Tag: perpetual war

‘A Lie And Propaganda’: Gabbard Fact-Checks Reuters’ Russia Scaremongering In Real Time

On Saturday afternoon, Reuters posted an anonymously-sourced story pushing the idea that Russia is bent on reconstituting the Soviet Union. Before the metaphorical ink had dried, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard pounced, condemning the story as “a lie and propaganda” on behalf of “warmongers” seeking to derail President Trump’s drive to end the long and bloody Ukraine war.  

From selling the Iraq invasion to achieving a news and social media lockdown on Hunter Biden’s laptop, the Deep State has long used major media outlets like Reuters, the New York Times and Washington Post to inject their agenda-advancing narratives into America’s town square. Displaying the typical modus operandi with its Saturday night story, Reuters vaguely attributed the purported US intelligence conclusions about Russia to “six sources familiar with US intelligence.” 

According to those sources, “US intelligence reports” are warning that, despite Putin’s outwardly earnest claims that he wants to end the Ukraine war — claims credited by Trump — Russia not only wants to conquer all of Ukraine but also other European territories that were part of the Soviet Union. “The reports present a starkly different picture from that painted by…Trump and his Ukraine peace negotiators,” wrote Reuters journalists Jonathan Landay, Erin Banco and John Irish. Shortly after Banco promoted the story on X, Gabbard lashed out: 

“No, this is a lie and propaganda Reuters is willingly pushing on behalf of warmongers who want to undermine President Trump’s tireless efforts to end this bloody war that has resulted in more than a million casualties on both sides. Dangerously, you are promoting this false narrative to block President Trump’s peace effort, and fomenting hysteria and fear among the people to get them to support the escalation of war, which is what NATO and the EU really want in order to pull the United States military directly into war with Russia.

The truth is the US intelligence community has briefed policymakers, including the Democrat HPSCI member quoted by Reuters, that US Intelligence assesses that Russia seeks to avoid a larger war with NATO. It also assesses that, as the last few years have shown, Russia’s battlefield performance indicates it does not currently have the capability to conquer and occupy all of Ukraine, let alone Europe.”

The “Democratic HPSCI member” (House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence) is Illinois Rep. Mike Quigley, who told Reuters that intelligence has “always” said “Putin wants more…The Europeans are convinced of it. The Poles are absolutely convinced of it. The Baltics think they’re first.”

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Gabbard blasts ‘deep state warmonger’ report claiming Putin seeks to invade Eastern Europe, warns NATO and EU pushing U.S. toward war with Russia

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard refuted a report claiming that U.S. intelligence reports are finding that Russian President Vladimir Putin seeks to capture all of Ukraine and parts of Eastern Europe formerly under Soviet control.

Gabbard dismissed a Reuters report claiming that Putin still has the intention of expanding his war past Ukraine, citing six anonymous sources.

The report, released on Saturday, claims that a September U.S. intelligence report contradicts President Donald Trump and his negotiators, who have stated that Putin is seeking an end to the war in Ukraine.

The report added that U.S. intelligence has been consistent on the matter since Putin invaded Ukraine in 2022, aligning with European leaders on the belief that Putin seeks to take back former Soviet bloc states by force, including NATO allies.

“The intelligence has always been that Putin wants more,” Democrat House Intelligence Committee member Mike Quigley (Ill.) told Reuters. “The Europeans are convinced of it. The Poles are absolutely convinced of it. The Baltics think they’re first.”

Gabbard responded to the report on Saturday afternoon, criticizing “deep state warmongers and their propaganda media” for attempting to undermine President Donald Trump’s peace efforts.

“This is a lie and propaganda @Reuters is willingly pushing on behalf of warmongers who want to undermine President Trump’s tireless efforts to end this bloody war that has resulted in more than a million casualties on both sides,” Gabbard wrote.

Gabbard went on to accuse NATO and the EU of wanting to lure the United States into a direct military conflict with Russia.

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EU is Broke & Rejects Peace Since They Would Have to Return Russian Money

I have been getting emails asking if the EU robbing Russia is the prelude to the Great Taking. Let’s make this very clear – there is NO GREAT TAKING – that is sophistry. You might as well add that they will default on all pensions, medicare, and Social Security while at it. Not even the army would defend such actions.

Without the army, the government fails just as the 1991 coup in Russia collapsed when the army did not fire on the people. They know that such a “Great Taking” would be revolution. We will all be singing the Revolution song from Les Misérables.

