G.I. Joe

Oh even better, let’s double down shall we - now it is all the “West’s fault”.  The US did not “force” anyone to disarm.  Ukraine took the money happily and got rid of mountains of old USSR stocks that would not have shortened you current war at all. Or worse held onto strategic nukes that would have accelerated one.
Regardless, what is unfolding in Israel has nothing to do with their stance on Russia. Or the West not carpet bombing Moscow every time a suicide bomber goes off in Tel Aviv.  In fact beyond some pretty tenuous money trails from Russia buying stuff from Tehran to support their war, that in turn likely funded some Hamas, the link is non-existent.  We could have pounded Russia into sand and Hamas would still be doing this sort of stuff, or do you honestly think deterrence extends that far.
For the record it is in extremely bad taste to post video of slaughtered Israeli civilians and follow up with “I told you so”, especially when the “told” is so far off the mark it borders on John Kettler-level.  It suggests that in your opinion that Israel deserves whatever this is because they have not sent Ukraine enough whatever - statements like that make one wonder just who the hell we are supporting in this war.
Globally, basically the only way you appear to be satisfied is if the US and West essentially start behaving like Russia - that will somehow make the world a better place?  We tried a lot of hard power flexing in the 2000s, we invaded two countries and a whole lot of westerners are left wondering what the freakin point was.  Now we got new messes to deal with and do not need partners we are trying to keep above water telling us “you are doing it wrong” anymore than Ukraine wants us to tell you how to win your war.

Like most of your other theories, come up with one shred of supporting evidence.  Of course there was diplomacy but no one coerced Ukraine into giving up land mines.  The fact that Ukraine still has cluster munitions is proof that coercion was not the primary method of trying to get people to sign on to any of these treaties.  Prove it.
Again the West can’t win.  We somehow blindly trusted Russia and then violated agreements not to contain them through NATO expansion. We forced Russia’s hand and let them do dirty through inaction- at the same time.  Here is the truth and you can go back to the Budapest Memo debate we had on this…Ukraine agreed to all of the arms reductions the each step on the way.  Ukraine was paid millions for those reductions and signed off on every one.  Ukraine signed off on guarantees - weak as they were - as well.  So now that things have obviously gone sideways, you want to forget all that and put all the blame on the US/West for this mess?  You want to forget gross political corruption in defence - that is still happening according to some - that very likely would have seen all those MANPADs sold off to a highest bidder, many in those VEOs we faced for 20 years?  Are we to honestly believe that you are saying with a straight face that Ukraine would have held onto all that weaponry for a rainy day 20-30 years later?
The West’s failure was in not acting decisively and with unity back in 2014.  We definitely did not step up and push back hard enough.  That is a fair point.  Further we definitely could have moved faster in late 21.  The rest of your narrative is unsubstantiated, and frankly self-serving.  The West does not owe Ukraine a damned thing based on its failures.  
It owes you support because it is the right thing to do.  Ukraine is an independent nation that was minding its own business when Russia decided to invade and murder.  That is why we support Ukraine.  Not some bizarre construct of culpability pulling half the facts from the 1990s.

I would respectfully suggest that the guy who made a budget deal during the debt ceiling negotiations and reneged on it, or the guy who intentionally separated out Ukraine aid and attached it to very controversial border legislation, or the guy who could have won many Democratic 'present' votes with small concessions and chose not to is perhaps not the best source for what happened yesterday. For instance, pretty much every characterization of the CR bill above is wrong. 
Anyway, the king is dead and any of his likely replacements (Emmer, Scalise, McHenry) have been fairly strong supporters of Ukraine. As I understand it, there was a deal ready to go before McCarthy mucked it up that is still on the table for a clean vote. As a one vote motion to vacate is likely off the table for any new Speaker, I suspect we'll see that aid come through forthwith barring the usual caveats about bad bounces, etc.

