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Items are archived in this category chronologically or in the order of discovery. Plenty more stuff at the "2009" button -- left
column. |
| It Just Boggles |
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| U.S. Commanders Are Confused By Obama's Rules |
CNSNews.com is
reporting that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), just
back from a fact-finding trip to Afghanistan and Pakistan, said he and
other senators found operational "confusion" among U.S. military
officials on how to handle detained enemy combatants.
"From the
top to the bottom, the military, the American military people that we
talked to, indicated some confusion, operationally, about what you do
when you detain a terrorist," McConnell said at a press conference on
Tuesday.
After pointing out that a U.S. military general declined
to answer questions about the handling of insurgent detainees without
the presence of his lawyer, the minority leader said: "This operational
confusion has . . . been created, it strikes me, unnecessarily and,
frankly, dangerously, by the administration."
McConnell
criticized the administration, in particular, for recently handing over
the so-called underwear bomber,
Nigerian terror suspect Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, to criminal courts
rather than to the military.
"This sort of preoccupation, if you
will, that we see on full display here in the U.S., with the example of
the Christmas would-be bomber being turned over -- not to the military
for interrogation, but to criminal courts -- and told he is entitled to
a lawyer, is a mentality that I think is very dangerous in the war on
terror," the minority leader said.
McConnell said the
administration is wrongly preoccupied with "detainee rights."
"We see this preoccupation with prisoners' rights both on foreign
battlefield[s] and here at home that seems to be consuming the
administration in this war on terror," he explained. "I think it’s
wrong-headed."
McConnell added that treating captured terrorists
as if they were American citizens who have committed a crime is not the
right way to conduct the war -- "To not be allowed to properly
interrogate and to detain, without some of the concerns that you might
have if you were an American citizen here in the United States who is
under arrest for robbing a convenience store or something, strikes me as
a pretty wrong-headed way to conduct the war," McConnell said.
The Kentucky senator concluded by stating that the prison for terrorists
in Guantanaamo Bay (Gitmo) should not be closed and that enemy detainees
should be tried by military commissions.
At the press
conference, Sen. Crapo said: "It was very clear that there was
uncertainty among our military personnel as to exactly how they are
required now and going to be required in the future to deal with the
handling of detainees."
Sen. Wicker, who also visited
Afghanistan as part of the GOP delegation led by the senate minority
leader, repeated the alleged confusion created by the Obama
administration.
A task force commissioned as part of Obama’s
January 2009 Executive Order to revise terrorist detention policy,
interrogation tactics, and close down Gitmo, issued a preliminary report
in July 2009 summarizing their legal views for the handling of enemy
combatants.
"When asked the question, 'What do we do with
captured enemy combatants?' it was clear that the, the answer is
confusion and uncertainty on the part of our troops and the Afghan
security forces," said Wicker. |
| Political Correctness And The 21st Century Battlefield |
Paul Mirengoff is
reporting that the national security panel at the Reclaim American
Liberty conference in New York on Wednesday considered (1) whether we
have the right legal architecture for maintaining our security, and (2)
whether we have the right battlefield architecture for this purpose.
He summarized the panel discussion regarding the first question
here.
Tonight he'll write about the second.
The key panelist on our "battlefield architecture" was Col. Allen
West (U.S. Army, Ret.). Col. West served as a commander in Iraq
and, after retiring from the Army, he served as an adviser in
Afghanistan.
West retired from the Army with full benefits after
being accused of misconduct in connection with the interrogation of an
Iraqi police officer. Information obtained during the
interrogation is said to have led to the arrest of two insurgents and
the cessation of attacks on West's 4th Infantry Division battalion.
At a hearing, West testified that he would act as he did if he had it to
do over again. "If it's about the lives of my men and their
safety, I'd go through hell with a gasoline can," West said.
Not
surprisingly, West was blunt about Obama's military's rules of
engagement -- they are not suited for the 21st century battlefield and
they put our troops in danger. On the 21st century battlefield,
our enemy has removed its uniforms and taken to hiding among the
population. Our rules of engagement enable them to obtain an
advantage by adopting these tactics.