The EU is on the verge of absolute collapse. Not only economically are they still in love with Marxism, but they are floundering and they are losing the support of member states all thanks to their stupid migrant policies, excessively high taxation, over-regulation, and now their desperate attempt to shut down free speech in a cynical effort to retain power. As I warned, the EU will sabotage any effort by Trump to end the war Ukraine. This is about the conquest of Russia for money.

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Trump’s Expanded Drug War Will Make Overdose Crisis Worse, Experts Say

As President Donald Trump exploits fear about fentanyl to justify military aggression in Latin America, experts warn that his administration’s choice to slash federal support for public health programs threatens to erode progress in reducing fatal overdoses linked to synthetic opioids.

Trump issued an executive order on Monday declaring fentanyl a “weapon of mass destruction” that could be weaponized for “concentrated, large-scale terror attacks by organized adversaries.” Experts say fentanyl is not used as a weapon and dismissed the order as a public relations ploy as the administration struggles to explain its legal justification for waging a deadly international drug war without approval from Congress.

The order is the latest line in a series of massive escalations in Trump’s drug war. Trump and his “Secretary of War” Pete Hegseth are engaged military adventurism in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean, building up significant U.S. naval forces near Venezuela and blowing up boats the administration accuses of ferrying drugs in a campaign experts have classified as extrajudicial killings. Trump has ordered a naval blockade around Venezuela while threatening to oust President Nicolas Maduro.

The administration has spent months attempting to tie Maduro, and Venezuelans more broadly, to drug crimes in the U.S. while labeling such crimes as terrorism. After taking office, Trump declared the Venezuelan prison gang Tren de Aragua a “foreign terrorist organization” and called Maduro a “narco-terrorist” while rounding up Venezuelan immigrants and removing them to a notorious El Salvadoran prison. Most had no criminal convictions.

U.S. airstrikes have sunk at least 28 boats and killed more than 100 people since September, according to reports and to Zeteo’s strike tracker. The administration claims the boats are engaged in “narco-terrorist” activity, but the White House and Pentagon have not publicly released evidence that the victims are drug traffickers. The family of one man killed in a September 15 strike has said that the U.S. illegally murdered a law-abiding fisherman from Colombia, not a drug smuggler.

If any of the boats destroyed from the sky were ferrying drugs, it would most likely be cocaine, which is primarily produced in northwestern South America. Overdoses often involve multiple substances, but the overdose crisis is generally fueled by powerful synthetic stimulants, opioids, and tranquilizers — not cocaine, which is derived from the coca plant and is used by only a fragment of the population. Cocaine is typically more expensive than synthetics.

Maritza Perez Medina, director of federal affairs at the Drug Policy Alliance, said bullying Venezuela and attacking small boats will do nothing to prevent people from using fentanyl in the U.S. and could make the overdose crisis worse.

“This administration is not thinking in terms of solutions,” Medina said in an interview. “They are clearly using people’s fear of fentanyl as a pretext for implementing the president’s agenda, which includes taking away our civil liberties and actually putting us in more danger by potentially creating conflicts in other parts of the world.”

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How Washington’s Syrian Caper Debunks the Case for Empire

Sometimes a microcosm sheds a powerful light on large-scale macro issues. That was surely the case with respect to last weekend’s news that five US military personnel were involved in an ambush in Syria, which resulted in three deaths and three wounded. The incident apparently was caused by a member of the Syrian security forces, according to the Syrian Interior Ministry, who opened fire on a joint US-Syrian military patrol near the ancient ruins of Palmyra in central Syria (about 134 miles northeast of Damascus).

Needless to say, this news ignited a chorus of WTFs among the non-drinkers of the Deep State Kool Aid who post on X and elsewhere. After all, what other response was there when it became clear that these five servicemen were among more than 2,000 acknowledged US military personnel operating in the no count cipher of Syria; and that there are likely hundreds more covert forces working for the CIA and other US black operations there, as well.

And, yes, we do mean a spec of a country. After all, the tiny orange dot below is the essentially land-locked location of Syria on a representation of the global map. Relatively speaking, it has no economy, no technology, no military, no nukes, no oil, no minerals and, well, no nuthin’ that could possibly bear on the Homeland Security of America, way over here 6,000 miles away on the far side of the Atlantic.

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Volodymyr Zelensky’s Non-Compromise NATO Compromise

A key reason that Russia went to war in Ukraine was to prevent Ukraine from ever joining NATO; a key reason that Ukraine went to war with Russia was to defend their right to join NATO. On December 14, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky gave up Ukraine’s right to join NATO. He presented the concession as a compromise. But it is not really a compromise. Zelensky may intend the non-compromise to leverage concessions from Russia, but it may not really change anything.

