Obama’s “Catastrophic Defeat” in Ukraine : Information Clearing House - ICH

Obama’s “Catastrophic Defeat” in Ukraine    : Information Clearing House - ICH

Washington's "Pivot" hits a Brick Wall

Obama’s
“Catastrophic Defeat” in Ukraine

By Mike Whitney

“We are
currently witnessing an epic and historic
event. The Ukrainian regular army and the
punitive battalions are suffering a
catastrophic defeat to the south of
Donetsk…..It still is not quite clear how
the Junta intends to avoid a complete defeat
here…. By squandering the most
combat-capable brigades in systematic
offensive operations, the Junta sustained
enormous losses and at the same time
suffered a crushing, purely military defeat.
The southern front has collapsed.” –

The Southern Front Catastrophe – August
27, 2014″, Colonel Cassad, Military
Briefing, Novorossiya, Ukraine


“The reports
out of Novorussia (New Russia) are nothing
short of incredible… sources are reporting
that Novorussian forces have bypassed
Mariupol from the north and have entered the
Zaporozhie region!” –

News from the Front, Vineyard of the
Saker

August 30, 2014
"ICH"
- "Counterpunch"
- - Barack Obama has pushed Ukraine to the brink
of political, economic and social collapse. Now
he wants to blame Russia for the damage he’s
done. It’s absurd. Moscow is in no way
responsible for Ukraine’s descent into anarchy.
That’s all Washington’s doing, just as Iraq,
Afghanistan, Libya, and now Syria were
Washington’s doing. If you want to blame
someone, blame Obama.


Ukraine’s
troubles began when the US State Department
toppled the elected president in February and
replaced him with a compliant stooge who agreed
to follow Washington’s directives. The new
“junta” government quickly launched a full-blown
war against Russian-speaking Ukrainians in the
east which split the civilian population and
drove the country to ruin. The plan “pacify” the
East was concocted in Washington, not Kiev and
certainly not Moscow.


Moscow has
repeatedly called for an end to the violence and
a resumption of negotiations, but each request
has been rebuffed by Obama’s puppet in Kiev
leading to another round of hostilities.
Washington doesn’t want peace. Washington wants
the same solution it imposed on Iraq,
Afghanistan, Libya and Syria, that is, a chaotic
failed state where ethnic and sectarian
animosities are kept at a boiling point so
forward-operating bases can be established
without resistance, so resources can be
extracted at will, and so a formally-independent
nation can be reduced to a “permanent state of
colonial dependency.” (Chomsky) That’s the basic
gameplan wherever Washington goes. The same rule
applies to Ukraine. The only choice the people
have is to arm themselves and fight back. Which
is what they’ve done.


Donetsk and
Lugansk have formed militias and taken the war
to the enemy. They’ve engaged Obama’s proxy-army
on the battlefield and pounded it into
mincemeat. That’s why Obama deployed his
propagandists to lie about the fictitious
“Russian invasion”. The administration needs a
diversion because the Novorussia forces (aka-the
“pro Russia separatists”) are kicking the holy
crap out of Obama’s legions. That’s why
Washington and Kiev are in full panic-mode,
because none of this was supposed to happen.
Obama figured the army would put down the
insurrection, crush the resistance, and move him
one step closer to his goal of establishing NATO
bases and missile defense systems on Russia’s
western flank.


Well, guess
what? It’s not playing out that way and it
probably never will. The Novorussia fighters are
too tough, too smart and too motivated to be
one-upped by Obama’s feckless troopers. (Check
out this short video and you’ll see why the
rebels are winning: Vineyard of the Saker)


Putin hasn’t
sent tanks and artillery into Ukraine. He
doesn’t need to. The militias are loaded with
battle-hardened veterans who know how to fight
and who are quite good at it. Just ask
Poroshenko whose army has been taking it in the
shorts for the last couple of weeks. Check out
this blurb in Thursday’s Itar Tass:

“Over the
week of August 16-23, the self-defense
fighters of the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s
Republics seized 14 T-64 tanks, 25 infantry
fighting vehicles, 18 armored personnel
carriers, one armored reconnaissance and
patrol vehicle, one Uragan multiple launch
rocket system, two Gvozdika self-propelled
artillery guns, four D-30 howitzers, four
mortars, one ZU-23-2 air defense system and
33 vehicles.” (East
Ukraine militias seize large amount of
Ukrainian armor, Itar Tass)

Get the picture?
The Ukrainian army is getting beaten to a pulp,
which means that Obama’s glorious “pivot
strategy” just slammed into a brick wall.