West noted that in a
fire-fight, our troops typically have about five seconds before the
dying starts. Yet, we require them to hold their fire until the
intentions of the enemy have been verified and the potential for
collateral has been assessed. This can't be done in five seconds.
Thus, our troops are at a significant disadvantage.
In addition,
when the enemy holes up in a mosque, we cannot attack. Thus, the
enemy is able to use our own "politically correct" rules against us.
West argued that "top-down" rules of engagement are inherently
inadequate on the 21st century battlefield. When these rules are
driven by political
correctness, our ability to fight is undermined even more.
The same lesson applies to the homeland, which West correctly considers
part of the 21st century battlefield. The
Fort Hood massacre illustrates the
point. In this instance, political correctness prevented us from
dealing with the enemy before he dealt with us. |
| Militarized Police Force For U.S. |
On July 2nd, 2008, Obama spoke in Colorado Springs and hit themes of
national service, foreign policy, and national security. In that vein,
Obama proposed a rather extraordinary idea -- that the US should spend
as much money on a civilian national security force as it does on the
military. His actual words were:
"We cannot continue to rely on our military
in order to achieve the national security objectives we’ve set.
We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as
powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded."
Now, Prison Planet is reporting that A recent study
commissioned by the U.S. Army and written by the RAND Corporation calls
for the creation of a "hybrid" military/law enforcement unit which could
be put to use in the United States to take charge of riot control and
SWAT duties, according to the authors.
The study (PDF)
was released last year but has garnered fresh attention following
comments made by one of its authors, Terry Kelly, in an interview with
an online news website, said, "If there were a major disaster like
Katrina it could be deployed in the U. S. but that’s not the purpose of
the research."
"It’s important to point out that the goal was to
create a force that’s deployable overseas. If it’s to be used in
the United States it would be a secondary thing and then only in an
emergency."
Kelly said that the main focus of the force would be
in places like Iraq, Afghanistan or Haiti, in light of the earthquake
disaster, adding that it could operate as a U.S. force under U.N.
authority.
However, the report itself uses language that leaves
open the exact agenda of the force, and makes it clear that domestic use
has been considered at length.
It states that a Federal
"Stabilization Police Force" of 2–6,000 personnel would work best under
a civilian federal agency or the military police.
"They (the data) suggest that the U.S.
Marshals Service (USMS) and the MP options are the only credible
ones. The Marshals Service has sufficient baseline
capabilities and a policing culture to build a competent SPF, and
its location in the Department of Justice makes it well suited to
achieve broader rule-of-law objectives. This finding is
consistent with a significant body of academic and policy research,
which strongly concludes that civilian agencies are optimal for the
execution of policing functions." (page 123)
The study concludes that the use of the Marshals
Service is more favorable in order to avoid a breach of the long
standing Posse Comitatus Act, which forbids the domestic use of the
military for law enforcement purposes.
The report also states
that the force could both augment and be augmented by "additional
federal, state, or local police from the United States."
Continue
reading
here . . . |
| We Have Bigger Problems Than "Don’t Ask Don’t Tell" |
What was Barack Obama’s
call to scrap
the "Don’t-Ask-Don’t-Tell" rule barring homosexuals from military
service doing in the middle of the speech? Why is Obama addressing
this difficult, both politically and legally, issue now? We have
bigger problems than normalizing homosexuality.
Obama, an
advocate for the homosexual agenda, announced his desire to allow
homosexuals to serve openly in the military during his first State of
the Union address Wednesday night, saying, "This year, I will work with
Congress and our military to finally repeal the law that denies gay
Americans the right to serve the country they love because of who they
are," Obama said.
The Clinton-era rule, which skirted the
outright ban on homosexuals serving in the military, would likely take
an act of Congress to change, said Elaine Donnelly, president of the
Center for Military Readiness, and "voters are concerned about national
security, and they don’t want America’s military to be used for any
purpose other than national defense." |
| Obama Takes Credit For Success In Iraq |
Move America Forward, the nation’s largest grassroots pro-troop
organization
took
offense last night as Barack Obama tried to take credit for the
success of the Iraq War when he was a bitter opponent of the successful
troop surge implemented by President George W. Bush. Obama
proclaimed "I promised I would end this war, and that is what I am doing
as President."
