If You're Not Allowed to Say It, It's Propably True

From Hunter's Laptop to Ukraine's warts, speaking the truth is punishable by the slow death of isolation

Prior to Russia’s invasion, Ukraine was consistently ranked one of the most corrupt countries on earth. In 2015, The Guardian ranked Ukraine number one in corruption in all of Europe.

No wonder so many prominent US politicians and their families made millions there. Besides Hunter Biden’s millions funneled to his father to buy influence, Mitt Romney, Nancy Pelosi, Adam Schiff, and Hillary Clinton have profited from Ukrainian corruption.

Those true stories of Ukrainian corruption have been swept down the memory hole. Anyone daring to point out that Ukraine has flaws is subject to internal exile, just like anyone who points out the dangers of mRNA vaccines or who questions the efficacy of masks. Rep. Dan Crenshaw and Senator Mitt Romney have gone so far as to recommend hanging anyone who mentions Ukrainian biolabs. (I’ll be they both have hefty investments in those labs. Just watch.)

Meanwhile, if you want to keep your job, you better be in favor of killing every Russian you meet. Doesn’t matter if they’re fifth-generation American. The New World Order wants every Russian dead. Or, more accurately, it wants every person to wish every Russian dead. Orwell’s 1984 featured a daily “two=minutes hate.” Fox News now features a two-minutes hate every fifteen minutes. Facebook, which supposedly banned hate-speech years ago, now allows hate-speech as long as it promotes the murder of Russians.

I could be sent to internal exile for this post, especially for reporting that Ukraine has outlawed 11 political parties. Like Putin’s Russia, Zelenskyy’s Ukraine has no room for democracy, freedom of speech, or freedom of association. You are either with his party (named after the political party in his TV sitcom) or you die.

I might also be exiled for telling you that the rate of civilian casualties and deaths during a America’s 2003 to 2006 invasion of Iraq was way higher than the rate in Ukraine to this point. The US invasion took 400,000 civilian lives in three years, while the Russian invasion has claimed just under 1,000 in three weeks. At this rate, a three-year war in Ukraine will kill 48,000 civilians, just 12 percent of the US total.

What could really get me in trouble is reminding readers that the US intentionally targeted hospitals in Iraq and Afghanistan, just like Russia—but before Russia. From The Intercept in 2015:

On October 3, a U.S. AC-130 gunship attacked a hospital run by Médecins Sans Frontières in Kunduz, Afghanistan, partially destroying it. Twelve staff members and 10 patients, including three children, were killed, and 37 people were injured. According to MSF, the U.S. had previously been informed of the hospital’s precise location, and the attack continued for 30 minutes after staff members desperately called the U.S. military.

The Pentagon later justified its attack on the hospital. “At least,” you say, “they didn’t deny it.”

Wrong. Check out the very next paragraph:

The U.S. first claimed the hospital had been “collateral damage” in an airstrike aimed at “individuals” elsewhere who were “threatening the force.” Since then, various vague and contradictory explanations have been offered by the U.S. and Afghan governments, both of which promise to investigate the bombing. MSF has called the attack a war crime and demanded an independent investigation by a commission set up under the Geneva Conventions.

“But, Bill,” you say, “that’s just one incident. America would never target civilian facilities in war.”

Apparently, you didn’t read that Intercept story, did you? Here are some lightlights:

• U.S.-led coalition bombed the Infant Formula Production Plant in the Abu Ghraib suburb of Baghdad. Iraq declared that the factory was exactly what its name said, but the administration of President George H.W. Bush claimed it was “a production facility for biological weapons.” [Fact Check: Iraq was telling the truth; Colin Powell was lying.]

• The U.S. purposefully targeted an air raid shelter near the Baghdad airport with two 2,000-pound laser-guided bombs, which punched through 10 feet of concrete and killed at least 408 Iraqi civilians. A BBC journalist reported that “we saw the charred and mutilated remains. … They were piled onto the back of a truck; many were barely recognizable as human.” Meanwhile, Army Lt. Gen. Thomas Kelly of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff said: “We are chagrined if [civilian] people were hurt, but the only information we have about people being hurt is coming out of the controlled press in Baghdad.”

• During the U.S.-led bombing of Serbia during the Kosovo war, an F-15E fighter jet fired two remotely-guided missiles that hit a train crossing a bridge near Grdelica, killing at least 14 civilians. Gen. Wesley Clark, then Supreme Allied Commander Europe, called it “an unfortunate incident we all regret.” While the F-15 crew was able to control the missiles after they were launched, NATO released footage taken from the plane to demonstrate how quickly the train was moving and how little time the jet’s crew had to react. The German newspaper Frankfurter Rundschau later reported that the video had been sped up three times. The paper quoted a U.S. Air Force spokesperson who said this was accidental, and they had not noticed this until months later — by which point “we did not deem it useful to go public with this.”

• Sixteen employees of Serbia’s state broadcasting system were killed during the Kosovo War when NATO intentionally targeted its headquarters in Belgrade. President Clinton gave an underwhelming defense of the bombing: “Our military leaders at NATO believe … that the Serb television is an essential instrument of Mr. Milosevic’s command and control. … It is not, in a conventional sense, therefore, a media outlet. That was a decision they made, and I did not reverse it.”

• At the beginning of the U.S-led invasion of Afghanistan, the U.S. attacked the complex housing the International Committee of the Red Cross in Kabul. In an attempt to prevent such incidents in the future, the U.S. conducted detailed discussions with the Red Cross about the location of all of its installations in the country. Then the U.S. bombed the same complex again. The second attack destroyed warehouses containing tons of food and supplies for refugees.

Oh, and don’t forget that last August, Biden’s Pentagon killed ten innocent, pro-American Afghans to save face after being humiliated by fleeing the country in the dark of night and getting 13 American service members killed on the way out.