cbbass1 said:

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sycasey said:

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cbbass1 said:

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sycasey said:

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cbbass1 said:

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sycasey said:

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cbbass1 said:

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sycasey said:

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MinotStateBeav said:

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Eastern Oregon Bear said:

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MinotStateBeav said:

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Sebastabear said:

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MinotStateBeav said:

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Unit2Sucks said:

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Tucker asking the disingenuous questions. He's really gunning for Russian media personality of the year.

.@TuckerCarlson tonight: “What if these bodies of tortured, dead civilians were staged? What if they’re fake? What if the Ukrainian military killed them & then blamed Russia? I’m not saying any of this is true, I’m just asking the questions. Why can’t we ask these questions?”

— Joe Walsh (@WalshFreedom) April 4, 2022

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Those are actually legitimate questions.

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What if Tucker Carlson is a Russian asset embedded to destroy American democracy? What if he maintains a dacha in Vladivostok where he plays pinochle with Putin on his days off? I mean those seem like legitimate questions too and honestly far more likely to be true than the "fake corpses planted in a Russian occupied city to make Putin look bad" theory.

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Also completely fair to ask those questions, I don't agree, but I'm not going to shout you down for asking them.

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Well, except for them being monumentally stupid and idiotic questions and a total waste of air time that could have been devoted to meaningful questions. I suppose you still think questioning whether the dead school kids ar Sandy Hook were actually crisis actors was a legitimate question too. It's got about as much logic.

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Everything that doesn't follow your ideology becomes stupid and idiotic. It's a problem with democrats currently. They can't picture themselves on the other side of the divide.

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Why does the other side of the divide have to be "maybe Putin was justified for invading?"

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Tucker Carlson may very well be a Russian asset, but calling for more information about the alleged massacre in Bucha is the only reasonable course of action.

The reasoning is simple: the timeline doesn't add up.

Wed, 3/30: Russian troops left Bucha (according to the Russian Defense Ministry);

Thu, 3/31: Anatolii Fedoruk, mayor of Bucha, announces a "Day of Liberation of Bucha"; "This day will go down in the glorious history of Bucha and the entire Bucha community as a day of liberation by the Armed Forces of Ukraine from the Russian occupiers."

Fri, 4/1: "Ekaterina Ukraintsiva, representing the [Bucha] town council authority, appeared on an information video on the Bucha Live Telegram page wearing military fatigues and seated in front of a Ukrainian flag to announce 'the cleansing of the city.' She informed residents that the arrival of the Azov battalion did not mean that liberation was complete [but it was, the Russians had fully withdrawn], and that a 'complete sweep' had to be performed."

Sat, 4/2:
++ NYT reports completion of Russian withdrawal from Bucha, "leaving behind dead soldiers and burned vehicles", with no mention of a massacre;

++ Left Bank, a U.S./EU-funded Ukrainian language site, announces: "Special forces [Azov Battalion] have begun a clearing operation in the city of Bucha in the Kyiv region, which has been liberated by the Armed Forces of Ukraine. The city is being cleared from saboteurs and accomplices of Russian forces."

++ Photos posted of Bucha massacre, blaming Russian troops [who had already been run outta town] for the killings;

Whenever there are reports of the killings of innocent civilians, it's important to remember that all Ukrainian men aged 18-60 were required by law to stay and fight against Russian forces. Were there really any "innocent civilians"? Or were they compelled, by the declared martial law, to be combatants?

Could the Bucha massacre victims have been pacifists who refused to fight?

It's also important to remember that throughout the entire Ukraine support for U.S./EU/NATO policies vs alignment with Russia was pretty evenly mixed, with the West more U.S.-aligned, and the East more Russia-aligned. Were there Russian sympathizers in Bucha who signaled their surrender to Russian troops?

There are many open questions that need answering. Unfortunately, no investigation is forthcoming.

When Putin started his troop buildup on Ukraine's Eastern border, I urged you guys to believe very little of what you hear from the media on this conflict. I stand by my statement even more so today.

