By Caitlin Johnstone, Consortium News, 9/13/23

During an appearance on ABC’s This Week with Jonathan Karl, U.S. Secretary of State Tony Blinken explicitly said that the U.S. would not oppose Ukraine using U.S.-supplied longer-range missiles to attack deep inside Russian territory, a move that Moscow has previously called a “red line” which would make the United States a direct party to the conflict.

“We understand that the United States is considering sending those long-range missiles that Ukraine has been asking for for a long time,” Karl said in the interview. “These are long-range missiles, 200 miles in range. Are you okay if those missiles allow Ukraine to attack deep into Russian territory?”

“In terms of their targeting decisions, it’s their decision, not ours,” answered Blinken after some bloviation.

“We’ve seen an increasing number of attacks on Russian territory by Ukrainian drones, some in Moscow, Rostov-on-Don just a couple of days ago. Did you bring that up?” asked Karl.

“No,” said Blinken.

“Are you — are you okay with — I mean, obviously, they’re — it’s their decisions, but is this war now escalating into Russia?” asked Karl.

“Jon, we haven’t encouraged and we haven’t enabled any use of weapons outside of Ukraine’s territory,” Blinken said.

“Having said that, let’s take a step back for a second. Virtually every single day the Russians are attacking indiscriminately throughout the entire country of Ukraine. Just during the 48 hours that I was there going in, more missiles were launched at civilian targets, including in Kyiv while I was there; a horrific attack on a marketplace, people just going to buy food, civilians, had nothing to do with this war — killed 17 people. This is the daily life for Ukrainians. This is what they face every single day. So they have to make the basic decisions about how they’re going to defend their territory and how they’re working to take back what’s been seized from them. Our role, the role of dozens of other countries around the world that are supporting them, is to help them do that. And ultimately, what we all want is an end to this Russian aggression and an end to the aggression that, again, is just and is durable. That’s what Ukrainians want more than anyone else. That’s what we’re working toward.”

The interview then concluded without any further follow-up from Karl. By successfully winding down the clock babbling about what Ukraine has a right to do, Blinken avoided discussing the real issue of what the U.S. itself is doing.

Nobody disputes that Ukraine has a right to attack Russian territory; Russia is attacking Ukrainian territory, so of course Ukraine has a right to retaliate. That is not being seriously debated anywhere. What’s being debated is whether the U.S. should be backing those attacks, because doing so could lead to nuclear war.

A year ago when Ukraine first started urging the United States to send it the Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) — which has nearly four times the range of the HIMARS [high-mobility artillery rocket system] weapons the U.S. has been supplying — Russia’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova immediately responded with a warning that their use on Russian territory would make the U.S. a direct participant in the conflict, and Russia would respond accordingly.

“If Washington decides to supply longer-range missiles to Kyiv, then it will be crossing a red line, and will become a direct party to the conflict,” Zakharova said, adding that Russia “reserves the right to defend its territory.”

As Michael Tracey noted on Twitter, Blinken was saying last year that Ukraine had provided assurances to the U.S. that it would not use the other weapons systems the U.S. has been supplying “against targets on Russian territory.”

Going by Blinken’s current statements and the attacks we’ve been seeing from Ukraine inside the Russian Federation, this agreement appears no longer to be in place. Blinken has already previously voiced support for Ukrainian use of U.S.-supplied weapons in Crimea, and now he’s saying the U.S. is fine with any U.S.-supplied weapons being used on any Russian territory.

Which means there appears to have been yet another massive escalation between nuclear superpowers, which is once again going alarmingly under-reported by the Western press.

In an article published in Antiwar in July, “ATACMS: Be Very Afraid of This Acronym,” West Suburban Peace Coalition President Walt Zlotow wrote that this missile system “has potential to draw the U.S. and NATO into all out war with Russia.” He continued:

“ATACMS are long range U.S. missiles that can strike up to 190 miles. Top U.S. officials, likely including President Biden, are seriously considering giving ATACMS to Ukraine in their battle to take back all Russian gains in Ukraine, including Crimea. They can reach both Crimea and the Russian mainland.

If so used by Ukraine to attack Russia, it may be a missile too far that could ignite Russian tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine. Further escalation into nuclear confrontation between Russia and the U.S./NATO alliance seeking Russia’s defeat becomes more likely.”

