victoria nuland

Self-anointed "fact-checkers" in the U.S. corporate press accept spent two weeks mocking as disinformation and a false conspiracy theory the claim that Ukraine has biological weapons labs, either alone or with U.South. back up. They never presented whatever evidence for their ruling — how could they possibly know? and how could they prove the negative? — but nevertheless they invoked their characteristically authoritative, in a higher place-it-all tone of self-balls and self-arrogated right to decree the truth, definitively labelling such claims false.

Claims that Ukraine currently maintains unsafe biological weapons labs came from Russia every bit well equally Prc. The Chinese Strange Ministry this month claimed: "The US has 336 labs in 30 countries under its command, including 26 in Ukraine lone." The Russian Strange Ministry asserted that "Russia obtained documents proving that Ukrainian biological laboratories located near Russian borders worked on development of components of biological weapons." Such assertions deserve the same level of skepticism every bit U.Southward. denials: namely, none of it should be believed to be true or false absent evidence. All the same U.S. fact-checkers dutifully and reflexively sided with the U.South. Authorities to declare such claims "disinformation" and to mock them as QAnon conspiracy theories.

Unfortunately for this propaganda dissonance masquerading as neutral and high-minded fact-checking, the neocon official long in charge of U.South. policy in Ukraine testified on Monday earlier the Senate Strange Relations Committee and strongly suggested that such claims are, at least in part, true. Yesterday afternoon, Under Secretarial assistant of State Victoria Nuland appeared before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), hoping to debunk growing claims that there are chemical weapons labs in Ukraine, smugly asked Nuland: "Does Ukraine have chemical or biological weapons?"

Rubio undoubtedly expected a flat denial by Nuland, thus providing farther "proof" that such speculation is dastardly Fake News emanating from the Kremlin, the CCP and QAnon. Instead, Nuland did something completely uncharacteristic for her, for neocons, and for senior U.Southward. strange policy officials: for some reason, she told a version of the truth. Her answer visibly stunned Rubio, who — as soon every bit he realized the damage she was doing to the U.S. messaging campaign past telling the truth — interrupted her and demanded that she instead affirm that if a biological set on were to occur, everyone should be "100% sure" that information technology was Russian federation who did information technology. Grateful for the life raft, Nuland told Rubio he was right.

But Rubio'due south clean-up human action came too late. When asked whether Ukraine possesses "chemical or biological weapons," Nuland did not deny this: at all. She instead — with palpable pen-twirling discomfort and in halting speech, a glaring contrast to her normally cocky style of speaking in obfuscatory State Department officialese — acknowledged: "uh, Ukraine has, uh, biological research facilities." Any promise to draw such "facilities" as beneficial or banal was immediately destroyed by the alert she quickly added: "nosotros are now in fact quite concerned that Russian troops, Russian forces, may be seeking to, uh, gain command of [those labs], then we are working with the Ukrainiahhhns [sic] on how they tin can forestall whatever of those research materials from falling into the hands of Russian forces should they approach" — [intermission by Sen. Rubio]:

Nuland's bizarre admission that "Ukraine has biological research facilities" that are unsafe enough to warrant business organisation that they could fall into Russian hands ironically constituted more decisive show of the existence of such programs in Ukraine than what was offered in 2002 and 2003 to corroborate U.S. allegations well-nigh Saddam's chemical and biological programs in Iraq. An actual confronting-interest confession from a top U.Due south. official under oath is clearly more significant than Colin Powell's holding upwardly some exam tube with an unknown substance within while he pointed to grainy satellite images that nobody could decipher.

It should get without saying that the existence of a Ukrainian biological "research" programme does not justify an invasion past Russian federation, let alone an attack as comprehensive and devastating as the i unfolding: no more than the being of a similar biological plan nether Saddam would take rendered the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq justifiable. Just Nuland's confession does shed critical calorie-free on several of import bug and raises vital questions that deserve answers.

