Michael Tracey attended an America First Policy Institute and recorded his experiences on substack. If you want to know how everything is totally screwed up, you’ll want to read it. Read it anyway. The one particularly noteworthy thing is that the weapons and money we send to Ukraine go down a “black hole.” We have heard that before, but here is proof again, and no one will stop sending weapons and cash down the black hole.
During the conference, Rep. Waltz had talked about accelerating the use of troops in Ukraine despite money and weapons going down the “black hole.”
Tracey caught up with Rep. Waltz said he wanted US troops to help with planning and logistics. He assured Tracey he wasn’t asking for troops to serve on the front lines. Waltz also wants oversight.
“And the thing that I most want to happen is to provide oversight of all these billions that we’re providing. Where’s it going, who’s using it? How is it being used? We just can’t send this stuff into a black hole,” he said.
Tracey continued.
I asked if this plan of his would require Congressional authorization, and he did not reply, instead ducking swiftly into an elevator. But think about what Waltz did manage to say. Like the vast majority of his Republican colleagues, he voted for the latest round of $40 billion in war funding back in May.
Now, two months later, he’s publicly admitting the “billions that we’re providing” to Ukraine are going down a “black hole.” But rather than acknowledge this as an astronomical flaw in the measure he voted for — and therefore in the wider policy approach the US is taking to the conflict — Waltz now says the solution is to escalate the US war effort dramatically further by sending US military “advisors” to physically integrate into the actual war. Which, according to Waltz, is what British forces are already doing.
(By the way, does this mean the UK is at war with Russia? Wouldn’t the UK military personnel currently operating inside Ukraine be legitimate military targets? In the event they get blown up by a Russian missile strike, what is the US/NATO response supposed to be? Furthermore, why doesn’t anyone in the UK media seem to be asking these glaringly pertinent questions? There’s currently a Conservative Party leadership contest underway, and the UK press corps has all but ignored the issue. But I digress.)
The blunt admission that all this much-heralded US weaponry is simply plunging into a “black hole” — from one of the most dedicated pro-Ukraine hawks in Congress, no less — really deserves to be dwelled upon for a moment. Not just in the insanity of the admission but in how it’s now being used to justify even greater US military commitments.
“I’d like to know where in the hell that equipment is too, Mike,” Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-TN) said to Waltz at one point. In order to fix the mess he created by voting for a bill with no actionable monitoring provisions, Waltz is now proposing to entangle the US even more deeply into the war.
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And according to Waltz — who’s apparently on track to be a top foreign policy sage for the next GOP House majority — this is a totally sensible remedy, because he doesn’t envision the troops technically deploying to the “front lines.” Which sounds very reassuring.
You don’t have to be a scholar of the Vietnam War to know that the incremental buildup of so-called “advisors” was how the US ended up in an all-out war by 1965.
Tracey noted that Waltz voted for a war funding bill with zero oversight and, months later, admits the weapons sent by the US are going down a “black hole.” He then proposed to fix the mess he made by sending in US troops. Now he is the GOP’s key point-man on foreign policy.
It would be a mistake to focus only on Rep. Waltz. Most are doing the same, and it’s both parties.
Meanwhile, the one who did try to get oversight – Rand Paul – didn’t become the point-man. And the weapons and money continue down the black hole.
wpDiscuz