The U.S. and its allies keep providing Ukraine with more and more offensive weapons that they had previously refused to supply for fear of getting drawn into the war and provoking a nuclear conflict.

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Last year then Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov correctly predicted that the U.S. would wind up supplying the tanks, F-16s and ATACMS it had previously deemed too escalatory, because that had already been established as the trend from the beginning of the war.

“When I was in D.C. in November, before the invasion, and asked for Stingers, they told me it was impossible,” Reznikov told The New Yorker last year. “Now it’s possible. When I asked for 155-millimetre guns, the answer was no. HIMARS, no. HARM [high-speed anti-radiation missile], no. Now all of that is a yes.” He added, “Therefore, I’m certain that tomorrow there will be tanks and ATACMS and F-16s.”

As Branko Marcetic explained earlier this year in an article for Responsible Statecraft titled “Mission Creep? How the U.S. role in Ukraine has slowly escalated,” this continual pattern of escalation is actually incentivizing Russia to start taking aggressive action against western powers so that its warnings and red lines will cease being ignored.

“By escalating their support for Ukraine’s military, the U.S. and NATO have created an incentive structure for Moscow to take a drastic, aggressive step to show the seriousness of its own red lines,” Marcetic writes. “This would be dangerous at the best of times, but particularly so when Russian officials are making clear they increasingly view the war as one against NATO as a whole, not merely Ukraine, while threatening nuclear response to the alliance’s escalation in weapons deliveries.”

“Moscow keeps saying escalatory arms transfers are unacceptable and could mean wider war; U.S. officials say since Moscow hasn’t acted on those threats, they can freely escalate. Russia is effectively told it has to escalate to show it’s serious about lines,” Marcetic added on Twitter.

And it’s just so strange how this isn’t the main thing everyone talks about all the time. The fact that we are drawing closer and closer to nuclear conflict should dominate headlines every single day, and the subject of how to avoid planetary disaster should be the constant focus of mainstream political discourse. But it isn’t, because that would interfere with the grand chessboard maneuverings of a globe-dominating empire working to secure unipolar planetary domination by undermining disobedient nations like Russia and China.

It’s hard to think about the end of the world. It’s hard to even wrap your mind around it, much less stand staring into the harsh white light of deep contemplation about what it is and what it would mean. A lot of cognitive dissonance and discomfort comes up, and it’s easier to shift one’s attention to something easier to chew on like the presidential race.

But this is something that urgently needs to be looked at. Because the people steering our world today appear to be driving blind.

Caitlin Johnstone’s work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following her on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud, YouTube, or throwing some money into her tip jar on Ko-fi, Patreon or Paypal. If you want to read more you can buy her books. The best way to make sure you see the stuff she publishes is to subscribe to the mailing list at her website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything she publishes.  For more info on who she is, where she stands and what she’s trying to do with her platform, click here. All works are co-authored with her American husband Tim Foley.

By Lt. Col. Daniel Davis, 1945, 9/6/23

Daniel L. Davis is a Senior Fellow for Defense Priorities and a former Lt. Col. in the U.S. Army who deployed into combat zones four times. He is the author of “The Eleventh Hour in 2020 America.” Davis is a 19FortyFive Contributing Editor.

In Washington, Brussels, and Kyiv, a never-ending stream of government officials, military officers, and opinion leaders often and defiantly declare they will support Ukraine in its fight against Russia’s illegal invasion “for as long as it takes.” The war’s objective, according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, is to drive every Russian out of Ukrainian territory. In the face of overwhelming and mounting evidence that there is no viable military path to a Ukrainian victory, such defiance and confidence is more likely to cause harm than to help.

Far from enabling Ukraine to win the war, the most likely outcome of continuing to resolutely fight is to doom Kyiv’s most valuable asset — its people — to ever deeper levels of loss. Providing blanket support to a country so it can continue fighting a war it is very likely to lose is, in my view, immoral.

If we truly care about the people of Ukraine, it is time to chart a new path forward — and before tens or scores of thousands more Ukrainians needlessly pay the ultimate sacrifice in pursuit of a militarily unattainable objective.

