President Biden has been savaged for “letting the cat out of the bag,” and revealing that the United States is “running low on ammo.”
When sitting down for a US media interview ahead of his visit to the UK, and, subsequently, to attend the NATO summit in Lithuania, the Democratic POTUS doubled down on the importance of transferring lethal cluster munitions to Ukraine.
The Pentagon had announced the planned provision of cluster bombs as part of a new $800 million-worth military assistance package for the Kiev authorities on Friday.
Amid the growing chorus of voices criticizing the decision, ranging from NATO allies to his own key top Democrats, Biden defended sending the bombs banned by over 100 countries to the conflagration zone in Ukraine, blurting out:
"This is a war relating to munitions. And they’re running out of that ammunition, and we’re low on it."
The 80-year-old commander-in-chief then added:
"And so, what I finally did, I took the recommendation of the Defense Department to – not permanently – but to allow for this transition period while we get more 155 weapons, these shells, for the Ukrainians."
The remark opened the floodgates to a plethora of wide-ranging remarks on social media. Some sarcastically commented that it was mind-boggling how the president was announcing the US shortage during a nationally televised interview.
Screenshot of Twitter post by political operative Logan Dobson.
© Photo : Twitter
Screenshot of Twitter post by Byron York of the Washington Examiner.
© Photo : Twitter
Some on social media joked that the President of the United States had said the “quiet part out loud: ‘We've run out of ammunition.”
Screenshot of Twitter post by US political commentator Ian Miles Cheong.
© Photo : Twitter
If the whole point of the ongoing American-led proxy war against Russia being fought in Ukraine was to “weaken Russia," tech entrepreneur David Sacks tweeted, then how is it that the US “ran out of ammo first. So who’s weakening whom?”
Screengrab of Twitter post.
© Photo : Twitter
Others on social media ripped Joe Biden for funding "a war we shouldn't be in."
Screenshot of Twitter post by Robert F Kennedy Jr.
© Photo : Twitter
Robert F Kennedy Jr, the present 2024 presidential hopeful and nephew of assassinated former US President John F Kennedy, slammed the cluster munitions decision by Biden as a "pretext for more military spending."
US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin told reporters after a trip to Ukraine in April last year that Washington's goal was "to see Russia weakened." But despite the US and its NATO allies funneling military assistance to Ukraine, the latter's much-heralded counteroffensive has so far been a disappointment to Kiev's handlers. The US announced Friday that it would send the controversial cluster munitions to Ukraine to help shore up Ukraine's military, which has run up against stiff resistance from Russian forces backed by heavy artillery and air power. The Ukrainian forces do not have enough tanks, armored vehicles or ammo, US business media reported, citing senior Ukrainian officials and frontline commanders.
The 155mm artillery dual-purpose improved conventional munition (DPICM) rounds, the M864, stated Washington, would be an emergency stop-gap measure designed to allow Kiev to sustain its planned rate of fire until US and European production of 155mm artillery could be boosted to meet Ukraine’s operational needs. The announcement was met with a chorus of condemnation, as much of the world views cluster munitions as presenting an unacceptable risk to civilian life due to the high occurrence of “dud” munitions (i.e., munitions that fail to detonate on impact). Such munitions continue to kill long after, in cases when civilians stumble upon them.