Washington Feigns Ignorance Regarding Russia’s March Into Ukraine

Ann-Marie Murrell March 29, 2014

235 1 minute read

Despite all their complicated NSA spying capabilities, the Washington Beltway claims they don’t know what Russia’s “intent” is behind their invasion of Ukraine. “Maybe someone could tell President Obama that Putin has joined the Tea Party — might do the trick”, Andrew C. McCarthy writes. McCarthy continues,

“When information is too available and too pellucid for them to feign ignorance, epistemological uncertainty about its significance is always a convenient fallback position. Let’s say a cop on the beat in a high-crime area in the dead of a summer night sees a man in a ski mask, screwdriver in hand, eying an apartment window. He would not be a cop for long if he turned his back because, after all, you never know what the masked man’s intent might be. But he would still qualify for a front-office job at the National Intelligence Directorate — perhaps analyzing “largely secular” organizations like the Muslim Brotherhood.”

McCarthy doesn’t reserve judgment solely for Democrats—Putin’s “red line-crossing” began with the Bush administration.

“[T]he Bush administration delusionally regarded Russia as a “strategic partner,” notwithstanding Putin’s quite calculating strategic cooperation with Iran (you know, the “Death to America” guys) on nuclear-power development and ballistic-missile technology. Then, as I observed in late 2010, two years after the Georgia invasion, with Putin defiantly occupying Abkhazia and South Ossetia, GOP support for Obama’s wayward New START treaty with Russia was mustered by such foreign-engagement masterminds as former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice (architect of Bush’s strategic partnership with Russia) and Senator Richard Lugar (who in 2006 had partnered with then-senator Obama to disarm Ukraine). The treaty would not have been ratified without the familiar machinations of Republican senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham — then on a respite between supporting Qaddafi against jihadists and supporting jihadists against Qaddafi. McCain and Graham strongly urged their colleagues to take up consideration of New START . . . then voted against it once its approval was assured.”