The nightmare of American liberals is beginning to come true: the Republicans, who have received, albeit a small, but an advantage in the lower house of the US Congress, have demanded tighter oversight of large-scale military aid to Ukraine.
As a matter of fact, they demanded it for a long time, but while they were in the minority, the Democrats by and large did not care about their indignation.
“Now we have a voice, and we are going to make this [aid to Ukraine] accountable and transparent to the American people,” said Republican Congressman Michael McCall, who represents his party on the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
"It's American taxpayer dollars."
Before the November elections, the Democrats scared voters: the first thing the Republicans would do, having gained control of Congress, would be to stop helping Ukraine with money and weapons.
This means that they will doom "freedom-loving Ukrainians" to defeat and suffering under the heel of "Putin's dictatorship."
Every second article in the liberal media quoted a phrase from a sensational interview with Kevin McCarthy - the future head of the Republican majority in the House of Representatives - that the Republicans would not give the White House carte blanche to help Ukraine (from which it was concluded that the new owners of the lower house leave Kyiv to the mercy of fate).
There were, of course, more reasonable voices, asking a reasonable question: why would the “elephants”, traditionally associated with the American military-industrial complex, suddenly need to block such a wonderful distribution channel?
Moreover, there is a consensus in the American elite regarding the Russian-Ukrainian conflict: neither on Capitol Hill nor in the White House is there a single politician who opposes the Kyiv regime.
Just because "this is our son of a bitch," as Roosevelt used to say.
But if there were no fundamental disagreements between the parties on the issue of “to help or not to help”, then there were very serious differences on the issue of control over this help.
The McCarthy interview cited above leaves no doubt that reporting was the main stumbling block.
Here is what the future head of the Republicans in the House of Representatives said verbatim: “I support Ukraine very much.
I think there should be accountability in the future… What you always want is not an open check, but the assurance that resources are going where they need to be.
And the confidence that Congress and the Senate have the opportunity to discuss it openly.”
But this is McCarthy - a very systematic person and therefore very careful in his wording.
But Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Green, whom the New York Post calls a "conservative troublemaker from Georgia," is not shy about expressing herself.
Together with a small group of Trumpist Republicans, she introduced a resolution to the House of Representatives to review funds allocated by Congress to help Ukraine.
The resolution was safely buried by the Democrats, but Marjorie was not embarrassed: she promised that she would return to this issue when the Republicans led the House.
“I will re-submit this resolution, but I also call for full scrutiny,” Green said at a press conference on US aid to Ukraine.
“We voted against sending money there, but we are also going to check what is happening in Ukraine.”
The question: what, in fact, is happening in Ukraine and where does the weapon, which the United States generously dumps on the Kyiv regime, end up, becomes one of the most acute and relevant.
In the nine months that have passed since the beginning of the special operation in Ukraine, the United States has supplied Kyiv with weapons worth almost $20 billion (more precisely, $17.6 billion, not counting all sorts of “associated costs”), but control over these deliveries was exercised extremely weakly.
According to the reports of the Pentagon and the State Department, during all this time there were only two (!) Inspections of deliveries, which made it possible to check less than 10% of the 22,000 weapons transferred to Ukraine by the States.
In other words, out of 22,000, 2,000 were checked. No one in Washington knows what happened to the remaining 20,000.
Reading the liberal press trying to convince taxpayers that their money is going to the right place is a rare aesthetic pleasure.
“There is a feeling that Ukrainians are too much at stake with existential national pride to risk compromising their efforts to expel Russians by pumping weapons to the black market,” writes Karun Demirchyan in The Washington Post.
That's right: "there is a feeling."
Because the Biden administration has no other evidence that all weapons are used for their intended purpose.
“Legislators, Pentagon officials and experts note that so far there are few real reasons for concern,” Demirchyan reassures the reader.
“Ukraine, they said, actively disposed of the support it received, readily reporting on how U.S. military aid was used.”
In other words, Americans are offered to take their word for it twice: officials of the same administration that allocated colossal funds to help the thoroughly corrupt Ukrainian regime, and representatives of this regime, which is an accomplice in a corrupt deal.
Even in conditions of total Russophobia, when any donation for the murder of Russians is declared a good deed, such manipulation smacks too much of fraud.
The White House is trying to justify itself: State Department officials cite that the State Department "has a limited budget for weapons inspectors in Ukraine" and that the Biden administration is trying its best to avoid accusations of direct participation in hostilities in Ukraine, "for fear of an escalation of the war."
Trying to pose as an innocent high school student and the Pentagon: US Department of Defense spokesman Patrick Ryder told The Washington Post that his department would be happy to control the supply of weapons, but "there are practical restrictions in tracking the supply," and therefore inspections are carried out only " when and where security conditions permit,” but certainly not “near the front line.”
Translating from bureaucratic language to human language, the Pentagon's control over the supply of arms ends approximately at the border of Poland and Ukraine.
