THE situation in Ukraine did not start with Vladimir Putin's February 24 invasion.
It has a long history, and the article I'm about to quote from takes that history back hundreds of years.
It's by retired US public servant, Richard C. Cook, now 75, who became a whistleblower after the Challenger space shuttle disaster of 1986, leaking documents showing NASA was warned of various problems. He moved to the US Treasury, where he stayed until his retirement in 2007.
To balance it, there's a June 24 speech from Mike Pompeo, a Trump administration CIA director and secretary of state, who's thinking of running for president in 2024.
Cook: "The most fateful decision made by Obama and his administration was to overthrow the democratically-elected government of Ukraine in 2014 and install a pro-US and pro-NATO regime," Cook writes.
"US designs on Ukraine went back to the break-up of the Soviet Union prior to 1991.
"After Ukraine became independent, it agreed to transfer nuclear weapons on its soil to the Russian Federation.
"But the US vultures had begun to circle over what appeared to be Cold War road kill.
"The CIA immediately began to probe for weaknesses among the states that had spun off the Soviet colossus, including Ukraine, as well as within Russia itself. The next 'clash of civilizations' was underway."
He continues: "According to journalist Eric Zuesse, writing in How the War Started, 'The US regime under Barack Obama had been planning, ever since June 2011, a takeover of Ukraine." The purpose was to control Russia's key naval base in Sevastopol, Crimea.
"Zuesse wrote: 'The active operation to take over Ukraine had started actually on March 1, 2013, inside the US embassy in Kiev, which was almost nine months before (ousted) Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych on November 20, 2013, rejected the EU's demand that Ukraine must bear the full $160 billion cost of abandoning its existing trading relationships with Russia and its allies in order to join the EU."
And: "Also during the period 2014-2022, the Ukrainian army constructed heavy fortifications in Donbass in preparation for undertaking an offensive there.
"At the same time, the US military had been engaged since 2005 in equipping and operating over 40 biological labs in Ukraine that the Russia Ministry of Defense later said were actually bioweapons labs.
"The labs were run by the US's Defense Threat Reduction Agency.
"The Russians have presented captured documents to the US government and the UN Security Council but have received no response.
"Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov states that the documents 'clearly indicate direct violations of the Convention on the Prohibition of Biological and Toxin Weapons.'
"He adds, 'In fact, the Pentagon's military-biological activities around the world, especially in the post-Soviet countries, require the closest attention in light of the multiplying evidence of criminal experiments with the most dangerous pathogens in order to create biological weapons conducted under the guise of peaceful research.' (Saker, July 18, 2022)
"It is obvious today that planning by the US for the war between Ukraine and Russia had been underway for a very long time.
"I would like to suggest that it had probably been going on within the US military, the CIA, and the rest of the US foreign policy establishment all the way back to the Clinton administration.
"We will have to wait for the research and assessments from future historians to make that determination. But planning within the US security establishment is extensive, long-range, and involves literally generations of well-paid analysts.
"Given (Zbigniew) Brzezinski's views on the importance of Ukraine to Russia within the context of the World Island/Heartland mythology, it couldn't be otherwise. (Note: The stridently anti-communist Brzezinski (1928-1917) was National Security Adviser to President Jimmy Carter, and highly influential on modern US foreign policy.)
Now, Pompeo, in an address to the Hudson Institute on June 24: ""By aiding Ukraine, we undermined the creation of a Russian-Chinese axis bent on exerting military and economic hegemony in Europe, in Asia and in the Middle East.
"This would further devastate the lives of Americans and our economy here at home. Indeed, by empowering Ukraine, we demonstrate to China the cost of invading Taiwan.
"Or frankly exerting its influence in nations all across the world, thus helping to thwart an assault that would rupture the living standards of the world by crippling supplies of goods, such as semiconductors.
"Look, we must act in support of Ukraine's territorial integrity, lest we undercut America's self-interest. It is a deeply American mission."
Most people in the West prefer, it seems, the Pompeo view.
That's fine, but then Pompeo was happy to laughingly tell a roomful of people about the CIA, on camera in 2019, when he said, among other things: "We lied, we cheated, we stole, we had entire training courses, it reminds you of the glory of the American experiment."
It's on YouTube.
- Cook quotes from 'The US, the Ukraine Disaster, and the Future - The Long View', read on Veterans Today website.