That blocking Ukraine accession to NATO was Moscow’s primary motivation has been confirmed by NATO, by Ukraine and by the United States. Jens Stoltenberg, NATO Secretary General at the start of the war, says that “no more NATO enlargement… was a pre-condition for not invade Ukraine… [Putin] went to war to prevent NATO, more NATO, close to his borders.”

Davyd Arakhamiia, who led the Ukrainian negotiating team in Istanbul, says that an assurance that Ukraine would not join NATO was the “key point” for Russia. “It was the most important thing for them… They were prepared to end the war if we agreed to… neutrality, and committed that we would not join NATO.”  Zelensky said, in his first interview after the invasion, “As far as I remember, they started the war because of this.”

Amanda Sloat, the former Special assistant to President Biden and Senior Director for Europe at the National Security Council, was recently caught suggesting that a guarantee that Ukraine not join NATO could have prevented the war. “We had some conversations even before the war started about, what if Ukraine comes out and just says to Russia, ‘Fine, you know, we won’t go into NATO, you know, if that stops the war, if that stops the invasion’ – which at that point it may well have done,” she said. “There is certainly a question, three years on now, you know, would that have been better to do before the war started, would that have been better to do in Istanbul talks? It certainly would have prevented the destruction and loss of life… If you wanna do an alternative version of history, you know, one option would have just been for Ukraine to say in January 2022, ‘Fine, you know, we won’t go into NATO, we’ll stay neutral. Ukraine could’ve made a deal, I guess, in, what, March, April 2022 around the time of the Istanbul talks.”

But Ukraine did not make that deal because the United States, the U.K., Poland and their partners pushed them not to. They promised Ukraine whatever they need for as long as they need it to fight Russia in defense of the “core principle” that Ukraine has the right to choose its alliances and that NATO has the right to expand.

Nearly four years and hundreds of thousands of deaths later, Ukraine has surrendered the right to join NATO. On December 14, Zelensky said that he is ready to give up the demand for NATO membership in exchange for “bilateral security guarantees between Ukraine and the United States – namely, Article 5–like guarantees… as well as security guarantees for us from our European partners and from other countries such as Canada, Japan and others.”

Zelensky presented this concession as “a compromise on our part.” But it is not really a compromise for three reasons.

The first is that the retraction of the promise that Ukraine would join NATO was already a done deal. Ukraine’s accession to NATO was never going to happen.

That reality was implicitly stated by Biden and explicitly stated by Trump. It is point number 7 in Trump’s 28-point peace plan. The reality has been recognized by Zelensky who has “understood that NATO is not prepared to accept Ukraine” since the start of the war. He has, since that time, “acknowledged” that Ukraine “cannot enter” the “supposedly open” NATO door and that, though “publicly, the doors remain open,” in reality, Ukraine is “not going to be a NATO member.” Any hope of resuscitating that dream died in the recently released 2025 National Security Strategy of the United States of America that states the policy priority of “Ending the perception, and preventing the reality, of NATO as a perpetually expanding alliance.”

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WMDs for a MIC in Need

In the closing days of 2025, the White House turned an opioid crisis into a national security drama. Standing in the Oval Office during a Mexican Border Defense Medal ceremony on December 15, President Donald Trump declared that he would sign an executive order to classify fentanyl as a “weapon of mass destruction,” calling the announcement “historic.” Treating a synthetic painkiller like a nuclear bomb says more about Washington’s mindset than about the drug. Though drug overdose deaths declined in 2024, 80,391 people still died and 54,743 of those deaths were from opioids. Those numbers mark a public‑health emergency. Rather than tackle fentanyl abuse as a medical or social problem, the administration reframed it as an existential threat requiring military tools. Labeling a narcotic a WMD creates a pretext for war and sidesteps due process. This move grows out of a political culture that uses fear of invisible enemies—terrorists, microbes, drugs—to justify extraordinary power.

Past and present administrations have blurred the line between law enforcement and warfare. Since September 2025 the United States has launched more than twenty strikes on boats in the Caribbean and Pacific suspected of carrying narcotics, killing over eighty people. Experts note that little proof has been made public that the vessels contained drugs or that blowing them out of the water was necessary. Yet the assaults continued, and on December 10 the U.S. Navy seized a sanctioned Venezuelan oil tanker off Venezuela’s coast, sending oil prices higher. Trump boasted it was the largest tanker ever seized and said, when asked about the cargo, “We keep it, I guess.” Caracas denounced the action as “blatant theft.” The administration justified the operation as part of its anti‑drug campaign, but the target was not an unmarked speedboat; it was a carrier of crude oil, the sanctioned state’s main revenue source. Calling fentanyl a WMD makes such seizures look like acts of defense and blurs war and policing.

