25 organizations urge Senate to reject Biden pick.
By S.T. Patrick
Twenty-five organizations have signed a letter asking the Senate to reject President Joe Biden’s nominee for undersecretary of state for political affairs, Victoria Nuland.
Nuland was the former foreign policy advisor to Vice President Dick Cheney, a former ambassador to NATO under President George W. Bush, and the former director for Soviet Union affairs under President Bill Clinton. While serving Bush and Cheney, Nuland enthusiastically supported the troop surge of 200 in Iraq and Afghanistan, a decision that critics contend was largely based upon a report written by the American Enterprise Institute’s Fred Kagan, Nuland’s brother-in-law.
Nuland’s husband is Robert Kagan, a co-founder of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) which was infamous for the “Rebuilding America’s Defenses” document that determined that only a “new Pearl Harbor” would speed up the revolutionary change necessary within the global order. The phrase later inspired the title of one of Dr. David Ray Griffin’s works critical of the official 9/11 narrative.
Most of the 25 organizations urging the U.S. Senate to reject Nuland’s appointment are peace organizations. Examples include the Center for Encounter and Active Non-Violence, “Knowdrones. com,” the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, the Resistance Center for Peace and Justice, five local chapters of Veterans for Peace, Wage Peace, and World Beyond War.
In the joint statement, it is noted that “Nuland played a key role in facilitating a coup in Ukraine that created a civil war costing 10,000 lives and displacing over a million people. She played a key role in arming Ukraine as well. She advocates radically increased military spending, NATO expansion, hostility toward Russia, and efforts to overthrow the Russian government.”
As this writer has pointed out in the American Free Press throughout the past four years, the best coverage of the Russiagate hoax has come from journalists on both the political left and right. These 25 organizations standing against the Nuland appointment would undoubtedly be considered stalwarts of the political left, yet they, too, oppose escalation against Russia, something Nuland enthusiastically favors.
The joint statement commented on Nuland’s positions on Russia in the past year. Nuland wrote, “The challenge for the United States in 2021 will be to lead the democracies of the world in crafting a more effective approach to Russia—one that builds on their strengths and puts stress on Vladimir Putin where he is vulnerable, including among his own citizens. . . . Moscow should also see that Washington and its allies are taking concrete steps to shore up their security and raise the cost of Russian confrontation and militarization. That includes maintaining robust defense budgets, continuing to modernize U.S. and allied nuclear weapons systems, and deploying new conventional missiles and missile defenses . . . establish permanent bases along NATO’s eastern border, and increase the pace and visibility of joint training exercises.”
Nuland was a Russiagate purist who saw the specter of Putin in nearly every hall of power in the American government. During a 2018 appearance on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Nuland told the show’s hosts that the now-discredited Michael Steele dossier was brought to the FBI by President Barack Obama’s State Department.
“This needs to go to the FBI,” Nuland said, describing the discussion at the State Department, “if there is any concern here that one candidate or the election as a whole might be influenced by the Russian Federation. That’s something for the FBI to investigate.”
Doubling down on what she believed was widespread Russian influence in the Trump campaign, Nuland added, “And, frankly, if every member of the campaign who the Russians tried to approach and tried to influence had gone to the FBI as well in real time, we might not be in the mess we’re in today.”
The statement from Nuland’s critics goes one step further regarding her direct interaction with the Steele dossier: “Some U.S. military officials say this demonizing of Russia is all about weapons profits and bureaucratic power, no more fact-based than the Steele Dossier that was given to the FBI by Victoria Nuland.”
Therefore, Nuland’s popularity is slim-to-none with either wing of the political spectrum. To the left, she’s a Bush-Cheney warmongering neoconservative. To the right, she’s a card-carrying Russiagater. To all Americans, she’s just dangerous, and that’s a fine enough reason to reject her nomination.
S.T. Patrick holds degrees in both journalism and social studies education. He spent 10 years as an educator and now hosts the “Midnight Writer News Show.” His email is [email protected]. He is also an occasional contributor to TBR history magazine and the current managing editor of Deep Truth Journal (DTJ), a new conspiracy-focused publication available from the AFP Online Store.
