There are legions of people online who will inevitably throb with rage if any discussion of the newly commenced war doesn’t begin with a full-throated condemnation of Vladimir Putin. So right off the bat, I’ll repeat in full what I said in my very first comment
Thank you for your honesty and accountability — anyone can get something wrong, especially something as deliberately murky as invasion plans, but those two commodities are in short supply today and if anything only make me respect you more!
"This owes in significant part to Putin’s apparent madness." -- a strange thought from you Michael. ONE sentence in writing -- Ukraine will NOT join NATO would have solved the problem -- Ukraine and the "West" ignored Minsk agreement for 6-7 years...
Biden’s own CIA director, career diplomat and Russia hand William Burns, has long argued that NATO expansion, especially with regard to Ukraine, is a provocative miscalculation that will enrage Russia and exacerbate tensions across eastern Europe. In a 2008 memo to Condoleeza Rice, then Bush’s Secretary of State, Burns wrote:
“Ukrainian entry into NATO is the brightest of all redlines for the Russian elite (not just Putin). In more than two and a half years of conversations with key Russian players, from knuckle-draggers in the dark recesses of the Kremlin to Putin’s sharpest liberal critics, I have yet to find anyone who views Ukraine in NATO as anything other than a direct challenge to Russian interests.”
--------------------------------------------
An outstanding book:
The Plot to Scapegoat Russia: How the CIA and the Deep State Have Conspired to Vilify Putin
I see a few people apologizing today, but while I appreciate your apology, I'm more worried about why US intelligence was unaccountably right in what was a transparent attempt to divert from domestic problems. And I don't think Putin is insane. Just calculating or reacting to something we don't yet grasp. The "evil madman" is too easy an explanation.
I know what the solution is: proceed exactly as you’ve been going, keep on with your reporting and accept that occasional you will be wrong. You have the right to be wrong, keep pursuing the truth and hold power to account.
Michael: there's no reason to apologize about misjudging the actions the Russian government would take if its entirely reasonable security demands were not met. It's precisely because Putin (if you want to put everything on him, which is not a wise manner of assessment) has been so cautious over the past decade that most all of us could not quite imagine the decision would be so far-reaching. Many excellent analysts didn't see this coming. Gilbert Doctorow, for instance:
Or see Patrick Armstrong, longtime Canadian defense analyst, who served in the Soviet Union and the first years after the collapse. He too, though he did not fully expect it, allowed for the possibility that Russia would do more than just solidify the defense of the Donbass. He'll have a new post up in the next few days, more than likely, but in the meantime, read what he had to say on the 14th:
"And I’m not even saying this as some perfunctory PR exercise: what Putin has done is an act of aggressive war, and should genuinely be condemned. It will have dire consequences, many yet unforeseen. A division of US soldiers is stationed less than four miles from the Ukraine border in Poland; further escalation on a scale that few would have dared to fathom is now a harrowingly distinct possibility. This owes in significant part to Putin’s apparent madness. I’m always leery of playing armchair psychologist, which tends to be the dumbest form of political analysis — but I will say that in my layman’s observation of his recent public statements, Putin comes across as increasingly bitter, vengeful, and even deluded."
Horseshit. For one thing, pinning it all on “Putin” is nonsense. And then claiming Putin is “mad” is even worse. The entire Russian leadership, including Sergei Lavrov, have been very clear and straightforward about the “Red Lines” the US was crossing. If anything, Putin is very cautious. The Donbass shelling has been a murderous grind. As Pepe Escobar pointed out, today is the first time in EIGHT YEARS that Donetsk and Luhansk haven’t been shelled. 15,000 or so people killed there during that time, the vast majority on the side of the nascent republics. That's of no import?
Why this urge to condemn? It’s only supposed to be the US and its poodles that invades and destroys other countries? We’re allowed to condemn that, sure, but heaven forbid the worm turns and those other countries or peoples gain the ability to shoot back? However brutal the Russian attack is on Ukraine, I’ll bet the loss of life will be a minute fraction of that caused by the US destruction of Serbia, Libya, Iraq, Syria, etc etc just in this century. Of any ONE of those, as a matter of fact. It’ll likely be far less than the number of dead in the Donbass since 2014!