Well at least he was honest about it. Kinda feels like he just gave up and rolled the dice. That didn't work out for one of our former PMs either he infamously and flippantly said his strategy for negotiating the Meech Lake Accord "come down to last minute negotiations and that a “roll of the dice” would be necessary" : https://parli.ca/roll-dice/

I find a lot of this sort of analysis wrt escalation as "easy to say, very hard to do."  I do not think people fully understand what is at risk in widening this conflict.  The standard justifications are:
- Russia will never go nuclear.
- Russia will back down - they are full of BS.
- We got all the guns, what are they going to do?
Ok, I will buy the first one for arguments sake.  A functioning Russia will very likely not use the nuclear option unless we are talking foreign troops invading Russia itself. (a broken Russia is another story)  Russia may even back down.  They definitely talk a good game but so far those red lines have been pretty mobile.  And we do have a lot of military power within NATO...but herein lies the rub.  It only works if it is unified.
Professionally speaking, the single largest risk of escalation with Russia is a Russian response - controlled or otherwise - that triggers a NATO Ch 5.  We have already had errant missiles in Poland that became Ukrainian ones pretty damned quick.  If Russia starts lobbing them at a NATO nation in response to significant escalation within Russia...what happens?
Well, we essentially move to a NATO Ch 5 escalation, which will get out of hand pretty quick.  Or more likely, NATO falls apart.  An Article 5 could actually break NATO.  It could nations deciding that maybe Poland, or Estonia, or Latvia are not worth dying for.  We have had a single Article 5 declaration in the history of the alliance - 9/11.
 https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/topics_110496.htm#:~:text=NATO invoked Article 5 for,the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
And most of this was intelligence sharing and overflights/port usage permissions.  NATO stayed out of Iraq in '03 completely, GWOT as a concept was not sold in its entirety in the least - even given 9/11.  ISAF in Afghanistan did not come into play until much later in that war, and a lot of NATO nations kept their forces out of combat...and that was the Taliban FFS.
I am betting that those in power have already done this calculus and know exactly how vulnerable the alliance is right now.  A lot of people on this board have been asking "well why don' they just do X?"  "It about ATACMS stupid!"  Well it is likely because they know what is actually at risk and a lot of these capabilities are just not worth those risks...at this time.  In fact a lot of those capabilities value right now is as a threat to Russia as opposed to actual use.
This war is not simple, and there are no simple solutions.  If anyone starts believing that there are you are likely missing something.

Welcome to my world. 
Even crazier - killing the right civilians = legal.  International law allows the legal targeting of anything directly tied to the war effort - less hospitals and humanitarian stuff (obviously).  So if you are a janitor working in a power generation plant that is feeding production of tanks...guy with mop goes boom.  Kill that janitor while he is dropping his kids off at school = warcrime.  HVTs are even more messy.  At what point does a person themselves become intrinsically linked to the war no matter where they are?  Political leadership, military civilian leadership - easy.  Defence scientists?  Ideological figures?  Influencers?
There is a reason we have damned lawyers in the kill chain.
But trust me, this is better than taking the cuffs off the Red God entirely.

Not how it really works.  Mainly because “the law”.  The international community has never passed laws on the use of nuclear weapons.  Restrictions and limitations on their use are all managed by treaties.  The employment of nuclear weapons is essentially off the legal map.
As JonS pointed out, striking a large dam that would lead to massive civilian casualties is against the law.
Fellas can we not drift into “let’s do warcrimes because XYZ?”  C’mon, we are supposed to be the adults in an internet of children.  No, we can not condone warcrimes because Russia did them (and oh we made a lot of noise when they blew that dam down by Kherson).  We cannot condone them because “back in WW2 everyone did it” - doesn’t freakin matter, take a look at your calendar…what year does it say.  Most international law on warcrimes were written after WW2 because everyone was doing them.  WW2 was an example of what a total war looked like when everyone sat around after WW1 and did nothing.  So we decided that was a bad thing and passed a whole bunch of laws to prevent it from happening again.
We do not do war crimes for some very good reasons:
Unity.  If Ukraine (or anyone else) starts playing fast and loose with unrighteous targeting, we risk splitting the coalition of support for Ukraine.  Canada for instance would lose its mind and likely start turning off the taps.
Escalation.  Ok, we take out a dam, kill a bunch of civilians.  Russia potato-in-the-exhaust-pipes a nuclear power plant.  You see where this goes.
Post-war justice.  You want criminal prosecution for Bucha?  Might want to skip committing warcrimes of your own.
Utility.  It won’t work.  A mass killing of Russian civilians anywhere will very likely drive enormous active support into Putin’s arms.  We will wind up with a stronger Russian Will, not a weaker one.
So can we please skip warcrimes week…again?

