victoria nuland

Cocky-anointed "fact-checkers" in the U.S. corporate press have spent 2 weeks mocking as disinformation and a faux conspiracy theory the claim that Ukraine has biological weapons labs, either lonely or with U.South. back up. They never presented any show for their ruling — how could they possibly know? and how could they prove the negative? — simply nonetheless they invoked their characteristically authoritative, above-it-all tone of self-assurance and self-arrogated right to decree the truth, definitively labelling such claims simulated.

Claims that Ukraine currently maintains dangerous biological weapons labs came from Russia also every bit 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 asserted that "Russia obtained documents proving that Ukrainian biological laboratories located near Russian borders worked on evolution of components of biological weapons." Such assertions deserve the same level of skepticism as U.Due south. denials: namely, none of information technology should be believed to be true or false absent evidence. Nevertheless U.S. fact-checkers dutifully and reflexively sided with the U.Due south. Government to declare such claims "disinformation" and to mock them as QAnon conspiracy theories.

Unfortunately for this propaganda racket masquerading equally neutral and loftier-minded fact-checking, the neocon official long in charge of U.S. policy in Ukraine testified on Monday earlier the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and strongly suggested that such claims are, at to the lowest degree in part, true. Yesterday afternoon, Nether Secretary of State Victoria Nuland appeared earlier 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 take chemical or biological weapons?"

Rubio undoubtedly expected a flat denial past 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.S. strange policy officials: for some reason, she told a version of the truth. Her answer visibly stunned Rubio, who — as soon as he realized the damage she was doing to the U.Due south. messaging campaign past telling the truth — interrupted her and demanded that she instead assert that if a biological attack were to occur, everyone should exist "100% sure" that it was Russia who did information technology. Grateful for the life raft, Nuland told Rubio he was correct.

But Rubio's clean-up human action came also late. 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 normally self manner of speaking in obfuscatory State Department officialese — acknowledged: "uh, Ukraine has, uh, biological research facilities." Whatsoever hope to depict such "facilities" equally benign or bland was immediately destroyed past the warning she quickly added: "we are now in fact quite concerned that Russian troops, Russian forces, may be seeking to, uh, gain control of [those labs], so we are working with the Ukrainiahhhns [sic] on how they can prevent any of those enquiry materials from falling into the hands of Russian forces should they approach" — [interruption by Sen. Rubio]:

Nuland'southward bizarre admission that "Ukraine has biological research facilities" that are unsafe enough to warrant business concern that they could fall into Russian hands ironically constituted more decisive prove of the beingness of such programs in Ukraine than what was offered in 2002 and 2003 to corroborate U.South. allegations nearly Saddam'due south chemical and biological programs in Iraq. An bodily against-interest confession from a top U.S. official under adjuration is conspicuously more significant than Colin Powell'due south holding up some exam tube with an unknown substance inside while he pointed to grainy satellite images that nobody could decipher.

It should get without proverb that the being of a Ukrainian biological "enquiry" plan does not justify an invasion by Russia, allow alone an attack as comprehensive and devastating as the 1 unfolding: no more the existence of a similar biological program under Saddam would take rendered the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq justifiable. But Nuland's confession does shed critical calorie-free on several important problems and raises vital questions that deserve answers.

Any attempt to claim that Ukraine's biological facilities are just benign and standard medical labs is negated by Nuland's explicitly grave concern that "Russian forces may be seeking to gain control of" those facilities and that the U.Southward. Regime therefore is, right this infinitesimal, "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 own advanced medical labs. After all, it was one of the first countries to develop a COVID vaccine, one which Lancet, on February 1, 2021, pronounced was " rubber and effective" (even though U.South. officials pressured multiple countries, including Brazil, non to take any Russian vaccine, while U.S. allies such as Australia refused for a total yr to recognize the Russian COVID vaccine for purposes of its vaccine mandate). The only reason to exist "quite concerned" about these "biological research facilities" falling into Russian hands is if they contain sophisticated materials that Russian scientists have not still developed on their own and which could be used for nefarious purposes — i.e. , either advanced biological weapons or dual-use "research" that has the potential to exist weaponized.

What is in those Ukrainian biological labs that make them so worrisome and dangerous? And has Ukraine, not exactly known for being a swell power with avant-garde biological inquiry, had the aid of any other countries in developing those dangerous substances? Is American aid confined to what Nuland described at the hearing — "working with the Ukrainians on how they tin can foreclose any of those research materials from falling into the hands of Russian forces" — or did the U.S. assistance extend to the construction and development of the "biological inquiry facilities" themselves?

politifact ukraine biological weapons

For all the dismissive language used over the concluding two weeks past self-described "fact-checkers," information technology is confirmed that the U.South. has worked with Ukraine, every bit recently as terminal yr, in the "evolution of a bio-run a risk management culture; international inquiry partnerships; and partner capacity for enhanced bio-security, bio-safety, and bio-surveillance measures." The U.S. Embassy in Ukraine publicly boasted of its collaborative work with Ukraine "to consolidate and secure pathogens and toxins of security concern and to go on to ensure Ukraine can discover and report outbreaks caused past dangerous pathogens before they pose security or stability threats."