Go back to Putin's Munich speech in 2007. Watch him talk with journalists in 2016
Read the speeches he's made in the past week. These are not the ravings of a madman. It's just that the bar has fallen so low for "our" leaders, that encountering words from someone this clearheaded and coherent, it sounds like they're from another planet.
This is a major turning point in world history. We better get used to it.
Putin did what he had to do after NATO (i.e., the U.S.) basically told him to sit down and shut up, threatening to surround Russia with NATO bases, not caring about Russia's legitimate security concerns. The winners in this: The U.S. Military Industrial Complex and ruling elites that can use the new crisis to increase already absurd 'defense' budgets and further ramp up internal and external surveillance powers. The same goes for the Russian Military Industrial Complex and its associated services. The losers: The American Tax Payer, the Ukrainian neo-nazi Azov fighters and other military forces, the Ukrainian civilian population, the European Tax Payers and pretty much everybody else. If you are a member of the CIA, the NSA or any of the more than 50 so-called US Intelligence Agencies, or one of the three branches of the US military (each of which is bigger than the entire Russian Military), then today was a good day for you. Congrats!
So, OK maybe you said Putin wouldn't invade and now the MSM is saying he did. So What?
I don't see anything to commit hari kari over.
But I can't imagine you really believe the BS about how Putin needs to be condemned for his crime. Where is that same condemnation for Yemen? For the freezing of Afghan assets so that children there will starve?
Sure Putin is bad, but that hardly makes the USA good. And you've totally caved.
Putin was very clear over the last several months about what he wanted -- written guarantees that the US would not allow Ukraine to become a member of NATO. The USA did a version of that promise about a blow job: "I won't cum in your mouth."
Putin is spitting out that cum from the last 8 years!
At what point is the abused wife justified in murdering her husband?
You have nothing to apologize for -- except for apologizing for this. This excuse for Biden and the Oligarchy to continue to pursue Empire.
This "war" is totally on Biden and the US Oligarchy. Who bought you Michael? Who threatened you? I'm at a loss.
I don't mean to be cynical, but looking at this with a jaundice eye, why do I get the feeling that we calculatingly sacrificed Ukraine in order to sabotage Nordstream 2 and isolate Russia from further integrating into Europe's economic and political sphere. Something we are terrified of happening. A stable Europe without a Russian threat, what's the point of NATO and with it, billions in weapons contracts? We knew Ukraine would probably never join NATO but we held that out to them and provoked Russia knowing that it was the one red line Putin would act on. Well, we (the military-industrial complex) got our new Cold War and Russian isolation. Trillions in new military spending for decades to come, and the rest of us all the more poorer.
Yet - the truth is soo obvious and soo simple... The original modern sin is -- Russia-gate hoax.
SAME lying team that concocted the Russia-gate hoax and 2014 bloody coup that overthrew democratically elected Ukraine government Jake Sullivan, Hillary strategy advisor had a KEY role in launching Russia-gate hoax – he is now national security advisor to Biden.
SAME people that launched the Russia-gate hoax are now hollering that Russia invasion of Ukraine is "imminent". All to "save democracy" there -- in order to distract from the fact that St. Obama organized in 2014 bloody coup against democratically elected Ukraine government. St. Obama installed Biden and his CIA pal Brennan as de facto governors of Ukraine -- immensely enriching US "elite" and posting and removing government members, judges and heads of industry with billions of corrupting cash -- in "fight against corruption".
US War party’s key exports are – coups, wars and all-encompassing US corruption.
I applaud you, Michael. Both you and Matt Taibbi have held yourselves to account on calling this wrong - even though I don’t think it’s necessary. Your honest journalism is enough, no explanation necessary.
Most of us are not for war and held the media responsible for their obviously irresponsible rhetoric -- as well as Biden's idiot statement he would essentially allow a "minor incursion." I don't think you were off-base in your commentary.
" I stand by previous skepticism and criticism of US Government policy/rhetoric, as well as the US media’s unabashed war fervor. But this is insane aggression from Putin, and of course needs to be condemned unreservedly."