Well said. This tracks with everything I hear and if anything, the people who follow the PRC the most closely now seem the most certain that the scenario you posit above is most likely. Xi's regime has realized that they aren't America in 1940, they are Germany in 1913. They've peaked as a power too early and their moment is passing. They are not the sort of regime that will take that philosophically. 
I would add, however that things are not hopeless for Taiwan. China has managed to deprive itself of any friends in the world and has united its neighbors as enemies. South Korea, Japan and the United States have clearly concluded that this is a war they mean to fight. 

I don't really follow this logic. What makes you think that having a weapon that theoretically could crack a big dam is going to stop an authoritarian government from its expansionist goals? The CCP has proven time and time again that they are willing to suffer huge economic hits and lose tens of millions of lives in pursuit of their political objectives. And the people of China have spent almost a century living under this regime, developing a fatalist worldview that sounds similar to how Russia watchers on this thread describe the people of Russia.
There is no critical mass of disgruntled citizens sitting on a knife edge, just waiting for a single catastrophic event to have them storm Zhongnanhai and boot out their great leader. Protests in the country are small and localized and rapidly squashed. News of them - or any kind of activity that undermines the party line - is suppressed. Dissent is largely kept behind closed doors, expressed only in close social circles. The focus for most people is staying under the radar, trying to get rich (but not so rich it will attract attention) and - for some - to get their family out. Anyone who legitimately cares about the broader success of the country and not just their own personal advancement has necessarily bought into the current political structures and thus will not challenge them in any significant way.
My current feeling is that China definitely under Xi, and probably under the CCP more broadly, is going to push Taiwan till the very end. I do not see any face-saving escape hatch at this point. Even if they cannot win the war, if they start it, they will keep fighting it, just as Russia appears to be doing in Ukraine. But for Taiwan the pre-war status quo is worse, because nobody formally recognizes it as the independent country it clearly already is, so it's already excluded from being an active player in global affairs, thanks to the overwhelming economic pressure China is able to apply to the rest of the world. Is there any wunderwaffe Taiwan could point across the Strait that would nullify that pressure? I don't think so.
In standing up to China, I think the pen will be mightier than the sword. But, of course, the CCP knows that, which is why they have invested so much into controlling the public discourse and exchange of ideas - not just in the country they govern but increasingly around the rest of the world too.

This post and the preceding one it was in response to by @paxromana got me thinking of one of the best World War II documentaries I have ever seen: the 1993 PBS series A Fighter Pilot's Story, featuring Captain Quentin Aanenson, a P-47 pilot who served in the ETO. I was 13 when I saw that documentary and I think it did more to give me a grown-up understanding of war than anything else.
One thing that really stuck in my mind was Aanenson talking about how difficult it was to deal with the fact that he would sometimes have the power of life or death over an individual enemy soldier. If he saw someone running in the open, he could put in a little aileron or just nudge the rudder and strafe him. He usually did, because that German soldier might kill two or three Americans the next day if he didn't...but he never felt good about it.
Immediately after the war, shooting a pair of gophers that had been digging up his garden was too much for Aanenson after everything he'd seen and been through, and afterwards he put the gun back on his wall and never shot again.
To be sure, every line of work attracts a range of personalities, but I think Aanenson was far more typical than gung-ho movie stereotypes and reminiscences told with bravado to put on a brave face and avoid difficult memories would suggest. He was definitely not having fun up there, and was all too aware of the reality of what he was doing. Aanenson will always have my respect not just for his wartime service, but for pulling zero punches in his documentary.

