Sen. Dan Coats Among U.S. Officials Banned From Entering Russia By Putin

In retaliation for a move by President Barack Obama on Monday to bar 11 Russian, Ukranian and Crimean officials from entering the U.S. and freezing assets they hold here, Russian President Vladimir Putin has hit back by barring nine U.S. officials from his country, including Indiana's Sen. Dan Coats (R), a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee. The list is reported to include Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ), Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV), Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA), House Speaker John Boehner, senior White House adviser Daniel Pfeiffer and White House national security advisors Ben Rhodes and Caroline Atkinson. "We have repeatedly warned that sanctions are a double-edged instrument and would hit the United States like a boomerang," the Russian Foreign Ministry said. "There must be no doubt: We will respond adequately to every hostile thrust."

I'm no fan of Putin, but what the media doesn't tell the American people is that American-backed covert operations led to the ouster of the democratically-elected president in the Ukraine and all the turmoil within that country that has resulted in Russia's actions to annex Crimea, a state within the Ukraine whose people are predominantly Russian in ethnicity and who overwhelmingly favor being a part of Russia. U.S. foreign policy has been focused on creating as much instability in the region as possible to weaken Russia economically and militarily. Listening to Sen. Coats or Sen. McCain speak out on the issue, it's obvious they're just aping the talking points of the Council of Foreign Relations, which is nothing more than a thinly-disguised creature of the military industrial complex to promote their permanent war industry and subversion of human rights throughout the world, while feigning an interest in world peace and respect for the sovereignty of independent nations and democratic governance.