Everything from Western MSM is urging escalation of the conflict on Ukraine's behalf, tighter economic sanctions, and the ouster of Putin. The fact that Russia's defense policy authorizes the first use of nuclear weapons for their own defense doesn't seem to give anyone in Washington a 2nd thought.

Nor does our track record with economic sanctions and their lack of success -- except the unintended consequence of consolidating support for the despot du jour.

As I said before, both Zelensky and Putin have had enough, and are ready to negotiate an end to this ordeal. Then Biden, who's kept the zealots from unbridled escalation thus far, calls Putin a "war criminal", somehow forgetting that the U.S. still refuses to recognize the International Criminal Court in The Hague, and still refuses to ratify the Rome Statute.

The U.S. Neocons believe that they're close to the regime change in Russia that they've wanted all along, and they aren't about to let their agenda get derailed by a peace agreement.

Bottom line: Believe very little of what you hear on Ukraine. Assume that everything that reaches you is propaganda, until proven otherwise. Everyone has an agenda, and they're more committed to their agenda than the truth.

Primary source: Questions Abound About Bucha Massacre, Consortium News

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Buddy, you need to take your own advice. You are repeating Russian propaganda. I think Consortium News is likely just a propaganda site itself.

The timeline does add up, because satellite images confirm the bodies have been lying in the street since March 19. This article is nonsense.

https://www.bbc.com/news/60981238

You need to start rethinking the sources you consume.

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If that's the case, why didn't the NYT report on them? Why didn't they include them in their initial report on 4/2? It seems like an extremely important detail to overlook.

More importantly, given their value to Zelensky & Ukraine as evidence of Russian barbarism, why not publish photos immediately after Russian troops left?

And why wasn't the Bucha mayor's jubilant "Day of Liberation" speech tempered with sadness for the fallen victims?

Do you really think that the BBC is impartial here?

I'll compare photos, because I can't imagine that the bodies of Ukrainians killed by Russian troops were left in the street for 2 weeks, only then to be "discovered" & photographed days after the Russians left, and days after Western reporters had free rein to walk all over the town.

Also, why would the Russian soldiers bind the hands of these Ukrainians, and shoot them execution-style? They clearly had no qualms about shooting Ukrainian residents.

Like it or not, the binding of their hands behind their back suggests that they were interrogated by someone who thought that they were traitors to their cause, which fits with the Azov Battallion's alleged 'purge'.

I'm open to being wrong, but I'm not seeing any solid evidence to the contrary yet.

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Okay, so let's rewind a bit.

Your original argument was that the Russian Army couldn't have done it because the timeline was wrong: the news about the massacred corpses came out after the Ukrainians had retaken the city, so it couldn't have been the Russians.

Now that's been disproven by satellite photos: in fact, these corpses could be seen in the streets weeks earlier, when the Russians were occupying. Now your line is that the Azov Battalion must have been responsible, even though the Ukrainian military was not in the city at the time of those photos? You think the satellite images are forgeries, even though they've been reported in multiple international outlets other than the BBC? You think these images were staged?

You think this even though there is also video footage of Russian soldiers executing civilians? You think this even though we have eyewitness accounts from citizens of the city confirming that this was happening?

As your refutation of this evidence, you have thus far only provided an article from the same site you once cited before, just days before their predictions about Putin not wanting to invade Ukraine were proven laughably wrong? And you also posted that article AFTER its own timeline about when the bodies were found was ALSO proven wrong by satellite footage and all of the above? And you want to tell me there's no evidence to the contrary? Do you ever get tired of being wrong?

It's pretty obvious you've already made up your mind about this and are willing to contort yourself to the greatest degree possible to maintain your narrative. Either you have been taken in by propagandists or you are one yourself. Not a good look, either way.

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The only bodies I'm talking about are the ones initially reported on 4/2 that were shot execution-style, with hands bound.

