Scott Ritter: Answers Questions On Ukraine & Russia Military Special Operation

Well now we have people who say we want to do this with Ukraine. Well right off the bat I want to tell you any time we deal with Russia, let's put it this way, you can't solve a problem unless you have properly defined the problem. Any time we are dealing with Russia we need to understand that the United States and our NATO allies don't understand Russia. We don't have an accurate assessment of Russia. We've under estimated them in some areas and over estimated them in other areas. I'll give you an example...the Special Military Operation.

Mark Milley briefed Congress that Kiev would fall within 72 hrs. The director of the CIA made a similar assessment. His belief was that Ukraine would collapse in less than a week. Guess who else made that assessment? Me. Why? Because anyone who knows anything about the Russian way of fighting a war would have said that if the Russians come in even with 200,000 troops they come in doctrinally and they smother everything with fire power and overwhelm you with mass and slaughter everything there is nothing the Ukrainians can do to stand up to that.

But, Russia didn't come in that way. Why? Because see we're mirror imaging ourselves on Russia. We're acting as if we are fighting the Iraqis whom we don't identify with. Therefore we are capable of dehumanizing them to the extent that we have no problem with steamrolling over their troops and killing tens of thousands of them. And afterwards we will have the nightmares and the PTSD and the value of what we have done with hit home. But, at the time they are just ragheads, we're killing the ragheads and kids, civilians....shame on you for being alive. Boom, boom, boom, we'll roll through you and we'll do what we need to do.

But, the Russians are coming in saying "these are our brothers." See we don't understand that. We don't understand the concept of Slavic cultural unity, the identity that during the time of the Soviet Union they literally were brothers; that they fought side by side against NAZI Germany....27 million shared casualties. They have a shared culture, shared history, shared everything. So the Russians don't want to come in and steamroll. They were trying to do something different, a softer approach and because we don't understand Russia we misunderstood their softer approach as a sign of weakness. We interpreted it as weakness. At first we said, "Oh, they're going to steamroll" and when they didn't steamroll we said, "Gosh, that's cuz they're weak; they suck."

So then we step up and think now we can simply reinforce Ukraine and Russia is going to fold. We don't understand anything about Russia. The Russians will never fold. I am not saying they are invincible, they are not, but they are willing to step up. It's like if I wanted to play football. Juan you and I are going to play a football game next year and you know you get your team ready. So you get your team ready and I get my team. And your team if lighting weights all day long, running wind sprints, getting ready running plays. My team is sitting in the bar drinking beer and talking about how good we are. And when we show up on the field your team is going to wipe me off the field because you've actually prepared. It may take you time to prepare. Your guys may not be in as good a shape at the beginning but my lifting weights and running you're there.

The Russians are lifting weights and running. They're preparing. They are ready for this. We've been sitting in the back drinking beer fighting insurgents for twenty years. We think that because we can kick down the door in an Iraqi village we're somehow superman. We think because we can bomb and Afghan wedding party "God, we're really good." But, we're not; we're not that good. We're not; we are a bunch of beer drinking slobs in a bar thinking we can play a football game without actually preparing to play the game. The Russians meanwhile may not be as good as we are in terms of their potential but they are lifting weights every single day; they're running...they are ready to play. That's what's happening right now. The Russians have never given up on this; they are doubling down while we have sat here and we've burned up all our resources in fruitless attempts to build this Ukrainian army the Russians have been mobilizing. While we are sitting here talk, talk, talking they are training right now. You're familiar with the National Training Center in Fort Irwin, California where the army does it's force on force training...big stuff. Well that's what the Russians are doing right now. We just don't follow it in the Western media. But, they've got 10 to 15 divisions going through the final preparatory training of getting combat certified.

What are we doing? Nothing; but the other day we sent the 101 airborne division to Romania and everyone's like "Oh my God the hundred and first." 4,700 guys, light infantry men on helicopters. We're going to what? Fly into the most heavily defended air space in the world? We've lost our brains. The fact is that NATO has nothing that can take on the Russians.

