Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 12/30/22 Daniel Davis: A Look at Where Things Stand in Ukraine

Episode Date: January 1, 2023

Scott interviews Daniel Davis about the state of the war in Ukraine. Davis has been watching the war closely and works hard to correct for the biases of both sides. He gives Scott a rundown of where he thinks things stand and what developments are likely in the near future. They also talk about the political situation between Washington and Moscow and highlight some of the flaws at the heart of the establishment narrative of this war.  Discussed on the show: “The Russia-Ukraine War Of 2022: What We Learned — Part I” (19FortyFive) “The War In Ukraine Is A Bloodbath. Could It End In 2023? — Part II” (19FortyFive) “The CIA Is Using A European NATO Ally’s Spy Service To Conduct A Covert Sabotage Campaign Inside Russia Under The Agency’s Direction” (JackMurphy) “How Will the Blob React if Ukraine Faces Defeat?” (Antiwar.com) Daniel Davis did multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan during his time in the army. He is a Senior Fellow at Defense Priorities and is the author of the reports “Dereliction of Duty II: Senior Military Leaders’ Loss of Integrity Wounds Afghan War Effort” and “Go Big or Go Deep: An Analysis of Strategy Options on Afghanistan.” Find him on Twitter @DanielLDavis1. This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott; and Thc Hemp Spot. Get Scott’s interviews before anyone else! Subscribe to the Substack. Shop Libertarian Institute merch or donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal or Bitcoin: 1DZBZNJrxUhQhEzgDh7k8JXHXRjYu5tZiG. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

All right, y'all, welcome to the Scott Horton Show. I'm the director of the Libertarian Institute, editorial director of anti-war.com, author of the book, Fool's Aaron, Time to End the War in Afghanistan, and The Brand New, Enough Already, Time to End the War on Terrorism. And I've recorded more than 5,500 interviews since 2004. almost all on foreign policy and all available for you at scothorton dot for you can sign up the podcast feed there and the full interview archive is also available at youtube.com slash scott horton show aren't you guys on the line i've got daniel l davis he was a lieutenant colonel in the u.s army he was in iraq war one iraq war two and afghanistan where he became the heroic whistleblower of 2012 look into that. If you don't already know about it, he writes regularly for 1945.com. Welcome back to the show. How you doing? I'm doing all right. Scott, thanks for having me back. Very happy to have you here and happy to have a chance to learn from you again. Tell me here,

what's the situation on the ground in Ukraine? The best I can tell from here is, I keep saying this, I don't know any better. Unstoppable Forest versus immovable object. Massive Russian invasion, but against a very well-financed and well-armed defensive force fighting on their home turf. And here we are 10 years in – here we are 10 months into a very short war. Everyone expected when it broke out in February. So I know there's been fighting over this town of Bakhmut. I know that, as we've covered, the Russians gave up or lost, withdrew from northern La Hansk and from Curson and now including Curson City.

But also you've been writing that the Russians are preparing this giant winter invasion. So help us see the battlefield from a birdside point of view here, if you could, Daniel. You bet. Yeah, actually, I'm in the midst of publishing a three-part year-end assessment of where the war has been, where it's at right now, and where it's going on 1945. Part two will be published today in part three. tomorrow for anybody who wants to go check it out. But the bottom line is that we're kind of in a wait and see situation right now or perhaps more accurately. The Russians are in their preparation

phase and it's really uncertain exactly how big of a hammer is going to drop potentially as early as next month probably no later than February. But it's pretty clear that there is a hammer being prepared. And so far, really, I guess in September, when Putin announced that he was mobilizing 300,000, he then gave the order to his troops and to his new commander, Saravikin, General Saravikin, to basically hold the line that they had at the time after they had been, the Russians had been driven out of a good portion of the Kharkiv region, where they surrendered, you know, several hundred thousand, I'm sorry, several thousand square kilometers of terrain that they ostensibly held, though it was never really held in any real matter, to be honest. And after Russia

gave up the city of Kersone, and it's very important to understand because the way it's being characterized primarily in the West is that Ukraine had this massive, successful offensive in the Karki area. And everybody focuses on this thousand square. kilometers that were recovered and that they drove Russia out of Kyrsone like those things were you know big movements of themselves but when you look at it from an unemotional military perspective Russia only had really at most a few thousand uh basically uh national guard troops that were not very well trained holding the entire Kersone area because they didn't expect it to be hit there uh and so when Ukraine

came in with an eight to one military advantage. It was no contest. They just rolled over them until Russia sent reinforcements to stop in the area of the Savodivo Kremlin area, which is basically where the lot has been since October. In the south, while Russia did choose to give up the city of Kirstoan, it was to their military advantage to do so because they withdrew back across the other side of the Danipro River. They blew all the bridges across it. It's a very large river, basically making it impossible for Ukraine to go any further. So basically, the Russians solidified and strengthened their southern front to prevent any more incursions from the Ukraine there. They brought reinforcements in to solidify the northern part in the Kharkiv area now.