Washington is a relentless bully and the partners CIA chooses for its coups and color revolutions are always the terrorists. In the 2014 Ukraine coup actual Nazis w Langley puppet were installed. Oddly enough local populations tend to resent corrupt leaders selected for them and it is no different in Ukraine.
This from Max Blumenthal is 4 years old so.. betcha a nickle there aren't two blue check, legacy presstitutes who know or care how things got here.. greedy idiots who pose as America's public servants & have never, ever faced consequences for their actions or accountability for their words can never satisify its predatory hunger.. we the people be damned.. if our death has useful PR value we are a hero...
We have been robbed blind for the Corona circus now ooops election season let's talk war. NYPD budget is almost as big as Putin's ffs. We would rank as 7th largest military on a global scale & can't run Rikers. An enemy is anyone w resources who does not genuflect & pay vig to DC Mafia.
Everybody read Max his research is meticulous and his passion and talent abundant!!
Thanks for the statement. My gut feeling with the lack of actual diplomacy that went on by the U.S. is that this is the outcome our government for a variety of reasons.
Whatever we may think of Putin, he is no Stalin. He has not murdered millions or created a gulag archipelago.
Nor is he "irrational," as some pundits rail. He does not want a war with us, which would be worse than ruinous to us both.
Putin is a Russian nationalist, patriot, traditionalist and a cold and ruthless realist looking out to preserve Russia as the great and respected power it once was and he believes it can be again.
I'll take the humble over the hubristic every time.
Thank you for your honesty and accountability — anyone can get something wrong, especially something as deliberately murky as invasion plans, but those two commodities are in short supply today and if anything only make me respect you more!
"This owes in significant part to Putin’s apparent madness." -- a strange thought from you Michael. ONE sentence in writing -- Ukraine will NOT join NATO would have solved the problem -- Ukraine and the "West" ignored Minsk agreement for 6-7 years...
Biden’s own CIA director, career diplomat and Russia hand William Burns, has long argued that NATO expansion, especially with regard to Ukraine, is a provocative miscalculation that will enrage Russia and exacerbate tensions across eastern Europe. In a 2008 memo to Condoleeza Rice, then Bush’s Secretary of State, Burns wrote:
“Ukrainian entry into NATO is the brightest of all redlines for the Russian elite (not just Putin). In more than two and a half years of conversations with key Russian players, from knuckle-draggers in the dark recesses of the Kremlin to Putin’s sharpest liberal critics, I have yet to find anyone who views Ukraine in NATO as anything other than a direct challenge to Russian interests.”
--------------------------------------------
An outstanding book:
The Plot to Scapegoat Russia: How the CIA and the Deep State Have Conspired to Vilify Putin
by Dan Kovalik Esq., Alex Hyde-White, et al
https://www.amazon.com/Plot-Scapegoat-Russia-Conspired-Vilify/dp/B07771BMV8/ref=tmm_aud_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1645575140&sr=1-1-ef9bfdb7-b507-43a0-b887-27e2a8414df0
---------------------------------------------------
A must see: Tucker Carlson Today – interview with Dan Kovalik: “Russia, Russia, Russia” (Feb. 4, 2022)
-------------------------------------
I see a few people apologizing today, but while I appreciate your apology, I'm more worried about why US intelligence was unaccountably right in what was a transparent attempt to divert from domestic problems. And I don't think Putin is insane. Just calculating or reacting to something we don't yet grasp. The "evil madman" is too easy an explanation.
I know what the solution is: proceed exactly as you’ve been going, keep on with your reporting and accept that occasional you will be wrong. You have the right to be wrong, keep pursuing the truth and hold power to account.
Michael: there's no reason to apologize about misjudging the actions the Russian government would take if its entirely reasonable security demands were not met. It's precisely because Putin (if you want to put everything on him, which is not a wise manner of assessment) has been so cautious over the past decade that most all of us could not quite imagine the decision would be so far-reaching. Many excellent analysts didn't see this coming. Gilbert Doctorow, for instance:
https://gilbertdoctorow.com/2022/02/24/unjustified-and-unprovoked-russias-ongoing-military-operation-in-ukraine/ Read this, and it's much more understandable why Russia acted as it has.
