Uber-hawk Senator Jim Inhofe (R-OK) has long been demanding that the US escalate its conflict with Russia over the ongoing civil war in Ukraine. In fact just this week he introduced legislation to clarify that the president must send lethal military weapons to Kiev.
In his statement introducing the bill, he cited “the undeniable participation and presence of Russian troops fighting in eastern Ukraine” as his justification for demanding US weapons to Ukraine.
Senator Inhofe was absolutely certain of Russian troops fighting in Ukraine. He even had the photos to prove it. A delegation of his allies in the Ukrainian parliament had handed him some photos of endless lines of Russian tanks entering Ukraine. A smoking gun! The Senator promptly handed them to the D.C. Beltway’s neocon mouthpiece, the Washington Free Beacon, which gleefully published this scoop! Finally here was the evidence they had long been searching for!
Except it was all a very sloppily crafted lie. Perhaps the Ukrainian parliamentarians were betting that the US Senator was so hopelessly ignorant of the rest of the world that he would never notice the truth about the smoking gun: the photos were actually taken in 2008 in Georgia, not 2014-2015 in Ukraine. But thankfully the Internet still provides the tools for interested parties to research such claims. Very soon the world knew that the Senator had been taken for a fool.
Maybe Senator Inhofe doesn’t know as much about the situation in Ukraine as he thought. Maybe the Senator is just very gullible, easily taken in by blatant lies from the US-backed regime in Kiev. One wonders what else Kiev is lying about.
Inhofe surely had access to some of the most sensitive US intelligence surveillance photos: he had been ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Presumably any US intelligence community photos would have a more trustworthy provenance than a stack of photos handed him by some Ukrainian parliament members. One can only conclude that these photos were the best evidence he has seen. He ran with them.
The Free Beacon, which is the National Enquirer of neoconservatism, likewise ran to print the smoking gun photos without bothering to check the facts because they suited the publication’s agenda. How many other falsehoods do they carelessly promote because they back up the pro-war and pro-empire views of the neoconservative establishment?
And the real punchline to this sorry tale? When Inhofe found out that he had been taken for a ride by phony photos of Russian troops in Ukraine he didn’t even miss a beat. The fact that his evidence is a lie did not change his assertion! He is a true-believer, unbowed. “This doesn’t change the fact that there is plenty of evidence Russia has made advances into the country…,” he said.
But of course it changes the fact that there is plenty of evidence Russia has made advances into the country, because as he found out for himself, the “evidence” is phony.
Imagine if Inhofe were a prosecutor and the court became aware that the evidence against the accused was completely made up, but he brushed it off stating, “this does not change the fact that there is plenty of evidence that the accused is guilty.” One would hope the jury would have the same reaction: “well actually the fact that the evidence if phony does change a few things.”
The neoconservative warmongers never let facts get in the way of their bloodlust. With US interventionism leaving nothing but charred craters in its wake, Senator Inhofe soldiers on…