Most of my adult life has been spent preparing for war, engaged in high intensity combat, or analyzing ongoing conflicts. During my four combat deployments I was shot at, bombed, or rocketed numerous times. And I have seen, on far too many occasions, the devastation and sorrow — the so-called collateral damage — imposed on the men, women, and children helplessly caught between warring parties. It is an egregious waste of human life.

I will concede up front that while any war is being actively fought, there are no guarantees of any outcome. It is theoretically possible Kyiv could win, Moscow could win, or that the conflict degenerates into a bloody stalemate of indefinite duration. Yet based on my personal experience with both peacetime training and active combat operations, I assess, with a high degree of confidence, that the chances Ukraine will attain Zelensky’s objectives are so remote as to be unrealistic.

At the moment, there is no appetite in either Kyiv or Moscow to even contemplate active negotiations to end the war. Both Zelensky and Russian President Vladimir Putin are hardened into their corners, each apparently believing that with enough time, their side can amass sufficient numbers of trained personnel, armored platforms, air power, and ammunition to prevail on the battlefield. Odds are strong that neither is correct.

Whether Ukraine and Russia come to a settlement now, a year from now, or five years from now, the ultimate outcome will likely be the same: a negotiated end in which neither side gets everything it wants. Every delay in reaching that point condemns untold thousands to unnecessary deaths.

My colleague Rajon Menon, who has made three trips to Ukraine since the war began, has met with civilians, government officials, and combat troops at the frontlines. The citizenry of a nation that has been invaded will endure remarkable lengths to resist, he told me in a recent email, “enduring losses that outsiders may deem irrational.”

Wars only end, he continued, when one side comes to the point where they conclude “it’s better to compromise than to suffer additional losses.

“Not one person, soldier or civilian I’ve ever met on any of my wartime visits to Ukraine,” he somberly observed, “has said that the death and destruction had gotten so bad that it was time for talks and a settlement involving territorial concessions.”

Based on a number of Russian Telegram channels I have read, the opinion of many in Russia would seem to mirror such views. It is virtually certain, therefore, that without something changing the dynamics from the outside, the war will slog on mindlessly for the foreseeable future.

If a rational, unemotional analysis of the balance of power between Russia (with its few supporters) and Ukraine (with the support of 50 nations) suggested a valid path for Ukraine to achieve Zelensky’s objectives via military means, it would be reasonable for the United States to continue supporting the Ukrainian Armed Forces “for as long as it takes.” Not that there would need to be a guarantee of success. Perhaps as little as a 25% chance of success would be enough. Fully committed nations and soldiers have sometimes succeeded against great odds.

But those cases are rare.

The vast majority of major wars have predictably been won by the side that holds the most fundamentals of combat power on its side. In this case, that means Russia.

Cathal J. Nolan, author of the 2017 book The Allure of Battle: A History of How Wars have been Won and Lost, argues that his research of studying wars over many centuries reveals that most major state-on-state conflicts are not decided by which side is in the moral right, which has the highest morale, or even which side employs the best commanders. “Wars are won by grinding, not by genius,” Nolan explained.

“Celebration of genius generals encourages the delusion that modern wars will be short and won quickly,” he explained, “when they are most often long wars of attrition. Most people believe attrition is immoral. Yet it’s how most major wars are won.”

Similarly, a 2015 Naval Postgraduate study analyzed more than 600 battles around the world from the 15th through the 20th centuries. The researchers found that force ratios — the side with more troops and equipment — were one of the biggest factors in determining the winner. The study also found that in the latter centuries, the side with more artillery, and in the 20th century the side with more tanks, tended to win. Russia has more available troops, more tanks, and more artillery than Ukraine can likely ever field (not to mention an enduring advantage in air power and air defense).

Based on historical precedent, then, the longer this war continues, the greater will be the chance that Russia wins. This owes nothing to brilliance or superiority in fighting ability. Rather, the conclusion rests on the banal calculation of the vast superiority of Russia’s natural and human resources over those of Ukraine. Russia has a population that is now five to seven times greater than Ukraine’s (owing to lost territories and to people who have fled Ukraine). Though sanctions have had a limiting effect on Moscow’s ability to produce weapons and ammunition, Russia still has a robust military industrial capacity that is likely to grow over time.