This post and the preceding one it was in response to by @paxromana got me thinking of one of the best World War II documentaries I have ever seen: the 1993 PBS series A Fighter Pilot's Story, featuring Captain Quentin Aanenson, a P-47 pilot who served in the ETO. I was 13 when I saw that documentary and I think it did more to give me a grown-up understanding of war than anything else.
One thing that really stuck in my mind was Aanenson talking about how difficult it was to deal with the fact that he would sometimes have the power of life or death over an individual enemy soldier. If he saw someone running in the open, he could put in a little aileron or just nudge the rudder and strafe him. He usually did, because that German soldier might kill two or three Americans the next day if he didn't...but he never felt good about it.
Immediately after the war, shooting a pair of gophers that had been digging up his garden was too much for Aanenson after everything he'd seen and been through, and afterwards he put the gun back on his wall and never shot again.
To be sure, every line of work attracts a range of personalities, but I think Aanenson was far more typical than gung-ho movie stereotypes and reminiscences told with bravado to put on a brave face and avoid difficult memories would suggest. He was definitely not having fun up there, and was all too aware of the reality of what he was doing. Aanenson will always have my respect not just for his wartime service, but for pulling zero punches in his documentary.

This post and the preceding one it was in response to by @paxromana got me thinking of one of the best World War II documentaries I have ever seen: the 1993 PBS series A Fighter Pilot's Story, featuring Captain Quentin Aanenson, a P-47 pilot who served in the ETO. I was 13 when I saw that documentary and I think it did more to give me a grown-up understanding of war than anything else.
One thing that really stuck in my mind was Aanenson talking about how difficult it was to deal with the fact that he would sometimes have the power of life or death over an individual enemy soldier. If he saw someone running in the open, he could put in a little aileron or just nudge the rudder and strafe him. He usually did, because that German soldier might kill two or three Americans the next day if he didn't...but he never felt good about it.
Immediately after the war, shooting a pair of gophers that had been digging up his garden was too much for Aanenson after everything he'd seen and been through, and afterwards he put the gun back on his wall and never shot again.
To be sure, every line of work attracts a range of personalities, but I think Aanenson was far more typical than gung-ho movie stereotypes and reminiscences told with bravado to put on a brave face and avoid difficult memories would suggest. He was definitely not having fun up there, and was all too aware of the reality of what he was doing. Aanenson will always have my respect not just for his wartime service, but for pulling zero punches in his documentary.

This post and the preceding one it was in response to by @paxromana got me thinking of one of the best World War II documentaries I have ever seen: the 1993 PBS series A Fighter Pilot's Story, featuring Captain Quentin Aanenson, a P-47 pilot who served in the ETO. I was 13 when I saw that documentary and I think it did more to give me a grown-up understanding of war than anything else.
One thing that really stuck in my mind was Aanenson talking about how difficult it was to deal with the fact that he would sometimes have the power of life or death over an individual enemy soldier. If he saw someone running in the open, he could put in a little aileron or just nudge the rudder and strafe him. He usually did, because that German soldier might kill two or three Americans the next day if he didn't...but he never felt good about it.
Immediately after the war, shooting a pair of gophers that had been digging up his garden was too much for Aanenson after everything he'd seen and been through, and afterwards he put the gun back on his wall and never shot again.
To be sure, every line of work attracts a range of personalities, but I think Aanenson was far more typical than gung-ho movie stereotypes and reminiscences told with bravado to put on a brave face and avoid difficult memories would suggest. He was definitely not having fun up there, and was all too aware of the reality of what he was doing. Aanenson will always have my respect not just for his wartime service, but for pulling zero punches in his documentary.

