Former CIA analyst Ray McGovern has a lot to say

[Ludmila]

http://www.americanswhotellthetruth.org/portraits/ray-mcgovern

[Ludmila]

Take a listen, folks, and give it a thought. This is a serious "guy", and he knows what he is talking about, unlike LGBT proponent Boethius and al.
 

[jone]

This guy is a crackpot since his days in the CIA were over in 1990. 

We have heard from him before.  He claims that all the actions of the CIA were contrived at the insistence of the President in power.    He was 'retired' under the 1st Bush administration.  I've watched a couple of his interviews over the years.  He is out of touch with reality, not even remembering basic premises of policies in the situations he is trying to describe.

15 years later, he claims to have insider knowledge of the actions of the CIA in areas of policy that the CIA would never let a former employee near.  One of the convenient situations is that he uses former employment to disguise the problem that he has no facts to back him up.   Everything is confidential, and therefore cannot be confirmed.

What is unfortunate is when you have a conspiracy theorist like this, the paid Russian trolls will repeat his words again and again.

[The Natural]

Well Jone, an even bigger problem is that the opposite side always make character assasinations and labels any Sources that is brought into the discussion. Always.

And the old card, conspiracy theories.... ahhh. And that from the side that claimed that Putin has a double that visited the pope, haha. Talk about conspiracy theory.

[jone]

Well Jone, an even bigger problem is that the opposite side always make character assainations and labels any Sources that is brought into the discussion. Always.

And the old card, conspiracy theories.... ahhh. And that from the side that claimed that Putin has a double that visited the pope, haha. Talk about conspiracy theory.

I don't mind bringing additional people into the discussion from other viewpoints.  As long as they relay facts.  This guy had none.  What is more is that he was claiming part of the decision making process for events that happened three, five and now even fifteen years after he was retired from intelligence activities.

At least Ron Paul has a seat at the table, albeit a very small one.

On another topic, when Russia went into Ukraine (even Putin admits he did, in Krim) Rand Paul set out with the idea to give instantaneous drilling access and export capabilities to US businessmen for natural gas.  The idea was to export to Europe and kill the European's dependency on Russian petroleum products.  I still think that's a good idea.

[Boethius]

Interesting how what Mr. McGovern says is rather milder when he is debating someone with real knowledge of Ukraine (unlike our thread starter)


http://www.democracynow.org/2014/3/3/who_is_provoking_the_unrest_in

[Boethius]

From the link:

TIMOTHY SNYDER: I guess a lot depends on what you think Russia’s strategic interests are. I would say that Russia’s strategic interests would involve trade with Ukraine, stability in Ukraine. These are not things that are going to be improved by the military occupation of all or part of the country.
I would draw attention to the basic fact that Ukraine and Russia are different countries. Americans and Canadians have a lot in common, a lot of Americans and Mexicans have a lot in common, but that doesn’t mean that we start speaking about frontier zones. We know what borders are. It doesn’t mean that we start speaking about the interests of English-speaking people in Canada or Spanish-speaking people in Mexico, then claim we have a right to invade, or vice versa. Ukraine is a sovereign state. Russia’s direct military interest in Ukraine is its base in Crimea. That base is secured by international treaty until 2042. One of the provisions of that treaty is that Russian forces are not to move beyond the borders of that base, which they have now done. That’s one more agreement that they violated.

In terms of the question, who is provoking what, I’m very happy to hear that telephone call cited. Imagine just how much evidence the Russians have of what the U.S. was doing in Ukraine, given that they had access to that telephone call. That was the best bit they could come up with. And in the context of the time, what that telephone conversation showed was that the Americans were, A, not up to date about what was happening in Ukraine and, B, unable to influence events happening in Ukraine, because at that time, as opposed to weeks later, what was being discussed in that phone call was an offer by the then-president of Ukraine to Klitschko and to Yatsenyuk, which they refused. The Americans were telling them to accept it, and they refused it. If you just read the transcript of that phone call, that’s very clear, what was actually happening. And remember, that’s the best thing the Russians could come up with to show that the Americans were behind the scenes.