Or see Patrick Armstrong, longtime Canadian defense analyst, who served in the Soviet Union and the first years after the collapse. He too, though he did not fully expect it, allowed for the possibility that Russia would do more than just solidify the defense of the Donbass. He'll have a new post up in the next few days, more than likely, but in the meantime, read what he had to say on the 14th:
https://patrickarmstrong.ca/2022/02/14/russian-federation-sitrep-14-february-2022/
It’s this part of your piece that irks:
"And I’m not even saying this as some perfunctory PR exercise: what Putin has done is an act of aggressive war, and should genuinely be condemned. It will have dire consequences, many yet unforeseen. A division of US soldiers is stationed less than four miles from the Ukraine border in Poland; further escalation on a scale that few would have dared to fathom is now a harrowingly distinct possibility. This owes in significant part to Putin’s apparent madness. I’m always leery of playing armchair psychologist, which tends to be the dumbest form of political analysis — but I will say that in my layman’s observation of his recent public statements, Putin comes across as increasingly bitter, vengeful, and even deluded."
Horseshit. For one thing, pinning it all on “Putin” is nonsense. And then claiming Putin is “mad” is even worse. The entire Russian leadership, including Sergei Lavrov, have been very clear and straightforward about the “Red Lines” the US was crossing. If anything, Putin is very cautious. The Donbass shelling has been a murderous grind. As Pepe Escobar pointed out, today is the first time in EIGHT YEARS that Donetsk and Luhansk haven’t been shelled. 15,000 or so people killed there during that time, the vast majority on the side of the nascent republics. That's of no import?
Why this urge to condemn? It’s only supposed to be the US and its poodles that invades and destroys other countries? We’re allowed to condemn that, sure, but heaven forbid the worm turns and those other countries or peoples gain the ability to shoot back? However brutal the Russian attack is on Ukraine, I’ll bet the loss of life will be a minute fraction of that caused by the US destruction of Serbia, Libya, Iraq, Syria, etc etc just in this century. Of any ONE of those, as a matter of fact. It’ll likely be far less than the number of dead in the Donbass since 2014!
Go back to Putin's Munich speech in 2007. Watch him talk with journalists in 2016
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqD8lIdIMRo
Read the speeches he's made in the past week. These are not the ravings of a madman. It's just that the bar has fallen so low for "our" leaders, that encountering words from someone this clearheaded and coherent, it sounds like they're from another planet.
This is a major turning point in world history. We better get used to it.
Putin did what he had to do after NATO (i.e., the U.S.) basically told him to sit down and shut up, threatening to surround Russia with NATO bases, not caring about Russia's legitimate security concerns. The winners in this: The U.S. Military Industrial Complex and ruling elites that can use the new crisis to increase already absurd 'defense' budgets and further ramp up internal and external surveillance powers. The same goes for the Russian Military Industrial Complex and its associated services. The losers: The American Tax Payer, the Ukrainian neo-nazi Azov fighters and other military forces, the Ukrainian civilian population, the European Tax Payers and pretty much everybody else. If you are a member of the CIA, the NSA or any of the more than 50 so-called US Intelligence Agencies, or one of the three branches of the US military (each of which is bigger than the entire Russian Military), then today was a good day for you. Congrats!
What happened to you Michael?
Who's threatening you?
So, OK maybe you said Putin wouldn't invade and now the MSM is saying he did. So What?
I don't see anything to commit hari kari over.
But I can't imagine you really believe the BS about how Putin needs to be condemned for his crime. Where is that same condemnation for Yemen? For the freezing of Afghan assets so that children there will starve?
Sure Putin is bad, but that hardly makes the USA good. And you've totally caved.
Putin was very clear over the last several months about what he wanted -- written guarantees that the US would not allow Ukraine to become a member of NATO. The USA did a version of that promise about a blow job: "I won't cum in your mouth."
Putin is spitting out that cum from the last 8 years!
At what point is the abused wife justified in murdering her husband?
You have nothing to apologize for -- except for apologizing for this. This excuse for Biden and the Oligarchy to continue to pursue Empire.
This "war" is totally on Biden and the US Oligarchy. Who bought you Michael? Who threatened you? I'm at a loss.