Bottom line:
Russia has not invaded Ukraine. The
propagandists in the media are just trying to
hide the fact that the Novorussia Army Forces (NAF;
aka-the pro Russia separatists) are kicking ass
and taking names. That’s what’s really going on.
That’s why Obama and his gaggle of miscreant
neocons are in a furor. It’s because they don’t
know what to do next, so they’ve returned to
their default position on every issue; lie like
hell until they settle on a plan.


Naturally,
they’re going to blame Putin for the mess
they’re in. What else can they do? They’re
getting their heads handed to them by a superior
army. How do you explain that to the folks at
home? Check out this excerpt from the New York
Times Number One fiction writer, Michael
“aluminum tubes” Gordon (who, not surprisingly,
co-authored pieces with infamous Judy Miller in
the lead up to the Iraq War):

“Determined
to preserve the pro-Russian revolt in
eastern Ukraine, Russia reinforced what
Western and Ukrainian officials described as
a stealth invasion on Wednesday, sending
armored troops across the border as it
expanded the conflict to a new section of
Ukrainian territory.


The latest
incursion, which Ukraine’s military said
included five armored personnel carriers,
was at least the third movement of troops
and weapons from Russia across the southeast
part of the border this week, further
blunting the momentum Ukrainian forces have
made in weakening the insurgents in their
redoubts of Donetsk and Luhansk farther
north. Evidence of a possible turn was seen
in the panicky retreat of Ukrainian soldiers
on Tuesday from a force they said had come
over the Russian border.” (Ukraine
Reports Russian Invasion on a New Front,
New York Times)

“Stealth
invasion”? In other words, Gordon has settled on
a substitute for WMD. What a surprise.


This isn’t even
good fiction; it’s more like Grimm’s Fairy
Tales. And where are the photos? If you have
evidence, Gordon, let’s see it. But, please,
make sure it’s better than the last time, you
know, those fake photos of Russian soldiers that
were supposedly operating in Ukraine. That was
another deceit, wasn’t it? (See:

Another NYT-Michael Gordon Special?, Robert
Parry, Consortium News)


This is like the
Malaysia airlines crash, isn’t it? Remember how
Kerry went on a five-TV-talk-show blitz the day
after the crash, making all kinds of spurious
accusations, about surface-to-air missiles and
phantom Russian convoys, without a shred of
evidence, and then— the very next day– Russian
military experts calmly produced hard evidence,
from radar and satellite data, that a Ukrainian
fighter plane was seen closing in on MH17 just
moments before it was downed. (BBC also
interviewed eyewitnesses who saw the SU 25
approaching the passenger plane.)


So, who do you
believe; Kerry or the facts? And who are you
going to believe this time; “Aluminum tubes”
Gordie or Organization for Security and
Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) monitor Andrey
Kelin who said yesterday:

“We have
said that no Russian involvement has been
spotted, there are no soldiers or equipment
present.”


“Accusations
relating to convoys of armored personnel
carriers have been heard during the past
week and the week before that. All of them
were proven false back then, and are being
proven false again now.” (RT)

Repeat: “No
Russian involvement”. All the accusations “were
proven false.” “False” as in fake, phony,
propaganda, bunkum, lies which, by the way,
appears to be Gordon’s area of expertise.


Anyone who has
been following the conflict knows that the
Washington-backed junta in Kiev has waged a war
against its own people in the East, and that
they’ve been bombing hospitals, schools,
libraries, apartments, public buildings,
residential areas, etc, all in an effort to drag
Putin into a war that will sabotage EU-Moscow
economic integration and further US interests in
the area. It’s all geopolitics, every bit of it.
Remember the pivot to Asia? This is what it
looks like in real time. A lot of people get
butchered so the big money guys in Washington
can maintain their grip on global power for
another century or so.


