Five Quick Things: Polish Jets and Lies
Biden has a plan to stop Putin. Russia is causing your pain at the pump. And we have a bridge to sell you.
by Scott McKay
March 10, 2022, 10:43 PM
The latest in our world-famous drive-by punditry series:
1. What on Earth are these clowns doing?
There is this story of the Biden administration’s half-hearted attempt to build a beefed-up Ukrainian air force on the fly amid a war, and it doesn’t generate much confidence.
To say the least.
The facts as we understand them are as follows: on Sunday, Biden’s Secretary of State Antony “Winkin’ ” Blinken went on TV and said Poland had a “green light” to send some not-insignificant number of MiG-29 Fulcrum fighter jets to Ukraine in order that Kyiv might break down Russian control over their airspace. When Blinken said this, it sounded as though it was the Poles’ idea in order to help their neighbors against a common enemy.
By Monday it had circulated that the U.S. and Poland had reached a deal and dozens of MiG-29s were headed across the border into Ukraine. Whether the Ukrainians have enough pilots and ground crews to service all these fighter jets and keep them flying is a question, but in any event this was the story.
But then things seemed to change. Because on Tuesday the Polish foreign ministry said that the Polish government was pleased to deliver all of those MiG-29s to the U.S. air base at Ramstein, Germany, in return for American delivery of used planes of “corresponding operational capabilities.”
That sounded an awful lot like the Poles attempting to trade up from the Fulcrums to used U.S. F-16 fighters, and you certainly can’t blame them for pushing such a deal. After all, arming the Ukrainians with dozens of fighter planes capable of turning the air war into a stalemate, not to mention making fiery wrecks out of Russian heavy machinery on the battlefield, would be a bit of an escalation on the part of a Russian neighbor. There would be risks — of a kinetic nature — involved in such an escalation.
more
https://spectator.org/five-quick-things-polish-jets-and-lies/