If this war simply grinds into an attrition contest, and if both Zelensky and Putin decide to continue fighting, there is no rational basis to suggest Ukraine can come out on top. Put bluntly, to continue supporting Ukraine in a war of attrition against Russia is likely to condemn tens or even hundreds of thousands of more Ukrainian lives, invite the destruction of yet more Ukrainian cities, and in the ultimate end, yield a military victory to Putin.

If nothing more, the West should be highly motivated to bring this conflict to an end in a negotiated settlement in which Putin will have to settle for less than his maximalist demands. But morally, the West should not continue to press forward in a vain attempt to accomplish the militarily unattainable objective of a Ukraine victory — especially when such support will most likely result only in the pointless loss of Ukrainian lives and territories.

We will either admit the unpalatable realities of how wars are fought and won and seek to engage in a diplomatic effort to gain all we can for Ukraine, or we will ignore the evidence we dislike and blindly press for a victory that will likely never come.

I fear I know what we will choose.

Link here.

By Andrew Napolitano, Antiwar.com, 9/7/23

In a year, if a friend asks you if the CIA is in your underwear, you’d probably not take the question seriously. You’d be wrong. The CIA is spending millions in tax dollars to get into your underwear next year.

Eleven years ago, when this column asked if the CIA was in your kitchen, folks who read only the title of the column mocked it. Yet, then-CIA Director Gen. David Petraeus gave a talk to CIA analysts that he fully expected to be kept secret. In the talk he revealed that CIA vendors had discovered a means to log on to the computer chips in kitchen microwave ovens and dishwashers. From there, they could listen in real time to the conversations in a kitchen if those chatting were nearby the appliances.

Unfortunately for Petraeus, but fortunately for the Constitution, one of his analysts was so critical of the CIA’s disdain for constitutional norms that the analyst recorded a major portion of Petraeus’s talk and leaked it to the media. Is the CIA in your kitchen? Yes, not physically, but virtually.

The CIA, notwithstanding a clause in its charter that prohibits it from engaging in surveillance in the United States or from engaging in any law enforcement activities, has a long history of domestic spying without search warrants.

That last phrase “without search warrants” when used in conjunction with CIA spying is redundant. The CIA does not deal with search warrants. It behaves as if the Fourth Amendment – and the First (protecting the freedom of speech and of the press) and Fifth (protecting life, liberty and property), for that matter – do not exist or somehow do not pertain to its agents.

Not long ago, I was challenged to a public debate at the Conservative Political Action Conference by the general who was then the head of the National Security Agency, the CIA’s domestic surveillance cousin. The topic of the debate was whether domestic warrantless spying is constitutional. I accepted the challenge and aggressively pressed the general on the notorious lack of fidelity that the 17 federal spying agencies have for the Constitution in general, and specifically the Fourth Amendment.

The general gave me two answers, both of which would have flunked a bar examination. First, he argued that the Fourth Amendment only protects against unreasonable surveillance, and his 60,000 domestic spies were behaving reasonably. After the laughter died down, I pointed out that the Supreme Court has held that all searches and seizures – all surveillance – conducted without search warrants are as a matter of law unreasonable, and thus violative of the amendment.

Then he retreated to a post-9/11 argument crafted by the Department of Justice in the George W. Bush administration. That argument offers that the Fourth Amendment only restrains law enforcement; it does not restrain the intelligence community. I pointed out that this view is defied by both language and history.

The plain language of the amendment has no exceptions to it. Rather, it protects “the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects.”

I then reminded him – we were friends, mind you; but I could not let him get away with publicly trashing the document he and I had both sworn to preserve, protect and defend – that the Fourth Amendment was written in the aftermath of British intelligence agents breaking down the doors of colonists’ homes ostensibly looking for compliance with the Stamp Act of 1765 but really looking for subversive materials by folks whom today we call the Founding Fathers.

I present this brief background so as to offer a flavor for the mindset of the feds who spy on us and to address the latest craze among senior level intelligence folks in the Biden administration.

Last week, the Director of National Intelligence – she is the nominal head of all 17 federal surveillance agencies – revealed to Congress that she had spent $22 million in order to develop cotton fibers that she called smart clothing. The fibers will enable the CIA and other federal spies to record audio, video and geolocation data from your shirt, pants, socks and even your underwear. She billed this as the largest single investment ever made to develop Smart ePants.

Smarty pants – how appropriate is that name for federal intrusion? Smarty pants is the jerk who can’t stop talking and won’t change the subject.

