Aid to the Military Industrial Complex

[billisonboard]

Whoops, i mean to Ukraine.

The largest chunk has gone directly to help Ukraine’s military

The US has actually spent a bit more than $43 billion on security aid for Ukraine since Russia’s invasion in February 2022.

The figure pops up to more than $44 billion during the Biden administration and more than $46 billion since 2014, when Russia first seized portions of Ukraine, according to the State Department.

What does the military funding buy?

A lot of firepower. Start with 300 million rounds of ammunition and millions of artillery rounds.

The Pentagon and State Department have a list of what the billions in US aid have gone to since Biden took office.

It includes 198 Howitzers for those millions of artillery rounds; 31 Abrams tanks; hundreds of Bradley infantry fighting vehicles; hundreds of armored personnel vehicles; anti-tank systems like the Javelin; NASAMS (national advanced surface-to-air missile systems) and HAWK air defense systems; river patrol boats; medical supplies; night vision devices; cold weather gear; and spare parts.

Pretty much everything you could imagine short of F-16 fighter jets, which are to be provided by other countries.

link

Abrams tanks are manufactured in Ohio. The tanks may go to Ukraine but money goes to pay workers in Ohio. Artillery shells are made here.

The headlines say aid to Ukraine but how many of the actual dollars go there? Anyone have any ideas on how this really works?

[ripvanwinkle]

Here we go again. Another proxy war to which I see no end. Just pouring vast billions to a corrupt regime with no accountability. We give Ukraine a no limit American Express card.

And yes I feel bad innocent people are dying in this war. Russia was wrong in invading. Sure toothless NATO is involved but are they really putting in their fair share of money?  What is our economic interest in this war?

[Spellbound454]

Sure toothless NATO is involved but are they really putting in their fair share of money

Ukraine is not in NATO so the the agreement to act has not been triggered.

This is about providing support materials to Ukrainian fighters ....... to defend their own country from Russian expansionism.

Many countries are providing ammunition etc as they see this land grab as illegal and against international protocol.

[Tennesseer]

Sept 24, 2023 0:03:49 GMT -5 ripvanwinkle said:

Here we go again. Another proxy war to which I see no end. Just pouring vast billions to a corrupt regime with no accountability. We give Ukraine a no limit American Express card.

And yes I feel bad innocent people are dying in this war. Russia was wrong in invading. Sure toothless NATO is involved but are they really putting in their fair share of money?  What is our economic interest in this war?

Russia/Soviet Union has always had a hard-on for the Ukraine. Stalin's Holodomor comes to mind.

How Joseph Stalin Starved Millions in the Ukrainian Famine
Cruel efforts under Stalin to impose collectivism and tamp down Ukrainian nationalism left an estimated 3.9 million dead.

At the height of the 1932-33 Ukrainian famine under Joseph Stalin, starving people roamed the countryside, desperate for something, anything to eat. In the village of Stavyshche, a young peasant boy watched as the wanderers dug into empty gardens with their bare hands. Many were so emaciated, he recalled, that their bodies began to swell and stink from the extreme lack of nutrients.

"You could see them walking about, just walking and walking, and one would drop, and then another, and so on it went," he said many years later, in a case history collected in the late 1980s by a Congressional commission. In the cemetery outside the village hospital, overwhelmed doctors carried the bodies on stretchers and tossed them into an enormous pit.

The Holodomor's Death Toll
The Ukrainian famine—known as the Holodomor, a combination of the Ukrainian words for “starvation” and “to inflict death”—by one estimate claimed the lives of 3.9 million people, about 13 percent of the population. And, unlike other famines in history caused by blight or drought, this was caused when a dictator wanted both to replace Ukraine’s small farms with state-run collectives and punish independence-minded Ukrainians who posed a threat to his totalitarian authority.

“The Ukrainian famine was a clear case of a man-made famine,” explains Alex de Waal, executive director of the World Peace Foundation at Tufts University and author of the 2018 book, Mass Starvation: The History and Future of Famine. He describes it as “a hybrid…of a famine caused by calamitous social-economic policies and one aimed at a particular population for repression or punishment.”

How Joseph Stalin Starved Millions in the Ukrainian Famine

[Tennesseer]

Sept 24, 2023 0:03:49 GMT -5 ripvanwinkle said:

Here we go again. Another proxy war to which I see no end. Just pouring vast billions to a corrupt regime with no accountability. We give Ukraine a no limit American Express card.

And yes I feel bad innocent people are dying in this war. Russia was wrong in invading. Sure toothless NATO is involved but are they really putting in their fair share of money?  What is our economic interest in this war?

Please explain in detail how Ukraine's current government is corrupt.

[pulmonarymd]

It's corrupt because trump says so. What makes you think he has an educated opinion on this, as he admits to being "comfortably uninformed". What Trump says is what he believes.

[happyhoix]

Sept 24, 2023 0:03:49 GMT -5 ripvanwinkle said:

Here we go again. Another proxy war to which I see no end. Just pouring vast billions to a corrupt regime with no accountability. We give Ukraine a no limit American Express card.

And yes I feel bad innocent people are dying in this war. Russia was wrong in invading. Sure toothless NATO is involved but are they really putting in their fair share of money?  What is our economic interest in this war?

Everyone is giving money to the Ukraine to fight Russia so that they don’t have to fight Russia.

