[leothecool]

> GOP's stated preferences for defunding Ukraine's defense

The voting record shows their preference is to continue funding it. I don't know why your information sources are saying the opposite. Maybe they do it to polarize us.

[pessimizer]

Both the Republicans and the Democrats paint each other as insufficiently committed to attacking Russia and China. It's because they both, wisely, don't respect the intelligence of the people who vote for them.

edit: not that both don't have a huge base that is against WWIII, but with the Republicans, having a far more democratic internal process that was a concession to Tea Party activists, some of that base actually gets to have a say in Congress. The Congressional Democratic Party is completely impenetrable to anyone in their base who isn't an extreme nationalist hawk, whereas Republicans can't realistically exclude isolationists/paleocons.

[bjhartin]

Maybe because they have multiple party members who have said so.

Yes, it's a minority. However, in that minority are people who spout Kremlin talking points.

[ethanbond]

There you go, I've removed it, despite Kevin McCarthy, Matt Gaetz, and Marjorie Taylor Greene all expressing in the last few months that if the GOP were to win the House, that funding would either slow or be halted completely.

The point remains that indeed Putin did prefer a Trump victory, as he himself publicly stated [0], which of course is 50% bullshit propaganda itself. However this was also confirmed by the US's Intelligence Community in 2017 [1].

---

[0]: https://www.politico.com/story/2018/07/16/putin-trump-win-el...

[1]: https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/ICA_2017_01.pdf

> We assess Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election. Russia’s goals were to undermine public faith in the US democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency. *We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump.*

[AzzieElbab]

some GOPs do not support funding Ukraine, most do. Also, most want accountability and audit

[bjhartin]

I think given the gravity of the atrocities being committed, and the imminent threat to democracy, things like audits should be a distant secondary concern.

I'm certainly not concerned about the dollars being used to fight Putin because I think the costs of not doing otherwise would far outweigh them.

[AzzieElbab]

What if the prices are inflated and we are not sending as much as we could?

[ethanbond]

When we see any indication whatsoever of abuse/lost weapons/etc, then we can discuss audits. So far there has been not one single photo anywhere of any US-provided weapons leaking from Ukraine.

[AzzieElbab]

That is not entirely true. According to Ukrainian sources (Kiev Independent) there were at least 2 high profile incidents. 1 - US supplied weapons popping up in Finland, 2 - someone tried to ship a helicopter out of Odesa. But this is not what I am saying at all. How would you even know how funds are being used? A manufacturer can hike prices of say ammo 10x, and as result Ukraine would get 10x less of it

[ethanbond]

Not sure if you’re shilling on purpose but 1) no, Kiev Independent never reported on foreign supplied guns in Finland, “New Voice of Ukraine” did, using a statement by Finnish FBI (NBI) that was mischaracterized and explicitly corrected by NBI about 7 days ago. They say they are watching closely but have no evidence of what you’re alleging. 2) Couldn’t find anything about the helicopter, link?

You can “just ask questions” like that one about any item in any budget on the planet with the net effect of stalling everything we need to accomplish as a society, so I don’t really give that approach much credence. No reason to suspect a particularly bad or particularly important instance here and it’s especially suspect coming from people who’ve already indicated they don’t support US involvement in such conflicts.