This post and the preceding one it was in response to by @paxromana got me thinking of one of the best World War II documentaries I have ever seen: the 1993 PBS series A Fighter Pilot's Story, featuring Captain Quentin Aanenson, a P-47 pilot who served in the ETO. I was 13 when I saw that documentary and I think it did more to give me a grown-up understanding of war than anything else.
One thing that really stuck in my mind was Aanenson talking about how difficult it was to deal with the fact that he would sometimes have the power of life or death over an individual enemy soldier. If he saw someone running in the open, he could put in a little aileron or just nudge the rudder and strafe him. He usually did, because that German soldier might kill two or three Americans the next day if he didn't...but he never felt good about it.
Immediately after the war, shooting a pair of gophers that had been digging up his garden was too much for Aanenson after everything he'd seen and been through, and afterwards he put the gun back on his wall and never shot again.
To be sure, every line of work attracts a range of personalities, but I think Aanenson was far more typical than gung-ho movie stereotypes and reminiscences told with bravado to put on a brave face and avoid difficult memories would suggest. He was definitely not having fun up there, and was all too aware of the reality of what he was doing. Aanenson will always have my respect not just for his wartime service, but for pulling zero punches in his documentary.

This post and the preceding one it was in response to by @paxromana got me thinking of one of the best World War II documentaries I have ever seen: the 1993 PBS series A Fighter Pilot's Story, featuring Captain Quentin Aanenson, a P-47 pilot who served in the ETO. I was 13 when I saw that documentary and I think it did more to give me a grown-up understanding of war than anything else.
One thing that really stuck in my mind was Aanenson talking about how difficult it was to deal with the fact that he would sometimes have the power of life or death over an individual enemy soldier. If he saw someone running in the open, he could put in a little aileron or just nudge the rudder and strafe him. He usually did, because that German soldier might kill two or three Americans the next day if he didn't...but he never felt good about it.
Immediately after the war, shooting a pair of gophers that had been digging up his garden was too much for Aanenson after everything he'd seen and been through, and afterwards he put the gun back on his wall and never shot again.
To be sure, every line of work attracts a range of personalities, but I think Aanenson was far more typical than gung-ho movie stereotypes and reminiscences told with bravado to put on a brave face and avoid difficult memories would suggest. He was definitely not having fun up there, and was all too aware of the reality of what he was doing. Aanenson will always have my respect not just for his wartime service, but for pulling zero punches in his documentary.

The same answer from me they should have all been tried and punished accordingly. 
 
Also, the much quoted ridiculous "Hard times make strong men" thing is a meaningless mystical fantasy. If hard times made strong men made good times, Russia would have been a much better place at some point in the last 600 years. Seems to me they've had nothing but hard times and horrible men, and maybe  a lot of dead good men who didn't get to make a difference as a result.

But the dance next month will be defined by the realization among the (too-conservative-for-me but) generally sane majority of Republicans in the House that to retain some semblance of order in the House they have to keep McCarthy and to keep McCarthy they need Democratic votes to stifle their own bomb throwers. There's already talk on the Hill among Republicans to cooperate with Democrats to change the rule so that motions to vacate will be nullified. With a half decent bounce or two, things are about to get a lot less crazy in the House. 

Meh.  Beyond social commentary, which does have some truth but also those fratboys appear to have built the most powerful economy in human history (now how long it survives is a very good question), this war is all about expectations.
If your expectation is for Russia to fold out a la Afghanistan, well that war took 10 years of bleeding.  For us it took nearly 20.  If your expectation is that Ukraine preserve its political freedom and independence, well that bridge was crossed a long time ago.  Given the events I cannot express how unlikely the reality we live in now is - Russia on operational defensive while we wrong hands at pace of Ukrainian offensive.  Given what we knew on 21 Feb, no one honestly thought Ukraine stood a chance of survival, let alone being critiqued for advancing too slowly.
Ukraine is not going to tap out and roll under Russia at this point.  Russia’s last major advance was Prigy driving on Moscow while Putin ran away in Jun.  Many are sweating Russian ability to freeze this war…well Ukraine definitely can and as such will survive.  As long as we support them, even just simple money.  
If we fail in support or walk away, then it is not Ukraine that loses this war, we do.  So glass half full…?

Anyone who hasn't read Timothy Snyders "Bloodlands" book should do so.The extent of the 360 degree awfulness pretty much anywhere between Berlin and Moscow was simply incomprehensible from 1900 to 1950. Not to say that it was the same everywhere in that large expanse of territory, but it was some flavor of awful in almost all of it. There was a whole lot of intentional forgetting after that, because it was the only way to get thru the day.
BTW I almost always read a book in a week or less, "Bloodlands" took me six months just because it is to awful to take more than little tiny bits.

