COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE ON CBC NEWS
“Nerve agent in our
midst is haunting, dangerous — and divisive
“Deterrence,
investigation by independent watchdog crucial to defeat skeptics”
International confirmation? But Theresa May refused even Russia's
reasonable request for a sample of the material to analyze or even copies of
pertinent documents before charging ahead with reprisals and many reckless
statements.
And we have a recent history in a Europe totally under
America's thumb of its leaders making dumb statements and imposing dumb sanctions
all because America spent $5 billion to create a coup in Ukraine and Russia
made reasonable responses to the genuine threat.
We even know the amount of money spent on the American operation
because the then State Department's big-mouthed Victoria Nuland, was overheard
bragging about it. This was in the same charming diplomat who famously bellowed,
"F--k Europe!"
The example of Malaysian Airlines Flight MH-17 downed over
Ukraine is highly instructive. I have studied the matter fairly closely, and
there can be no doubt that the incompetents running post-coup Ukraine shot it
down, either in error or deliberately thinking it something else.
But what do we get as an investigation? Other interested
parties were kept out of the investigation and even evidence submitted by at
least one was suppressed. The country whose airliner it was, Malaysia, was
excluded from the investigation.
A NATO ally (Holland) assumed control, didn't even collect
all the evidence from the site, and after spending an inordinate amount of time
- in such cases with black boxes recovered and other evidence, it usually takes
only a short time to reach a conclusion - we get a vague, accusatory statement,
not a proper scientific report, not a proper document of any kind.
So American influence on NATO countries virtually makes
honest investigation of anything impossible, even mass murder, if the politics
of the event do not suit the United States. That is the sad state at which we
have arrived today.
Just imagine a Russian-installed government imposed in
Mexico? American tanks and jets would be in Mexico City in days.
But Putin clearly has not behaved that way at all over the
Ukraine coup, although his military could easily have been in Kiev in short
order.
He has shown restraint from the beginning even though a
staged coup in a country with a long common border was about as provocative as
it is possible to be. He has always been willing to talk, and he participated
in creating the Minsk Accords early in 2015, with Ukraine, France, and Germany,
as a formula for peace. But somehow the conditions for implementing the Minsk
Accords never does seem to arise in Ukraine. I just wonder why that is?
