MarkG

Bingo. The majority of people posting here act like this is some kind of football game, not the largest conflict in Europe since WWII which has probably killed more than a million people already and could have been avoided by simply agreeing to a peace treaty which would have kept Donbas as part of Ukraine at the cost of the country remaining independent and staying out of NATO. They don't give a wet fart about the actual people of Ukraine and will support sending them to their deaths until there are literally no Ukrainians or Ukraine left. Meanwhile we get to talk to friends over there about what's been blown up near them this week, whether the power has stayed on, and what missiles and drones have flown over their house lately. Because Johnson had to big himself up and monsters in the West keep sending money and weapons solely to keep this war going and kill more Ukrainians when it's clear that Russia is in it to win even if that leads to direct war with NATO. This thread really exemplifies the Ugly Englishman who thinks they have the right to send foreigners to their deaths to serve their political ambitions. And while I'm not a great fan of Dominic Cummings, his words yesterday seem quite apt: "The lesson we’ve taught Putin is that we’re a bunch of total f**king jokers." It will go down in history as the worst disaster since the last time the West picked a fight with Russia. And even worse for Ukraine.

No, but there are Western-backed groups (including the BBC) who have studied Russian obituaries, cemeteries, social media etc and produced what are likely to be reasonable estimates of the actual number of Russians who've died in the war. If they were lying, they'd be pushing excessively high numbers rather than low. Meanwhile Zelensky is trying to force Ukrainian refugees to return to Ukraine to be sent to the front, so... the hundreds of thousands of men they used to have in the military went somewhere. They didn't just get Raptured away. Nor did those new cemeteries fill themselves. Even doubling the Western numbers would leave Russian losses as a small fraction of Ukrainian losses. Which makes perfect sense given that even Ukranians admit that the Russians have a massive superiority in artillery, and the Russians were fighting a defensive action for months where the Ukrainians threw human wave attacks at defences that they failed to breach while the Russians plastered them with artillery and drones. Anyone who claims to believe Ukraine only lost 31k men while Russian lost 500,000 is either deluded or a paid stooge. The entirety of military history tells us the actual numbers are far more likely to be the opposite (though Russia has almost certainly lost more than 31k). Heck, if Russia had actually lost 500,000 men at this point Putin would have been replaced with a war-hawk who didn't give a damn about how much civilian damage he caused in Ukraine and just flattened the place.

The Russians have already said they have over $300 billion of Western assets that they can seize in response. Meanwhile the Western financial system will see a massive withdrawal of foreign money because no-one wants a proven thief looking after their cash.

Years ago I read the autobiography of a Vietnam war photographer called Tim Page and it was pretty much like that. He was wounded in action four times, on some occasions even by the Vietnamese. And ended up killing a Vietnamese soldier. After that he went to cover the Arab-Israeli war and captured an Arab anti-tank gun that he towed behind his car until the Israelis took it away. None of his friends sounded very sane either. Some of them didn't make it back.

Allegedly the people who run the US agreed not to retaliate if Iran didn't kill any Israelis. So they did a symbolic attack which hit a few hangars and other low-value military targets. Israel appears to have responded by attacking Iranian nuclear facilities, so Iran will respond with a much larger attack and probably hit Israeli nuclear facilities this time. Sooner or later, Sunak will be sending British boys to die for Israel.

Hope everyone's ready to be drafted to die for Israel.

You forget that while China is full of Chinese people, the West has the benefit of Diversity. Which is Our Strength. Our low-IQ migrants will soon turn America into Wakanda 2.0 and make missiles and drones obsolete.

The Iranians have relatively modern air defences and they can launch thousands of drones and missiles in response to any attack. Only Boomers think Israel is capable of an outright war with Iran. Even the Israelis know they can't do it without American boys to die for them.

It's starting to look like Galloway might end up the next Prime Minister if both cheeks of the Uniparty are abandoning the Muslim vote.

So it looks like both sides are claiming they won, but Israel is going to double-down and provoke a larger retaliation. Biden has allegedly told Israel they're on their own if they do attack Iran, but it's probably just electioneering.

Iran wouldn't have done this without discussing it with Russia and China, and the US won't allow any action against Israel, so I don't see much of consequence happening there.

Yeah, there are plenty of videos of missile impacts, but many appear to be the same missiles from different angles. So I guess we'll have to wait and see.

Predictably. So either Iran fell into an obvious trap or they're prepared for all-out war.

Biden has to decide whether it's worth starting WWIII in an election year. Or, more precisely, Biden's handlers do.

The only way to stop this mess is for Biden to announce no more US support for Israel. And he's not going to do that. So long as American boys are on the line to die fighting Iran, Israel will keep escalating.