Look, we thought that we could intimidate Russia just by imposing sanctions. We belittled Russia calling them a gas station disguised as a country. But, if you are going to call your opponent a "gas station disguised as a country" don't be the car on a freeway in the middle of nowhere with an empty gas tank because that is what happened here. The Russians know energy security better than we do. They know it better than anybody. We thought we could do something but we didn't define the problem properly. Therefore the solution we were trying to impose...sanctions...backfired. It's not Russia that is going through an energy crisis right now...its Europe, its the United States. And we made the same mistake on the military. We concluded weakness when it is actually strength. The Russian approach isn't a sign of weakness, it is a sign of strength. It's the Russian way of doing things and if you studied Russia you would have known that but we don't have anybody who does that because we don't respect Russia anymore. We treat them as they are this little nation and we are insulted that they dare stand up and demand a seat at the table. And what we find is that, you know, we are treating them like children and they are actually adults and they are adults who do the job better than we do. So the reason why people did what they did and do what they do is a combination of arrogance and hubris and ignorance on our part and we totally failed to understand. Sun Tzu said "Know your enemy as you know yourself." We don't know our enemy. We know nothing about the Russians. We pretend to, we call it Russophobia. And the way we deal with Russia is say "Russia" and go "Putin...Putin did this, Putin did that." That's our response to everything. And if that's your response it means you are ignorant and you are never going to solve any problems.

Estimates of the casualties from the Iraq War (beginning with the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and the ensuing occupation and insurgency and civil war) have come in several forms, and those estimates of different types of Iraq War casualties vary greatly.

Estimating war-related deaths poses many challenges.[1][2] Experts distinguish between population-based studies, which extrapolate from random samples of the population, and body counts, which tally reported deaths and likely significantly underestimate casualties.[3] Population-based studies produce estimates of the number of Iraq War casualties ranging from 151,000 violent deaths as of June 2006 (per the Iraq Family Health Survey) to 1,033,000 excess deaths (per the 2007 Opinion Research Business (ORB) survey). Other survey-based studies covering different time-spans find 461,000 total deaths (over 60% of them violent) as of June 2011 (per PLOS Medicine 2013), and 655,000 total deaths (over 90% of them violent) as of June 2006 (per the 2006 Lancet study). Body counts counted at least 110,600 violent deaths as of April 2009 (Associated Press). The Iraq Body Count project documents 185,000–208,000 violent civilian deaths through February 2020 in their table. All estimates of Iraq War casualties are disputed.[4][5]

Oh jeez, this is real rich. The Russians have shown such Slavic cultural unity that the Poles, the Czechs, the Slovaks, the Hungarians, the Ukrainians, Romanians, Moldovans, and basically every other Slavic people except the Serbs and Belorussians want nothing to do with them ever again.

I think we're got a pretty good handle in what "slavic cultural unity" means to Russia. It means all slavs should be united under Russia whether they wish to be or not.

It also means that the Russian fetish with being ruled by a czar/dictator type means those other slavs must be ruled by that individual as well. And if any slav - Russian or otherwise - is deemed insufficiently committed to whatever is deemed "Slavic" policy at a given time, they must be either re-educated or liquidated.

I think that about sums it up. I

they are just ragheads, we're killing the ragheads and kids, civilians....shame on you for being alive. Boom, boom, boom, we'll roll through you and we'll do what we need to do.

Is that what we did in Iraq?

I remember General Norman Schwarzkopf actually saying that they rolled over the Iraqis.

Daniel wondered what happened to the estimated 6,000 Iraqi defenders who had vanished. "Where are the bodies?" he finally asked the First Division's public affairs officer, an army major. "What bodies?" the major replied.
Months later, Daniel and the world would learn why the dead had eluded eyewitnesses, cameras and video footage. Thousands of Iraqi soldiers, some of them firing their weapons from first world war-style trenches, had been buried by ploughs mounted on Abrams tanks. The tanks had flanked the lines so that tons of sand from the plough spoil had funnelled into the trenches. Just behind the tanks, straddling the trench line, came Bradleys pumping machine-gun bullets into Iraqi troops.
"I came through right after the lead company," said Colonel Anthony Moreno. "What you saw was a bunch of buried trenches with people's arms and legs sticking out of them. For all I know, we could have killed thousands."

From the Guardian:

'What I saw was a bunch of filled-in trenches with people's arms and legs sticking out of them. For all I know, we could have killed thousands'

He hit a bullseye in Iraq about WMD’s and nuclear inspections. He was just right...on...down the line. The people on FR were on here belittling him for going against the WoT. In all seriousness, it was a money siphon on America. The last 50 years in the USA has been a long running bank job. Our tills and banks are empty. We are living on a credit card where the bill is owed to our enemies.

Nice Opinion piece Scott.

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