Dear shadowminister,

I don't trust the media. Maybe we are the good guys, and the other side the bad guys. During the Vietnamese war my cousin was a major in the US air force. His picture of the war was quite different from the picture most of the media were giving us. According to him most Vietnamese were against us. He wanted to resign his commission, but he wasn't allowed to. He continued to fly and engage in raids against North Vietnam. He did have the option of refusing promotion. If an officer continues to refuse promotion eventually he will be discharged. That is how my cousin got out. He had planned a career in the US military, but Vietnam ended that. I later read how the Tonkin Gulf incident which justified US intervention in Vietnam was based on a lie. Apparently what the Russians are doing in Ukraine is horrible. However, unlike Vietnam, I know nobody on either side so I have only the media which I distrust and official figures who I also distrust for information.

Hi David,

You are suggesting an enormous conspiracy of independent sources to falsify the reporting of the war in Ukraine. I think that were your conspiracy theory correct it would be a resounding endorsement of western democracy. To be able to coordinate hundreds of thousands of people suggests incredible organisation. Flattening Mariupol, staging Bucha, bombing theatres, schools, hospitals, markets and train stations. That would require incredible skill to conceal, not to mention hiding all those Nazis, drug addicts and homosexuals. In contrast, Russia seems to fair very poorly with their propaganda, and their war effort seems equally abysmal.

I do note that Russia is not denying targeting critical civilian infrastructure. How is this action justified?

Ultimately I think that the war will need to be ended by force. Toward that end I hope that Ukraine will be supplied with better air defence to better protect civilian infrastructure along with long range munitions to target Russian supply lines.

Dear Fester,

I am not suggesting an enormous conspiracy of independent sources to falsify the reporting of the war in Ukraine. We do not need an enormous conspiracy. All we need are some credible false accounts mixed in with the valid accounts. We now know that the Tonkin Gulf Resolution was based on a false account of an encounter. However, the US participation in the Vietnamese War was based on that one false account.

Dear Fester,

The powers-that-be don't need a vast conspiracy to justify getting involved in a war.The US got involved in the Second Gulf War based on three lies. The three were:

1. Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction
2. He was involved in the destruction of the Twin Towers in Manhattan.
3. He was importing yellow cake for nuclear weapons.

All the above statements proved to be lies. Colin Powell justified the attack on Iraq by citing these lies to the UN. He later apologized stating that he had been misled into believing they were true.

There's a Chinese proverb. Fool me once. Shame on you. Fool me twice. Shame on me.

I no longer believe we tell the truth, and the other guys lie. I believe we should not rush to judgment.

David,

When I see someone saying that they don't trust the media it normally means that they want to ignore any facts that counter their own opinions.

However, there are a few facts that are clear:
1 Russia had no real justification for attacking Ukraine. There was no threat of attack from Nato.
2 Russia has committed 1000s of war crimes and has no problem targeting civilians.
3 Russia is losing the war.

Hi David,

I thought that dubious provocations and terrible outcomes were the norm for warfare, with the conflict in Ukraine being no exception.

US involvement in Vietnam had more to do with a fear of the USSR and communist China funding insurgency and establishing a proxy regime, much like the insurgency and false provocations Russia has been using in Ukraine to justify invasion.

Again, I think the war in Ukraine tragic and horrible, but as a diplomatic solution is as likely as the participants in this discussion agreeing, I see the conflict continuing until the Russian military is depleted or Putin is deposed. With Russia now conducting the war as a terrorist regime, Ukraine's allies will hopefully provide greater assistance to protect civilian infrastructure and defeat the invading army.