Dear mhaze,

As I said a Trump cultist and apologist but also it seems deeply delusional.

No he could not have easily done it as the bill specifically forbid him from doing so.

You claim: “Did he veto it? No. Why not? Because he agreed with it.”

No he did not. He had no choice as it was obvious there were the numbers to overturn any attempt by him at a veto.

To imply that little mhaze sitting at his little keyboard here in Australia knew different to the 98 out of 100 Senators and 419 out of 422 House of Representative members with all their advisers and their deep inside knowledge about Trump and his plans is utterly daft.

Such a decisive bipartisan move to protect this alliance against a sitting president was unheard of in American political history.

Trump was Putin's best asset in this and the destruction of NATO was very much on the agenda from even before the election.

This is the man you have so much time for.

Shame.

You assert “There were no bounties, it was a made up anti-Trump hoax. Why am I not surprised you fell for it.”

So you are claiming that the intelligence briefings referring to the bounties which had come from captured prisoners were an anti-Trump hoax? What idiocy.

“The intelligence in 2019 and 2020 surrounding Russian bounties was derived in part from debriefings of captured Taliban militants. Officials with knowledge of the matter told the AP that Taliban operatives from opposite ends of the country and from separate tribes offered similar accounts.”

“Concerns about Russian bounties flared anew this year after members of the elite Naval Special Warfare Development Group, known to the public as SEAL Team Six, raided a Taliban outpost and recovered roughly $500,000 in U.S. currency. The funds bolstered the suspicions of the American intelligence community that Russians had offered money to Taliban militants and linked associations.”
AP

Nor should we forget Trump's pressure to get Russia admitted back into the G7 from which it had been ousted in 2014, but of course you will.

SR wrote..."He had no choice as it was obvious there were the numbers to overturn any attempt by him at a veto."

So he didn't veto it for reasons you've divined. Or perhaps he didn't veto it because he agreed with it. Any evidence to the contrary? Nup. But who needs evidence when you have multiple unnamed sources, eh?

Re the bounty hoax, you quote old outdated assertions.

"Now, however, the Biden administration says the U.S. intelligence community only ever had “low to moderate” confidence in the bounty allegation, the Daily Beast reports, adding, “Translated from the jargon of spyworld, that means the intelligence agencies have found the story is, at best, unproven – and possibly untrue.”

"I know. I am just as surprised as you are that the same people who alleged, without evidence, that Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh is a serial gang rapist and that Trump “colluded” with the Russians to steal the 2016 election would get a story of this magnitude wrong.

"If you can believe it, this bounty business may have originated with a single detainee who simply told his jailers what he thought they wanted to hear."

But if you rooly rooly want it to be true.....

There is so far no question about who pays to repair all the
damaged buildings. Obviously Putin will refuse to pay, so
perhaps if the UN has the guts to try, place a charge on
Russia moved by the General Assembly.
Alternatively the European countries could make it a condition
of reopenning trade with them and also other countries that a
tariff be placed on all trade with Russia the proceeds be paid
to Ukraine to rebuild their cities.
This way it will not affect the peace negotiations and will
set a principle that attacking residential areas is a crime.
It could be a condition of removing other restrictions.

As far as Ukraine and NATO is concerned agree to that and then
wait a suitable time such as the end of Putin, then join NATO.
Oh dear a solemn oath was made that you would not join NATO.
Well promises made under duress have never been valid !

"If Trump were the Manchurian candidate that people keep wanting to believe that he is, here are some of the things he’d be doing:

Limiting fracking as much as he possibly could
Blocking oil and gas pipelines
Opening negotiations for major nuclear arms reductions
Cutting U.S. military spending
Trying to tamp down tensions with Russia’s ally Iran."

Who did those things? Obama. Who's doing most of them now - the clown in the White House."

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Bazz,

Italy has already said they'd rebuild the theatre in Mariupol bombed by Russia (?). I think we'll see a lot of western money flow into Ukraine once this is over, assuming they retain some level of independence.

Dear mhaze,

So you are contending that Trump fully supported a bill specifically designed to box him in on NATO and to directly curb his powers to act on exiting from it?

What risible nonsense.

As to your unaccredited piece about Trump it was written by Walter Russel Mead in 2017. By 2020 he was saying:

“As a beleaguered Trump administration struggles with an unprecedented surge of domestic challenges, foreign leaders friendly and otherwise are recalibrating their strategies for coping with an unconventional administration embroiled in turbulence. It now looks as if China, Russia and Germany have decided how to handle President Trump through November. Berlin will ignore him; Moscow and Beijing will take advantage of U.S. Distraction.”
…
“For its part, the Chinese leadership seems to believe that it is impossible to conciliate Mr. Trump, but that there is also little to fear from him. An economic crisis worse than 2008, the greatest surge in racial and political dissension since 1968, and a presidential election likely to test America’s strife-filled political climate—no Chinese leader, least of all Xi Jinping, could be expected to ignore opportunities like these.”
…
“The president’s critics will pounce on his inability to coordinate a united allied response to Chinese and Russian provocations as further proof of his inability to achieve constructive results in foreign affairs. They will not be entirely wrong, but this story has more characters than Donald Trump.”
...
“Recent events reinforce a belief in many foreign capitals that U.S. society has entered a period of dysfunctional chaos and that the American political system is no longer capable of providing consistent leadership in international affairs.”
…
“Whatever happens in the election, the U.S. administration next year will face a problem even more daunting than the intellectual challenge of crafting a national strategy for an increasingly dangerous time. It will have to convince the world that this time, America really means what its president says.”
http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-world-waits-out-trump-11591052890

He woke up, why don't you try it?

It follows from this discussion that America is more of a hindrance than support, that they are the weakest link: without their hesitation and silly internal issues, a determined and united Europe would have already struck back and driven Putin out of Ukraine, tail between his legs. Remember that France and the UK have also got nukes!

But the situation here in the pacific is different: we don't have as much conventional power as Europe and as we cannot rely on America, we must assume that they do not exist and we got just ourselves plus Indian nukes to back us... unless we secretly have our own already.

Given that useless America is out of the picture, perhaps rather than waiting for the inevitable terrible war, our best option is a peaceful separation settlement with China, whereby the hostage population of Taiwan, Hong Kong and Tibet is allowed to leave peacefully and be settled in Japan, the Philippines, India and Australia; and the Uyghurs in Turkey.

Absorbing some 35,000,000 refugees between us is still much cheaper than nuclear destruction.