I have to ask, why do you come to this board and just post information that is just absolutely false? Is it just to get a reaction out of other posters? Do you think it is funny?
There is a very legitimate argument for this decision. Just because you do not like the current POTUS or SecDef, do not let that impact your thinking on this policy decision.
Generally we get a sense of the motivation for politicians. But not on this, why does Trump kowtow so to Putin? Maybe it’s Trump cutting his loses early because he knows Putin won’t listen - a bit of fear on trumps part? Or is it all too complex and messy for trump to make a real commitment? after trumps call with Putin Russia said this: “Ushakov said Putin also congratulated Trump ahead of U.S. Independence Day on July 4. “We noted that Russia played a role in the founding of the American state, including during the War of Independence..” Imagine if that was macron & France (which they did help us in rev war) Trump would have called it out.
That of course is an issue that must be considered , but hegseth in his brief history had arbitrarily stopped shipments before. He might just be using this as cover. There are other quotes like below from both sides who are involved with defense. “Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas) is pressing the Trump administration to rescind its pause on sending weapons to Ukraine in its war with Russia. “Senior U.S. military officials have concluded that providing these critical weapons to Ukraine will not endanger U.S. readiness, so I urge the administration to quickly get the pipeline back up and running,” McCaul, who previously served as chair of the House Armed Services Committee, wrote Friday in a post on the social platform X. “Pentagon officials halting weapons only weakens President Trump’s noble attempts at peace,” he added.” Michael McCaul presses Pentagon to unfreeze weapons shipments to Ukraine
Just realize that the definition of "readiness" is often nebulous. It can change depending on which scenario the DoD is planning for and what assumptions are built into that.
Apparently, while Russia was sending a massive drone attack against Ukrainian civilians, Ukraine was busy with its own drone attack against a Russian air base. Supposedly, a glide bomb depot was hit, possible along with several aircraft. https://apnews.com/article/russia-u...mp-zelenskyy-d403d0807e35a64f530d587dbd218aa5
I understand and agree with that completely. However, this is an actual war going on against an actual enemy of the U.S. So I would rather err on the side of keeping Ukraine supplied than risk seeing Ukraine fail due to short-sightedness. If we were that worried about the more serious scenarios with other countries materializing, we should crank up our defense production to supply both ourselves and Ukraine. Trump seems unable to recognize the need to stop Russia in its invasion of Ukraine. He's a more arrogant and less intelligent version of Neville Chamberlain, with his first response being to deny that there's a problem with the situation. The Ukraine War could easily be the canary in the coal mine for World War III, just like Poland was in WWII. Europe and the U.S. did not take Germany seriously enough at that time, partly because they were dealing with the Great Depression. We have no such excuse. Telling our grandchildren that the after-effects of WWIII are not our fault because we elected a mentally disabled president who wanted to save a few dollars at the cost of millions of lives is not going to go over well.
Maybe the Defense Production Act should be used to build the stockpiles of some of these weapons back up?
Spoken like a true supporter of Vladimir Putin. "Ultra-nationalist" meaning resistance by Ukraine to being completely subsumed into Russia, losing it's identity as an independent country and returning to it's status under the Soviet Union or the Czarist Russian Empire.
Fortunately, European countries are taking the threat of Russia seriously. Total aid to Ukraine from other NATO countries is now exceeding US aid. Unfortunately the other countries do not have weapons with the capability of some American systems, the Patriot coming immediately to mind. Europe's overall Ukraine aid outpaces US by $26 billion, report says
Absolutely. And immediately. Still, there is some delta between the flash and the bang of ordering the weapons into existence and their physical manifestation. To stay true to Colby’s strategy, we have to hold on to the weapons we need to fight China and not give them away, hoping we won’t need them, such as Patriots. That part makes sense to me. Where I’m less clear is on the weapons we don’t need to fight China, such as 155mm artillery shells. There should be no interruption in supply of weapons that are mostly for land component combat.