Shawn Callahan, Executive Director of Move
America Forward, said "Without the surge America would have left Iraq
with the war lost to the insurgents. If Obama had been in charge
of the Iraq war, it would have been lost along with the needless loss of
potentially thousands of innocent Iraqis who would have been at the
mercy of the terrorists and criminals. Americans would be further
at risk with a more emboldened terrorist network."
"It is
reprehensible for the President to take credit for a war his predecessor
won. Then-Senator Obama criticized the Iraq war, called it a dumb
war, said our troops would fail and that the surge would make things
worse. History has proved him wrong, and yet he still tries to
somehow take credit for our troops’ success without even congratulating
them on the good job they have done."
His speech offered only a
few minutes to the subject of national security after speaking at length
about a multitude of other issues that Obama felt were more important
despite the fact that the country is at war. Obama also failed to
address security in several other ways:
•The President failed to recognize America’s
"war on terror." His Administration continues to treat
terrorism as a police action despite the threat against America by a
group of extremists who have declared war on us.
•The President makes no mention of
Guantanamo Bay, nor does he acknowledge that his own Administration
has found terrorists held there who should be detained indefinitely.
•The President talked tough about nuclear
disarmament with respect to North Korea and mentioned Iran, but his
pandering around the world has brought no success in stopping their
nuclear ambitions.
•Obama refused to address complaints that
the Christmas bomber is being treated as a criminal defendant with
full constitutional rights instead of an enemy combatant who should
be in the hands of the U.S. military and intelligence agencies.
|
| A Great Achievement |
Andrew Malcolm
says the same Barack Obama and Joe Biden who opposed the Iraq war,
its tactics, and predicted failure, are now prepared to accept credit
for its success.
Biden, in an
interview with Larry King, said he is certain that Iraq will turn
out to be one of the Obama-Biden administration's greatest achievements
-- No, really! He did.
Here's how Biden put it:
"I
am very optimistic about -- about Iraq. I mean, this could be one
of the great achievements of this administration. You're going to
see 90,000 American troops come marching home by the end of the summer.
You're going to see a stable government in Iraq that is actually moving
toward a representative government."
"I spent -- I've been there
17 times now. I go about every two months -- three months. I
know every one of the major players in all the segments of that society.
It's impressed me. I've been impressed how they have been deciding
to use the political process rather than guns to settle their
differences."
Biden did not elaborate on what the
administration's other "great achievements" were. |
| War In Iraq To Be Given New Name |
Jake Tapper
Exclusive: ABC News has learned that the Obama administration has
decided to give the war in Iraq -- currently known as Operation Iraqi
Freedom -- a new name.
The new name: "Operation New Dawn."
In a February 17, 2010, memo to the Commander of Central Command,
Gen. David Petraeus, Defense Secretary Robert Gates says the "requested
operation name change is approved to take effect 1 September 2010,
coinciding with the change of mission for U.S. forces in Iraq."
You can read the memo -- a copy of which was sent to the Chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen --
HERE.
Gates writes that by changing the name at the same time as the
change of mission -- the scheduled withdrawal of U.S. combat troops --
the US is sending "a strong signal that Operation IRAQI FREEDOM has
ended and our forces are operating under a new mission."
The
move, Gates writes, "also presents opportunities to synchronize
strategic communication initiatives, reinforce our commitment to honor
the Security Agreement, and recognize our evolving relationship with the
Government of Iraq."
Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell had no
comment on the memo, saying it speaks for itself.
The move has
met with some criticism. In a statement, Brian Wise, executive
director of Military Families United said, "You cannot end a war simply
by changing its name. Despite the Administration’s efforts to spin
realities on the ground, their efforts do not change the situation at
hand in Iraq. Operational military decisions should not be made for
purposes of public relations, as the Secretary of Defense cites, but
should be made in the best interests of our nation, the troops on the
ground and their families back home."
If Gates was hoping that
"Operation New Dawn" would convey a new period in the US-Iraq
relationship, it's not clear that was the best choice of name.