Looks like the number of dead Ukrainians in Bucha may be in the hundreds. From citizen accounts, Russian soldiers clearly killed many of those people throughout the month of March.

I have no doubt that Russian troops are responsible for many more Ukrainian deaths in the area. It's a war, with both sides armed & going at it. If Putin is saying that Russian soldiers didn't hurt or kill anyone, he's obviously full of crap.

For how many Bucha deaths are Russian troops responsible? Could be many, most, or all. They weren't passing out flowers & candy for a month. They were fighting armed combatants who were defending their homes. The timeline still doesn't add up, though. It's possible that some of those people were killed after the Russians left. But clearly, the Russians killed people in Bucha. Exactly how many remains to be seen.

Still, Putin & Lavrov's denials are not credible. He sent his soldiers there for a reason, and if they didn't hurt or kill anyone, they're in deep stuff.

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Okay, so now we're in agreement that Russian troops probably were killing civilians and that those bodies could be seen in the streets during their occupation of Bucha.

The supposition now is that maybe the Ukrainian government saw fit to stage a fake execution scene after the fact, in order to further pressure the West to enter the conflict against Russia. And they did this despite having ample corpses already strewn around the streets of the city that could easily help them make this argument without having to stage anything.

I find this scenario extremely unlikely to be true. I don't know why anyone would even entertain the idea unless there was some kind of concrete evidence pointing to it.

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Aside from the certainty that Russian troops killed people in Bucha (probably a lot), we still have the possibility that Ukrainian troops (i.e., Azov Battalion) may have come through after the Russian troops left, executing Russian sympathizers (who may have been the ones who signaled surrender to Russian troops instead of fighting them).

I doubt that anyone "staged" anything. Russian forces are trying to show Ukrainian residents that it's better to surrender than fight. Ukrainian militias may be sending the message that "You're either with us, or you're against us." These militias have been fighting against Russian sympathizers in the Donbass region since 2014, so there's more than enough history & bad blood to make this a real possibility.

My speculation about Ukrainian militias has only one source -- a U.S.-backed Ukrainian language site -- to back it up. Unless there's a U.N. investigation of some sort, we'll probably never know. Even if some of the deaths are found to be at the hands of Azov or Right Sector, you aren't going to hear about it from Western media, but you will hear about it from Fox News or Consortium News.

Unfortunately, there's just no single source of news that gets everything right.

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BearNIt said:

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I stand by my statements. If a person were to come to my house and kicked open my door in the dead of night that person would be dead and I wouldn't shed a ****ING tear.

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cbbass1 said:

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Unit2Sucks said:

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More evidence of the Bucha massacres.

THREAD: German intelligence service BND captures radio messages of Russian soldiers coordinating Bucha massacres. 1/ 👇
https://t.co/DMxmG95sxZ via @derspiegel

— Peter R. Neumann (@PeterRNeumann) April 7, 2022

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Pretty clear that this is a tragedy of war.

Here's the English version of Spiegel International:

https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/the-horrors-of-bucha-at-the-scene-of-the-war-crimes-a-b1b95592-5518-45ae-8010-2fd060c3dcd9

No doubt that Russian soldiers killed many, possibly hundreds, in the month that they were there.

From the moment when Zelenskyy prevented men 18-60 from leaving the country, and forced them to fight the Russians, I was afraid that this would happen. The mandatory conscription turned millions of Ukrainians from innocent, unarmed civilians into armed combatants. I thought it was a contemptible attempt by Zelenskyy to create enough photos & video of Russian atrocities to bring the U.S. into direct military conflict with Russia.

This put the Russian troops in the same predicament as the U.S. soldiers in Vietnam. With the Ukrainian fighters mixed in with the population you have to assume that everyone's out to get you. In the later years of the Vietnam War, U.S. helicopters would fly over the countryside, with the gunners ordered to "shoot anything that moves." Entire villages were burned to the ground, and Atrocities & mass murder were commonplace.