The issue is that it is too late to crank up defense production if you think the CCP is going after Taiwan in 2027. It is something that the Biden Admin should have done back mid-2023. We have what we have right now in our current stocks and what we can produce in the next 18 months. Do you want to lose a war with China because we ran out of long range fires after two or three months? Ukraine is producing their own cruise missiles now. The only thing they could really only get from us are the GLMRs and Patriots. If the Israelis are willing to sell them some air defense capabilities, it would make up for the Patriots.
They could buy the weapon systems from the US and donate them to Ukraine, assuming there is an inventory in the US that they could purchase.
You mean like when I said Trump would win the popular vote? Like when I said the most accurate pollsters were Richard Baris, Atlas Intel, Trafalgar, Insider Advantage and Patrick Basham? Out of dozens or hundred of other pollsters, which one beat any one of my top 5 in 2024? Other poster claimed my pollsters were right-leaning. "Right-leaning" is code for "more accurate." Note that 538 has disappeared. I said it's pollsters lied and were highly inaccurate and 2024 proved it. What's great about elections is you get a definitive result. You find out who is the best. I bet for a living so I avoid motivated reasoning. Doing so comes naturally to me. As for the rest of the board, excepting duggers_dad, 95% of the rest of the posters have broken down mentally when it comes to the Ukraine war, the Israel vs Iran conflict and Israel vs the Palestinians in Gaza (imo). The motivated reasoning is off the charts. Around mid to late 2022 I remember reading that Russia was killing 15 Ukrainian military for every 1 Ukrainian civilian killed. In the Iraq war the US killed at best 5 Iraqi military for every Iraqi civilian killed (from what I've read}. One estimate I saw put the ratio at 3:1. Remember the first Gulf war? Madeline Albright said the death of 500,000 children was worth it. My own analysis suggested a more reasonable estimate would have been 70,000 children killed. (I mention that to show I don't have an automatic anti-US bias). Regarding the Iraq war, according to Grok: The 2006 Lancet study, published by researchers from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Al Mustansiriya University, estimated approximately 654,965 excess [civilian] Iraqi deaths (with a 95% confidence interval of 392,979 to 942,636) from March 2003 to July 2006 as a consequence of the Iraq War. Of these, about 601,027 deaths were attributed to violent causes.... Numbers vary quite a bit. depending on the source you choose. After some back and forth with me, Grok puts the Ukrainian civilian deaths caused by Russia at 12,000+. If someone else asks Grok I'm sure you'll get a different number. Grok stupidly put Ukrainian military deaths at 70,000 thru August 2023 but somehow concluded the number was just 30,000 total for the entire war thru June 2025 (this is an example why you have to go back and forth with Grok). Col Douglas MacGregor estimates Ukrainian military deaths as ~450K to 1.5M. I think he has good sources in the Pentagon and CIA. Generally speaking, I find official Russian statements and estimates to be more accurate than US statements. If you honestly evaluate statements by Putin and Lavrov and compare them with statements by Biden/Blinken or Trump/Rubio you would see I'm right. But most of the posters here are incapable of dispassionate analysis, their motivated reasoning gets in the way. Motivated reasoning will make you lose money in the betting world. Imagine if you were betting ,$10,000 on the 2028 presidential election--would you rely on 538-type pollsters or would you rely on my top 5 pollsters? To put civilians killed by Russia into perspective, keep in mind that Israel is killing 3+ civilians per enemy combatant in Gaza. IOW, for every 100 Hamas fighters killed by Israel in Gaza 300+ civilians are killed. For every 100 Ukrainian soldiers killed byid to late 2022, ~7 civilians were killed. This number has no doubt risen somewhat as Russia has transitioned to attacking more Ukrainian infrastructure, due in part because of Ukrainian attacks inside Russia (such as the Crocus City Hall attack).
You do know that the ‘24 election was called for Trump several days ahead of election day by a series of data crunchers, correct? Not sure why you are talking about polling when the real action was on the early voting numbers. But once again, why do you come to this board and constantly lie about American military and the War in Ukraine? Do you get off on it? Because, quite frankly, you come off as extremely ignorant when you cannot tell the difference between a high intensity conflict and a low intensity conflict and state firmly that Russia is trying to avoid civilian casualties when they are actively targeting civilians. Why do you embarrass yourself like this?