The CIA does not directly develop its ability to connect to your kitchen microwave and dishwasher or your socks and underwear. Rather, it hires outside groups to do so. In the case of smarty pants, 28 American tech firms and laboratories have helped to develop this monstrosity. Most are not household names, but some are – like the University of Virginia (which is owned by the state of Virginia), Penn State (which is owned by the state of Pennsylvania) and DuPont (which owns most of the state of Delaware).

You can’t make this stuff up. The federal government’s appetite for surveillance is quite literally insatiable. And its respect for the individual natural right to be left alone is nonexistent. It traffics in evading and avoiding the Constitution, using absurd and puerile arguments that have never been accepted by the courts, even though every single federal employee has sworn an oath of fidelity to the Constitution as it is generally understood and interpreted.

When the DNI told Congress about this – while Congress was on its summer break – not a peep was heard from anyone in Congress or from the sleepy White House for whom the DNI works.

Does the government work for us, or do we work for the government? What employee gets to spy on his bosses by putting trick textiles into the bosses’ underwear and then gets away with it? When will Congress protect our liberties? When will enough of this warrantless spying be enough?

Andrew P. Napolitano, a former judge of the Superior Court of New Jersey, is the senior judicial analyst at Fox News Channel. Judge Napolitano has written seven books on the US Constitution. The most recent is Suicide Pact: The Radical Expansion of Presidential Powers and the Lethal Threat to American Liberty. To learn more about Judge Andrew Napolitano, visit https://JudgeNap.com.

COPYRIGHT 2021 ANDREW P. NAPOLITANO – DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS.COM

By Alexander Rubinstein, The Grayzone, 8/21/23

A PR offensive to inundate the American public with pro-Ukraine war advertisements during the 2024 election is the latest initiative of neocon chickenhawk Bill Kristol. While targeted at GOP voters, the campaign appears to be another Democratic Party front.

Defending Democracy Together, a neoconservative outfit led by career chickenhawk scribe Bill Kristol, has launched a new initiative called “Republicans for Ukraine” to transform the 2024 presidential election into a referendum on US funding for the NATO proxy war. 

Urging Republicans in Congress to support more funding for Ukraine in the upcoming appropriations bill is also a key item on the agenda.

Kristol had defined himself as a leader of the Republican Party’s neoconservative faction, bashing isolationist and antiwar GOP figures on the pages of his now-defunct Weekly Standard magazine while laying the intellectual groundwork for the invasion of Iraq through his Project for a New American Century. 

By fashioning his Defending Democracy Together as a bastion of Never Trumpism, Kristol was able to ingratiate himself with elite Democrats eager for Republican allies in their messianic battle against the Bad Orange Man. His anti-Trump efforts ultimately earned him a cringeworthy MSNBC tribute celebrating the unrepentant neocon as “Woke Bill Kristol.”

Now, as the Ukrainian counteroffensive fails and a majority of Americans declare opposition for the first time to sending more military aid to Ukraine, Kristol is launching a multimillion dollar ad blitz to keep the tanks slogging through the Donbas mud and the dark money flowing into his bank accounts.

“Ukrainian troops fought alongside Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan, and now they are fighting to defend their democracy,” Kristol’s campaign announces on its website. “Most importantly, American military, financial, and humanitarian aid to Ukraine has helped them weaken Russia.”

His initiative has therefore invoked the military debacles that turned the GOP base firmly against neoconservatism and into the arms of Trump, presenting Ukraine’s participation in these forever wars as justification for a new one. 

And as we will see, Kristol’s supposedly Republican operation has been funded by a top Democratic Party donor with close ties to US intelligence.

Pro-war ads for a GOP base turning firmly against NATO’s proxy war

To generate viral content for its $2 million “Republicans for Ukraine” campaign, Defending Democracy Together gathered testimony from 50 GOP voters, drawing from a base of mostly white collar baby boomers alienated by the non-interventionist direction of the party base. 

In each testimonial, the interviewees spouted boilerplate talking points on “defending democracy” and opposing authoritarianism that could have just as easily been produced by senior fellows at any arms industry funded think tank on DC’s K Street. 

One veteran featured in the campaign claims he spent two decades fighting the “Soviet Union’s threat to freedom,” and offers his hope that Republicans for Ukraine “can serve as counterprogramming to conservative radio and TV show hosts who are challenging additional aid to Ukraine.”

