People Count Differently

So it's Matt Tait (pwnallthethings, USNA, ten years USN in IT and security, does private IT foreign security analysis and veterans charities now) criticising Glenn Greenwald, who is relying on a NYT article for his information, which is trying to massage the info for political reasons. So pick your side based on that! What could possibly go wrong?

It's about the money being sent to Ukraine - or sent to various US companies and agencies on behalf of Ukraine, or sent for military/nonmilitary, humanitarian/nonhumanitarian purposes to God-knows-who, slated for next year but we're calling it this year because we are talking about it now...

I put this forward to illustrate that people count different things and make comparisons that are shaky but perhaps capture overlooked truths, often misrepresent their opponents' positions and sometimes even their own. The claim is that this is military aid to Ukraine and compare it to the entire Russian military budget, except only a relatively small fraction of this is actually military. OTOH, it is money going out the door which otherwise would not have, and means the Ukrainians don't have to shell out for that. Plus accusing agencies of lying about the money - which is probably true, but lying in which direction and for what purpose seems to be conveniently applied by the arguers. Can we ask "Which lie is this group telling and why" rather than just assuming we know?

Ouch, you already started reading the replies to Greenwald.  My bad, I should have warned you. Except you should probably know by now on your own, without me telling you. You will be shocked to know that precisely none of the replies express any version of "Y'know, that's a good point that I should have remembered.  Let me think about whether I want to word my position as strongly as I did a minute ago, or even reconsider it altogether."  They mostly sound like they were written a year ago and put in a list of Six Things To Say About The War In Ukraine that gets recycled for every conversation.