As I've said before, Putin has made his point. He's serious about needing the U.S. to back off, as he has been trying to say, diplomatically, since 2008. The battlefield losses are hurting, and the sanctions are hurting. He needs an escape route.

Zelenskyy has made his point. Courageous Ukrainian fighters took on the Russian invaders, and turned them back. There's a lot of Russian hardware left behind in Bucha.

Both sides have paid a heavy price. And both sides are ready to settle.

Except that the U.S. media & the NeoCons are wanting a few more weeks and months for sanctions to take effect, figuring that they can finally accomplish their dream of regime change in Russia. No one in D.C. is talking about any negotiations or a peace deal.

Is Zelenskyy authorized to lift U.S. sanctions when he talks with Putin? Probably not. No one knows. Ryan Grim, D.C. Bureau Chief for The Intercept, asked this question to Jen Psaki, and got a word salad response. Meanwhile, the rest of the White House Press Corps is asking about no-fly zones and ever-increasing levels of escalation.

It's obvious that Russia does not care one bit about the people of Ukraine. But neither does the U.S. The more Biden & his foreign policy team pin their hopes on regime change, the more the people of Ukraine and Russia suffer.

Matt Taibbi adds this great piece on the history of U.S. attempts at regime change:
https://scheerpost.com/2022/04/03/matt-taibbi-regime-change-doesnt-work-you-morons/

On top of that, figure that as soon as the U.S. engages in a hot war with Russia, China will invade Taiwan. And in the midst of all this, the Fed will be raising interest rates. What could go wrong? (:-o

Time to make a deal and get this over with. We've got more than enough crises to deal with.

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Unit2Sucks said:

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cbbass1 said:

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Unit2Sucks said:

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More evidence of the Bucha massacres.

THREAD: German intelligence service BND captures radio messages of Russian soldiers coordinating Bucha massacres. 1/ 👇
https://t.co/DMxmG95sxZ via @derspiegel

— Peter R. Neumann (@PeterRNeumann) April 7, 2022

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Pretty clear that this is a tragedy of war.

Here's the English version of Spiegel International:

https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/the-horrors-of-bucha-at-the-scene-of-the-war-crimes-a-b1b95592-5518-45ae-8010-2fd060c3dcd9

No doubt that Russian soldiers killed many, possibly hundreds, in the month that they were there.

From the moment when Zelenskyy prevented men 18-60 from leaving the country, and forced them to fight the Russians, I was afraid that this would happen. The mandatory conscription turned millions of Ukrainians from innocent, unarmed civilians into armed combatants. I thought it was a contemptible attempt by Zelenskyy to create enough photos & video of Russian atrocities to bring the U.S. into direct military conflict with Russia.

This put the Russian troops in the same predicament as the U.S. soldiers in Vietnam. With the Ukrainian fighters mixed in with the population you have to assume that everyone's out to get you. In the later years of the Vietnam War, U.S. helicopters would fly over the countryside, with the gunners ordered to "shoot anything that moves." Entire villages were burned to the ground, and Atrocities & mass murder were commonplace.

As I've said before, Putin has made his point. He's serious about needing the U.S. to back off, as he has been trying to say, diplomatically, since 2008. The battlefield losses are hurting, and the sanctions are hurting. He needs an escape route.

Zelenskyy has made his point. Courageous Ukrainian fighters took on the Russian invaders, and turned them back. There's a lot of Russian hardware left behind in Bucha.

Both sides have paid a heavy price. And both sides are ready to settle.

Except that the U.S. media & the NeoCons are wanting a few more weeks and months for sanctions to take effect, figuring that they can finally accomplish their dream of regime change in Russia. No one in D.C. is talking about any negotiations or a peace deal.

Is Zelenskyy authorized to lift U.S. sanctions when he talks with Putin? Probably not. No one knows. Ryan Grim, D.C. Bureau Chief for The Intercept, asked this question to Jen Psaki, and got a word salad response. Meanwhile, the rest of the White House Press Corps is asking about no-fly zones and ever-increasing levels of escalation.

