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It appears that some Pentagon officials aren’t as anxious to embark on World War III over Russia’s war in Ukraine as one might be led to believe.
Reports from Reuters and Newsweek suggest that some in the military, and others recently retired, do not believe Russian leader Vladimir Putin will launch a chemical attack, as President Biden recently suggested. Nor is Russia using all of its might to crush Ukraine’s resistance.
The question is whether saner heads in the armed forces will prevail over the Deep Staters and media leftists. They can’t wait to see American boys die face down in the mud for “democracy” in a country that just outlawed 11 opposition political parties.
Battle Inside Biden Administration
Those military officials, Joe Lauria wrote for Consortium News, are “engaged in a consequential battle with the U.S. State Department and the Congress to prevent a direct military confrontation with Russia, which could unleash the most unimaginable horror of war.”
Like Democrat President Franklin Roosevelt before he deliberately provoked the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Biden has promised not to send American fighting men into a world war. But “pressure on the White House from Congress and the press corps is unrelenting to recklessly bring NATO directly into the war,” Lauria wrote:
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, hailed as a virtual superhero in Western media, has vacillated between openness to negotiating a peace settlement with Russia and calling for NATO to “close the skies” above Ukraine. To save his country he appears willing to risk endangering the entire world.
Meanwhile, Western corporate media, depending almost exclusively on Ukrainian sources, report that Russia is losing the war, with its military offensive “stalled,” and in frustration has deliberately targeted civilians and flattened cities.
Biden has bought into this part of the story, calling Russian President Vladimir Putin a “war criminal.” He has also said that Russia is planning a “false flag” chemical attack to pin on Ukraine.
And addressing NATO yesterday, Biden said a chemical attack from Putin would ““would trigger a response in-kind.”
No wonder defense officials and retired military officers are speaking out.
No Chemical Attack Planned
A top defense official told Reuters, in so many words, that Biden is full of it. Russia has no plan to unleash a devastating chemical attack on Ukraine.
“There’s no indication that there’s something imminent in that regard right now,” the official said.
Continued Reuters:
The United States was monitoring intelligence for signs of an imminent attack, including “any indications that they have moved chemical or biological weapons into Ukraine.”
“We just haven’t seen that bear fruit yet, and we certainly don’t want it to. But there’s a variety of things that we’re looking at,” the official said.
Meanwhile, Newsweek explained why Putin is not bombing Ukraine indiscriminately, and not bombing civilians purposely.
“The destruction is massive,” a senior analyst working at the Defense Intelligence Agency told the magazine, “especially when compared with what Europeans and Americans are used to seeing.”
Yet the heart of Kyiv, the capital “has barely been touched. And almost all of the long-range strikes have been aimed at military targets.”
A retired Air Force officer elaborated:
“We need to understand Russia’s actual conduct,” says a retired Air Force officer, a lawyer by training who has been involved in approving targets for U.S. fights in Iraq and Afghanistan. The officer currently works as an analyst with a large military contractor advising the Pentagon and was granted anonymity….
“If we merely convince ourselves that Russia is bombing indiscriminately, or [that] it is failing to inflict more harm because its personnel are not up to the task or because it is technically inept, then we are not seeing the real conflict.”
In the analyst’s view, though the war has led to unprecedented destruction in the south and east, the Russian military has actually been showing restraint in its long-range attacks.
That analyst said Russia is retraining itself. Russia has flown fewer sorties, 1,400, and launched fewer missiles, 1,000, than the United States did on Day 1 of the Bush administration’s imprudent war in Iraq. And most are “over the battlefield,” Newsweek reported, “with Russian aircraft providing ‘close air support’ to ground forces. The remainder — less than 20 percent, according to U.S. experts — has been aimed at military airfields, barracks and supporting depots.”
Though the war has killed civilians and destroyed civilian infrastructure, Russia has not unleashed its full power.
“I know it’s hard … to swallow that the carnage and destruction could be much worse than it is,” the DIA analyst told Newsweek. “But that’s what the facts show. This suggests to me, at least, that Putin is not intentionally attacking civilians, that perhaps he is mindful that he needs to limit damage in order to leave an out for negotiations.”
In other words, don’t believe the leftist media’s hysterical hate-Russia, wear-the-Ukraine-flag propaganda.
Concluded Lauria, “Never let the facts get in the way of a good story — even if it could lead to the most devastating consequences in history.”
