Posted on 07/19/2022 11:19:12 AM PDT by JonPreston
Rep. Matt Gaetz, the firebrand House Republican from Florida, said as much in a July 1 exchange with Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.). Answering a Tweet from Gallego that said “Fact is if the Republicans take over the House in 2022 US support to Ukraine will come to a halt,” Gaetz replied, “Ruben is correct.”
At a recent rally in Anchorage, Alaska, Trump riffed on the cost so far, misstating the amount spent.
“Like with Ukraine, we put up $60 billion and Europe put up $5, 6 [billion]? OK?” he said, drawing boos from the crowd. (Through early July, Congress has authorized about $54 billion for assistance not only to Ukraine, but to neighboring countries as well in response to the Russian invasion. )
And Trump is by no means alone among Republicans. On the last aid package, 11 GOP senators voted against more money, including Kentucky’s Rand Paul.
“We don’t have any money for anyone,” he told HuffPost. “I mean, we’re a trillion dollars in the hole every year. So any money that is allocated to send to a foreign country has to be borrowed first from another foreign country.”
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Ukraine’s Image is faltering fast. No longer the bastion of Democracy we were told. If aid dries up, they are GONE. Only thing that could save the day—Some big incident—Like Russia nukes a few Uke Cities—and WW III starts. But that too would not save Ukraine-—there mansion in Florida will be nuked.
I served at the beginning of the AVF, 76-84. I lived through those challenges as a Platoon Leader, XO, and Staff Officer (mostly S-4 (Supply Officer)) during my 4 years in Germany, 6/56 ADA (Chaparral/Vulcan), motto "Night Hides Not".
My last battalion commander was great, turned around a C-3 battalion to a C-1. A big part of that was discharging 60 underperforming soldiers via Chapter 13...basically 10% of the battalion. He caught hell from higher HQ, but he stuck to his guns.
He was promoted to Colonel, we both went back to Fort Bliss about the same time. As luck would have it, I worked for him again at a directorate on Fort Bliss...met my wife there, too. He appointed me his Operations Officer, a LT Colonel slot, that's how much confidence he had in me.
Along with the "war stories" I've told my sons and nephews, I advise them not to join the military. It's not the same military that I served in. In this Army, I'd never make it to First LT. In a way, that's cool, too. I loved being a Platoon Leader, most fun I had in the Army. With the possible exception of Battalion S-4, made great use of my public accounting degree.
When you're in the military, it's often easy to assess leadership qualities of the men in charge. I had the opportunity to shadow then-LTC Garner, when I was XO of a support detachment at the anti-aircraft range in Todendorf, Germany.
When on-site, it was my job to stick close to him, to respond to any additional requests they had. During that week his battalion was there (2/60 ADA), I was able to observe his leadership style. It was obvious that his soldiers loved him, just by seeing how they interacted with him. He was not a "screamer", just a down to earth guy that happened to have silver oak leafs on his shoulders.
It's too bad he was not allowed to finish his work in Iraq. I can only wonder how many American lives would have been saved through his leadership.
There's no secret why he was fired: Halliburton and Brown & Root saw dollar signs coming their way from Iraq contracts.
Bush and Cheney are dead to me.
Well, in light of the fact that the plane carrying military goods that crashed in Greece was headed from Ukraine to Hezbollah, I’d be rethinking this claim for more and more military goods and MONEY be delivered pronto, as Zelensky has been demanding.
I’m shocked that we’ve been so hasty to commence giving into demands...demands, mind you, to give this and that, and a daily addition of several millions or billions more. It’s time to stop the stealing of our own national goods. We make everyone else buy them, but pass on one country? Because of Soros?
Your numbers are far different than those I am hearing and I will do some research. I am pretty familiar with NATO and how it works and it is usually the American people that pay for “our” checks and “theirs”.
I could be wrong but its easy to believe we get played like suckers because that is the story of NATO.
Good post and I agree about Garner. Many have called the sandbox conflict(s) the “IED war” and there is much truth to that. I know a lot of EOD guys who would agree.
However, history will likely show it was the “contractors war” given where we spent the majority of money. It may have also been the first war where the State Dept (I include the CIA) “outspent” the Pentagon. While I am uncertain about this, I would be curious to see the real break-down of funds expended and who directed the expenditures.
The human toll is most important (and tragic), but I think it dragged out so long because of $$$$ and institutional momentum. The amount of “waste, fraud, and abuse” that took place makes me sick.
“Fact is if the Republicans take over the House in 2022 US support to Ukraine will come to a halt,” Gaetz replied, “Ruben is correct.”
Thank
God
!!!!!!!!!
What a giant mistake.
Exactly. Grrrr!
The $29 billion figure came from the first paragraph of the Economist article from early May linked below. It might be more now in mid July. I could only see the first paragraph which included that figure and the parties involved.
This link tracks funding from many sources and parts of the world: https://www.devex.com/news/funding-tracker-who-s-sending-aid-to-ukraine-102887 [A sample from 2/24-7/4 below.]
“Devex’s Funding Platform has recorded more than $100 billion in commitments for Ukraine. However, a relatively small percentage of that funding is humanitarian-focused. The Funding Platform tracks more than 850 sources of information about the largest funders around the world, including national governments, multilateral agencies, and the biggest philanthropic foundations.”
“A search of the platform’s database reveals more than $8.5 billion of primarily humanitarian grant funding, allocated by national governments and other funders between Feb. 24 and July 4. Additionally, Devex turned up $62.3 billion in loans and other repayable finance, although relatively little of this is likely to be spent on aid. On top of this, donors and governments have made multiple multibillion-dollar pledges for the future, such as $10.1 billion in grants and loans at an event in Poland in April and $19.8 billion at a meeting of the Group of Seven leading industrial nations in May.”
I leave finding details and timing on US commitments to you. Probably easier to find. It is almost 3 am, and I’m turning in. Goodnight
It’s all about kickbacks to politicians.
Four Ways to Understand the $54 Billion in U.S. Spending on Ukraine...The cost of the aid is not as high as some of the Democrats’ more expensive policy priorities, Some of the comparisons are tricky because Democrats shortened the time frames for many of the programs in the bill to lower costs. Six years of a universal preschool program, for example, would cost roughly twice as much as the aid packages to Ukraine.But AP on Jul 12, 2022 reports,
US announces $1.7 billion in aid to Ukraine to pay health care workers..Ukraine is getting an additional USD 1.7 billion in assistance from the US government and the World Bank to pay the salaries of its beleaguered health care workers and provide other essential services. Last week, the Biden administration said it will send another $400 million in military equipment to Ukraine, the 15th package of military weapons and equipment transferred to Ukraine from Defense Department stocks since last August. This new set of funds will be used for humanitarian purposes. ...Overall, the US has sent about USD 7.3 billion in aid to Ukraine since the war began in late February.Thus, not only does Yahoo contradict Trump but also the AP.
Largely, and if the GOP had the WH then the headlines would be how it failed to deal with Covid and how vaccination was a failure. Yet Snopes actually did FC the 150,000,000 Americans figure, and affirms,
"Biden shared a statistic that would have meant roughly half of the American population had been killed since 2007 by guns. Biden did indeed make the comment....here are roughly 330 million Americans, according to U.S. Census figures. Biden’s campaign acknowledged that he had misspoke. The New York Times reported that more than 33,000 people die in firearm-related deaths in the U.S. every year, "
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