It's obvious that Russia does not care one bit about the people of Ukraine. But neither does the U.S. The more Biden & his foreign policy team pin their hopes on regime change, the more the people of Ukraine and Russia suffer.

Matt Taibbi adds this great piece on the history of U.S. attempts at regime change:
https://scheerpost.com/2022/04/03/matt-taibbi-regime-change-doesnt-work-you-morons/

On top of that, figure that as soon as the U.S. engages in a hot war with Russia, China will invade Taiwan. And in the midst of all this, the Fed will be raising interest rates. What could go wrong? (:-o

Time to make a deal and get this over with. We've got more than enough crises to deal with.

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Are you saying that you think Ukraine's conscription of able bodied men is responsible for Russian military raping and torturing civilians, including women and children? Ukraine isn't in NATO and wasn't close to admission. Russia is already bordering NATO with 5 different countries. Why did he never invade any of them? This also isn't about regime change, unless you count the invasion. The US was perfectly willing to let Putin continue to drive Russia into the ground as a failing petro-state oligarchy. The only reason we are having this conversation is because Putin took the step to invade a sovereign nation.

I'm not sure why people like you are so willing to let Putin off the hook by allocating blame in this bizarre way to everyone else. This is 100% Putin's fault for invading a sovereign nation. This isn't a reaction to NATO encroachment or anything else. Even official Russian propaganda has begun to admit that they don't believe Ukraine is a real country or people and that they don't deserve to be independent.

There is no need to twist yourself into knots to lay blame on Ukraine and the US for Putin's invasion.

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oski003 said:

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sycasey said:

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cbbass1 said:

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Except that the U.S. media & the NeoCons are wanting a few more weeks and months for sanctions to take effect, figuring that they can finally accomplish their dream of regime change in Russia. No one in D.C. is talking about any negotiations or a peace deal.

Is Zelenskyy authorized to lift U.S. sanctions when he talks with Putin? Probably not. No one knows. Ryan Grim, D.C. Bureau Chief for The Intercept, asked this question to Jen Psaki, and got a word salad response. Meanwhile, the rest of the White House Press Corps is asking about no-fly zones and ever-increasing levels of escalation.

It's obvious that Russia does not care one bit about the people of Ukraine. But neither does the U.S. The more Biden & his foreign policy team pin their hopes on regime change, the more the people of Ukraine and Russia suffer.

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Why do you assume that Ukraine and Russia can't reach an agreement only because of the US? If Ukraine wants a peace deal with Russia then they can get one. American sanctions don't force them to avoid a peace deal. Ukraine also can't dictate to the United States about when to end their sanctions regime.

To me it seems more likely they can't reach a deal because Ukraine doesn't want to agree to Russia's demands and/or they don't find any of Putin's promises reliable. I can't really blame the Ukrainians for any of that.

Also, all of this could have been avoided if Russia had just, y'know, not invaded. Not everything is America's fault.

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"American sanctions don't force them to avoid a peace deal. Ukraine also can't dictate to the United States about when to end their sanctions regime."

I don't think Russia is going to agree to any peace deal that doesn't include the lifting of sanctions, neutrality etc...

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Big C said:

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Since annexing all of Ukraine isn't going so well (understatement), Putin's new plan is to get as much of eastern/southeastern Ukraine as he can, declare victory, and live to try again another day. The question is, how much of it should Ukraine be willing to concede in order to end this war? (Opinions will vary, but I say toss Putin a bone he can chew on and let's call it a day. The dude and his shxthole country are toast anyway, so WTH.)

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cbbass1 said:

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Eastern Oregon Bear said:

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oski003 said:

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sycasey said:

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cbbass1 said:

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Except that the U.S. media & the NeoCons are wanting a few more weeks and months for sanctions to take effect, figuring that they can finally accomplish their dream of regime change in Russia. No one in D.C. is talking about any negotiations or a peace deal.

