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Thomas, lamenting the absurdities of pundits on cable news channels or in the comment sections of internet sites is a fools errand. My advice is forget it Jake, it’s Chinatown.

As for the content of Ms Crowley’s comment, she’s about fifty percent right and, of course, half wrong.

Claiming that Biden’s motive (or the motive of the bipartisan crew that agrees with him) has anything to do with enriching defense contractors is absurd. Almost anytime government spends any money on anything someone or some entity is enriched. If enriching private individuals or companies was off the table, the Government wouldn’t be able to spend any money on anything.

As for her other point, it’s far more valid than you give her credit for. The direct spending on Ukraine may be a minuscule percentage of total U.S. Government spending but it’s a more substantial percentage of discretionary spending; it’s still small but not so small.

As your yourself acknowledge, the cost to replace the equipment shipped to Ukraine will be anything but insignificant. That spending will be measured in the tens of billions and if things continue as they are, hundreds of billions.

Then there’s the tens of billions in expenditures that will be needed to refill our strategic petroleum reserves. Why were the reserves depleted? The idea was to lower prices that were sky high because of reduced Russian supplies because of the war. By the way, Trump wanted to begin refilling these reserves towards the end of his presidency when oil was going for $28 a barrel. The Democrats in the House and Senate refused to allocate the funding. What do you suppose refilling the reserves will cost at today’s prices?

Besides all of this, there’s the negative economic impact that the war is having on tens of millions of Americans and billions of other people around the world. A serious analysis can’t ignore these costs.

You’re right, the airwaves and the internet are filled with clowns. But there are serious reasons to question whether a different approach back at the beginning of 2022 and even now, might be preferable to the approach Biden has adopted.

It’s fine with me if you question Crowley’s motives; I presume that like her brethren, her overriding ambition is to get ratings. My question isn’t about her motives, it’s about Biden’s motives. Did he really try to discourage Putin’s invasion or was he more interested in encouraging it?

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Having lived and worked in Ukraine for 11 years I have opinions on both sides of this. Make no mistake the government is not a small 'd' democracy and Zelinsky is not anywhere like our George Washington. As we got into this neo-quagmire (remember that word from Vietnam?), there was an effort made early-on, I think by Sen. Rand Paul, who wanted a provision in the legislation that the appropriate inspectors general be given authority to oversee that the monies we had sent to Ukraine were spend effectively. The Democrats blocked that. Knowing the history of the oligarchs in Ukraine, there has been money siphoned off. Do I have proof? No. I just know that's how the system works there. Our mafia in the U.S. calls it "vig". And Zelensky has run things pretty much as a dictator even per-invasion. I remember one bold move by Oligarch Akmentov. He had a lot of interests in banking. A particular tranche of $1 billion came in for USAID projects. It was deposited into one of Akmentov's banks and mysteriously disappeared. The excuse was the some accounts had been "hacked" and the criminals found this large deposit of dollars. The money was laundered several times and the trail ran cold. Akmentov became a richer man. This kind of crap happens all the time. It's corrupt government at it's best.

The other side of this is: The Ukrainian military has fought valiantly and stopped thug-Putin in his tracks. You gotta root for the good guys here. Ukraine (even with the oligarch thugs), if left to its devices, can prosper. I think there is a lot of basic jealousy on Putin's part as Mother Russia has not progressed as well as Ukraine since the collapse of the Soviet framework.

We have to also remember Lloyd Austin early on saying they wanted to use the Ukrainian forces to "wear down" the Russian forces - I think to bleed them dry slowly so they would be useless in the long run. I believe we should have kicked the crap out of Putin asap and not dribbled out the donations of arms incrementally, which is what happened. This slow decimation of Russian forces has got to humiliate Putin. He basically was hosed by his military industrial complex. They hadn't modernized his forces at all. Now we are faced with a possible nuclear retribution from him since we have backed him into an embarrassing corner.

Exit strategy? The options are running out.

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