Musk reacts after swap Russian arms dealer for WNBA star Brittney Griner

https://www.yahoo.com/news/musk-reacts-biden-swaps-russian-112110650.html

Musk said Friday the U.S. should "never" leave behind one of its own servicemen.

"Never leave a marine behind. Never," Musk tweeted, responding to a user who inquired about his opinion

 

Good to hear that a long-time Marine like Musk has chimed in with this battlefield ethic.

Getting an American back is a good thing, and certainly worth giving up an arms dealer who had already served a decade behind bars. (And whose customers had already been freed, some of whom have become elected officials in their home country.)

 

What Musk seems to ignore is that his battlefield ethic voiced is being applied to an ex-Marine that was not left behind on the battlefield. Also, if Russia refuses to release Whelan then he has the stupid idea that Brittany Griner should be left to freeze in Russia? If so that makes no sense. Russia claims that Whelan is a spy and would only be released if Germany releases a Russian spy that is jailed in Germany. Perhaps Musk is under the delusion that we run the German government?

 

The marine should have asked Zelenskyy.

 

Everyone's Brittney Griner Reaction

 

This Musk tweet has a certain quality to it, doesn't it? Has a kernel of truth, simplified to the point of complete falsehood (Paul Whelan is neither a Marine nor is he "left behind"), easily digestible, designed to invoke strong emotions in a well-defined demographics. What does it look like? It looks like the sea of tweets provoking polarization, on both sides, back in good old 2016. Tweets later associated with sock puppet accounts ran by employees of a noted russian career criminal, putin lackey, and leader of war-criming private army "Wagner Group", Evgeniy Prigozhin. You know, the "russian hoax" that actually happened.

Does Musk try to point out the biggest success story Twitter had in recent years - as an ideal delivery system for russian ИПСО ("information-propaganda special operations")? Twitter could use a good revenue source or a patient investor right about now...

To be clear: no matter how fishy Paul Whelan's story is (a bad conduct-discharged former Marine going to Russia for his brother's wedding, ditches his group to drink alone in a hotel lobby, and gets set up by a "friend of many years" who's also a Major in the FSB, a russian intelligence agency) - he's still an American held on doubtful (fabricated) charges by an enemy regime, and should be brought home. If there ends up being a trade somehow for that Germany-held russian spy-assassin - I'd be all for it.