Thanks To Bernhard Or About Losses, Again...

Bernhard of MoA did a great service by providing a link to the article from yesterday which, in this particular case, does provide words from Pentagon man, that is not just some BSer from Reuters or CNN, or  WSJ who make numbers up and then lie that those numbers are from their "sources".  But even this "15,000 Russian troops killed" dude had to cool it on the Ukie BS being used by US media:

The US and NATO disagree over an estimate of 40,000 Russian casualties in Ukraine. "We continue to have low confidence in those estimates" 

But as I stated, even Pentagon's "figure" (7,000-15,000 KIAs), if it was delivered by someone "in the know" shows the absolute lack of even fleeting grasp of what is going on on the ground in Ukraine. I agree with Bernhard's title of his article and its content:

Propaganda Does Not Change The War - The Ukraine Is Still Losing - Updated

That is why I constantly cringe when, yet another, "analyst" begins to weep about Russia "losing the information war". Russia couldn't have "won" such a war abroad, because it is the only field in which US excels--creation of virtual reality by means of non-stop lies in every single field US media cover, be it elections, health, war (especially war), science, education, you name it. They lie, that's what they do.  Part of this lie serves political agenda of non-stop elections shell game, which passes for "democracy", a euphemism of substituting one incompetent amoral ignoramus for another. The other part is a genuine ignorance, no more so than in the field of warfare. For every truth Russia delivers, there are 10 respective insane lies. 

Just to demonstrate what kind of fraud this "journalism" is, we may go to Columbia University Journo "Program" and partake in the most difficult (in involves some calculations) part of this pseudo-profession and it is Data Journalism. As the title implies, the future "journo" will be taught how to handle data. Just get the load of this from curriculum:

Data Journalism students begin their program in the fall taking foundational computational and data courses as well as courses on the fundamentals of reporting. In the second semester, they continue honing their journalistic skills with Writing with Data and the Data, Computation, Innovation workshop, where they will explore cutting-edge storytelling using data and computation, and take a 15‐week seminar and production course with the Master of Science students. In the final semester, students work on the Master’s Project, a substantive piece of data-driven journalism. They also join the Master of Science students in taking a suite of courses called Journalism Essentials, which covers the business, historical, legal and ethical issues of the field. They also take Storytelling with Data and Data, Computation, Innovation II. 

So, in other words, they teach those "students" some Python, maybe some statistics and "data handling" with application to exactly what? A-ha, here is the issue, assuming, of course, with a very high probability of those students trying to get their M.S. (yes, Master of fvcking Science) in this "field" having no serious math and physics fundamental education crucial for any field of the modern technology-infused world, and that is why no matter what grade they get in this Hodgepodge collection of intro level programming, multi-media and some basic data-handling, they will remain as ignorant on the realities of engineering and design practices, real physical economy or science. But they also will not get even in the most basic form real warfare, ranging from tactics and operational art to more complex issues of sensors, weapon systems integration and combat control--it is a completely different world which is fully obscured by fanboys on YouTube who wouldn't know the difference between math.expectation and probability of hitting the target, and, incidentally, is precisely completely obfuscated by these very "journalism" and "communications" graduates who do not know shit from shinola and have zero background in warfare.

I don't need to really expose here such "wonderful" examples of military "journalism" such as David Axe or Michael Peck, among many others who grace the pages of innumerable US publications on war and military porn, but they are not there to "report". They are there to spin. I do appreciate and I know there are real American (and Russian) military reporters out there who have seen some shit and they try to report honestly (including by risking their lives) on war issues, but that is still--reporting. It gives some touch to the reality on the ground, but the essential thing which runs modern war: strategic and operational planning, combat command and control--these are very different animals and anyone wouldn't even get close to those without graduating serious military higher learning institution and having serious tactical let alone operational planning experience at least at the level of regiment and its staff. Brigade and division staff level is still preferred. And it is this level at which one begins to learn to handle immense arrays of data of which fanboys who discuss how one or another tank looks like or why F-16 is sexier than MiG-29 (which, actually, is true) have no clue about, as are the graduates of this Data Journalism courses. 

That is why such a BS about 15,000 Russian KIAs makes it to Western media, spun, of course, for the sake of the agenda of powers that be and really, any claims by American or European journos about "freedom of press" are met today in Russia and elsewhere with a Homeric laughter. But even factoring all those PR-"professionals" and propaganda pushers one still doesn't get the problem resolved. Professionals, especially serious professionals, and my blog allows many of them to speak here, such as Larry Johnson, or, by references such as Colonel Vladimir Trukhan, or Scott Ritter or Colonel Macgregor, no matter how one tries to convey a complexity of a modern C2 (Command and Control) on the modern and very complex battlefield, Hollywood will always win, as will those "unnamed" Pentagon officials who would be "leaking" a complete BS and non-sense to ignoramuses from media, who exist only for sensation and not for honest reporting. Some of them, as you all know, are downright war criminals. 

It is not that Western journos spread lies, it is the fact that with each passing day their BS becomes so outlandish that one has to ask the question: do they even know what basic arithmetic is? I begin to doubt it. I can try to explain to some moron from NYT or WSJ (not that they will be interested in it) how the combat tasks are set and how planning develops from there, how to approximately calculate the force size for a company, even battalion to accomplish the task, where the reserves will come and how, but I cannot help in cases when their parents and schools didn't teach them basic adding and subtraction, not to speak of multiplication and division (ooh, boy those stochastic coefficients, you have to multiply there). So, that is why General Patton is America's main WW II "hero", because BS sells and no matter how one may hate (and they deserve it fully) Erick Von Manstein, Heinz Guderian or Walter Model, should these people be alive today, as would have been Zhukov, Tolbukhin or Rokossovsky, they all would have come to an agreement that the US learned all the wrong lessons from WW II and that explains why the US lost all of its wars which followed. Goebbels would have loved to have Anglo-American MSM journos in his org in Hell. They would fit right in. 

In related news. New anecdote from Russia, Madeleine Albright gets to the Charon the ferryman at the river Styx and offers him a coin (one sixth of a Drachma) for crossing the river. Charon shakes his head in disagreement and replies to her: "I accept only Rubles".