Telling them off? I simply want to tell them I believe Whalen deserved to come home too and would have rather seen him let go first since he has been their longer for a crime never committed.
Y'all are pumping up a guy based on his media-given headline moniker to say he's too important when it is the other way around: Whelan is too valuable to give up for him. But they don't value griner. Meanwhile, what good is a merchant of death after 14 years inside to us? He's a fossil and not different from a common criminal. But that there is a nick cage movie based on him and has a spiffy media nickname.
Meanwhile, we are handing him his ass in Ukraine. Putin holds these people in his prisons. We hold some of their guys, too, ones they want. It's a negotiation, unless we can, somehow, drop special forces into deep Russia and do some kind of prison break.
It's pretty decent. The opening credits scene of the life of a bullet is one of my favorite in all of film, though.
No Uni. I'm making fun of all of you. As I said earlier, be thankful that an American came home. How stupid would you have to be to not see this would be the political outcome? The real debate is whether the Biden admin saw it this way and are geniuses for bringing her home right in front of Christmas so it's forgotten in a little over two weeks at the worst or if they were just that blind hog that found the acorn.
The two things that jump out to me about this whole situation: I've heard people mention that she likely didn't even have the hash oil or whatever it was. That "experts" suggest it very likely could have been planted on her, or just not been there in the first place. That her confession to having it was simply her attempt to get a lighter sentence because there was no scenario in which she went to trial and won. I've been of the mindset that, while the sentence seemed way too harsh, if you break laws in other countries, you've gotta be prepared to live with the consequences. Obviously, if she wasn't guilty of committing a crime, then yeah, get her home ASAP, no questions asked. But I just found that odd/hard to believe, as I hadn't really heard any of that until yesterday (admittedly, I haven't paid super close attention to this). I've seen people calling "racist" for anyone whose reaction to this whole thing isn't strictly jubilation. That caught me off guard as well, though I'm not really sure why.
blind hog, in the sense that they don't care about the timing/optics. Can't win on optics anymore, everything is bad optics.
I don't think there's a sexy answer of being geniuses or anything, some kind of wizardry deal making. It was most certainly laborious and a thankless, tedious work for some collection of unknown government officials.
In the sense that they bumbled into the good timing of it blindly. It being good because we will not be talking about this December 27.
It is entirely possible it was planted, but if I were going to plant something I would make it more than residue in a vape cartridge. So I think it is plausible it wasn't. Now, would they have even tested a residue on a regular person? I don't know. It seems to be something to point to her skin color as being an indication/reason that she got the attention and trade. Her celebrity status? Ya, I think that played a big role in the coverage. Her race, orientation, etc? No, I don't think so. That's culture wars cope. The butt-hurt about her getting released caught me off guard. As if anyone knew or cared about Bout 2 weeks ago. However, it was public that the US was angling to get Whelan with her so I do understand the disappointment on that. But not the anger.
Putin needed a win, and the state media there will spin the trade bigger than it really is, no matter how big or small it may be.
I hope we are talking about Whelan being home. Like I said, this may help lubricate further exchange.
"We"?!? We are sending some weapons along with the rest of the World at a cost that is significantly less than if we engaged ourselves. At the same time denying weapons request for more powerful systems because... you know Putin says nukes and Biden cowers.
Right, and it looks like a win to Russians because who values a person of Griner's background over a Russian veteran? Unfortunately, apparently many Americans agree.
Or, Biden escalates and he gets reamed from the right even further (and the hard left, too) as some war monger wasting tax payer money, endangering us for a possible "World War III". Ukraine would have been dead in the water without US help.
Right, there is no reason to operate based on "optics." All decisions must be made absent of "optics" in this environment because anything can and will be spun as negative anyway. So focus on outcomes and risk/reward of outcomes.
I think US strategy failed to anticipate the scale of Iranian help and had they, the type and amount of equipment supplied would have been different.