Any attempt to claim that Ukraine's biological facilities are just beneficial and standard medical labs is negated by Nuland's explicitly grave concern that "Russian forces may be seeking to proceeds control of" those facilities and that the U.S. Regime therefore is, right this minute, "working with the Ukrainians on how they tin can foreclose any of those research materials from falling into the hands of Russian forces." Russia has its own avant-garde medical labs. Later on all, it was ane of the first countries to develop a COVID vaccine, one which Lancet, on February i, 2021, pronounced was " safe and constructive" (even though U.S. officials pressured multiple countries, including Brazil, not to take any Russian vaccine, while U.S. allies such as Commonwealth of australia refused for a full year to recognize the Russian COVID vaccine for purposes of its vaccine mandate). The only reason to be "quite concerned" virtually these "biological research facilities" falling into Russian easily is if they contain sophisticated materials that Russian scientists have not yet adult on their own and which could be used for nefarious purposes — i.east. , either advanced biological weapons or dual-utilize "research" that has the potential to be weaponized.

What is in those Ukrainian biological labs that make them so worrisome and unsafe? And has Ukraine, not exactly known for being a great power with avant-garde biological research, had the assistance of whatever other countries in developing those unsafe substances? Is American assistance confined to what Nuland described at the hearing — "working with the Ukrainians on how they tin can prevent any of those research materials from falling into the easily of Russian forces" — or did the U.S. help extend to the construction and evolution of the "biological inquiry facilities" themselves?

politifact ukraine biological weapons

For all the dismissive language used over the terminal two weeks by cocky-described "fact-checkers," it is confirmed that the U.S. has worked with Ukraine, every bit recently as last year, in the "development of a bio-risk management culture; international enquiry partnerships; and partner capacity for enhanced bio-security, bio-prophylactic, and bio-surveillance measures." The U.S. Embassy in Ukraine publicly boasted of its collaborative piece of work with Ukraine "to consolidate and secure pathogens and toxins of security business concern and to go on to ensure Ukraine can detect and report outbreaks acquired by dangerous pathogens earlier they pose security or stability threats."

This joint U.s.a./Ukraine biological research is, of course, described by the State Department in the nigh unthreatening way possible. But that again prompts the question of why the U.South. would be and so gravely concerned well-nigh benign and common inquiry falling into Russian easily. It too seems very odd, to put it mildly, that Nuland chose to acknowledge and describe the "facilities" in response to a articulate, unproblematic question from Sen. Rubio about whether Ukraine possesses chemical and biological weapons. If these labs are merely designed to notice a cure for cancer or create safe measures against pathogens, why, in Nuland's mind, would it take annihilation to practice with a biological and chemic weapons plan in Ukraine?

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© U.s. Govt

The indisputable reality is that — despite long-standing international conventions banning development of biological weapons — all big, powerful countries conduct research that, at the very least, has the capacity to exist converted into biological weapons. The work conducted under the guise of "defensive research" tin, and sometimes is, easily converted into the banned weapons themselves. Call back that, co-ordinate to the FBI, the 2001 anthrax attacks that terrorized the nation came from a U.S. Army Research scientist, Dr. Bruce Ivins, working at the U.S. Army'due south infectious disease research lab in Fort Detrick, Maryland. The claim was that the Ground forces was "but" conducting defensive research to find vaccines and other protections confronting weaponized anthrax, but to do so, the Regular army had to create highly weaponized anthrax strains, which Ivins then unleashed as a weapon.

