By Eve Ottenberg | CounterPunch | July 14, 2023

So how many American soldiers fight in Ukraine? The Biden bunch is careful not to reveal or refer to their presence, mercenary or otherwise, but the question keeps coming to mind. It popped up again June 27, when Russia bombed what the Ukraine press called simply a restaurant in Kramatorsk. However, this supposedly innocuous restaurant was part of a hotel complex that apparently attracted lots of western men of fighting age, specifically American soldiers and others from NATO countries. We know this because eyewitnesses heard them speaking American English and saw their U.S. military tattoos (3^rd Ranger Battalion) and the American flags on their helmets. Also, American mercenaries were reported dead in twitter accounts. We also know that this missile attack killed 50 Ukrainian officers and two generals and at least 20 of the westerners, including Americans, proving yet again that one American soldier in Ukraine is one too many.

The problem is that we dont know how many U.S. soldiers to say nothing of American mercenaries are in Ukraine. The Russian ministry of defense estimates that there have been over 900 American mercenaries in Ukraine. Meanwhile Washington remains mum, closely guarding its knowledge of this secret for the obvious reason that not doing so might provoke an open confrontation with Moscow. And since they dont want a nuclear World War III, the white house and pentagon nurture an intense interest in concealing facts about the U.S. military footprint in Ukraine and their possible encouragement of it. Even if large numbers of American NATO officers were killed there, we, back in the so-called homeland, would doubtless be kept in the dark.

The scraps of news we do get indicate that the fighting goes poorly for U.S. troops. This is my third war Ive fought in, and this is by far the worst one, Troy Offenbecker told the Daily Beast July 1. Youre getting fucking smashed with artillery, tanks. Last week I had a plane drop a bomb next to us, like 300 meters away. Its horrifying shit.

The Daily Beast quotes another U.S. soldier, David Bramlette: The worst day in Afghanistan or Iraq is a great day in Ukraine. Regarding reconnaissance missions, he said, if two of them get injured theres no helicopter coming to get you shit can go south really, really frickin quickly. In other words, this is a different enemy, a very competent one, and U.S. soldiers in Ukraine sub rosa could die in large numbers that people back home never hear about.

Take the case of the March missile attack on Lvov. We have no idea if the rumors swirling around this assault, rumors of hundreds of NATO dead, includin...

House passes US defence spending bill, cuts amendments on reducing military footprint

Rightly, theres been an outpouring of tributes to Daniel Ellsberg following the announcement of his death last Friday, aged 92. His leaking of the Pentagon Papers in 1971 revealed that Washington officials had systematically lied for decades about US military conduct in Vietnam.

The disclosure of 7,000 pages of documents, and subsequent legal battles to stop further publication by the New York Times and Washington Post, helped to bring the war to a close a few years later.

As an adviser to US Secretary of Defence Robert McNamara in the 1960s, Ellsberg had seen first-hand the Pentagons brutal military operations that caused mass civilian casualties. Entire villages had been burned, while captured Vietnamese were tortured or executed. Deceptively, the US referred to these as pacification programmes.

But most of those today loudly hailing Ellsberg as an American hero have been far more reluctant to champion the Ellsberg of our times: WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

For years, Assange has been rotting in a London high-security prison while the Biden administration seeks his extradition on charges that ludicrously equate his publication of the Afghan and Iraq war logs a modern Pentagon Papers with espionage.

Like Ellsberg, Assange exposed the way western states had been systematically lying while they perpetrated war crimes. Like Ellsberg, he was fraudulently labelled a threat to national security and charged with espionage. Like Ellsberg, if found guilty, he faces more than 100 years in jail. Like Ellsberg, Assange has learned that the US Congress is unwilling to exercise its powers to curb governmental abuses.

But unlike Ellsbergs case, the courts have consistently sided with Assanges persecutors, not with him for shining a light on state criminality. And, in a further contrast, the western media have stayed largely silent as the noose has tightened around Assanges neck.

The similarities in Assanges and Ellsbergs deeds and the stark differences in outcomes are hard to ignore. The very journalists and publications now extolling Ellsberg for his historic act of bravery have been enabling, if only through years of muteness, western capitals moves to demonise Assange for his contemporary act of heroism.

Docile lapdogs

The hypocrisy did not go unnoticed by Ellsberg. He was one of the noisiest defenders of Assange. So noisy, in fact, that most media outlets felt obliged in their obituaries to make...