Tag: Philip Breedlove

US officials gave Ukraine public green light to bomb Kerch bridge

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)1 Comment

US officials gave Ukraine public green light to bomb Kerch bridge

Completely excluded from any account in the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal was the fact that senior US officials not only publicly authorized, but a former US official publicly encouraged, the attack to take place.

“Bomb Russia’s bridge to Crimea, Ukraine urged,” read the headline in the Times of London on July 7, reporting the statements of US General Philip Breedlove, NATO’s former Supreme Allied Commander Europe.

…

The next day, July 8, clearly referencing Breedlove’s comments, a reporter identified only as “Howard” asked at a Pentagon background briefing, “can you talk about any preclusions? Would the — would the Kerch Bridge be not precluded as a potential target?”*

The defense official replied, “As I said, there aren’t any preclusions that I’m aware of about the Ukrainians fighting on their sovereign territory against Russia.”

Related:

* [07-08-2022] U.S. Says Russia’s Prized Kerch Bridge Is A Fair Target For Ukrainian Forces

At a press briefing held this morning, The War Zone asked a senior U.S. official whether or not there were any preclusions about the use of High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, or HIMARS, in Ukraine against certain targets. Speaking to reporters on the condition of anonymity, the official responded by saying that they couldn’t reveal any further information about specific targets, but that “Russian forces’ capabilities and logistics nodes within Ukraine are absolutely fantastic” targets. The War Zone followed up, asking if there were any hesitations about using the HIMARs against the Kerch Bridge. The official responded as follows.

“As I said, there aren’t any preclusions that I’m aware of on Ukrainians fighting on their sovereign territory against Russia.”

Escalation Without Consequences on the Op-Ed Page

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Escalation Without Consequences on the Op-Ed Page

The United States implemented two “no-fly zones” over Iraq between 1991 and 2003, at which point the US and its partners moved on to the full-scale devastation of Iraq, killing hundreds of thousands in the process. NATO created “no-fly zones” in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and later over Kosovo, during the period in which NATO was dismantling Yugoslavia. In 2011, NATO imposed a “no-fly zone” in Libya, ostensibly to protect the population from Muammar Gaddafi: The result was ethnic cleansing, the emergence of slave markets, mass civilian casualties and more than a decade of war in the country.