soviets

Yeah, the Soviets did fuck all, but the western side was a totally different story.

The Soviets started using it because it would provide good coverage of their very nordic territory, something geostationary sats would not do.

The Soviets had their Galosh missiles defending Moscow, which are still in place.

Central planning is a Bad Thing because Soviets did it and it went bad, so nowadays its inferiority is treated as an axiom.

Apparently, the Soviets had a plan to repeatedly nuke the bay to generate huge clouds of radiation that would then spread across the country.

Some were kept by the soviets until the mid and late 50's.

The A-10 worked because the Soviets didn't export man portable SAMs.

Different group and location, but yes, we backed the mujahideen in Afghanistan against the soviets.

They would have, but they gave it to the Soviets instead.

The Soviets even denied it and covered it up until 1989.

Unfortunately the soviets discovered you cannot have a classless society.

Well, ask the soviets how it worked out for them.

"rationale to this decision that I do not know or understand" I imagine the rationale went like this: We have intelligence that the soviets are developing weapons with deadly bacteria X with delivery mechanisms {Y, Z,...}.

"we need to try it because we need to know if we should be concerned about the Soviets doing it with seriously harmful bacteria." Additionally, when you do anything involving a group that large there's bound to be an few outliers.

The atrocities you list were almost all done by the Soviets, yet you somehow blame the West?

And there is zero mention of any of the other political factors involved, such as staving off the Soviets.

It was more than to just counter the Soviets: They removed the German threat for good.