Aletho News

Stop arming Ukraine now, intelligence veterans warn Biden

By Serena Wylde | TCW Defending Freedom | February 13, 2023

Eighteen senior former intelligence professionals have signed an ‘alert memorandum’ to President Biden warning him what will follow his decision to send Abrams tanks to Ukraine.

Calling themselves Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, they informed him: ‘What your advisers should have told you is that none of the newly promised weaponry will stop Russia from defeating what’s left of the Ukrainian army. If you have been told otherwise, replace your intelligence and military advisers with competent professionals – the sooner the better.’

Two decades ago, before the US/UK attack on Iraq, some of the same signatories warned President George W Bush that ‘justification’ for such an attack was based on false intelligence. In their February 5, 2003 memorandum on Colin Powell’s speech, they alerted the then president to the unintended consequences of an attack on Iraq which were likely to be catastrophic. Then, as now, they urged the president to widen the circle of his advisers beyond those clearly bent on a war for which they saw no compelling reason. Five years later the Senate Intelligence Committee concluded: ‘In making the case for war, the [Bush] Administration repeatedly presented intelligence as fact when in reality it was unsubstantiated, contradicted, or even non-existent.’

The current Alert Memorandum goes on: ‘The issuances of your current intelligence advisers rival those of Bush’s and Cheney’s fixers in disingenuousness. Their statements run from dishonest to naïve. They betray a woeful lack of understanding of Russia’s strategic concerns and its determination to use its formidable military power to meet perceived external threats. The statements also reflect abysmal ignorance regarding how US behaviour has led willy-nilly to a profound shift in the world correlation of forces in favour of Russia and China – to include making them military allies in all but name.’

Even a casual observer of events in Ukraine since the collapse of the Soviet Union is aware that Nato’s continuous eastwards push has been provocative because Vladimir Putin had made it abundantly clear that Nato expansion into Ukraine was a red line for Russia. Some will also know that in 2014 and 2015 Russia brokered two truces, called the Minsk Protocols I and II, in an attempt to end the slaughter of ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine by the AFU (Armed Forces of Ukraine). These agreements were simply ignored. Fewer may know that on February 16, 2022, a week before Putin sent combat troops into Ukraine, the AFU began heavy bombardment of the area in Eastern Ukraine mainly occupied by ethnic Russians. Yet, just as the media echoed and reinforced the false claims of WMD in Iraq, so it pushes the myth that Putin launched an ‘unprovoked invasion’ of Ukraine.

Public opinion in the US is not totally fooled, however, as manifested by a new right-left coalition which is organising a protest march from the Lincoln Memorial to the White House next Sunday demanding ‘Not one more penny for war in Ukraine’.

The sponsoring organisations of this new movement are the People’s Party and the Libertarian Party. The former was formed in 2020, but the latter is the third-largest political party in the US by voter registration.

The key demands of the demonstration are:

·       Not one more penny for war in Ukraine

The Democrats and Republicans have armed Ukraine with tens of billions of dollars in weapons and militarised aid. The war has killed tens of thousands and displaced millions.

·       Negotiate peace

The US government instigated the war in Ukraine with a coup of its democratically elected government in 2014, and sabotaged a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine.

·       Stop the war inflation

The US blew up the Russian gas pipeline to Europe to break up trade relations between Russia and Europe, starve the latter of energy and de-industrialise its countries.

·       Disband Nato

Nato expansion to Russia’s border provoked the war in Ukraine. Nato is a warmongering relic of the Cold War. Disband it like the Warsaw Pact.

February 12, 2023 - Posted by aletho | Militarism, Solidarity and Activism | Ukraine, United States