And then they have been moving more troops into the Donbos, and they have now gone back on to the offensive for whatever reason. This doesn't get any press in the Western media, but they have for almost a month now returned to this slow methodical movement to the east, to the west, and they've been taken small pieces of territory. They were supposed to just hold the territory, but they've actually been increasing their territorial gain, especially in the Bakhmud area, the Advivka area, and now even in the Svatovoyer, they've been and start to do some small counterattacks in offensive operations in those areas. Ukraine is losing enormous numbers of troops in those areas to try to hold it, especially

Bakhmud, because both sides have placed a tremendous psychological value on that city, even though militarily it's not that important one way or the other, but both sides are saying, no, we cannot lose this. And there's just a terrible human toll being paid on both sides of that line. And it's still uncertain, you know, how that's going to play out in the near term. But behind all of this stuff I've just described, there is a battle force of at least 150,000 Russian troops that have been preparing and training for employment since the call that began in September. And at some point, the likelihood is that Siravican, General Saraviken, is going to employ them in some large-scale offensive somewhere probably, my guess, is that they're going to hit a flank somewhere and try to penetrate in a weak spot of the

Ukraine line, which is about 1,000 kilometers long, I'm sure there's a lot of area where they can't cover, penetrate into the deep and then maybe cut off some of these troops in the Bokhmud area or in the northern part of the Savo devo area so that the Ukraine troops simply can't get reinforced with supplies or personnel or anything else. And that's what we were kind of waiting to see, you know, how big of an offensive to this Russia launch? Is it successful? Is it partially successful? Does Ukraine somehow manage to hold them off? Those things are really impossible to predict right now. But the majority of the evidence suggests to me that Russia is likely to win at least up through the spring. And then, you know, so many things will have to,

we'll have to see how it goes from there. But that's kind of where things are right now. Now, it's reported, generally, that based on, I guess, claims mostly, I think, by the Ukrainian military, or I guess by the American one, that the Russians have lost 100,000 men. But then supposedly General Millie said that the Ukrainians also have lost 100,000 men. But I got to tell you. And I know this is not, you know, Iraq War II, where our guys are patrolling around fighting an insurgency, you know, with, landmines that's a different kind of war than that for sure but still a hundred thousand man that's a lot and it seems like you would have to have had some really major battles where entire divisions are being wiped out at a time and things like that but i don't recall hearing anecdotes

like that seems like yeah you have a lot of one-offs artillery here and and you know tanks killed by drones there if he told me tens of thousands i guess But 100,000 on each side, do you believe that? Does that sound right to you? You know, the reality is that, you know, without any kind of independent assessment, it's impossible to know anything one way or the other. But I'll just tell you that if, you know, looking at the evidence that we do have, it seems very unlikely to me that the Russian side has lost that many and probable that the Ukraine side has lost that many. And here's the reason why it's been very clearly. communicated from the outset and still to this day, that especially in the front lines areas

back in the summer in the Severo Donetsk and the Lisi-Chansk battles and now in the Bokhmut battle, that Russia outguns Ukraine somewhere around 15 to 20,000 artillery shells per day to 6 to 5 on the other side, that Russia has about 200 air sorities per day to 5 to 10. on the Ukraine side. And it just defies math to suggest that the side that has a 10 or 20 to one firepower advantage, it's going to lose either equal or more than the Ukraine side. And of course, the official word out of Kiev is that they've only lost 13,000 men, which just defies any kind of logic because they say that Russia has lost over 100,000

dead, that they've only lost, the Ukraine, they've only lost 13,000, yet at the same time, those same officials tell you how they're outguned 10 or 20 to 1, and that just again, defies simple math. So I don't think that's the case, and especially since September when the Russian media and the Russian war bloggers finally said, enough is enough, and they're sick and tired of all the happy talk out of their official government statements, and they want the truth even if it's ugly, and they've been getting the truth. And there's been some complaints, you know,

and people saying they don't like the way this operation's being led or whatever. And they've got lots of embedded reporters at the front that are not reporting through any official channels, just what they see. And if there was 100,000 deaths, which would mean that there's probably a total of 400,000 total casualties, that's going to be getting more press on the Russian side because, you know, they have lots of people looking at that. And as you just said, I mean, I've not seen anything on that level. They do admit that they have losses.