After all, Operation New Dawn was the name for the bloody and grueling
2004 battle for Fallujah.
Originally, US forces had called the
fight for that city "Fallujah Fury," but Iraqi leaders suggested it be
called al Fajr, or New Dawn.
"It is with all pleasure that I
announce to you that Operation New Dawn has been concluded," the Iraqi
minister of state for national security, Qasim Dawood, said at a news
conference in Baghdad in November 2004.
Is Obama going to declare victory?
Will the troops get their parade? |
| Obama Plans Dramatic Reductions In Nuclear Weapons |
The BBC News is reporting that Barack Obama is planning "dramatic
reductions" in the country's nuclear arsenal, a senior US administration
official has said.
This would come as part of a sweeping policy
review designed to prevent the spread of atomic weapons, he said, adding
that the new strategy will point to a greater role for conventional
weapons -- like bows and arrows?
The review "will point to dramatic reductions in the
stockpile, while maintaining a strong and reliable deterrent through the
investments that have been made in the budget," the official said.
All this is in line with Obama's school-boy
vision of a nuclear free
world, and reaffirmed in Prague, a little less than a year ago.
The
official said the review would go further than previous reviews in
"embracing the aims of non-proliferation," saying thousands of nuclear
weapons could be cut, in many cases by retiring weapons that are now
kept in storage.
The new strategy will also seek to abandon
plans put in place by the previous administration to develop a new
generation of nuclear weapons for penetrating underground targets known
as "bunker busters" -- a
brilliant move, considering that Iran is building their nuclear weapons
facility
inside a mountain.
Continue reading
here . . .
Obama is
just doing what he said he was going to do during the campaign.
|
| Obama's War Whopper |
Mark
Finkelstein
paraphrased Mark Twain, writing there are lies, damned lies, and
then the kind of brazen rewriting of what a man stands for that Barack
Obama engaged in yesterday.
As you saw in last evening's news,
our hero showed up in Afghanistan to "rally the troops" -- an absurd
concept. In his address to the troops, Obama said:
"The United States of America does not quit
once it starts on something. You don't quit, the American armed
services does not quit. We keep at it. We persevere."
Whoooaaaaa, Nelly! That just doesn't square
with a statement he made on September, 12, 2007, while calling for the
immediate withdrawal of all U.S. combat brigades from Iraq:
"There is no military solution in Iraq and
there never was."
The swaggering Obama, in his faux-military leather
jacket, who boasted to American troops that "the United States of
America does not quit once it starts on something," is the same man who
in 2007 told the troops and the entire world that America and its
military couldn't win in Iraq, never could, and should immediately quit.
Will the ObamaMedia let PBO get away with this prevarication?
Absolutely!
Introducing the
video
clip on Morning Joe today, Norah O'Donnell, rather than reporting
the divergence between his words today and those he spoke when trying to
woo a Dem presidential primary electorate, reverentially described the
speech as "rousing."
Obama wasn't finished misrepresenting the
truth. He went on to claim that, as between Republicans and
Democrats, "there's no daylight when it comes to support for all of you.
There's no daylight when it comes to supporting our troops."
Surely Obama knows better. But let's remind him:
• John
Kerry accused
US troops of "terrorizing" women and children in Iraq.
• John Murtha
accused US Marines
of killing innocent Iraqi civilians "in cold blood."
• Dick Durbin
accused
US troops at Guantanamo of acting like "Nazis." |
| Obama Won't Let Navy Defend Its Ships |
DEBKAfile is
reporting that the US Fifth
Fleet and US aircraft carrier USS Eisenhower in the Gulf of Oman were
not allowed to shoot at an Iranian
Fokker F27 aircraft which on April 21 hovered for 20 minutes 900
meters over the carrier and no more than 250 meters away, even though
they saw its flight crew gathering intelligence on the Eisenhower and
its warship escorts.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military sources report
that the US Persian Gulf command went public on the incident on April
28, a whole week later, only after Gulf military circles, amazed at the
American naval and air units' passivity in the face of hostile
surveillance, threatened to break the story to local media.
