Are you living in a fantasy world? We have spent close to $200 billion of borrowed money in this proxy war and counting. Biden says we will be there for "as long it takes." We are providing real time intelligence to assist the Ukrainians in target selection. We have boots on the ground in Ukraine coordinating our efforts with them. We have moved troops into Poland. Biden just approved the provision of long range missiles after giving the green light for our allies to provide F-16s. We are training Ukrainian pilots in the US.
Three hours later, he took "Sunday Morning" underground, deep in the bowels of the Pentagon, into a top-secret command center where all the intelligence collected from the battlefields of Ukraine is monitored by his staff, who inform him on a day-to-day basis what's happening in the current operations. Milley said, "The fog and friction of war is always present, but our information systems are pretty good."
Maps on screens in the command center (showing unclassified information, because of "Sunday Morning"'s presence) track the painful progress of the offensive – Ukrainians cutting into Russian lines, which are defended with minefields, trenches, ditches, barbed wire, "dragon's teeth" anti-tank fortifications, and small 10- or 12-man hunter-killer teams armed with anti-tank munitions.
When asked if the U.S. shares with Ukraine what it knows about Russian troop movements, Milley replied, "Our intelligence pipes to Ukraine are quite open, for sure. And of course, the CIA and interagency, NSA, all those guys … There's pretty open pipes on intel to Ukraine."
"Are you helping Ukraine select targets?" Martin asked.
"Target selection and authority to strike is with Ukraine," Milley said. "What we do is provide them situational awareness."
The weapons are an investment and not an expense