They do admit that the fighting is tough and that the casualties are, you know, very meaningful. But nothing of that scale. But, again, nobody can say for sure what it is without independent verification. I'm just saying that based on what I do know, that's what I think is going on. Yeah. I mean, I was just watching a documentary about the American War in the Pacific. in World War II, where the Marines are going ashore on these islands inhabited by these Japanese who are fighting to the very last man and this kind of thing. And I guess in the very

worst of those, I'm sure you can correct me if I'm wrong here, but in the very worst of those, they lost like five or ten thousand Marines. That's the bitterest fighting in American history, right? Yeah, right, right. Yeah, I think it got up to 15,000 in some areas. Yeah, that was just enormous. And you're right, that was some of the most bitter fighting with heavy firepower. Now, on the Ukraine side, though, especially in both several Donetsk and now in the Bakhmud, you have a very similar dynamic playing out where because the Ukraine side doesn't want to lose those, they keep throwing just men after men after unit into those, into that cauldron. They're just getting really, I mean, kind of slaughtered with the artillery. And that's, that makes a little more

sense, you know, they don't cover the actual losses, but, you know, you see anecdotal evidence of morg's, you know, saturated with bodies. You know, the hospitals are overflowing that they don't even have room for everybody. You know, those things give evidence that the casualty might be that high. Yeah. All right. So let me ask you about some things that I read. The first one was in the New York Times where they said, boy, the Russians are having so

much trouble, man, and they think they're smart, but they're not. And they keep getting their plans way out ahead of their skis and getting themselves into so much trouble. They thought they're going to march right into Kiev. And then, boy, that was a disaster. That whole thing in the north, that wasn't a faint. That was a failure. And on like that. And then in the economist, they interviewed Zelensky, but they also interviewed the head of the military and the head of the army. And I think it was the head of the army one that I read. Where he's saying, Look, man, we really need a lot more tanks and a lot more guns and all hope ain't lost yet and chin up and gung ho and it's going to be cool. But we really need a lot more weapons and training and everything else from you before the Russian winner offensive comes.

And he sounded pretty worried about that. And I know you must have read those things and have opinions. So I'd like to hear that. Oh, yeah. Yeah. You know, first of all, from the New York Times piece, that was really a really good report. A lot of good information there that really appears accurate. The problem that I have with it, like so many in the West, is that it's incomplete.

It only presents the worst evidence that there is from the Russian perspective to give the impression that things are really bad across the board for Russia and that things, therefore, are going good for Ukraine. The truth is, which I do cover in my three-part series here, that there were absolutely a lot of major mistakes made by the Russian side at this tactical, operational, and strategic levels that has cost them dearly in their fight. But there's also a lot of improvements and positive things that are outcome, none of which are covered by the New York Times. So you don't have a comprehensive view there. And again, everything is pointing to the fact that Russia is preparing what has the possibility to be a very successful winter counteroffensive. And again, we're waiting to see how that happens because

it hasn't happened yet. But because it hasn't happened, people think then, that's all there is that what's happening right now is the end of it. And so Russia is just bad and they're always going to be bad. They can't learn, et cetera, because that's the kind of caricature that we like to draw because we want Russia to be bad. So we want them to lose so that feeds our narrative. On the part with Zilluzni and Zelensky and a couple of others in the series of economists articles, it's funny that you see a lot of characterization in the Western media of that is that oh it's not they're they're just exaggerating because they want to get more stuff but look they don't need to exaggerate you in fact that i think that the opposite is true if you wanted

to get more stuff and give a fake story you would tell people that you're succeeding but we just need these tanks or we're not going to be able to hold it etc but you can't say that they've been talking about all this failure and then suddenly well they don't mean this part and i think that zeluzuneev because he's got a reputation of being a hard-nosed no kidding fighter uh talks about the truth and has been very successful with the limited forces and funds that he's had. And when he says that he needs approximately 1,500 armored vehicles to include tanks, armor personnel carriers, and artillery pieces, and air defense pieces, I think he's absolutely meaning. In fact, I've come to a similar assessment several months ago that that's what Ukraine would need to have a legitimate shot to conduct an offensive operation to drive. Russia out of the places that they're dug into. And without that, Ukraine can continue to impose

a significant cost on Russia. They can slow them down. They can potentially defend a lot of areas well. But until they get that part, you can't really have a legitimate conversation about the possibility of driving Russia out, which, of course, is Zelensky's repeatedly stated objective. The problem is without the means, your strategy can't work if you don't have the ability to make it reality. And right now he doesn't.