This
striking restraint indicates that the US Gulf and Arabian fleets are
under orders to take no action -- certainly not to open fire -- against
Iranian naval or air units, without first obtaining permission directly
from Washington.
Military, naval and aviation sources told
DEBKA-Net-Weekly that the Iranian spy plane was 10 second away from
flying directly over the Eisenhower and could easily have been shot
down.
To try and explain this incident away, US naval sources
Wednesday, April 28, claimed the Iranian plane was unarmed and its
encounter with the US carrier was not of a threatening nature, although
irregular.
Admiral Gary Roughead, Chief of Naval Operations,
tried to play down the importance of the incident by saying: "The
Iranians (pilots) were not provocative or threatening. As long as
they are professional and not threatening or reckless, it's
international space."
Just
like that small boat that came alongside the
USS Cole.
It wasn't provocative either -- that is until it blew a whole in the
hull killing 17 sailors and injuring 39.
Consider, that
Fokker can easily carry 18,000 pounds (8,250 kg) of explosives.
According to this report, the distance (hypotenuse) from the Iranian
aircraft to the USS Eisenhower was 934.08 meters (3064.6 feet), or a
little more than one-half mile away.
With a top speed of 520 kph
(323 mph), or approximately 5 miles per minute -- more in a power dive
-- it would have taken approximately 6 or 7 seconds for that Fokker to
hit the Eisenhower -- hardly time to obtain permission to fire directly
from Washington. |
| U.S. Military Concerned With Obama's Afghan
Policy |
Sara A. Carter says the Obama administration's
plan to begin an Afghanistan withdrawal in 2011 is creating growing
friction inside the U.S. military, from the halls of the Pentagon to
front-line soldiers who see it as a losing strategy.
Critics of
the plan fear that if they speak out, they will be labeled "pariahs"
unwilling to back the commander in chief, said one officer who didn't
want to be named. But in private discussions, soldiers who are
fighting in Afghanistan, or recently returned from there, questioned
whether it is worth the sacrifice and risk for a war without a clear-cut
strategy to win.
Retired Army Reserve Maj. Gen. Timothy Haake,
who served with the Special Forces, said, "If you're a commander of
Taliban forces, you would use the withdrawal date to rally your troops,
saying we may be suffering now but wait 15 months when we'll have less
enemy to fight."
Haake added, "It plays into ... our enemies'
hands and what they think about us that Americans don't have the staying
power, the stomach, that's required in this type of situation.
It's just the wrong thing to do. No military commander would
sanction, support or announce a withdrawal date while hostilities are
occurring."
A former top-ranking Defense Department official also
saw the policy as misguided.
"Setting a deadline to get out may
have been politically expedient, but it is a military disaster," he
said. "It's as bad as [former U.S. Secretary of State] Dean
Acheson signaling the Communists that we wouldn't defend South Korea
before the North Korean invasion."
The former defense official
said the Obama administration's policy can't work. "It is the kind
of war that is best fought with a small number of elite troops, not tens
of thousands trying to continually take villages, leave, then take them
again," he added.
NATO commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal's rules
of engagement, which emphasize protecting civilian lives, even if that
means putting troops at greater risk, are adding to the anxiety of
troops in Afghanistan. That strategy is contradicted by a policy
that sets an early withdrawal date, said some soldiers with combat
experience in Afghanistan.
"I think McChrystal's strategy is
probably right, it is just not the strategy I want to fight under," said
one officer who recently returned from a combat tour in the Helmand
province of Afghanistan.
A Pentagon spokesman declined comment on
Afghan policy.
Continue reading
here . . . |
| Obama's "Private Flares Of Temper" |
David Saltonstall
says Obama may cultivate an image as the unflappable Mr. Cool, but
he can get hot under the collar too, according to a new book.
In
"The Promise: President Obama, Year One," by Newsweek senior editor
Jonathan Alter, the author recounts a series of private blow-ups --
including a particularly fiery one involving the nation's top military
brass. "A presidential dressing down unlike any in the United
States in more than half a century," is how Alter describes the October
2009 eruption.
