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Mocking Merkel
As for Merkel and her peace efforts, Nuland was overheard during a behind-closed-door meeting of U.S. officials at a security conference in Munich last month disparaging the German chancellor's initiative, calling it "Merkel's Moscow thing," according to Bild, a German newspaper, citing unnamed sources.
Another U.S. official went even further, the report said, calling it the Europeans' "Moscow bullshit."
The tough talk behind the soundproof doors at a conference room in the luxurious Bayerischer Hof hotel seemed to get the American officials, both diplomats and members of Congress, worked into a lather, according to the Bild account.
Nuland suggested that Merkel and Hollande cared only about the practical impact of the Ukrainian war on bread-and-butter issues of Europe: "They're afraid of damage to their economy, counter-sanctions from Russia."
Another U.S. politician was heard adding: "It's painful to see that our NATO partners are getting cold feet" -- with particular vitriol directed toward German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen as "defeatist" because she supposedly no longer believed in a Kiev victory.
Sen. McCain talked himself into rage, declaring "History shows us that dictators always take more, whenever you let them. They can't be brought back from their brutal behavior when you fly to Moscow to them, just like someone once flew to this city." Munich, a reference to British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's "appeasement" of Adolf Hitler.
According to the Bild story, Nuland laid out a strategy of countering Merkel's diplomacy by using strident language to frame the Ukraine crisis in a way that stops the Europeans from backing down. "We can fight against the Europeans, we can fight with rhetoric against them," Nuland reportedly said.
NATO Commander Breedlove was quoted as saying the idea of funneling more weapons to the Kiev government was "to raise the battlefield cost for Putin, to slow down the whole problem, so sanctions and other measures can take hold."
Nuland interjected to the U.S. politicians present that "I'd strongly urge you to use the phrase 'defensive systems' that we would deliver to oppose Putin's 'offensive systems.'" But Breedlove left little doubt that these "defensive" weapons would help the Ukrainian government pursue its military objectives by enabling more effective concentration of fire.
"Russian artillery is by far what kills most Ukrainian soldiers, so a system is needed that can localize the source of fire and repress it," Breedlove reportedly said. "I won't talk about any anti-tank rockets, but we are seeing massive supply convoys from Russia into Ukraine. The Ukrainians need the capability to shut off this transport. And then I would add some small tactical drones."
Nuland's Rhetoric
Before the Ukraine coup in February 2014, Nuland was overheard in a phone conversation with U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt discussing who should become the country's new leaders -- "Yats is the guy," she said about Arseniy Yatsenyuk who became the post-coup prime minister -- while also criticizing the less aggressive European approach with the pithy phrase, "f*ck the EU."
Nuland's tough-gal rhetoric continues, including her bellicose testimony before Congress this month, along with the alarmist (and unproven) reports from Gen. Breedlove, who claimed that "well over a thousand combat vehicles, Russian combat forces, some of their most sophisticated air defense, battalions of artillery having been sent to the Donbass" in eastern Ukraine.
The Nuland-Breedlove allies in Kiev are doing their part, too. Ukrainian military spokesman Andriy Lysenko recently claimed that around 50 tanks, 40 missile systems and 40 armored vehicles entered east Ukraine's breakaway Luhansk region from Russia via the Izvaryne border crossing.
This "rhetoric" strategy follows the tried-and-true intelligence gambit known as the Mighty Wurlitzer, in which false and misleading information is blasted out by so many different sources -- like the pipes of an organ -- that the lies become believable just because of their repetition.
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