The answer to the question, what provoked this—and this is very important—is Russian foreign policy doctrine. Russia wanted Ukraine to become a member of something called the Eurasian Union. The Eurasian Union is a dictatorship club. In order for Ukraine to be a member, Ukraine had to become an authoritarian regime like Russia. Russian financial aid preceded, and seems very likely to have been the cause of—and Russian financial aid is in the billions, it dwarfs anything the National Economic—the National Endowment for Democracy is doing in Ukraine—was made contingent upon Ukrainians’ authorities oppressing and killing their own citizens. If that were not the case, if there weren’t huge Russian money backing the killing of Ukrainian citizens, there would not have been a revolution in Ukraine. Russia would still have a leader it liked in Ukraine. Russia brought this on itself by overreaching. And one of the reasons why Russia is invading Ukraine now is to make sure that we forget all about that. If Russia had not overreached in Ukraine, it wouldn’t have provoked the revolution which it’s so unhappy about now.

[Boethius]

On the infamous "Nuland phone call", and Yatseniuk's becoming Ukrainian PM -

TIMOTHY SNYDER: Yeah. The reason that Yatsenyuk became the prime minister of Ukraine is that he received the majority of votes in the Ukrainian Parliament. That’s how things normally work. It’s not so difficult to predict who’s going to be the next president of the United States, for example. Other countries look on; they have their favorites; they make estimations.

The other things that she said in the phone conversation that you just cited did not happen. Klitschko is not kept out of politics. He’s most likely going to be the next president of Ukraine, providing that the Russian military occupation doesn’t prevent presidential form elections. He’s the overwhelming favorite. So he’s not going to be at home doing his political homework. He is going to be the most important person in the country. On the other things which she described as should happen, aren’t happening, either. So, if this is our piece of evidence that the Americans control everything, it’s a very, very thin piece of evidence. And remember, whoever is collecting that evidence—I don’t think we really doubt who that is—had much more than that, and this was the very best thing that they could find.

I think it’s very important that we Americans, or we people on the American left, don’t reduce everything to being the Americans did this or the Americans did that. This revolution happened because Ukrainians made it happen. Ukrainians are actual people living in an actual country. They believed that what we did, by the way, was far too little. The complaint that Ukrainians on the Maidan had about both the Americans and the Europeans was that we were way too hands-off. They complained that we were far—they complained that we were far too close to the Russians, that in effect we were helping the Russians hurt them. And that, I’m afraid, is much closer to the reality.

I was struck—I was struck that—we just heard talk about the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union has not existed for a quarter century. The Soviet Union ceased to exist in 1991. In December of 1991, the authorities of what became Russia accepted the borders with Ukraine. This has happened before. Other states have fallen apart. Legally, you draw up borders. You don’t then, 25 years later, talk about how you might want those borders to be a little bit different. You have to respect the agreements that you’ve actually made. The Soviet Union doesn’t exist anymore. Whether it seems to exist in people’s minds, now, that’s a problem. It’s a problem whether it’s there or a problem whether it’s here. But international law in these questions is absolutely clear, and there’s just no way in the world that somebody giving out cookies on the Maidan justifies invading a country.

[Boethius]

Well Jone, an even bigger problem is that the opposite side always make character assasinations and labels any Sources that is brought into the discussion. Always.

And the old card, conspiracy theories.... ahhh. And that from the side that claimed that Putin has a double that visited the pope, haha. Talk about conspiracy theory.

I don't think anyone on the forum believed that.  It really was posted as a fun story, that's all.

Unless of course you think the poster who noted he looks like a fictional elfin character was onto something.

[JayH]

I don't think anyone on the forum believed that.  It really was posted as a fun story, that's all.

Unless of course you think the poster who noted he looks like a fictional elfin character was onto something.

The fact that comment is even made illustrates the degree of lack of comprehension from a closed mind-- and it's capacity to warp  a comment( in this case) to represent it as something it was not.
Hardly surprising that the most extremist conspiracy theories are adopted as fact-when the higher degree of probability is in the 99.9% area-- that the .1% takes over the tiny minds.

[Welder]

From the link,
Timothy Snyder" [/size]Putin will try to argue that all of this just confirms his own view that Russia is all alone as a kind of superior national civilization facing a world conspiracy which, depending upon the mood and depending upon the audience, is either made up of Nazis or gays"[/color]
[/size][/color]
[/size]He sure had this reaction pegged, as confirmed by the OP up thread.[/color]