Don DeBar's Blog

My comments on this at the time here Here is the text of a memo, ostensibly from RAND Corporation, leaked in July, 2014, in the early months of the Maidan coup regime: MEMORANDUM On the advisable course of action in case the peace plan fails In case further negotiation with southeast Ukrainian insurgents should prove futile, the only practicable solution should be a swift crackdown on the separatists and terrorists, to be undertaken irrespective of public opinion or operation costs. Procrastination would dramatically reduce the operation’s chances of success. Possible political and material downsides of an operation should be greatly outweighed by the following probable gains: Activists of a pro-Russian political movement get decimated, pro-Russian voters get disorganized. A significant share of the region’s coal industries get destroyed in the fighting, or are otherwise designated for a quick shutdown, thus relieving Ukraine’s budget of the burdensome subsidy costs. Shutting down ...

From the New York Times editorial page on July 15, 2018, the day before Trump met with Putin in Helsinki Trump, Treasonous Traitor The president fails to protect the country from an ongoing attack. July 15, 2018 By Charles M. Blow NYT Opinion Columnist Put aside whatever suspicions you may have about whether Donald Trump will be directly implicated in the Russia investigation. Trump is right now, before our eyes and those of the world, committing an unbelievable and unforgivable crime against this country. It is his failure to defend. The intelligence community long ago concluded that Russia attacked our election in 2016 with the express intention of damaging Hillary Clinton and assisting Trump. And it was not only the spreading of inflammatory fake news over social media. As a May report from the Republican-run Senate Intelligence Committee pointed out: “In 2016, cyber actors affiliated with the Russian Government conducted an unprecedented, coordinated cyber campaign against state el...