Radio War Nerd EP #361 — CIA-NATO Sabotage Ops Inside Russia, with Jack Murphy

Why the hell was Ames even considering the possibility that Russia attacked its own pipeline???! Absolutely moronic

Warren Commission Test Skull

Now it does look like Murphy performed a clumsy limited hangout to try to muddy the waters ahead of Hersh's article. https://open.substack.com/pub/seymourhersh/p/how-america-took-out-the-nord-stream Mark has to eat his hat now. Though professional help for his russophrenia would probably be better in the long term.

Who is the proxy nation? I kept waiting to hear a country named. The story is plausible, but it is a little thin.

David Andrews

Would love to hear an episode about the Falun Gong

Matthew Thrunnowicki

Oh man fun reading how crazy the reaction to this interview has been, I gotta read the comment sections to the Ukraine updates more often I bet they’re even more unhinged Nobody knows what’s really going on, people

Michael Salmon

Guy who has committed dozens of war crimes: “The Soviet system just didn’t work”

RWN's need to widen their sources for this conflict. E.g. https://www.russiamatters.org/analysis/whats-ahead-war-ukraine or https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2023/01/what-if-russia-won-the-ukraine-war-but-the-western-press-didnt-notice.html

Magic Mikey

Many patrons are angry about this episode. Why? This is what I'll try to explore, as succinctly as I can muster, in this post. Before listening to the episode, I read all the comments because I was struck by the unusually negative reaction of so many people. After listening, I understood why (although I don't think, as some do, that this marks a descent into acceptance of Wash's destructive games playing). The ep is a mashup of a few elements which don't quite fit together: 1.) An interview about Jack's article which makes some rather alarming assertions about CIA-sponsored sabatoge activity in Russia 2.) A hang and catch-up for Mark, Jack and John 3.) An opportunity for Jack to reminisce and go on a bit of boastful review of the US's reportedly remarkable capabilities (to do what, again exactly?) relative to Russia - I won't go into the pipeline speculation, which despite all the hedging, was oddly confident. It's this third element which has inspired so much dismay. RWN patrons are interested in impact analysis so, when Jack semi-boasted, eyebrows inevitably arched. One additional aspect which caused some upset was the 'end of history' style assessment of the situation: just as nearly everyone agreed, before invasion, that an invasion was not in the cards, we're all (or at least, our hosts and their guest) now apparently convinced the Russian military is terrible and the story is done. There is a blitheness to it all which doesn't sit well.

Dwayne Monroe

in the run-up to the war the thing I was hearing was "The russians don't want to go to war because all their missiles blow up on the launchers and their infantry won't move forward unless a general tells them to" and that was clearly false, so I guess I'm coming at it from a different angle. Anne Appelbaum was running around begging everyone to launch nuclear attacks because supposedly all their missiles were rusting away in their silos (no idea what her opinion on their mobile launchers were) so I'm sort of allergic to all the "russia's military is crap" arguments because they're so american

Doug Cartel

One version of the early war that I heard was that the forces headed for Kiev were there to inflict maximum pressure on Ukraine at any proposed peace conference, but when BoJo convinced Zelensky to back out of peace talks at the last minute, Russia's initial gambit failed, so they withdrew those forces and redirected them elsewhere. So while the popular version of Feb-April 2022 is that the russians were tripping over themselves like the 3 stooges both going and leaving north Ukraine, the more forgiving narrative is that these guys left because the initial political goal of forcing a surrender failed. Given that the Russians have held onto a 1000km front line with a force that was 4x smaller than the Ukrainian army until the September mobilization, I think people give Russia less credit than they're owed, since most americans think Russia hasn't changed at all since 1991 and is still run by vodka swilling meth heads trying to entertain themselves by holding a blowtorch to their nutsacks, or whatever wacky stories came from Russia to America back during the hell days.

Doug Cartel

personally I think the idea that there could ever be "moderate" rebels is a joke on its face, but idk what counts as "moderate" in Syria anyways.

Doug Cartel

"the only blue check guy to talk about this was the economist defense correspondent and he hasn't tweeted at all since he did that"

Doug Cartel