I recall back in the war in Vietnam that Air Force Thunderchiefs 'hammered enemy positions'. So 'enemy positions' means 'enemy soldiers' and might include machine gun nests and artillery or anti-aircraft guns. Someone I know who served in Vietnam was surprised / doesn't believe, how many people were killed in that war, and I was also surprised when I found out. Despite being in living history, the truth has been obscured by using terms that hide the true meaning. 'Destroyed targets' was another way of expressing 'killed soldiers'.
To kick off the war, the US sent 700 million dollars of 'aid' or 'help' to Ukraine in 2021. The explanations here on PF have been that if only the US had sent more 'help' over then Russia would not have dared 'attack'. The 'attack' consisted of moving forces in on the west of Donbass to protect Donetsk in particular from artillery fire coming from the west. And a quick run down toward Kyiv to cause Zelenskyy to panic and withdraw forces from the area west of Donetsk to allow the Russian forces to move in. And that strategy worked. And in Istanbul Russian and Ukrainian diplomats drew up a peace agreement. The propaganda was describing the defense of Donbas as 'aggression'. If that was 'aggression' then what was Kyiv doing firing a few shells a day at Donetsk over the previous 7+ years? Kyiv was firing shells into a city what was at that time still part of Ukraine.
One way to verify or cast doubt on Biden's narrative is to compare it with real life. [President Biden Holds a Press Conference Feb 24th 2022] "Sorry to keep you waiting The Russian military has begun a brutal assault on the people of Ukraine without provocation, without justification, without necessity. ..." The implied message of Biden being late might have been to suggest he was picking up some last minute information about the rapidly unfolding conflict, he appears to be suggesting it was happening at that moment. There's a slight problem, NATO did not find that narrative sufficiently accurate:
There is also a kind of structural propaganda, moving the goal posts, which is an informal logical fallacy. It is a way for turning another's success into failure by redefining the intention. An obvious example is how the war in Ukraine didn't start in it's present phase until just after Feb 19 2022 when the heavy bombardment of Donbass began. The initial goal of Russia was not to allow NATO into Georgia or Ukraine. But it didn't have a pre-emptive element, so Russia would only intervene after NATO had taken the first steps, quite a few as it turned out. And that was the brightest of all red lines the Kremlin was talking about.
It might look like a failure because Russia has continued for two years to only keep the US/NATO-backed Kyiv regime out of half of Eastern Ukraine and out of Crimea. But that minimal requirement has been achieved, for two solid years. Moved Goal Posts A message claims that Putin himself has a personal ambition to conquer all of Europe, because he is the same height as Napoleon. It was actually a different signatory to the Minsk Agreement, Chancellor Angela Merkel who is the same height as Napoleon was. The others, Hollande and Putin are all about an inch and a half taller, 5ft 7in as is also Zelensky; all in the 5ft 7 club. Although a frivolous argument it is widely believed in the US, and goes with the label 'Dwarfistan'. An original document written by the US Ambassador to Moscow shows that he asked around the Kremlin and found everyone was of the same opinion that expanding NATO into Ukraine would be crossing the brightest of all red lines. It isn't a personal ambition.
Fallacy - appeal to popularity It is correctly known as: Argumentum ad populum I've noticed the main stream (govt supplied) news is a veritable jungle of logical fallacies. When a president says: "the whole world is with us" or "the whole world is praying with us" that's the Argumentum ad populum fallacy. It usually means even most of this country doesn't agree with him, but we are wrong because most of the people off in other countries do agree with him, or so he says.