There are;
Breech prems (horrible horrible events)
Bore prems (bad, but can make for amusing photos)
Muzzle prems (can be very bad, depending on battery layout)
Flight prems (problematic, and a cause for serious concern ... quite aside from the potential for fratricide)
The cause for any of those is far from easy to define, although the different types of prem each have more- or less-likely causes. It could be a wonky fuse, an obstruction in the barrel/muzzle, defective projectile, poor ammo handling proceedures, poor drills by the gun crews, force majure, etc. Without a full investigation, you're just left hoping it was a one off, and not a systematic problem with the ammo batch or fuse batch or the drills of the gun crew (assuming they survived).
That particular barrel appears to be ok, but I really wouldn't want to push anything other than a bore brush through it until its had a full tech inspection. *Something* caused the prem, and it'd be more than nice to know what it was before trying that again. Also there could be internal damage to the rifling, the front section of the barrel was likely overstressed by the detonation,  and the recoil system probably needs to be checked since it wouldn't have functioned in the way it was designed with this round. Specifically, the muzzle brake normally 'pulls' the barrel forward reducing stress on the recoil system, but of course that wouldn't have happened with this round, and obviously couldn't on any future rounds. Also, the mass of the muzzle brake forms an important part of the fine balance of the barrel assembly - without it working the elevating gears is really tough, and probably really damaging to the fine gears. It also makes the fine adjustments absolutely needed for accurate fire all but impossible. On the other hand, firing *this* gun /without/ removing the remains of the muzzle brake (to keep the balance roughly right) would do weird things to the trajectory since the air pressure on the round as it transitioned out of the barrel would be all over the place, which would itself bollix accuracy in random ways,  due to the modern art sculpture now sitting where the muzzle brake used to be.
*could* it be fired? Well ... yeesss. At least once more ...
*should* it be fired? Oh hellz no!
 
Edit: just saw Haiduk's post about Pakistani ammo. Aye, some manufacturers/countries rapidly get a poor reputation. We used to use Hirtenberger ammo for the 81mm mortar; lovely stuff - reliable and a delight to work with. But really expensive. So it got replaced by cheaper ammo from [differentcountry]. Yikes. Yiiiiikes.

That's an interesting opinion on what's going on.  Except that we're spending nearly 800 BILLION DOLLARS PER YEAR on our military.  OMG we're going broke because we used ~5% of our already spent money to actually try to do something, militarily, that will help the world be a better place.   What cumulative effect on our country??  This is just utter horses-t.  If we had just stood by & let Putin win in UKR would he then decide to not try to poison all the world's democracies?  Would he not use fossil fuels to extort europe every time he wanted to?  This is tankie nonsense.
We have mountains of gear gathering dust and that's a huge portion of what we've sent.
And just because I am on a rant on this:  How about we turn this around by saying "those that want to freeze the conflict haven't given any thought to the cumulative effect on the world of pulling Putin's *** out of the fire".  Gawd this makes my blood boil.  

Yeah, absolutelly terrible persona by the way, even by current standards, but not the guy to dictate anything. But it may be the case he was told to shut up cause no official confirmation yet of any request. So, proceed.
 
Wolski doing what he is best at; staring  at burn-out armour. Bradley ODS-SA destroyed, possibly somewhere in Zaporizhia (swicth-off sound if you use headphones, there is some loud Cossack-metal in the background).
 

On positive side- I almost forgot how high political standards of conduct looks like; well, that .^
Correct, I am not even sure if source didn't made this up; no formal confirmation of any official request. Anyway, if this particular persona is guilty, evidence against him will probably pop up and he should be investigated (given his age, it will ofc go nowhere). If not, it's just another twitter drama made from opaque understanding that we will forget in a week. Just a pitty Russians have a feast now.
Now, in real world:
 

https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/house-speaker-anthony-rota-resigns-over-nazi-veteran-invite-1.6577796
 

Japan is, as usually, ahead of the game: