invasion of Ukraine, months before it happened.

(Yesterday at 11:57 am)The Grand Nudger Wrote: Distrust of us intelligence is a non starter.  The war is out there for anyone and everyone to see, the most well documented war in human history, in real time...to both ukraine and russias great consternation, because everybody has a smartphone in their pocket.

Exactly, at this point US intel is irrelevant. You don't need the CIA to see the goddamned cruise missiles taking out apartment buildings in Kyiv.

But hey, as long as we're not talking about Russian lies bruited about by FSB/GRU/SVR, our pet appeaser here is happy.

Large scale satellite surveillance of the conflict from state actors. Radar coverage and reporting across the entire region from multiple angles. Geolocated smartphone data. Think tank analysis. Wire reporting. Resource movement schedules and production orders. Russian and Ukranian briefings. Prominent milbloggers in every language. POW interviews. Civilian interviews. Refugee interviews. Trackers of every kind and sort, including near real time drone and missile paths. Daily updates from soldiers at the front on xitter, on telegraph, on bluesky. Legacy print media.

If someone wants to know what's happening, it's all out there. All of it pointing to a singular conclusion. Putin is dead set on a war of extermination which he cannot afford to win or to lose.

(December 19, 2025 at 11:30 am)Ivan Denisovich Wrote: After 15 hours of talks in Brussels, the EU summit broke up with a deal on a €90 billion loan to Ukraine.

The cash will be raised through joint borrowing between 24 of the EU’s 27 countries, but it needed all of them to agree to the plan because it’s guaranteed by the central EU long-term budget.

It's worse option than original plan of using frozen russian assets I think but that still is a positive outcome.

I'm curious as to how you predict this playing out. In the long run, it seems as though a positive outcome is far from guaranteed. 

History indicates that a large portion of the 90 billion will be skimmed off by corruption. But let's assume that this time a significant portion of the money will go to the war effort. How much time does this buy? 

War is expensive, so what is the predicted timeline? Does this money keep Ukraine fighting until the end of 2026? During that time, will there be a possibility of reversing the losses that have happened so far? Surely they're not fantasizing about pushing the Russians back to the pre-war borders. 

Then there's also a question of whether this is enough. Trump is now expecting the European countries to pay for Ukraine's military equipment. Does this money come on top of the 90 billion? Zelensky said in a speech recently that some of the weapons systems he was given are now useless due to a lack of ammunition, and he wants more. So that's expensive too.

And of course there's the issue of whether Europe can really afford this. (Hungary, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic declined to participate in the plan, so their economies are less vulnerable.) Remember that the US has told European countries that they're no longer allowed to buy cheap energy from Russia, and this is having a significant effect on their economies. Industry is hurting, and the cost of living for citizens is going up. As living standards decline, and voters see their tax money being sent to a war that can't be won, the current leaders become less popular and there's an increased threat of right-wing parties gaining popularity. 

Remember that US sanctions on Russia are designed in part to benefit US oil suppliers. Europe has to buy more expensive oil from America. But America has exempted itself from this -- it does not sanction Russian exports of uranium to the US. Every year America buys millions and millions of dollars worth of uranium from Russia -- about 20 to 25% of what it needs to keep its reactors running. This money of course benefits the Russian government. So it looks pretty hypocritical that America gets its energy supplies from Russia while saying that Europe can't do the same. 

So seriously, realistically -- what benefit do we get from funding another year of war, paid for by European taxpayers in a "loan" which will certainly never be repaid?

How has anyone ever benefitted by stopping a murderous dictator from invading europe, amiright?