Freedom Fries (The Matrix, Three.)

Two days past eighteen

He was waiting for the bus in his army green
Sat down in a booth in a cafe there
Gave his order to a girl with a bow in her hair
He's a little shy so she give him a smile
So he said would you mind sittin' down for a while
And talking to me, I'm feeling a little low
She said I'm off in an hour and I know where we can go
So they went down and they sat on the pier
He said I bet you got a boyfriend but I don't care
I got no one to send a letter to
Would you mind if I sent one back here to you

I cried
Never gonna hold the hand of another guy
Too young for him they told her
Waitin' for the love of a travelin' soldier
Our love will never end
Waitin' for the soldier to come back again
Never more to be alone when the letter says
A soldier's coming home

~The Chicks, Travelin' Soldier.

I saw this earlier, report from a Ukrainian intelligence officer relayed by one of the reporters that I follow.

Apparently, it's not an understatement to say that Vlad is getting his ass kicked, here. I mean, 30 helicopters lost to fire from Ukrainian Marines? By any measure, that's a bad day. In any NATO/Western armed service, whoever had command responsibility for that level of casualties would be in a world of shit right now. Hell, I don't know how Putin hasn't gone full Stalin on his Army command just to root out the incompetents who made this fucking mess. In the Red Army of old, people got shot for this type of thing.

Again, in any real terms here, the Ukrainians are winning, and the Russians are thus far failing to hold most of the territory they take. 

Remember "Freedom Fries?"

In 2002 during the run-up to the Iraq War, as a result of French opposition to American intentions to invade Iraq, some idiot North Carolina US House Representative had the cafeterias in the Capitol rename "French Fries" as "Freedom Fries" (Apparently following the lead of some restaurant in his district. Never mind that French Fries have nothing to do with France.)

So...what do you call it when some idiot MAGA Republicans (This guy is not the first one to say that type of shit) keep demanding that Ukraine (which, again, is winning the war) surrender to the goddamned Russians? Among other things, in 2014 when Russia attacked Ukraine the first time, Ukraine was then a declared neutral country. That didn't matter to Putin. And this asshole, Joe Kent, says he was a Green Beret.

I wasn't aware that surrendering to Dictators was a thing Special Operations guys would be cool with.

Or at some point, fitness standards were in the toilet. You pick, Joe. Which is it?

'Cause I'm here to tell you, I'm not going to be afraid of any armed forces that would be dumb enough to deploy an armored train in a combat zone. I mean, what is this? 1862? 1942? Hell, speaking as a veteran here I wasn't aware anybody still had that type of shit. This entire concept was proven to be outdated during World War II because a train can only go where the tracks go, and to eliminate it as a threat all you have to do is damage or destroy some of the tracks or disturb the railbed enough that it can't support the weight of the train. 

German Stuka dive-bomber pilots figured out very quickly that they could destroy Polish (and later, French) armored trains simply by bombing the tracks in front of an oncoming train.

In a video of this shit that I saw earlier, this train mounts a dual 23mm antiaircraft gun on one of the cars. Old-school ZSU-23 manned mount (as in aimed and fired by a human crew, not much technology) would be my guess. A Bayraktar TB2 UCAV carrying four UMTAS anti-tank missiles can hit that shit from eight Klicks away and at no risk to its operators who will be further behind the lines yet.

That's how much warfare has evolved since 1945. Think about that for a second.

And Republicans want the Ukrainians...and ultimately us, as well, to surrender to that type of shit?

I mean, seriously in what alternate Matrix world does that make any sense? Is your prejudice really that much more important to you than your freedom?

If so, Russian Quisling, go fuck yourself.

Part Two

Слава Україна!

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