And that's another reason why I think that Russia has a pretty good chance of being successful because right now, Ukraine and the supply by the West is pursuing an objective that I don't think can be accomplished. Give me just a minute here. At the Libertarian Institute, we publish

books. Real good one. So far we've got Will Griggs's No Quarter, Sheldon Richmond's coming to Palestine, and what social animals owe to each other, and four of mine, fools Aaron, enough already, the great Ron Paul, and my brand new one, hotter than the sun, time to abolish nuclear weapons. And I'm happy to announce that we've just published our managing editor Keith Knight's first one, The Voluntarius Handbook, an excellent collection of essays by the world's greatest libertarian thinkers and writers. including me. Check them all out at Libertarian Institute.org slash books.

And for a limited time, signed copies of enough already and hotter than the sun are available at Scott Horton.org slash books. Hey guys, I had some wasps in my house. So I shot them to death with my trusty bug assault 3.0 model with the improved salt reservoir and bar safety. I don't have a deal with them, but the show does earn a kickback every time you get a bug assault or anything else you buy from Amazon.com by way of the link in the right-hand margin on the front page at Scott Horton.org. So keep that in mind. And don't worry about the mess.

Your wife will clean it up. What did your ancestors really do all day? Beyond names, what were their lives like? With Ancestry's global historical records, you can discover incredible stories about how your ancestors lived and worked. And for a limited time, you can explore select occupation records for free. Imagine finding your great-grandfather's R-CMP records or discovering your ancestors' name in the UK and Ireland Nursing Register. Don't miss out. Free access ends August 24th. Visit Ancestry.ca for more details. Terms apply. So now, I guess do you think that Putin has taken a huge risk in launching this winter offensive, this coming offensive? Because if he says, well, I'm going to cut off Kiev, from the West or I'm going to sack Odessa from Crimea or I'm going to do this, that,

or the other thing, it better work, right, or else he's going to, you know, he's going to have to call up another 300,000 men or this kind of thing, right? Like, at some point, he is going to have domestic problems here, right? Yeah, yeah. And I think that's why it's very important to pay attention to what Sergei Labrov has said in just the last 72 hours, because he's it feeds into exactly what you're talking about there. Without question, any military operation is a big risk, because even the best laid plans can sometimes go right. You know, the Russians could fail, even though the evidence suggests that they'll succeed,

it's entirely possible that it could fail. So it's a huge risk. But Lavrov has been specifically referring to their near-term objectives, which is the complete liberation of the Donbos, and all for the areas they annexed in September, which means Zapparesia, Kyrsone, Donetsk, and Lujansk. So those four regions right there, and they don't courageously have all those. So that's a fairly limited set. They didn't say anything about Odessa, anything about Kharkiv City.

They just said those, and I think that they have a very legitimate shot at taking those, and possibly they could even go more. So if you set the standard at, say, X, but then you achieve X plus five or something, then you come out looking really good. But if you say, we're going to seek X plus five, but then you only get X, well, then, yeah, then that could potentially be some problems. So I think that Putin is going to set objectives that he feels like with Saravikin now at the helm, that he feels like I can reasonably attain these.

That's what they're going to try to go after. So, you know, it remains to be seen. But, you know, one of the lesser known and risk of considered problems on the Ukraine, side is because they're losing so many men, and they keep, they're on a new mobilization right now. I don't know if you heard some of these things, but some of the, what they call the commissars, the military commissars are going out with subpoenas to the grocery stores and to the food markets where people, where men are coming to get food for their families for the holidays

and they get served with these papers because they don't have enough men. They just have to, you know, get large numbers of additional. and basically they're scraping the bottom of the barrel now and they keep losing the guys that have the most experience and so each time you bring a new wave of mobilization and you're not quite as effective as you were before and you know there's some point to where even if Ukraine gets the number of troops it has it

even if it gets a lot of these tanks and other things that they want it's not completely clear that they'll be able to operate them red just like the Germans did in the Second World War when they mobilized, you know, in the millions toward the end of the war, but they didn't have the same capacity they did in 1940 when they, you know, took France in four weeks, etc. And so that's something we get that Ukraine has to keep an eye on because it's not just numbers, but it's capacity within those troops. And, you know, history says that the capacity goes down as the war goes on and the casualties build. yeah now um what do you make of these strikes inside russia drone attacks three 400 miles across the line and then there's this new report by jack murphy that says that the CIA is running an allied intelligence agency it's kind of playing the overseer role there in i guess implications the polls or somebody um running sabotage missions deep inside russia yeah i think that they're