Putin has always resented that the USSR fell apart. He wants to capture back the parts they lost, and grabbing back part of the Ukraine was not enough.

If you think we should just let Putin have it because who cares what happens to Ukraine look at what happened when Germany took Poland.

[Spellbound454]

Yes indeed. If he gets away with this ........  more Countries will be on the agenda because he thinks they belong to him

Ukraine are having their fight back but they cant sustain it much longer.

Putin has had some embarrassing losses and his invasion is not as easy as he thought it would be.

Could go either way tbh.

[billisonboard]

Sept 24, 2023 11:31:46 GMT -5 happyhoix said:

Sept 24, 2023 0:03:49 GMT -5 ripvanwinkle said:

Here we go again. Another proxy war to which I see no end. Just pouring vast billions to a corrupt regime with no accountability. We give Ukraine a no limit American Express card.

And yes I feel bad innocent people are dying in this war. Russia was wrong in invading. Sure toothless NATO is involved but are they really putting in their fair share of money?  What is our economic interest in this war?

Everyone is giving money to the Ukraine to fight Russia so that they don’t have to fight Russia.

Putin has always resented that the USSR fell apart. He wants to capture back the parts they lost, and grabbing back part of the Ukraine was not enough.

If you think we should just let Putin have it because who cares what happens to Ukraine look at what happened when Germany took Poland.

The bolded brings me back to the issue raised in the OP. How much money are we giving and how much money are we giving to US defense contractors to ship their products to Ukraine? How much money is going to Americans to manufacture and ship products? How much is cycling back to us in tax dollars?

more than $46 billion intended to go through the Department of State and the US Agency for International Development. (From link in op)

How much of this is benefiting US bureaucrats and companies?

It seems that these things are presented in a way that the money is just gone. I don't think it is.

[djAdvocate]

Sept 24, 2023 0:03:49 GMT -5 ripvanwinkle said:

Here we go again. Another proxy war to which I see no end. Just pouring vast billions to a corrupt regime with no accountability. We give Ukraine a no limit American Express card.

And yes I feel bad innocent people are dying in this war. Russia was wrong in invading. Sure toothless NATO is involved but are they really putting in their fair share of money?  What is our economic interest in this war?

that sounds like Trump talk to me.  i don't know that Ukraine is corrupt.  any more than we are.

let me be clear here that i am anti-interventionist.  so i really don't care for us being ANYWHERE in the world that we are not asked to be, and even in some cases, that.

[Spellbound454]

[ripvanwinkle]

I haven't heard if there is anyone overseeing the money. Where it goes? Who gets it? Do we have someone on the ground in Ukraine watching the wallet?  I saw a 60 minutes story we are subsidizing small businesses and police in Ukraine. I want a accounting of the money. No more $30,000 toilet seats or $20,000 on a hammer.

[billisonboard]

Sept 25, 2023 21:31:06 GMT -5 ripvanwinkle said:

I haven't heard if there is anyone overseeing the money. Where it goes? Who gets it? Do we have someone on the ground in Ukraine watching the wallet?  I saw a 60 minutes story we are subsidizing small businesses and police in Ukraine. I want a accounting of the money. No more $30,000 toilet seats or $20,000 on a hammer.

Here is a good place for you to start reading: Ensuring Oversight to U.S. Aid to Ukraine

[djAdvocate]

Sept 25, 2023 21:31:06 GMT -5 ripvanwinkle said:

I haven't heard if there is anyone overseeing the money. Where it goes? Who gets it? Do we have someone on the ground in Ukraine watching the wallet?  I saw a 60 minutes story we are subsidizing small businesses and police in Ukraine. I want a accounting of the money. No more $30,000 toilet seats or $20,000 on a hammer.

fine by me.  but how about this idea:

we cut the military budget 50%, and let them figure out whether they can AFFORD the $30k toilets?

[tbop77]

Sept 25, 2023 21:31:06 GMT -5 ripvanwinkle said:

I haven't heard if there is anyone overseeing the money. Where it goes? Who gets it? Do we have someone on the ground in Ukraine watching the wallet?  I saw a 60 minutes story we are subsidizing small businesses and police in Ukraine. I want a accounting of the money. No more $30,000 toilet seats or $20,000 on a hammer.

Did you demand an accounting when we were spending trillions in the middle East?  Yes, I did say trillions!  

[Tennesseer]

Sept 25, 2023 21:31:06 GMT -5 ripvanwinkle said:

I haven't heard if there is anyone overseeing the money. Where it goes? Who gets it? Do we have someone on the ground in Ukraine watching the wallet?  I saw a 60 minutes story we are subsidizing small businesses and police in Ukraine. I want a accounting of the money. No more $30,000 toilet seats or $20,000 on a hammer.

Your $30,000 toilet seats happened under trump's watch the guy you voted for twice.

And now, under the Presidency of Donald Trump, over 30 years later, the overpriced airborne toilet seat has gained altitude.

Instead of 640 dollars, the new price tag was reported by the Air Force to be 10,000 dollars, and that’s for the lid only.

Grassley: $10,000 Toilet Seat Cover Doesn't Pass The Smell Test, DoD Flushing Taxpayer Dollars Down The Drain

[djAdvocate]

i again assert, if their budget was 50% smaller, they would spend money on unworkable aircraft rather than toilet seats.