Day: March 29, 2023

Lobbyist Money Well Spent

Recently the House had a brilliant idea….that is to find more oversight over the funds that is spent on continuing the war in Ukraine.

An idea that met with my approval (so that meant it would go nowhere) and now it looks like the buckets of cash from lobbyists has return a dividend.

The Senate on Tuesday night voted down an amendment to create a special inspector general to oversee the over $113 billion that the US has authorized to spend on the war in Ukraine.

The amendment, which was introduced by Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO), failed in a vote of 26-68, with 24 Republicans and only two Democrats voting in favor of more oversight for the billions in weapons that are being shipped to Ukraine.

Hawley tried to add the amendment to a bill to repeal the 1991 and 2002 Iraq Authorizations for the Use of Military Force (AUMFs). The legislation to repeal the AUMFs is expected to be voted on sometime this week.

Hawley’s idea was to create a position for Ukraine similar to the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), which John Sopko has filled since 2012.

Sopko found tens of billions of dollars in waste in US aid to Afghanistan and issued scathing reports criticizing US policy in the country. Last month, Sopko said he fears the US will repeat the same mistakes in Ukraine.

“You’re bound to get corrupt elements of not only the Ukrainian or the host government, but also of US government contractors or other third party contractors to try to steal the money. There’s just so much money going in, and it’s hard to keep track of,” Sopko told reporters.

Ahead of Tuesday’s vote, Hawley wrote in an op-ed published by Fox News: “Billions upon billions of American dollars are pouring into a war-torn country without any serious oversight.”

Hawley has been critical of US policy in Ukraine because he thinks the US should be focusing on building up in the Asia Pacific to face China instead. In December, he sent a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken urging the Biden administration to prioritize arming Taiwan over Ukraine.

(antiwar.com)

No one in the industry wants oversight.

Why should the American people know where their tax dollars are going and how it is spent?

Just another in a long list of oversight proposals that die an agonizing death.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

3 Options For Ukraine

DON’T PANIC!

Peace talks is not on the list.

You Nervous Nellies can sit back and enjoy the war without any worry of it ending soon.  That should keep the Putin haters and fear infested people happy.

The 3 options detailed in a report by the Institute of the Study of War (ISW)….

After just over a year of fighting, the war in Ukraine is stalemated. Both sides have seen heavy losses, but the war has gone especially poorly for Russia as it’s suffered a series of embarrassing setbacks on the battlefield and failed to accomplish its broader aims. That said, Russian President Vladimir Putin is showing no signs of giving up as his forces continue to push for gains in the eastern cities of Bakhmut and Avdiivka.

A new assessment from the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) suggests Ukraine has three fairly straightforward choices in the face of such obstinance — and immediate peace talks are not among them. 

“This would be an appropriate moment for Putin to conclude that Russia cannot impose its will on Ukraine by force and that he must seek a compromise settlement. He has clearly come to no such conclusion, however,” ISW said.

In this context, one option for Ukraine is to stop fighting, even as Russia continues ground and air attacks, which ISW said almost no one is pushing for and would “lead to disastrous defeat.” The second potential approach is for Ukrainian forces to continue fighting in a “very constrained way,” with the goal of holding on to the territory they currently control. But this would “encourage Putin to continue his efforts to pursue outright military victory.”

The third option is for Ukraine to “launch successive counter-offensive operations with the twin aims of persuading Putin to accept a negotiated compromise or of creating military realities sufficiently favorable to Ukraine that Kyiv and its Western allies can then effectively freeze the conflict on their own regardless of Putin’s decisions.”

https://www.businessinsider.com/ukraine-3-options-since-putin-not-giving-up-war-experts-2023-3

Personally I do not think these options will do anything but make matters worse and extend the death and destruction.

I know that no one likes the idea of any negotiations for it will be caving into Putin….and of course the whole thing will give these people ammo to use the Chamberlain statement after the Munich meeting with Hitler over Czechoslovakia to try and make some obscure point.

I do not need to ask for opinions here for I have heard and seen them all.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”