victoria nuland

Self-anointed "fact-checkers" in the U.Due south. corporate press have spent two weeks mocking equally disinformation and a false conspiracy theory the claim that Ukraine has biological weapons labs, either alone or with U.S. back up. They never presented any prove for their ruling — how could they perhaps know? and how could they bear witness the negative? — but withal they invoked their characteristically authoritative, above-it-all tone of self-assurance and self-arrogated right to decree the truth, definitively labelling such claims fake.

Claims that Ukraine currently maintains dangerous biological weapons labs came from Russia equally well as China. The Chinese Foreign Ministry this month claimed: "The US has 336 labs in 30 countries under its control, including 26 in Ukraine alone." The Russian Foreign Ministry building asserted that "Russian federation obtained documents proving that Ukrainian biological laboratories located well-nigh Russian borders worked on development of components of biological weapons." Such assertions deserve the same level of skepticism as U.Due south. denials: namely, none of it should be believed to be true or false absent-minded evidence. Yet U.Southward. fact-checkers dutifully and reflexively sided with the U.South. Government to declare such claims "disinformation" and to mock them as QAnon conspiracy theories.

Unfortunately for this propaganda racket masquerading equally neutral and high-minded fact-checking, the neocon official long in charge of U.South. policy in Ukraine testified on Mon before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and strongly suggested that such claims are, at to the lowest degree in part, truthful. Yesterday afternoon, Under Secretary of Land Victoria Nuland appeared before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), hoping to deflate growing claims that there are chemical weapons labs in Ukraine, smugly asked Nuland: "Does Ukraine have chemic or biological weapons?"

Rubio undoubtedly expected a flat deprival by Nuland, thus providing farther "proof" that such speculation is dastardly Imitation News emanating from the Kremlin, the CCP and QAnon. Instead, Nuland did something completely uncharacteristic for her, for neocons, and for senior U.South. foreign policy officials: for some reason, she told a version of the truth. Her respond visibly stunned Rubio, who — as soon as he realized the damage she was doing to the U.Due south. messaging campaign by telling the truth — interrupted her and demanded that she instead affirm that if a biological assail were to occur, everyone should be "100% sure" that it was Russia who did information technology. Grateful for the life raft, Nuland told Rubio he was correct.

Just Rubio's clean-upwards act came also tardily. 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 ordinarily cocky style of speaking in obfuscatory State Department officialese — best-selling: "uh, Ukraine has, uh, biological research facilities." Any hope to draw such "facilities" equally benign or banal was immediately destroyed past the alert she chop-chop added: "we are now in fact quite concerned that Russian troops, Russian forces, may be seeking to, uh, gain control of [those labs], and then we are working with the Ukrainiahhhns [sic] on how they can prevent any of those inquiry materials from falling into the hands of Russian forces should they approach" — [interruption by Sen. Rubio]:

Nuland's bizarre admission that "Ukraine has biological inquiry facilities" that are dangerous enough to warrant business organisation that they could fall into Russian hands ironically constituted more decisive testify of the beingness of such programs in Ukraine than what was offered in 2002 and 2003 to corroborate U.Due south. allegations most Saddam'due south chemic and biological programs in Iraq. An actual against-interest confession from a elevation U.S. official under oath is clearly more meaning than Colin Powell's property upward some test tube with an unknown substance within while he pointed to grainy satellite images that nobody could decipher.

It should go without saying that the existence of a Ukrainian biological "research" program does not justify an invasion by Russia, permit alone an attack every bit comprehensive and devastating as the one unfolding: no more than the existence of a similar biological program under Saddam would have rendered the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq justifiable. But Nuland's confession does shed critical light on several important issues and raises vital questions that deserve answers.

Any attempt to claim that Ukraine'due south biological facilities are simply benign and standard medical labs is negated by Nuland's explicitly grave concern that "Russian forces may be seeking to gain command of" those facilities and that the U.S. Authorities therefore is, correct this minute, "working with the Ukrainians on how they can prevent any of those research materials from falling into the hands of Russian forces." Russia has its ain advanced medical labs. After all, it was 1 of the start countries to develop a COVID vaccine, one which Lancet, on February 1, 2021, pronounced was " safe and effective" (even though U.Due south. officials pressured multiple countries, including Brazil, not to accept any Russian vaccine, while U.S. allies such as Commonwealth of australia refused for a total year to recognize the Russian COVID vaccine for purposes of its vaccine mandate). The only reason to be "quite concerned" about these "biological research facilities" falling into Russian hands is if they comprise sophisticated materials that Russian scientists have not nonetheless developed on their own and which could be used for nefarious purposes — i.e. , either advanced biological weapons or dual-employ "research" that has the potential to be weaponized.

What is in those Ukrainian biological labs that brand them so worrisome and dangerous? And has Ukraine, not exactly known for being a great ability with advanced biological research, had the assistance of any other countries in developing those unsafe substances? Is American assist bars to what Nuland described at the hearing — "working with the Ukrainians on how they can prevent any of those enquiry materials from falling into the hands of Russian forces" — or did the U.S. aid extend to the structure and evolution of the "biological research facilities" themselves?

politifact ukraine biological weapons

For all the dismissive language used over the last ii weeks by cocky-described "fact-checkers," it is confirmed that the U.South. has worked with Ukraine, as recently as last year, in the "evolution of a bio-run a risk direction culture; international research partnerships; and partner capacity for enhanced bio-security, bio-safety, and bio-surveillance measures." The U.S. Diplomatic mission in Ukraine publicly boasted of its collaborative work with Ukraine "to consolidate and secure pathogens and toxins of security concern and to continue to ensure Ukraine tin observe and report outbreaks acquired by unsafe pathogens before they pose security or stability threats."

