Posted on 01/23/2020 6:56:43 AM PST by Jim Robinson
Pay more than a dollar...
...and look at this red flashy thing...
One big concern I have is that the US spook "community" seems to be hiding information that that the people should know at least something about. During the Cuba missile crisis, the public saw photos of soviet silo construction. When KAL 007 was shot down, there was an audio recording of the command to fire. Now we get an "IC assessment" saying Russia was on Trump's side. If they assume I trust what they say they are very mistaken.
Ha ha. Touche.
0 did send equipment but there was something wrong with them. I don’t recall the details.
Let’s get them under oath and then we’ll both know.
I decided to look up Ukraine corruption on Google. Below is one interesting article which I have just read a little over half. It has several links to other info sources. There is a useful description of how Poland directed its growth from the bottom up whereas Ukraine was forced to use the top down approach pushed by the Communists, and that is also often urged by the World Bank and IDB. Many years ago my husband I were showing an African labor leader the Early American Agriculture exhibit at the Smithsonian. As he looked at 19th Century farm equipment like harrows, plows, and simple reaping machines he exclaimed, “This is the kind of AID we need. Simple things that are better than what we have but that our blacksmiths could study and build for us.” American aid is based on giving what big business wants to sell—John Deere, McCormic, International Harvester. Then the local governments force the smallholders off the land and consolidate to large holdings so highly efficient big agriculture can use the big machines our taxes have paid for and the landless move to the cities and create the ugly and restless major slums with high unemployment. So you have the local rich who got the big farms and machinery and paid off the politicians, and the little guys who used to have the dignity of owning their own land and honest labor to do with their own hands now landless and often unemployed.
Here is information from Defense News regarding both the Trump aid and comments about previous Obama aid.
“Some of the early nonlethal aid [from Obama] was useful. After Ukraine received 20 Lockheed Martin AN/TPQ-53 radar systems that track incoming mortar and short-range artillery fire in 2015, the casualty rate for units equipped with those system went from 47 percent to about 18 percent, Ordynovych said. “That was some of the most useful equipment that we ever provided them because it provided them early warning,” Hodges said. “The Ukrainians used [the radar] so much, they were under so much rocket and mortar fire, that they became extremely proficient. So we learned from them.”
[We learn from providing equipment to our allies in active warfare situations. This is just like the Germans and Russians learned by providing weapons to the two sides of the Spanish Civil War just before WW2.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.