Is Zelenskyy authorized to lift U.S. sanctions when he talks with Putin? Probably not. No one knows. Ryan Grim, D.C. Bureau Chief for The Intercept, asked this question to Jen Psaki, and got a word salad response. Meanwhile, the rest of the White House Press Corps is asking about no-fly zones and ever-increasing levels of escalation.

It's obvious that Russia does not care one bit about the people of Ukraine. But neither does the U.S. The more Biden & his foreign policy team pin their hopes on regime change, the more the people of Ukraine and Russia suffer.

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Why do you assume that Ukraine and Russia can't reach an agreement only because of the US? If Ukraine wants a peace deal with Russia then they can get one. American sanctions don't force them to avoid a peace deal. Ukraine also can't dictate to the United States about when to end their sanctions regime.

To me it seems more likely they can't reach a deal because Ukraine doesn't want to agree to Russia's demands and/or they don't find any of Putin's promises reliable. I can't really blame the Ukrainians for any of that.

Also, all of this could have been avoided if Russia had just, y'know, not invaded. Not everything is America's fault.

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"American sanctions don't force them to avoid a peace deal. Ukraine also can't dictate to the United States about when to end their sanctions regime."

I don't think Russia is going to agree to any peace deal that doesn't include the lifting of sanctions, neutrality etc...

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At this point, I'm not sure why Ukraine would believe Russia would honor any agreement they signed,

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I think that goes both ways. Putin knows that the U.S. has wanted regime change since the USSR collapsed.

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BearNIt said:

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sycasey said:

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cbbass1 said:

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Eastern Oregon Bear said:

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oski003 said:

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sycasey said:

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cbbass1 said:

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Except that the U.S. media & the NeoCons are wanting a few more weeks and months for sanctions to take effect, figuring that they can finally accomplish their dream of regime change in Russia. No one in D.C. is talking about any negotiations or a peace deal.

Is Zelenskyy authorized to lift U.S. sanctions when he talks with Putin? Probably not. No one knows. Ryan Grim, D.C. Bureau Chief for The Intercept, asked this question to Jen Psaki, and got a word salad response. Meanwhile, the rest of the White House Press Corps is asking about no-fly zones and ever-increasing levels of escalation.

It's obvious that Russia does not care one bit about the people of Ukraine. But neither does the U.S. The more Biden & his foreign policy team pin their hopes on regime change, the more the people of Ukraine and Russia suffer.

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Why do you assume that Ukraine and Russia can't reach an agreement only because of the US? If Ukraine wants a peace deal with Russia then they can get one. American sanctions don't force them to avoid a peace deal. Ukraine also can't dictate to the United States about when to end their sanctions regime.

To me it seems more likely they can't reach a deal because Ukraine doesn't want to agree to Russia's demands and/or they don't find any of Putin's promises reliable. I can't really blame the Ukrainians for any of that.

Also, all of this could have been avoided if Russia had just, y'know, not invaded. Not everything is America's fault.

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"American sanctions don't force them to avoid a peace deal. Ukraine also can't dictate to the United States about when to end their sanctions regime."

I don't think Russia is going to agree to any peace deal that doesn't include the lifting of sanctions, neutrality etc...

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At this point, I'm not sure why Ukraine would believe Russia would honor any agreement they signed,

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I think that goes both ways. Putin knows that the U.S. has wanted regime change since the USSR collapsed.

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Putin is not negotiating with the US.

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The losses that the Russian people will suffer will have to be so numerous that every corner of Russia will be touched. It will be at that time that they take a step back and reevaluate the war in Ukraine. This will give enough time that the truth regarding this war will permeate the Russian consciousness and they realize they have been fed a pack of lies and deceived. At this moment that Putin will go the way of all autocrats who have led their countries to the brink. He will lose power and most likely lose his life. Russians will then ponder their role in the destruction of a peaceful country that is their neighbor and the wartime atrocities that were committed by their military.

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