{"id":55208,"date":"2022-03-25T16:58:33","date_gmt":"2022-03-25T20:58:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/?p=55208"},"modified":"2022-03-25T16:58:33","modified_gmt":"2022-03-25T20:58:33","slug":"pentagon-drops-truth-bombs-to-stave-off-war-with-russia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/?p=55208","title":{"rendered":"Pentagon Drops Truth Bombs to Stave Off War With Russia"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Joe Lauria
\nSpecial to Consortium News
\nMarch 23, 2024 – consortiumnews.com<\/A><\/em><\/p>\n

The Pentagon<\/a>The Pentagon is 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.<\/p>\n

President Joe Biden is caught in the middle of the fray. So far he is siding with the Defense Department, saying<\/A> there cannot be a NATO no-fly zone over Ukraine fighting Russian aircraft because \u201cthat\u2019s called World War III, okay? Let\u2019s get it straight here, guys. We will not fight the third world war in Ukraine.\u201d
\n
\n\u201cPresident Biden\u2019s been clear that U.S. troops won\u2019t fight Russia in Ukraine, and if you establish a no-fly zone, certainly in order to enforce that no-fly zone, you\u2019ll have to engage Russian aircraft. And again, that would put us at war with Russia,\u201d said U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin earlier this month. (The administration plan is to bring down the Russian government through a ground insurgency and economic war, not a direct military one.)<\/p>\n

But pressure on the White House from some members of Congress and especially the press corps is unrelenting to recklessly bring NATO directly into the war. (Secretary of State Antony Blinken who initially backed a plan to send NATO planes from Poland to Ukraine has backed down and now opposes any no-fly zone. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi also supported<\/A> the Polish planes scheme, which was shot down<\/A> by the Pentagon.)<\/p>\n

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, again on Friday, to \u201cclose the skies\u201d above Ukraine. To save his country he appears willing to risk endangering the entire world. <\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Western corporate media, depending almost exclusively on Ukrainian sources, report that Russia is losing the war, with its military offensive \u201cstalled,\u201d and in frustration has deliberately targeted civilians and flattened cities.<\/p>\n

Biden has bought into this part of the story, calling Russian President Vladimir Putin a \u201cwar criminal.\u201d He has also said that Russia is planning a \u201cfalse flag\u201d chemical attack to pin on Ukraine. <\/p>\n

But on Tuesday, the Pentagon took the bold step of leaking two stories to reporters that contradict those tales. \u201cRussia\u2019s conduct in the brutal war tells a different story than the widely accepted view that Vladimir Putin is intent on demolishing Ukraine and inflicting maximum civilian damage—and it reveals the Russian leader\u2019s strategic balancing act,\u201d reported Newsweek<\/A> in an article<\/A> entitled, \u201cPutin\u2019s Bombers Could Devastate Ukraine But He\u2019s Holding Back. Here\u2019s Why.\u201d<\/p>\n

The piece quotes an unnamed analyst at the Pentagon\u2019s Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) saying, \u201cThe heart of Kyiv has barely been touched. And almost all of the long-range strikes have been aimed at military targets.\u201d<\/p>\n

A retired U.S. Air Force officer now working as an analyst for a Pentagon contractor, added: \u201cWe need to understand Russia\u2019s actual conduct. 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

The article says:<\/p>\n

\u201cAs of the past weekend, in 24 days of conflict, Russia has flown some 1,400 strike sorties and delivered almost 1,000 missiles (by contrast, the United States flew more sorties and delivered more weapons<\/A> in the first day of the 2003 Iraq war). \u2026<\/p>\n

A proportion of those strikes have damaged and destroyed civilian structures and killed and injured innocent civilians, but the level of death and destruction is low compared to Russia\u2019s capacity.<\/p>\n

\u2018I know it\u2019s hard \u2026 to swallow that the carnage and destruction could be much worse than it is,\u2019 says the DIA analyst. \u2018But that\u2019s 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.’\u201d<\/p>\n

A second retired U.S. Air Force officer says:<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m frustrated by the current narrative—that Russia is intentionally targeting civilians, that it is demolishing cities, and that Putin doesn\u2019t care. Such a distorted view stands in the way of finding an end before true disaster hits or the war spreads to the rest of Europe. I know that the news keeps repeating that Putin is targeting civilians, but there is no evidence that Russia is intentionally doing so. In fact, I\u2019d say that Russian could be killing thousands more civilians if it wanted to.\u201d<\/p>\n

These Pentagon sources confirm what Putin and the Russian Ministry of Defense have been saying all along: that instead of being \u201cstalled,\u201d Russia is executing a methodical war plan to encircle cities, opening humanitarian corridors for civilians, leaving civilian infrastructure like water, electricity, telephony and internet intact, and trying to avoid as many civilian casualties as possible.<\/p>\n

Until these Pentagon leaks it was difficult to confirm that Russia was entirely telling the truth and that corporate media were publishing fables cooked up by Ukraine\u2019s publicity machine<\/A>. <\/p>\n

No Evidence of Chemicals<\/STRONG><\/p>\n

The Pentagon\u2019s mettle will be tested if there is a chemical weapons attack in Ukraine. Biden has said Russia would be a \u201csevere price\u201d but who the perpetrator would be might be murky. Whoever might be behind such an attack, the calls for direct military action are sure to increase in the U.S. media, the Congress and perhaps internally at the State Dept.<\/p>\n

The second mainstream article directly undermines Biden\u2019s dramatic warning. Reuters reported: \u201cThe United States has not yet seen any concrete indications of an imminent Russian chemical or biological weapons attack in Ukraine but is closely monitoring streams of intelligence for them, a senior U.S. defense official said.\u201d<\/p>\n

It quoted the Pentagon official as saying, \u201cThere\u2019s no indication that there\u2019s something imminent in that regard right now.\u201d Neither The New York Times<\/EM> nor The Washington Post<\/EM> published the Reuters article, which appeared in the more obscure U.S. News and World Report<\/EM>. <\/p>\n

Never let the facts get in the way of a good story — even if it could lead to the most devastating consequences in history.<\/p>\n

Joe Lauria is editor-in-chief of Consortium News and a former U.N. correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, and numerous other newspapers, including The Montreal Gazette and The Star of Johannesburg. He was an investigative reporter for the Sunday Times of London, a financial reporter for Bloomberg News and began his professional work as a 19-year old stringer for The New York Times. He can be reached at joelauria@consortiumnews.com and followed on Twitter @unjoe <\/p>\n

Source: https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/2022\/03\/23\/pentagon-drops-truth-bombs-to-stave-off-war-with-russia\/<\/A><\/EM> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Joe Lauria Special to Consortium News March 23, 2024 – consortiumnews.com The Pentagon is 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. President Joe Biden is caught in the middle of the … Continue reading Pentagon Drops Truth Bombs to Stave Off War With Russia<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,5,1618,1245,1610,39],"tags":[1630,1631,42],"class_list":["post-55208","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-tt","category-international","category-nato","category-russia","category-ukraine","category-usa","tag-joe-lauria","tag-the-pentagon","tag-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55208","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=55208"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55208\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55209,"href":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55208\/revisions\/55209"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=55208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=55208"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=55208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}