A 2011 PBS Frontline plan on those anthrax attacks explained: "in October 2001, Northern Arizona University microbiologist Dr. Paul Keim identified that the anthrax used in the attack messages was the Ames strain, a development he described equally 'chilling' because that particular strain was developed in U.South. government laboratories." Speaking to Frontline in 2011, Dr. Keim explained why information technology was so alarming to find that the U.Due south. Army had been cultivating such highly lethal and dangerous strains in its lab, on U.Southward. soil:

We were surprised it was the Ames strain. And information technology was chilling at the same fourth dimension, considering the Ames strain is a laboratory strain that had been adult past the U.S. Army as a vaccine-challenge strain. We knew that it was highly virulent. In fact, that'due south why the Army used it, because it represented a more than potent challenge to vaccines that were beingness developed by the U.S. Army. It wasn't just some random blazon of anthrax that yous find in nature; it was a laboratory strain, and that was very significant to us, because that was the first hint that this might really exist a bioterrorism event.

This lesson about the severe dangers of so-called dual-use research into biological weapons was re-learned over the last 2 years equally a result of the COVID pandemic. While the origins of that virus have non however been proven with dispositive evidence (though remember, fact-checkers declared early on that it was definitively established that information technology came from species-jumping and that any proposition of a lab leak was a "conspiracy theory," only for the Biden White Business firm in mid-2021 to admit they did not know the origins and ordered an investigation to decide whether it came from a lab leak), what is certain is that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was manipulating various coronavirus strains to make them more contagious and lethal. The justification was that doing then is necessary to study how vaccines could be developed, merely regardless of intent, cultivating unsafe biological strains has the capacity to kill huge numbers of people. All of this illustrates that research that is classified as "defensive" can easily be converted, deliberately or otherwise, into extremely destructive biological weapons.

WMDs Ukraine bioweapons

At the very least, Nuland'south surprising revelation reveals, all the same over again, just how heavily involved the U.S. Authorities is and for years has been in Ukraine, on the function of Russia'south border which U.S. officials and scholars from across the spectrum have spent decades warning is the most sensitive and vulnerable for Moscow. It was Nuland herself, while working for Hillary Clinton and John Kerry's Land Section under President Obama, who was heavily involved in what some call the 2014 revolution and others call the "insurrection" that resulted in a change of government in Ukraine from a Moscow-friendly government to ane far more favorable to the European union and the West. All of this took place as the Ukrainian energy company Burisma paid $50,000 per month non to the son of a Ukrainian official but to Joe Biden's son, Hunter: a reflection of who wielded real power inside Ukraine.

Nuland not only worked for both the Obama and Biden Country Departments to run Ukraine policy (and, in many ways, Ukraine itself), just she also was Vice President Dick Cheney's deputy national security adviser and so President Bush's Administrator to NATO. She comes from ane of America's most prestigious neocon royal families; her hubby, Robert Kagan, was a co-founder of the notorious neocon war-mongering grouping Projection for the New American Century, which advocated regime change in Iraq long before nine/11. Information technology was Kagan, along with liberal icon Bill Kristol, who (side by side to current editor-in-chief of The Atlantic Jeffrey Goldberg), was most responsible for the lie that Saddam was working hand-in-hand with Al Qaeda, a lie that played a key role in disarming Americans to believe that Saddam was personally involved in the planning of 9/xi.

That a neocon like Nuland is admired and empowered regardless of the outcome of elections illustrates how unified and in lockstep the establishment wings of both parties are when it comes to questions of war, militarism and foreign policy. Indeed, Nuland's husband, Robert Kagan, was signaling that neocons would likely support Hillary Clinton for president — doing so in 2014, long earlier anyone imagined Trump as her opponent — based on the recognition that the Democratic Political party was at present more hospitable to neocon ideology than the GOP, where Ron Paul and then Trump's neo-isolationism was growing.

You lot can vote against neocons all you desire, but they never go abroad. The fact that a member of one of the most powerful neocon families in the U.S. has been running Ukraine policy for the U.S. for years — having gone from Dick Cheney to Hillary Clinton and Obama and now to Biden — underscores how petty dissent there is in Washington on such questions. It is Nuland's extensive experience in wielding ability in Washington that makes her confession yesterday and so startling: it is the sort of thing people like her lie about and conceal, not admit. Just now that she did admit it, it is crucial that this revelation not be buried and forgotten.

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