I think it's very plausible. I certainly don't have any independent knowledge that the CIA and probably other U.S. agencies are definitely helping the Ukraine side. And whether that's the Ukrainian intelligence services that's conducting it or polls, I can't say. I would guess it's not the polls or any NATO countries so that they can avoid the direct potential link. But, you know, those, even in the, some of the European press today, there were reports that the U.S. has been providing a lot of the intelligence support. In fact, I think it was in the Washington Post that said the U.S. has been providing targeting intelligence, not just for the high marks, but for some of these targets inside Russia, which, you know, shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone. But, you know, of course, Ukraine, and I don't know why they waited this long to start doing some of these things, because if Russia has. is attacking all these things throughout their country.

I mean, it makes sense that you would want to try and do the same in return. But the problem is, you know, it's basically pinpricks on the Russian side from what they're receiving because it's like the hit in Ingalls Air Base in Sarato, Russia. That damaged a handful of planes on the first one. The set in the last two, apparently were both shot down and didn't cause any damage. Some of these others are, you know, important stuff like in Belgarod. They're hitting some businesses. They're hitting some fuel depots, et cetera.

That's causing problems. But, you know, in a country of 140 million, the vast as Russia is, it's not anything that's going to cause a problem, especially in comparison to the massive attacks that the Ukrainian infrastructure is being subjected to by Russian fire. So, you know, it's nothing close to being equivalent. But, you know, if I was Ukraine, I'd be doing the same thing. I'd be doing as much as I could. So Ted Carpenter has a piece speculating about what might the Americans do if the Russians really start pulling that far ahead or even win the war or get close to it. Are they going to go ahead and engage? Or they're going to go ahead and give up like Afghanistan and say, well, come on.

We're not going to get everybody killed. Oh, I wanted to point this out to you from. from Biden's press conference with Zelensky. And he says, geez, why not just give them everything that they want and all of this? He says, I've spent several hundred hours, which couldn't possibly be right. But anyway, I've spent several hundred hours

face to face with our European allies and the heads of state of those countries, making the case as to why it was overwhelmingly in their interest, that they continued to support Ukraine. They understand it fully, but they're not looking to go to war with Russia. they're not looking for a third world war so in fact i hate to say this but compared to a lot of the cooks surrounding him biden sounds like one of the less crazy sometimes even though this is all his

fault and he keeps actually giving the orders and doing the things um but he sounds sometimes like the more reasonable one at least he acknowledges that war between the united states and or nato and Russia is an absolutely intolerable scenario that must not take place, even though he's the one driving us this close to the edge there. But it's pretty easy to imagine the hue and cry and uproar in D.C. If the Russians, for example, make major gains in this coming winter offensive, and Zelensky has to high-tail it to Leviv or to Poland or something, it's California. And then what are we going to do?

We're just going to let Hitler retake. you know, or take over Czechoslovakia and Poland and not act like Winston Churchill and stop him and all that, you know, like in the analogy. And it's always World War II in the analogy. So I wonder, you know, if the Russians do as good as you think they might, whether that just means we're going to have a whole other massive round of escalation on the American side. Oh, one more thing I could chime in there was this guy Anders, Aslan, I think it was, if I have his name right, after the errant missile killed two in Poland, the errant Ukrainian missile on the false report

that it was a Russian missile. This is a major, you know, former diplomat think tank guy at the Atlantic Council kind of thing. And he's saying, we absolutely must completely destroy the Russian military in Kaliningrad and in the Black Sea and, you know, with conventional means and in Ukraine as well.

