This land is your land.... Best song Ole Pete Sung Best song Arlo Guthrie ever writ! Lol Had to edit this!
BTW, Poland is taking possession of the first load of M1A1 Abraham's, (Don't know the exact model type), today from a previously negotiated contract. 300 of those bad boys are being delivered.
So uftaipan, When is the Govt gonna make an Abraham's that can levitate between 0 and 300 feet, and fly a few hundred kilometers on a tank of hydrogen. You working on that patent?
Rumors of a purge of military leadership in Russia underway. Could be hopeful nonsense, of course. Something like this would stand to reason, though. After the July Plot against Hitler, a similarly failed coup, the Nazi leadership burned anyone who wasn’t 100% reliable to the regime, including some very competent generals who played little or no role in the plot. But some of the Russian generals probably do have to answer for what they knew and when they knew it as well as why the response of the Russian was so slow and half-assed. General incompetence only explains so much. But whatever. I’m all for whatever weakens Putin’s war machine. So purge away. As dust settles after Wagner mutiny, Russia's military leaders face tough questions | CNN
One Brit speculates that Putin may have bumped off his top generals, since it is likely that one or more of them was in cahoots with Prigo. That would explain why they haven't been seen since the insurrection. Maybe Putin thinks he can run the war by himself. Putin’s generals are either incompetent or disloyal. Both will terrify him
Don’t let CNN take you off the rails. Last week you were explaining the only way Ukraine wins on the battlefield is if Russia quits. And now you’re comparing Russia’s position to Germany’s position in late 1944? (when it was abundantly obvious to everyone outside of Germany that it had become a foot race to Berlin between the Americans and Soviets?) Totally different scenario here. You can only hope Putin fires the wrong people. If someone takes the reins who knows what they’re doing, it could shift things a lot.
Still accurate, unless you have come up with a better plan since then. The only thing that has changed seems to be that the events of the weekend have made that scenario slightly more plausible. I compared a failed military rebellion to a failed military rebellion, nothing more than that. Of course, Russia’s position in mid-2013 does not look like Nazi Germany’s position in mid (not late) 1944. But how Putin reacts to it may or may not compare with Hitler’s reaction. Time will tell.
I think the knee jerk reaction to compare Putin to Hitler with every twist and turn of the war is probably wrong almost all of the time. Hitler would have demanded Prigozhin be arrested on the spot, FSB be damned. Also, Prigozhin didn’t make it a secret he was a loose cannon who had major issues with leadership in Moscow. So I am guessing Putin and the Russian government had been preparing for some time for the possibility of Prigozhin to attempt an uprising. Hitler had no clue who was trying to assassinate him from within the German ranks. They’re both dictators, but they probably couldn’t be more different in terms of approach. Of course their two regimes are going to share some similarity, because they are both totalitarian.
Ah, yes, the comparison is even worse than that. I mean, the July plotters used the actual military (not a private security firm), initiated with an assassination attempt, and were already in Berlin versus marching on it. And, like, Hitler never used his Luftwaffe on the plotters. Furthermore, Prigozhin is known to wear boxer briefs and made extensive use of the internet, but Stauffenberg went commando and never logged online once in his life. There are literally zero points of comparison worthy of discussion in terms of whatever purge Putin does to the leadership of his armed forces. What was I thinking?
It's not so much that. I wasn't trying to attack you. It's the obvious bias you have of wanting this to end like it did for Hitler and that's probably not going to happen. With the Russian military brass, it's addition by subtraction. I can't imagine whomever steps into those posts are going to perform worse than their predecessors have in the past year and a half. If Ukraine was going to bust through the line, this would be the time to do it and so far, meh.. a few inches here, a few inches there. You may take Putin as a punchline now, but his opponent is a comedian who is leading a pretty corrupt government and military in of itself.
If I am reading the tea leaves correctly, it’s not only a purge, but Prigo was aligned with the hardliners and they would be the ones most impacted here. So there is a chance that we get a more sane set of people advising Putin on where things truly are and where they are headed.
The more I've gathered on the Prigozhin thing, it reminds me of the "bad guy" General Hummel in the movie The Rock. Hummel was trying to get money from the govt to pay the families of his soldiers who died in covert missions that weren't compensated. Finally, when it's time to pull the trigger on his stolen rockers aimed at San Fran, Hummel balks. He said they called his bluff, he wasn't actually willing to kill civilians. Seems like Prigo was pissed about the way the Wagner troops we're being treated. He hated the defense minister. He lost his cool and decided to March on Moscow, but realized there was really no end game. They called his bluff.
Maybe that was one of Prigo's conditions for his sudden discontinuing of the March to Moscow, a change in Russia's military leadership?