This articulation US/Ukraine biological inquiry is, of course, described by the State Department in the nearly unthreatening way possible. But that again prompts the question of why the U.S. would exist and so gravely concerned about benign and common research falling into Russian hands. It also seems very odd, to put it mildly, that Nuland chose to acknowledge and describe the "facilities" in response to a clear, simple question from Sen. Rubio about whether Ukraine possesses chemic and biological weapons. If these labs are merely designed to detect a cure for cancer or create safety measures confronting pathogens, why, in Nuland's heed, would information technology accept anything to practice with a biological and chemic weapons program in Ukraine?

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© U.s.a. Govt

The indisputable reality is that — despite long-standing international conventions banning evolution of biological weapons — all large, powerful countries carry research that, at the very to the lowest degree, has the capacity to be converted into biological weapons. The piece of work conducted nether the guise of "defensive enquiry" can, and sometimes is, easily converted into the banned weapons themselves. Retrieve that, according to the FBI, the 2001 anthrax attacks that terrorized the nation came from a U.S. Army Inquiry scientist, Dr. Bruce Ivins, working at the U.Due south. Army'due south communicable diseases inquiry lab in Fort Detrick, Maryland. The claim was that the Army was "only" conducting defensive enquiry to find vaccines and other protections against 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 program on those anthrax attacks explained: "in October 2001, Northern Arizona University microbiologist Dr. Paul Keim identified that the anthrax used in the attack letters was the Ames strain, a evolution he described as 'chilling' because that particular strain was adult in U.Due south. government laboratories." Speaking to Frontline in 2011, Dr. Keim explained why it was so alarming to discover that the U.S. Ground forces had been cultivating such highly lethal and dangerous strains in its lab, on U.S. soil:

We were surprised it was the Ames strain. And it was chilling at the same time, considering the Ames strain is a laboratory strain that had been developed by the U.Southward. Army as a vaccine-challenge strain. Nosotros knew that information technology was highly virulent. In fact, that's why the Army used it, considering it represented a more potent claiming to vaccines that were beingness developed past the U.South. Army. Information technology wasn't only some random type of anthrax that yous find in nature; it was a laboratory strain, and that was very significant to us, because that was the start hint that this might really be a bioterrorism event.

This lesson well-nigh the astringent dangers of so-chosen dual-use research into biological weapons was re-learned over the last ii years as a result of the COVID pandemic. While the origins of that virus accept non yet been proven with dispositive evidence (though think, fact-checkers declared early that it was definitively established that it came from species-jumping and that any suggestion of a lab leak was a "conspiracy theory," only for the Biden White House in mid-2021 to acknowledge they did not know the origins and ordered an investigation to determine whether it came from a lab leak), what is sure 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, just regardless of intent, cultivating dangerous biological strains has the capacity to kill huge numbers of people. All of this illustrates that enquiry that is classified as "defensive" can hands be converted, deliberately or otherwise, into extremely destructive biological weapons.

WMDs Ukraine bioweapons

At the very least, Nuland's surprising revelation reveals, still once again, simply how heavily involved the U.S. Regime is and for years has been in Ukraine, on the part of Russian federation'due 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'due south Country Department nether President Obama, who was heavily involved in what some phone call the 2022 revolution and others call the "coup" that resulted in a change of government in Ukraine from a Moscow-friendly regime to one far more favorable to the European union and the West. All of this took identify as the Ukrainian energy company Burisma paid $50,000 per month not to the son of a Ukrainian official simply to Joe Biden's son, Hunter: a reflection of who wielded real ability inside Ukraine.

Nuland non only worked for both the Obama and Biden State Departments to run Ukraine policy (and, in many ways, Ukraine itself), but she also was Vice President Dick Cheney's deputy national security adviser and and then President Bush-league'south Administrator to NATO. She comes from i of America'due south about prestigious neocon royal families; her husband, Robert Kagan, was a co-founder of the notorious neocon war-mongering group Project for the New American Century, which advocated regime change in Republic of iraq long earlier 9/11. It was Kagan, along with liberal icon Bill Kristol, who (next to electric current editor-in-primary of The Atlantic Jeffrey Goldberg), was most responsible for the lie that Saddam was working paw-in-hand with Al Qaeda, a lie that played a central part in convincing Americans to believe that Saddam was personally involved in the planning of ix/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 state of war, militarism and foreign policy. Indeed, Nuland'southward husband, Robert Kagan, was signaling that neocons would likely support Hillary Clinton for president — doing and so in 2014, long before anyone imagined Trump as her opponent — based on the recognition that the Democratic Party was now more hospitable to neocon ideology than the GOP, where Ron Paul and and so Trump's neo-isolationism was growing.

You can vote confronting neocons all you want, but they never go away. 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.Southward. for years — having gone from Dick Cheney to Hillary Clinton and Obama and now to Biden — underscores how little dissent there is in Washington on such questions. It is Nuland's all-encompassing experience in wielding power in Washington that makes her confession yesterday and then startling: it is the sort of matter people like her lie about and conceal, not acknowledge. But now that she did admit it, information technology is crucial that this revelation not be cached and forgotten.

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