sherpa

At the risk of "thread creep," Venezuela's problems are entirely self inflicted. By the way, they recently, two days ago I think, condemned the rest of the world's sanctions against Russia in the wake of their Ukraine invasion. The Chavez gov nationalized their oil industry to fund his adventures trying to spread the "Bolivarian Revolution" across South America and beyond. Utter failure and he destroyed that industry among others he nationalized. He then rigged the legislature, rigged the courts, changed the constitution to ensure he could stay in power, courted Syria, Iran and Russia while harassing the US, and US diplomats based in Caracas at every opportunity, and constantly poking his neighbor, Colombia. He set his acolyte, Maduro, up to succeed him and the downward spiral continued with a massive exodus of talent to escape the nonsense. Venezuela is an entirely self caused, unforced error. The US deserves no blame for their tragedy.

Well, for starters, how ' bout any rationalization that explains Putin "carpet bombing" a Ukraine city, a preposterous idea that you brought up.

😄 Where do you dream up this stuff?

I think the next month is going to be painful, but..... I think Russia is done, at least the Putin regime, and... I think China is grossly overrated by US folks.

Putin, if he was smart.

Of course they do. Russia is being economically isolated in a manner never seen, and the pain to its populace is going to be massive. I'm simply responding to one element.

I'm not sure what NATO did, but that would make zero sense. Might as well blow them up on the ramp. The entirety of Russian civilian aviation is gone, regardless of what they agree to return. No spare parts, no maintenance, or access to out of country airspace. Over 50% of Russian airlines airplanes are leased, and while they might not return them, they cannot operate them. Among other industries, this one is dead.

"No fly zone," and "stooge" should be banned form this site. Their are no deader horses.

If it was launched by the US or NATO if would be an act of war. I'm not sure how the Russians would retaliate, but I'm sure they would initially take it out on Ukraine as a message that such aggression from a third party would be counterproductive. The thing is that there would be better options. A cruise missile doesn't have that big of a warhead. Air launched cruise missiles are more effective- bigger warhead since less rocket is needed. For all their talk, I am surprised and disappointed that the locals haven't used some kind of guerilla tactics against it. If they had any missile capability it would be very simple to hit. If they have no missiles, though I'm sure the Russians are guarding it, there has to be some point where they could do some damage with improvised weapons. If another country was serious about hitting it, and was willing to commit an act of war and risk the consequences, it would make more sense to do something bigger than a pin prick action like a cruise missile, which could be cleaned up in a matter of hours.. On that note, the Russians have a very sophisticated air defense capability which is though to have some ability to defend against cruise missiles. That is if they have it operating, which I'm not sure of, but we would know from signal intel if they did.

Largely true, but I think what started on April 19, 1775 was pretty OK.

So not willing to put up money to back up your claim? An admission of no confidence? Got it.

Hey Tibs. I see you didn't respond to my challenge. No surprise there. Just for your edification, if you want to know why people with knowledge of these type of things are surprised at your suggestions regarding a no fly zone, you can be educated here: The guy on the left is an F-14 RIO, (back seater), and accomplished author. The guy on the right is from the same background as me, A7's to F-18's. Both did the entire career thing. They kind of know what they're talking about.

Want to make it interesting, or you want to keep acting the goof? I can provide massive amounts of proof, so you name the stakes of a gamble, no limit, and I'll gladly agree. If not, shut up.

Can we stop this? A no fly zone is a declaration of war. Call it what it is.

Nothing wrong with that, but nobody should die unnecessarily based on a whiplash political decision the result of grossly ignorant talk shows.

If I might.... Those are decisions made by politicians. If you shock the energy market, you get very high prices that stifle economies and make civilians mad. That anger is directed towards those same politicians that make those decisions, so they are averse to it as a job security issue. The thing to do is rationally address it once this situation cools off. For the US and the Dems, there is simply no excuse to keep stifling our clean nat gas energy options while perusing alternatives that extend beyond renewables to hydrogen and other options.

I couldn't disagree more.

Its much worse. Lying, coward, emotional poster.

I spent two and a half years in the Pacific Fleet Adversaries after sea duty on Kitty Hawk. Graduated rom TopGun as an adversary instructor, the "bad" guys who actually brief, lead a d debrief those sorties that people saw in the movie. Flew against every US airplane, and some foreign ones, like Saudi F-15's and many Canadian detachments. We all had lecture responsibilities. I taught Soviet and US air to air missiles and Soviet SAM systems in use at the time. I can assure you, I can look at this with a cold and dispassionate focus. What would get me emotional is that if US/NATO policy, already announced, is changed because of what clueless ratings grabbers emotionally rant about on ignorant talk shows, because in order to minimize death to our guys, those decisions would have needed to have been made a month ago by sober, knowledgeable, objective, responsible people. Whatever you think, or whatever you call me is of absolutely no consequence.

Not triggered at all. Always funny how you assign nonsense, nonexistent emotions to people. Why bother? But, in the last couple weeks you have called me a coward, a liar and now an idiot. All I suggest is that you are silly, uniformed and knowledge-less in this area. Anyway, someone who would ask that question must have been living underground the last three weeks. The US and its NATO allies have said they will not go to war over this. Bombing a convoy is going to war. Is that hard to understand? Of course, a truly informed question would have been to use your erudite strategy and ask why we just don't drone them.

Not a CNN guy. Who asked that question, and I hope whoever did was not stupid enough to mean "we" being the US or NATO. Please tell me the CNN staff is not that stupid. Having someone ask an idiotic question does not equate to the subject being "discussed."

Your drone strategy is silly. Seems like a video game kid guessing at military capability. I'm hoping that the Ukraine has been sitting on its powder, looking for one huge assault on this convoy. They haven't done a thing in 48 hours, so just maybe they try to attack it all at once with what they've got left. Seems unlikely though, as the Russian convoy is incredibly vulnerable now, and have launched attacks that would seemingly trigger such a response. What would not be smart would be for NATO to to initiate some huge response against them at this too late date. The Russians have a huge problem in front of them, and as isolated as they have made themselves, the degree of difficulty is much greater. Not that their good at that anyway.

NATO made the decision to not engage in direct military action weeks ago. It is way too late now. This plays out with the Russians trying to run the country, and that won't work well, especially since their, (Russian) economy is going to be destroyed by sanctions and voluntary withdrawals by scores of different industry groups. The smart thing now is to prevent the massive loss of life that any late hour offensive would result in. So much for your "drone/Stinger/Javelin" strategy.

I don't know, but I am very concerned about confrontations on the International Space Station? Maybe a symbolic lockout of the Russians from the head?

I don't think it matters how trained his troops were. It is a screaming example of horrible strategy and planning, and that is done at way higher levels.