Some of the ads display a geopolitical paranoia far beyond the scope of average American voters. Teresa Benson from Minnesota, for example, is worried that “if nobody tries to stop [Putin] in Ukraine, that next he would attack Moldova and any other non-NATO countries in the area.”

The campaign’s advertisements will air “on cable and network TV and digitally on Youtube through the end of the year.” The outfit has even purchased ad space on Fox News during the first Republican primary debate on August 23 being held in Milwaukee.

In addition to the ads, the group has also purchased 10 strategically placed billboards in Milwaukee, urging debate attendees to “support Ukraine” and “Stand up to Putin.” Hints that the operation may expand can be found within a Google Drive folder maintained by the campaign, entitled “Billboards – August 2023.”

One image is labeled “ukraine-times-square-01.”

“Too many of the party’s leaders seem to think there’s no penalty to be paid for standing against Ukrainian democracy and America’s role in supporting the fight for freedom,” said Gunner Ramer, the campaign’s national spokesman. Among Ramer’s first positions out of college was an internship for the longshot pro-war 2016 presidential candidate and former CIA intelligence officer Evan McMullin.

In an interview with the Washington Post, Defending Democracy Together co-founder and former alcohol industry lobbyist Sarah Longwell lamented shifts within the Republican Party base. These included Republicans becoming “more protectionist on trade,” and “more populist.” But nothing causes her more concern than changes in “Republican attitudes around foreign policy.”

“It was alarming in the focus groups to see so many Republican voters talk about Ukraine or [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelensky in disparaging terms,” Longwell told the Washington Post.

The Omidyar connection

If Defending Democracy Together’s short history is any indication, the “Republicans for Ukraine” initiative may actually be powered by money from top supporters of the Democratic Party and the ultimate architect of the Ukraine war: President Joe Biden.

Defending Democracy Together was the top dark money spender in the 2020 election with its front, the Republican Accountability Project (formerly Republican Voters Against Trump) leading the charge. By injecting more than $15 million dollars into the campaign, the outfit more than doubled the spending of the second-highest ranked dark money outfit. Its ads urged Republicans to vote for the Democrat, Joe Biden.

Since the outfit is powered by dark money, it is impossible to know who greases its wheels. However, disclosures by one NGO offer insight into the liberal leanings of its main known backer: tech mogul and US intelligence partner Pierre Omidyar, whose Democracy Fund distributed $4.15 million into Defending Democracy Together and its offshoot, Republicans for the Rule of Law, between 2018 and 2021.

As I reported with Grayzone editor-in-chief Max Blumenthal, Omidyar has leveraged the fortune he amassed as the founder of Ebay to support establishment Democratic candidates while his various foundations act as cutouts for regime change operations waged by US intelligence, including in Ukraine. 

Defending Democracy Together serves as the sponsor for a mind-boggling array of important-sounding initiatives, all supposedly representative of the GOP: Republicans for Voting Rights, the Republican Accountability Project, Republicans for the Rule of Law, the Becoming American Initiative, The Russia Tweets, and now, Republicans for Ukraine.

Its first project, Republicans for the Rule of Law, was introduced in a Washington Post column by Jennifer Rubin, a neoconservative former George W. Bush cheerleader who switched parties during the Trump era. Rubin hailed the Kristol-led campaign for launching an effort to “protect [Robert] Mueller,” the FBI’s special counsel investigator who ultimately failed to turn up evidence of collusion between Trump and Russia. The Republicans for the Rule of Law campaign pushed ads on Fox News and MSNBC touting Mueller’s Republican bonafides over footage of Marines firing off mortars in the jungles of Vietnam.

As calls to impeach President Donald Trump over his threats to withhold military aid to Ukraine reached a fever pitch in 2019, Republicans For The Rule of Law ran a million-dollar campaign to “run television ads on Fox and MSNBC, calling on Republicans to ‘demand the facts’ about Mr. Trump and Ukraine.” 

The name of Republicans For The Rule Of Law was tinged with an irony that is impossible to ignore: When US presidents have lied to the public to justify catastrophic military adventures and the sadistic torture of detainees, its founder demonstrated little interest in the rule of law. And today, the neocon guru may not even be a Republican at all.