Thursday, November 17, 2022

From The Ministry Of Weaselwords

Translation: No nuclear war today, thanksverymuch. NATO took a vote, and they're not going to start Armageddon over one Russian "Aw shitski!" 

Because sometimes, it's better to be a live sh*tweasel, than a vaporized truth-teller floating to earth as radioactive fallout particles.

So much for the ongoing line of horsesh*t about anyone trying to poke Russia into a nuclear war. Vlad just got a mulligan, and some fuck-up missile programmer in Belarus just got a dirt nap.

10 comments:

Dan said...

Maybe this was a Russian faux pas....and maybe it was a deliberate effort by Zelensky to draw NATO into this mess. We will never know for sure as neither side can be believed.

Rhea said...

I wondered about this when I saw it go down and then that, lo, NATO learned it was magically not a Russian missile that hit Poland but a Ukraine missile. And thus no one has to defend Poland.

I'd be more inclined to believe NATO if Poland hadn't always been given the short end of the stick. Shades of 1939...

~Rhea

Aesop said...

@Dan,

NATO explicitly excluded Ukraine from any role or input into the minimal investigation, before announcing their conclusions.

That tells me everything I need to know about NATO's statement.

This was about obfuscation, not investigation.
They decided "You can't handle the truth!".
Case closed.


A few interesting factoids, that I'm sure is total coincidence:

1) Anti-aircraft missiles all have self-destructs wired in, to prevent exactly this. Nota bene that for 8 months, Ukrainian missiles haven't been falling from the sky on non-belligerents like raindrops. Like, not even once, in all this time.

2) AA missiles don't make round huge holes in the ground; they are proximity fuzed, not impact fuzed. They rain debris from altitude, they don't detonate at ground level.

3) Assume Ivan ground programmer has list of coordinates, and accidentally puts in latitude of Kyiv, and longitude of Lyviv. That's roughly where this missile impacted. I'm sure that's just wild random chance. [/sarc]

All in all, NATO is trying to avoid WW3. Great. But note how fast they fell all over themselves to still blame Russia, and reassure Ukraine that this wouldn't go on their permanent record. IOW, self-evidently, that was a wink and a finger aside the nose: the fix is in.
I'm actually surprised Stoltenberg wasn't Morse code-blinking B-U-L-L-S-H-I-T with his eyelids during his statement.

The Freeholder said...

I wonder if this was a deliberate act by Russia. Just a note to remind folks that they can make this bigger at will?

Aesop said...

"Never assign to malice that which can be adequately explained by ordinary incompetence."

I think Vlad's idiots just f**ked up.

BigCountryExpat said...

Bro
Look at the map where the impact was versus the 'potential launch sites'

Unless the missile was launched from Belarus (possible) I'm not seeing Rooskie involvement here. Vlad's Vodka Swilling fools be stoopid, but it's hard to have a 150km ranged weapon fly almost 600+km.
Jes' Sayin.
If you draw a circle around POI (point of impact) it shows no way for a missile to come from Belarus... The closest Belarusian city is Tamašoŭka, Belarus 200+km away. And that's a peninsula on the edge(s)

Krainefeld is getting a mite nervous.... FTX exposure is about to 'dry up' the Grift IMO...

Aesop said...

If you mis-program a cruise missile's target co-ordinates with the rough latitude of Kyiv, and the rough longitude of Lyviv, you get the exact impact area in Poland.
Easy-peasey.

Ukraine has managed to not hit anyone else for eight months, and then they suddenly decide that targeting a field in Poland is going to get them anything? Less likely.

I think one of Vlad's missileer drunkards fucked up while reading his targeting list cards, and NATO, not being batshit-insane, gave them a pass over it. That's why they kept Ukrainian investigators completely out of this, and issued such a multiple-weasel-worded press statement, simultaneously blaming Russia, and holding Ukraine blameless even as they kinda sorta suggested it was their missile, thus avoiding the requirement to start WW3, while still dropping the dead mouse right at Vlad's feet.

And errant S-300s don't impact detonate such massive craters. But surface-to-surface cruise missiles do.

When we pinned the shoot-down of KAL 007 on Russia in '83, we didn't mince words, we called them out, and laid out irrefutable evidence. NATO's press conference sounded about as convincing as any Democrat claiming victory after the last election. The NATO statement this time was the most half-assed weasel-worded non-denial denial I've heard them issue in decades.

And this kind of fuck-up by the vodka-soaked Russians on the front lines is well within their skill set, based on their performance since February.

Stupid, but not rising to casus belli for all of NATO. Who, BTW, simultaneously passed the hat for more weapons for Ukraine, based on the incident, especially AA missile systems and AAA artillery.

IMHO, that's NATO doing everything but pulling out a tail fin with Putin's picture painted on it, signed "From Russia, With Love".

Ever have a company formation where the first shirt talked to everyone about "some sonofabitch", but was giving a mad dog laser stare at one individual, and every swinging Richard in the formation knew exactly who was being addressed, without him saying it? This was NATO doing that.

LSWCHP said...

Jeez, I hate to be a pedant (no wait...actually I love it), but "AAA artillery" expands to "anti-aircraft artillery artillery", which would be artillery for shooting at anti aircraft artillery, or something. 😊

Carry on smartly now.

Aesop said...

Whatever :). Pedantry noted. Mea culpa.

"Germans?" "Forget it. He's rolling."

vanderleun said...

Nah, pedantry on this one is your strong suit. Keep pushing all in and wait on the river. It will define you.