over this one missile. They're just, man, they're, they're so into this narrative of good and evil here and in the right role that they're playing. And after all, I mean, you look at the level of violence that the Russians have brought to this country. You know, if they have this winter offensive that's successful, it's going to be because they brought that much more violence with them. So it's very easy to play. I mean, they are the invaders, the Russians here. So it's pretty easy to play that morality card when that's your role on this stage. And I guess I'm just worried that Ted is right, that the Americans are going to go nuts and they're going to do something really crazy and stupid because it's the only thing they can think

of to do. Well, you know, Scott, I mean, that's a lot to unpack, but let's first run back to the Biden's comments, which are almost contradictory, because on the one hand, he starts all saying it's in everybody's interest in Europe to help Ukraine win this war because it would be bad for them. If it's not, we just don't want to go to World War III. Well, look, if it's in your interest, then why would you say it's not worth going to war against? Because, and it's not, let's be point blank clear on this. It's absolutely not. But then it's also not in your interest to perpetuate this war going on, because as you kind of mentioned earlier, every day that

the war goes on, it gives the possibility for an error and miscalculation, some kind of of mistake that could cause the war to expand. Thus far, we've been lucky, and the couple of missiles that have gone outside of Ukraine have not spawned anything, even though some wanted to, like that curious fellow you just mentioned there about a very strange response that he suggested. But here's the fact, though, that needs to be clarified. Nobody in the West benefits from this war going on. Now, I know that some people say, yeah, but the longer it goes on, the weaker Russia gets, and that's actually in our favor. That's in our benefit. But here's what people need to understand. Number one, that comes at the cost of tremendous amounts of Ukrainian

blood. And to say, we're going to continue this on to just to keep to bleed Russia means you're also going to bleed the thousands of innocent people in Ukraine and pointlessly the troops of Ukraine and Russia together. I mean, if you care about people and not about just nationalities, You don't want the war to go on at all. But because of this 10 months that Russia has suffered, they have lost just catastrophically high amounts of equipment and personnel that will take literally decades at best to recover. So already, look, it's uncertain if even this winter offensive is going to completely recover or capture the Donbos area. Forget about all of Ukraine. and how much less is it even a theoretical possibility that Russia could conventionally attack a single NATO country?

And it's absurd and it's laughable on the face of it. And I would go toe to toe face to face with anyone who suggests that Russia is a conventional threat to do anything to NATO. And that, oh my gosh, if we don't stop them here, they'll keep going through Poland or Czech Republic, et cetera. That's nonsense. That's absolute nonsense. It's not going to happen. They don't have the capacity to do it. And they're not going to for decades to come. So that needs to be said right up front. And once you recognize that combat reality, now than the most appropriate thing to do for our interest is to get this war concluded as fast as possible to stop the dying and to stop the bleeding of our own equipment that we keep given to Ukraine of our own hundreds of billions of dollars that we keep giving. to support the war that's not in our interest got and people need to start paying attention to what the cost is not just what this theoretical benefit is yeah and man i already got to go but one more thing about that is that they expected ukraine to lose and to be backing an insurgency

this whole time that was where they were a year ago right so um it could be that they just say no that's fine if if uh kiev falls or you know even if if they don't even go as far as Kiev, but they just take the whole Donbass, solidify their control over you know, Kursons of Progia and the Donbass Oblast there. And then we just keep fighting against that.

We just keep pouring weapons in, even if in a year from now, they take Kiev and Odessa. We're still just keep pouring weapons in. And training, Mujahideen, I mean, Azov Battalion fighters in Poland, and this kind of thing, you know? Well, I mean, that's what people

are saying. That's for sure. And that's so far, what's been happening, but I'm just telling you that that's not sustainable. I mean, because it's going to come point where people are going to start saying, hey, hang on a minute. You know, the United States has already spent $100 billion in the first year. I mean, does anybody think that's going to stop? Like, there's not going to be commensurate amount required in 2023. And I'm not sure that the American people and certainly not the Republicans in Congress are going to be cool with just hand over fist giving this stuff. And how many more tanks are we going to give or personnel equipment? You know, how many more?

armor personnel carriers are we going to say how many more artillery pieces how many more shells you realize this is weakening our own national defense because it's it's eating into our own stocks right now how far are we going to go with that and at some point people have to say hey hang on a minute this is not going anywhere good for our country and of course i think we're close to being there already but it's not going to go too much further before the start gets pushed back from the u.s and western europe yeah um i'll tell you what I'm sorry, I can't keep going because I got so much more to ask you about, but we're so far over time. I got to run.

But thank you so much for coming back on the show, Daniel. All right. My pleasure, Scott. Thanks. All right, you guys. That is Daniel L. Davis. He's at 1945, and he's just riding up a storm over there. And you guys should be checking out all of his great analysis of this horrible Ukraine war.

The Scott Horton Show, anti-war radio, can be heard on KPFK, 90.7 FM in L.A. APSRadio.com, anti-war.com, Scotthorton.org, and Libertarian Institute.org.