For students of recent history, this conflation of domestic threats with existential danger is hauntingly familiar. After September 11, 2001, President George W. Bush and his advisers claimed Iraq was developing anthrax, nerve gas and nuclear weapons. Vice President Dick Cheney insisted there was “no doubt” Saddam Hussein possessed WMD and was amassing them for use against America and its allies. Those arguments resonated with a populace still traumatized by the attacks. Fear allowed hawks to portray preemptive war as the only way to prevent a “mushroom cloud,” and in March 2003 the United States invaded Iraq. Investigations later found no factual basis for the claims that Iraq possessed WMD or collaborated with al‑Qaida. The smoking gun was a phantom, but by the time the truth emerged, Baghdad had been captured and the region destabilized for a generation.

One of the most tragic figures in that saga was Secretary of State Colin Powell. On February 5, 2003, he sat before the United Nations Security Council holding a glass vial he said could contain anthrax. He described Iraq’s alleged weapons labs and insisted the case was based on “solid intelligence.” The performance helped clinch support for war. Years later it became clear the intelligence was false and cherry‑picked, and no WMD were found. Powell later admitted the presentation was wrong and had blotted his record. Using a decorated officer’s credibility to sell a war built on falsehoods shows how propaganda can override reason.

The consequences of the Iraq War were catastrophic. The Defense Department records 4,418 U.S. service members dead in Operation Iraqi Freedom, including 3,481 killed in hostile action. Brown University’s Costs of War Project estimates that the post‑9/11 wars have cost the United States around $8 trillion and killed more than 900,000 people. About $2.1 trillion of that went to the Iraq/Syria theater. These figures exclude indirect deaths and future costs for veterans’ care. Millions of Iraqis were killed, injured or displaced, fueling sectarian violence and extremism. The war enriched defense contractors and expanded the military‑industrial complex while leaving ordinary people to pay the bill.

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A War No American Needs: Confrontation with Venezuela Brings Neither Security nor Benefit

The United States finds itself at a moment when the gap between power and prudence has rarely been more visible. As American society grapples with structural inflation, deep social fragmentation, a crisis of institutional credibility, and the steady erosion of public trust, renewed talk of military confrontation with Venezuela is once again circulating within Washington’s political and security circles. In recent months, this rhetoric has intensified, driven in part by President Donald Trump and influential figures around him – most notably Senator Marco Rubio – who have pushed an increasingly confrontational line toward Caracas, bringing the country closer to the threshold of conflict. These developments are not the product of a genuine threat, but rather reflect a dangerous habit in U.S. foreign policy: transforming domestic deadlock into external military adventure. The central question is both simple and decisive: who exactly is this war for, and what purpose is it meant to serve?

The first reality that must be acknowledged is that Venezuela, despite its profound economic, political, and governance crises, does not constitute an imminent or existential threat to U.S. national security. Neither its military capabilities nor its regional position – and not even its relations with America’s strategic rivals – place it in the same category as real systemic challenges such as China, or even complex transnational threats like cyber warfare and the collapse of global supply chains. Venezuela is neither capable of striking the U.S. homeland nor of disrupting the global balance of power. The inflation of the Venezuelan threat rests less on sober security analysis than on Washington’s recurring political need to manufacture a “manageable enemy.”

Within this framework, a war with Venezuela offers no direct benefit to American citizens. It does not enhance job security for workers, reduce healthcare costs, rebuild decaying infrastructure, or provide lasting stabilization to domestic energy prices. The experiences of Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria demonstrate that early promises of “economic gain” or “market stability” tend to be short-lived illusions, quickly replaced by prolonged instability, rising public debt, and the erosion of social capital. At best, the American public becomes a spectator to a war that yields no dividends; at worst, it becomes the entity that pays for it.

The costs of such a war, by contrast, would be immediate and tangible. Direct military expenditures – at a time when the U.S. defense budget already exceeds the combined military spending of several major powers – would mean funneling tens of billions of additional dollars into an industry that thrives on conflict, not peace. Beyond this, potential shocks to global energy markets, particularly in oil and gas, would translate directly into higher fuel and consumer prices at home. Despite reduced production capacity, Venezuela remains a consequential actor in energy geopolitics, and any significant instability there would reverberate across global markets. The result would be renewed economic pressure on American households still struggling to recover from previous crises.

