“It never honors either.” And NATO did?

“So, if we admit that NAtO doesn't attack its members and that Russia doesn't attack NATO members, would Ukraine be safer within NATO - both from NATO and Russia?” Good point. Just a mild remark, Greece and Turkey, both member of NATO did fight each other and Cyprus is still divided between the two. I can mentioned as well the war between UK and Argentina, both allied with US (at the time, I don’t know what is the situation for Argentina now).

“The guy under the bridge will always be one move ahead while airplanes are circling about and their pilots are "apalled, shocked and gravely concerned".” Yeap, but the guy under the bridge put his life on line, when the pilot will be back home ½ hour after. And when did you ever heard pilots being "appalled, shocked and gravely concerned” of bombing?

“Our intelligence services screw up the feelings and intentions side of things regularly. Why? A preference for SIGINT over HUMINT....been our Achilles' heel for quite a while now.
For example, we had so little HUMINT in Iraq that we completely believed our source who said Saddam still had an active WMD program in place -- even though that source had a huge axe to grind and we had little corroboration.” I agree, but not entirely. Iraq is a good case. French, German, Italian intelligence told US that it was not possible. And if you put personnel on the grounds, just watching and listening, you could have seen that Iraq was not in position to maintain even a conventional army. And I remember on the French TV debates about the validity of the “free” Iraqis testimony…
As Ukraine is concerned, I said it before, I think it was a pure blunder due to arrogance itself generated by a string of successes in the coloured Revolutions. I am still convinced that no one planned Ukraine; it just went at its momentum as Dr Frankenstein’s creature wobbling to the nearest village. Or, as put by Pratchett, someone throwing a snow ball on a mountain and being surprise by the villages swept by the avalanche.