Well, you can
put that pipedream to rest now, mainly because a
group of scrappy ex-military types in east
Ukraine gathered themselves into an effective
and lethal militia which has turned things
around pronto. If you follow developments on
blogs that chronicle the daily events, you’ll
know that what I’m saying is true. The
disorganized and demoralized rabble they call
the Ukrainian Army has been routed in nearly
every dust up they have with the Novorussia
militia. Here’s how blogger Moon of Alabama
summed it up on a post on Thursday:

“Their moral
is bad, their equipment old, ammunition is
low and the entire aim of their campaign is
dubious. Now even a few weak counterattacks,
the “counteroffensive”, have them on the
run.”

The only thing
he could’ve added to the litany is the fact that
they are led by the biggest moron to ever hold
high office, Petro Poroshenko, the overstuffed
buffoon who thinks he’s Heinz Guderian deploying
his Panzers through the Ardennes and on to
Paris. What a joke!


The Times even
admits that the Ukrainian army is badly
demoralized. Take a look at this:

“Some of the
Ukrainian soldiers appeared unwilling to
fight. The commander of their unit, part of
the Ninth Brigade from Vinnytsia, in western
Ukraine, barked at the men to turn around,
to no effect. “All right,” the commander
said. “Anybody who refuses to fight, sit
apart from the others.” Eleven men did,
while the others returned to the city.


Some troops
were in full retreat: A city busload of them
careened past on the highway headed west,
and purple curtains flapped through windows
shot out by gunfire.” (New
York Times)

Have you ever
heard of a commanding officer asking his men
whether they want to fight or not? It’s
ludicrous. This is a defeated army, that much is
clear. And it’s easy to understand how the
average grunt feels, too. The average working
guy doesn’t have the stomach for killing his own
people. That’s not something he’s going to feel
good about. He just wants to see the war end and
go home, which is why they’re getting whooped so
bad. It’s because their hearts aren’t in it. In
contrast, the farmers, shopkeepers and miners
who make up the militia are highly-motivated,
after all, this isn’t some geopolitical game for
them. Most of these people have lived in these
cities their entire lives. Now they’re watching
neighbors get gunned down in the streets or
pulling friends out of the wreckage of bombed
out buildings. For these people, the war is real
and it’s personal. They’re defending their
towns, their families, and their way of life.
That tends to build resolve and focus the mind.
Here’s more from the NY Times:

“The United
States has photographs that show the Russian
artillery moved into Ukraine, American
officials say. One photo dated last
Thursday, shown to a New York Times
reporter, shows Russian military units
moving self-propelled artillery into
Ukraine. Another photo, dated Saturday,
shows the artillery in firing positions in
Ukraine.


Advanced air
defenses, including systems not known to be
in the Ukrainian arsenal, have also been
used to blunt the Ukrainian military’s air
power, American officials say. In addition,
they said, the Russian military routinely
flies drones over Ukraine and shares the
intelligence with the separatists.” (Ukraine
Reports Russian Invasion on a New Front,
New York Times)

Photos? What
photos? Gordon doesn’t have any photos. Ah, but
he has heard about a New York Times reporter who
saw a photo.


This is
ridiculous, but, then again, isn’t that what
you’d expect from a journalist who helped craft
the pretext for invading Iraq?


Here’s how
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov responded
to the claims of a Russian invasion. He said:

“It’s not
the first time we’ve heard wild guesses,
though, so far, the facts have never been
presented…


There have
been reports about satellite imagery
exposing Russian troop movements. They
turned out to be images from videogames. The
latest accusations happen to be much the
same quality…


We’ll react
by persisting in our effort to reduce the
bloodshed and to support negotiations about
the future of Ukraine, with participation of
all Ukrainian regions and political forces,
something that was agreed upon back in April
in Geneva, but which is now being
deliberately avoided by our Western
partners.” (RT)

There you have
it; there is no Russian invasion anymore than
there were WMD, mobile weapons labs, aluminum
tubes, Sarin gas etc, etc, etc. It’s all BS
concocted by a servile media pursuing the agenda
of a warmongering political establishment that
wants to escalate the conflagration in east
Ukraine at all cost. Even if it leads to a Third
World War.


Mike Whitney lives
in Washington state. He is a contributor to Hopeless:
Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion (AK
Press). Hopeless is also available in a Kindle
edition. He can be reached at fergiewhitney@msn.com.