Name:   Talullahhound - Subject:   60 Minutes on Ukraine Date:   9/25/2023 6:51:22 PM

Last night, 60 Minutes had a segment on Ukraine.  I believe it was to bolster support for continuing US support at outrageous levels.  So of course they had the obligatory soldier on there talking about how much of a difference US money and equipment is making.  The journalist then asked about how do we know that the equipment is being used for what it is provided for... And that is when the alarms went off for me.  

According to Ukraine, they digitally track every piece of equipment that they receive.  Funny, but some 20 years ago, I was in a foreign country and they explained the whole thing too.  Showed us how it works.  Except... we had direct evidence that they had passed parts to a 3rd country who was not to get anything from us.  They strongly denied, but we had proof.  Just because equipment, parts, etc goes in doesn't mean it gets scanned into the system.  

Then, we found out that US money is not just spent on the military - but on agriculture for their farmers, EMS and to subsidize small businesses in Ukraine.  And if Ukraine succeeds in getting Russia out, guess who will be subsidizing the rebuilding of their country???  This is not a short term investment - we're going to be forking over money for years. Just like Afghanistan - once we chased out the Taliban out, we then embarked on years of nation buidling, only to hand it all back to the Taliban.  

For me, I am not buying the current version of the "domino theory" that the Biden Administration is pushing - you know that if we don't stop Russia in Ukraine, then they will push into the other Eastern European countries.... Well, even if they aren't successful in Ukraine, what is to say they won't do that anyway?    The 2nd part I want to see is that all this funding is tried to military objectives and military achievement of those objectives.  Because otherwise this will just continue on indefinitely.