Migration represents another cost routinely underestimated in early calculations. Any escalation of violence or security collapse in Venezuela would generate new waves of displacement across Latin America and eventually toward the U.S. southern border. This would not only produce humanitarian and ethical challenges, but also inflame domestic political tensions and deepen partisan divides. A war launched under the banner of “threat control” could, in practice, import instability directly into the United States.

If this war is neither about security nor public welfare, where do its real motivations lie? The answer must be found in the intersection of politics, power projection, and the satisfaction of security elites. In a system where foreign policy is heavily shaped by the military–industrial complex and entrenched security networks, war is not an anomaly but a tool for sustaining the existing power cycle. Confrontation with Venezuela – precisely because of the country’s relative weakness – offers the opportunity for a low-risk display of force, one that may benefit politicians, generals, and defense contractors even as it imposes costs on society at large. The recent advocacy by Trump-aligned hawks, including Rubio, fits squarely within this pattern.

This logic is fundamentally diversionary. When governments fail to resolve structural domestic problems, the temptation grows to mobilize public opinion around an external threat, redirecting attention away from internal crises. In this narrative, Venezuela is not treated as a country with real people and complex realities, but as a simplified symbol of “the enemy” – one that appears easy to defeat and whose human costs are often erased from political calculations.

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Trump, Netanyahu ‘quietly planned’ Iran war since February: Report

US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu jointly coordinated the June war against Iran months prior, while organizing a deception campaign in the media aimed at presenting Washington as opposed to Tel Aviv’s plans against Tehran, sources told the Washington Poston 17 December. 

According to the sources, Netanyahu met Trump in February and gave him four options for how an attack on Iran could happen.

“The Israeli prime minister first showed Trump what the operation would look like if Israel attacked alone. The second option was for Israel to take the lead, with minimal US support. The third was full collaboration between the two allies. The last option was for the US to take the lead,” the report said. 

“Months of stealthy, intensive strategic planning commenced. Trump wanted to give nuclear diplomacy with Iran a chance, but he continued intelligence-sharing and operational planning with Israel,” it added. “The thinking was, if talks fail, we are ready to go.”

Trump said one day before the war started that the US could potentially strike Iran, but that he preferred a diplomatic solution. 

“He and Netanyahu maneuvered to keep the Iranians unprepared for what would happen next,” the sources went on to say. 

Tel Aviv leaked information that Netanyahu’s Strategic Affairs Minister, Ron Dermer, and Mossad chief, David Barnea, would soon meet with US envoy Steve Witkoff.

A round of US–Iran nuclear talks had been scheduled for 15 June. However, Israel launched pre-emptive strikes on military and nuclear facilities in Iran on 13 June, triggering the war.

“Israel had decided to strike, as the US well knew. The planned diplomacy was a ruse, and officials from both countries encouraged media reports of a US–Israeli rift. All the reports that were written about Bibi not being on the same page with Witkoff or Trump were not true. But it was good that this was the general perception, it helped to move on with the planning without many people noticing it,” the sources said. 

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Senate Armed Services chair sees ‘no evidence of war crimes’ after inquiry into boat strikes

Senate Armed Services Committee Chair Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) said on Thursday that he has seen “no evidence of war crimes” committed during the U.S. military’s Sept. 2 strikes against an alleged drug-trafficking boat in the Caribbean, and he indicated that his panel does not plan to further probe the controversial operation. 

“I have seen no evidence of war crimes. The fact is that our military is asked to make incredibly difficult decisions. Service members must do so based on the best available information and often under very tight timelines,” Wicker said in a lengthy statement. 

Wicker said he is “satisfied” with all of the information the committee has received regarding the Sept. 2 attack, where two survivors were killed in a strike authorized by Navy Adm. Frank Bradley. Wicker said the strikes against “narco-terrorists” in the U.S. Southern Command area are based on “sound legal advice.” 

“When reports first surfaced about a secondary strike, my office immediately directed inquiries to the department to ascertain the veracity of these reports. I promised that SASC would take this matter seriously and conduct thorough oversight. We have done so,” the Mississippi senator said. “Both military and civilian Pentagon leaders have worked in good faith to provide answers to us without any delays.” 

Wicker’s panel said it would investigate the Sept. 2 operation, during which the U.S. military conducted four strikes against the purported drug-trafficking vessel in the Caribbean, shortly after The Washington Post revealed a second strike, ordered by Bradley, took place during the mission.

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