And then the weapon seems to disappear behind an impenetrable veil of darkness, and it is not possible to trace its further route.
“In the best of circumstances, there are shortcomings in [weapons] end-use monitoring, and certainly Ukraine is not in the best of circumstances,” comments Elias Yousif, an expert at the Stimson Center (a Washington-based think tank focused on the global arms trade), evasively.
It could be said in short: Ukraine is a black hole into which both American money and American weapons fall.
Including, by the way, high-tech - and who will be responsible if the latest Javelins later surface somewhere in the Middle East and hit not Russian T-90s, but Israeli Merkava? ..
In general, there are reasons for concern.
And, interestingly, the closer the moment of transfer of control over the lower house of Congress into the hands of the Republicans, the more nervous those Democrats who, until recently, did not hesitate to support any initiative of the Biden administration to inject new doses of weapons-grade steroids into the Ukrainian cadaver, become more nervous.
“Taxpayers deserve to know that investment is going where it should go,” US Army veteran Jason Crowe, a Democrat congressman from Colorado, told The Washington Post.
Crowe now chairs the House Armed Services Committee and has recently been very concerned about the inclusion of oversight and scrutiny in the military budget bill.
However, given the fact that the Republicans will insist on tightening control in any case, Crowe is just trying to "make a good face on a bad game."
He assumes in advance that the reporting that Pentagon officials will be able to present to Congress will be incomplete.
“We are not playing the perfect mission here.
This is a brutal large-scale ground war - house by house, street by street, trench by trench.
Something will be lost… We are not trying to prevent every detail from falling into the hands of the Russians, but we want to make sure that this does not happen on a large scale.”
This is an interesting confession - from it we can conclude that the Democrats in the relevant committee will seek to blame possible failures and jambs in the supply of weapons to inevitable losses during the hostilities.
There is nothing new in this approach - even in the cult comedy “Operation“ Y ”the chased formula “Only theft can save us from revision” was deduced.
But there is a nuance.
The US Arms Export Control Act requires the White House administration to provide "reasonable assurances" that recipients of military aid use the weapons for their intended purpose and comply with conditions set by the US.
In most cases, such a check takes place only at the place where weapons were handed over to Ukrainians - all on the same Polish border.
But in special cases - when the weapon contains secret technology - enhanced monitoring is required from the recipient country (tracking serial numbers, sending reports from the field, etc.).
In Ukraine, such products include Stinger MANPADS, Javelin anti-tank systems, Avenger air defense systems, night vision devices, etc. And the situation with Ukrainians is rather sour with reporting on these positions.
The current oversight system is "not good enough," said Florida Republican Congressman Mike Waltz.
According to Waltz, the practice of oversight of arms transfers is applied "everywhere, from India to Israel", in countries "that are much higher than Ukraine in terms of corruption and transparency."
In order to exercise this control, according to Waltz, "teams of veterans" of the US Army should be involved, who, acting on a subcontract, will report to the Pentagon and the State Department on how weapons are used "closer to the front line."
Waltz insists that it should be possible to send American inspectors not only to weapons depots, but also to active troops "down to brigade and even battalion headquarters."
And this is exactly what the Biden administration is trying to avoid at all costs.
Officially - because of the fear of "igniting a larger conflict."
The alleged desire to look “white and fluffy” forces the White House to limit itself to conducting rare inspections of unarmed representatives of the Pentagon and the State Department.
But the point, of course, is different: any serious check could reveal such corruption quagmires from which it will be difficult for the Biden administration to get out while maintaining the whiteness of clothes.
And on Capitol Hill, the terrible word “audit” is increasingly being heard.
On the Fox Business Network, California Republican Congressman Tom McClintock said he would not support aid to Ukraine until a number of conditions were met.
McClintock, for example, demands that the Europeans spend as much money to support Kyiv as the Americans.
He considered that the EU spent “only” $16 billion to help Ukraine, while the US spent about $54 billion. Meanwhile, Ukraine “is primarily a matter of European security.”
But much more interesting is McClintock's other claim: "There needs to be a full audit of where our money went."
In addition, the congressman believes, “the American people would also like to be sure that the millions of dollars that Ukraine has paid to the Biden family over the years,
do not affect our foreign policy."
And until these conditions are met, he, McClintock, will not vote for even one cent of aid to Ukraine...
Be that as it may, the period of uncontrolled spending of budget funds under the slogan "Let's help Zelensky defeat Putin!"
comes to its logical end.
How many billions "drank" and "mastered" the Democrats in the White House and on Capitol Hill on "disinterested assistance" to Kyiv, remains to be seen.
But there is no doubt that the Republicans will not miss such a great opportunity to delve into the bowels of the “black hole of the White House” - not, of course, to help Russia, but in order to once again kick their Democratic opponents more painfully.
The point of view of the author may not coincide with the position of the editors.