This joint United states of america/Ukraine biological research is, of class, described past the Country Department in the most unthreatening way possible. But that over again prompts the question of why the U.Due south. would exist so gravely concerned about benign and mutual enquiry 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, unproblematic question from Sen. Rubio most whether Ukraine possesses chemical and biological weapons. If these labs are merely designed to discover a cure for cancer or create safety measures against pathogens, why, in Nuland's heed, would it take anything to do with a biological and chemical weapons program in Ukraine?

embassy ukraine WMDs

© US Govt

The indisputable reality is that — despite long-standing international conventions banning evolution of biological weapons — all large, powerful countries conduct research that, at the very least, has the chapters to be converted into biological weapons. The work conducted nether the guise of "defensive inquiry" can, and sometimes is, hands converted into the banned weapons themselves. Recall that, according to the FBI, the 2001 anthrax attacks that terrorized the nation came from a U.S. Regular army Research scientist, Dr. Bruce Ivins, working at the U.S. Army'southward communicable diseases research lab in Fort Detrick, Maryland. The claim was that the Ground forces was "merely" conducting defensive inquiry to detect vaccines and other protections against weaponized anthrax, simply to practise so, the 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 development he described every bit 'spooky' because that particular strain was developed in U.Southward. government laboratories." Speaking to Frontline in 2011, Dr. Keim explained why it was so alarming to notice that the U.S. Army had been cultivating such highly lethal and unsafe strains in its lab, on U.S. soil:

Nosotros were surprised it was the Ames strain. And it was chilling at the aforementioned time, because the Ames strain is a laboratory strain that had been developed by the U.S. Army as a vaccine-challenge strain. We knew that it was highly virulent. In fact, that's why the Army used it, because it represented a more than potent claiming to vaccines that were being developed by the U.South. Ground forces. It wasn't just some random type of anthrax that yous find in nature; it was a laboratory strain, and that was very significant to u.s., because that was the first hint that this might actually be a bioterrorism event.

This lesson virtually the astringent dangers of and then-chosen dual-utilise enquiry into biological weapons was re-learned over the last ii years equally a result of the COVID pandemic. While the origins of that virus have not even so been proven with dispositive evidence (though remember, fact-checkers declared early on on that it was definitively established that information technology came from species-jumping and that any proffer of a lab leak was a "conspiracy theory," only for the Biden White Business firm in mid-2021 to acknowledge they did non know the origins and ordered an investigation to determine whether it came from a lab leak), what is certain is that the Wuhan Plant of Virology was manipulating various coronavirus strains to make them more contagious and lethal. The justification was that doing so is necessary to report how vaccines could be developed, but regardless of intent, cultivating unsafe biological strains has the capacity to kill huge numbers of people. All of this illustrates that research that is classified equally "defensive" tin can easily be converted, deliberately or otherwise, into extremely subversive biological weapons.

WMDs Ukraine bioweapons

At the very least, Nuland'due south surprising revelation reveals, all the same again, just how heavily involved the U.South. Government is and for years has been in Ukraine, on the part of Russia'due south edge which U.S. officials and scholars from across the spectrum have spent decades alert is the near sensitive and vulnerable for Moscow. It was Nuland herself, while working for Hillary Clinton and John Kerry's Country Section nether President Obama, who was heavily involved in what some call the 2014 revolution and others call the "coup" that resulted in a change of government in Ukraine from a Moscow-friendly government to one far more than 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 merely to Joe Biden's son, Hunter: a reflection of who wielded real power inside Ukraine.

Nuland not only worked for both the Obama and Biden Land Departments to run Ukraine policy (and, in many means, Ukraine itself), but she as well was Vice President Dick Cheney's deputy national security adviser and so President Bush's Ambassador to NATO. She comes from one of America'south most prestigious neocon imperial families; her husband, Robert Kagan, was a co-founder of the notorious neocon war-mongering grouping Project for the New American Century, which advocated government alter in Republic of iraq long earlier 9/11. It was Kagan, along with liberal icon Neb Kristol, who (adjacent to current editor-in-chief of The Atlantic Jeffrey Goldberg), was about responsible for the lie that Saddam was working hand-in-mitt with Al Qaeda, a lie that played a key role in convincing Americans to believe that Saddam was personally involved in the planning of ix/11.

That a neocon like Nuland is admired and empowered regardless of the event 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's hubby, Robert Kagan, was signaling that neocons would likely support Hillary Clinton for president — doing so in 2014, long before anyone imagined Trump as her opponent — based on the recognition that the Democratic Political party was at present more hospitable to neocon ideology than the GOP, where Ron Paul and then Trump'south neo-isolationism was growing.

You can vote against neocons all yous want, but they never go away. The fact that a fellow member of 1 of the most powerful neocon families in the U.S. has been running Ukraine policy for the U.S. for years — having gone from Dick Cheney to Hillary Clinton and Obama and now to Biden — underscores how niggling dissent there is in Washington on such questions. Information technology is Nuland'due south extensive experience in wielding power in Washington that makes her confession yesterday and so startling: it is the sort of thing people like her lie about and muffle, non admit. Merely now that she did admit it, it is crucial that this revelation not be buried and forgotten.

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