I don't mean to be cynical, but looking at this with a jaundice eye, why do I get the feeling that we calculatingly sacrificed Ukraine in order to sabotage Nordstream 2 and isolate Russia from further integrating into Europe's economic and political sphere. Something we are terrified of happening. A stable Europe without a Russian threat, what's the point of NATO and with it, billions in weapons contracts? We knew Ukraine would probably never join NATO but we held that out to them and provoked Russia knowing that it was the one red line Putin would act on. Well, we (the military-industrial complex) got our new Cold War and Russian isolation. Trillions in new military spending for decades to come, and the rest of us all the more poorer.
Yet - the truth is soo obvious and soo simple... The original modern sin is -- Russia-gate hoax.
SAME lying team that concocted the Russia-gate hoax and 2014 bloody coup that overthrew democratically elected Ukraine government Jake Sullivan, Hillary strategy advisor had a KEY role in launching Russia-gate hoax – he is now national security advisor to Biden.
SAME people that launched the Russia-gate hoax are now hollering that Russia invasion of Ukraine is "imminent". All to "save democracy" there -- in order to distract from the fact that St. Obama organized in 2014 bloody coup against democratically elected Ukraine government. St. Obama installed Biden and his CIA pal Brennan as de facto governors of Ukraine -- immensely enriching US "elite" and posting and removing government members, judges and heads of industry with billions of corrupting cash -- in "fight against corruption".
US War party’s key exports are – coups, wars and all-encompassing US corruption.
-----------------------------------------------------------
ukrainegate.info nice summary of Bidens' corrupt rule in Ukraine -- a well-researched and an outstanding in-depth analysis of US corruption in Ukraine
https://ukrainegate.info/short-part-1-a-not-so-solid-prosecutor/
https://ukrainegate.info/summary-part-2-not-so-dormant-investigations/
https://ukrainegate.info/summary-part-3-a-not-so-noble-president/
https://ukrainegate.info/summary-part-4-shokin-strikes-back/
Shocking that a journalist admits he got it wrong. Bravo!
I applaud you, Michael. Both you and Matt Taibbi have held yourselves to account on calling this wrong - even though I don’t think it’s necessary. Your honest journalism is enough, no explanation necessary.
Most of us are not for war and held the media responsible for their obviously irresponsible rhetoric -- as well as Biden's idiot statement he would essentially allow a "minor incursion." I don't think you were off-base in your commentary.
" I stand by previous skepticism and criticism of US Government policy/rhetoric, as well as the US media’s unabashed war fervor. But this is insane aggression from Putin, and of course needs to be condemned unreservedly."
Washington is a relentless bully and the partners CIA chooses for its coups and color revolutions are always the terrorists. In the 2014 Ukraine coup actual Nazis w Langley puppet were installed. Oddly enough local populations tend to resent corrupt leaders selected for them and it is no different in Ukraine.
This from Max Blumenthal is 4 years old so.. betcha a nickle there aren't two blue check, legacy presstitutes who know or care how things got here.. greedy idiots who pose as America's public servants & have never, ever faced consequences for their actions or accountability for their words can never satisify its predatory hunger.. we the people be damned.. if our death has useful PR value we are a hero...
We have been robbed blind for the Corona circus now ooops election season let's talk war. NYPD budget is almost as big as Putin's ffs. We would rank as 7th largest military on a global scale & can't run Rikers. An enemy is anyone w resources who does not genuflect & pay vig to DC Mafia.
Everybody read Max his research is meticulous and his passion and talent abundant!!
https://thegrayzone.com/2018/11/15/blowback-how-us-funded-fascists-in-ukraine-mentor-us-white-supremacists/
Thanks for the statement. My gut feeling with the lack of actual diplomacy that went on by the U.S. is that this is the outcome our government for a variety of reasons.
On WHO is Putin:
Whatever we may think of Putin, he is no Stalin. He has not murdered millions or created a gulag archipelago.
Nor is he "irrational," as some pundits rail. He does not want a war with us, which would be worse than ruinous to us both.
Putin is a Russian nationalist, patriot, traditionalist and a cold and ruthless realist looking out to preserve Russia as the great and respected power it once was and he believes it can be again.