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The Raytheon board member (Lloyd Austin https://www.opensecrets.org/revolving/rev_summary.php?id=82688) turned Pentagon chief has vowed Americans will support and arm Kiev “as long as it takes” to “take back all of the territories” within its “sovereign borders.” This includes the Crimean Peninsula, the Russian controlled areas in the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia oblasts, as well as the Donbas Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk.

by Connor Freeman

https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/forever-war-at-the-end-of-the-world/

Uncle Sam now has nuclear weapons held to humanity’s head. Washington’s recently released Nuclear Posture Review clarified that launching nuclear weapons in a first strike is indeed on the table, to “achieve U.S. objectives if deterrence fails.” This came after President Joe Biden acknowledged that his administration’s proxy war in Ukraine has brought humanity closer to nuclear “Armageddon” than at any time since the Cuban Missile Crisis.

This month, the Pentagon announced it is setting up a new command, based in Germany, overseeing the training and equipping of Ukraine’s military during its fight with Russia. The command is named Security Assistance Group-Ukraine, or SAG-U. The New York Times reported the command will give the proxy war a “formal structure…roughly modeled on U.S. train-and-assist efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan over the past two decades.” The American people may have largely rejected the “forever wars” of the last twenty years, but the American Empire is eager to launch “long term” conflicts with Russia and China.

A possible reason for the decision to establish this new command may be to obscure the level of funding going to the proxy war, making it more difficult for American civilians and journalists to discern where the money comes from and just how much is being spent.

As Kelley Vlahos, Editorial Director at Responsible Statecraft, has written,

[Dan Caldwell, senior advisor to Concerned Veterans of America] suggests this could allow the Pentagon to carve out a protected fund for the war. “Establishing a formal, named-mission or military task-force specifically for Ukraine could further open the door to moving funding for the war in Ukraine to the Overseas Contingency Operations budget, which is essentially the Pentagon’s slush fund. That could be one of the primary motivations here—the Pentagon wants a steady stream of funding from a source that Congress has shown a lack of willingness to properly oversee.”

This news was paired with the Pentagon’s announcement of yet another $400 million arms package to Ukraine, including tanks and drones. Sabrina Singh, the deputy Pentagon press secretary, told reporters this new command ensures “we are postured to continue supporting Ukraine over the long term.” She added the U.S. remains “committed to Ukraine for as long as it takes.”

Since Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine in February, Washington has funded Ukraine with over $67 billion, mostly in weapons, a figure greater than Moscow’s entire 2021 military budget. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin has said the current policy aims to see Russia “weakened.”

Members of both parties in Congress are reportedly planning another massive aid package for Ukraine that is said to cost as much as $60 billion which would bring total spending on the war to more than $125 billion. This week, the White House requested $37.7 billion in additional funding for Ukraine. Again, this is mostly military aid, and Congress will likely compete amongst themselves to add billions more.

See the rest here

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