The background: Gen. Stanley McChrystal had just
given a speech in London in which he publicly rejected proposals to turn
the tide in Afghanistan with more drone missiles and special forces, a
strategy backed mainly by Vice President Biden. Obama [who
was never even a Cub Scout] viewed McChrystal's comments as a bald
attempt to back him into a Pentagon-backed plan more reliant on troop
buildups -- and he soon ripped into top commanders for what he
considered insubordination.
In an Oval Office showdown, Obama
told Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Gen. David Petraeus that he was
"exceedingly unhappy" with the Pentagon's conduct, Alter reported,
adding that its leaks to the press were "disrespectful of the process."
"This was a cold and bracing meeting," an attendee said of the
encounter, where Obama demanded to know "here and now" if the Pentagon
would be onboard with any presidential strategy.
It apparently
worked: Petraeus later described himself as "chagrined," and both he and
Gates "swore loyalty" to the President. Obama eventually supported a
troop buildup.
Obama's often flashes of anger shine through
Alter's tome, including:
Asked during the 2008 campaign what
accounted for a drop-off in his Jewish support, Obama snipped to a
radio reporter off-air, "It's the f------ Clintons." Later, as
Obama mulled appointing Hillary Clinton his Secretary of State, he
cracked, "Hillary still has some anger issues with me."
When
he found that his Justice Department lawyers were relying on
Bush-era logic he disagreed with, Obama once exclaimed angrily,
"What the f---? This is not the way I like to make decisions."
When Obama learned that Massachusetts Democratic Senate
candidate Martha Coakley was mocking Republican opponent -- and
eventual victor -- Scott Brown for shaking voters' hands in the cold
outside Fenway Park, he knew he would soon be in trouble.
"No! No! You're making that up!" he shouted at aide
David Axelrod, grabbing him by the shirt. "That can't be
right."
WTF! -- "he [Petraeus]
and Gates "swore loyalty" to the President.
WTF! --
they can't do that! -- military officers swear to defend the
Constitution of the United States, against all enemies, foreign and
domestic -- military officers have no business swearing loyalty to a man
-- this isn't NAZI Germany -- or is it? |
| Obama Says He's Accountable for Civilian
Deaths |
NewsMax.com is
reporting that Barack Obama says he is "ultimately accountable" for
civilian deaths on the Afghanistan battlefield.
Speaking at a
White House news conference with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, Obama
said civilian deaths are "something that I have to carry with me" and
that it is not something he takes lightly.
He said the U.S. is
doing everything possible to prevent the killing of Afghan civilians.
Obama said the overwhelming majority of civilian casualties in
Afghanistan are caused by terrorist acts by the Taliban. Some
suspected terrorists have cited civilian deaths as justification for
their actions.
Too bad Obama
doesn't feel that way about our troops. |
| There Wasn't A Lot Of Cheering |
Warner Todd Huston
says
what was cut from Obama’s West Point speech says much about him.
Drudge has an interesting little snippet concerning Obama’s recent
speech before the graduating class at West Point. It is a short
headline about what was cut from Obama’s speech, a cut that really says
a lot about the arrogance of team Obama as well as his utter lack of
spontaneity and sincerity and his slavish reliance on the teleprompter.
Here’s the little snippet on Drudge:
"Tepid applause from cadets cuts, 'That’s a
lot of cheering,' line from prepared remarks."
Obama actually had written into his speech ahead of
time that there was to be "a lot of cheering?" This man who
campaigned against the work of these soldiers to be, this man from a
party that has called these soldiers murderers, criminals, dullards, and
dangerous, these folks were expected to give Obama "a lot of cheering?"
Obama really expected a lot of cheering from folks he and his party hate
so much?
There’s a break from sanity in the Obama White House,
for sure.
But not only was it arrogant of Obama to expect "a lot
of cheering" from people he hates and has treated like dirt, that it was
actually written into the speech at all shows that he can’t even come up
with a spontaneous line without the teleprompters telling him to say it.
Finally the fact that he had to cut it and forgo saying it because
there simply wasn’t "a lot of cheering" says that these soldiers to be
aren’t as stupid as the left imagines they are. These young men
and women clearly understood that Barack Obama and his party are not
friends to our armed forces. They dutifully
golf-clapped for Obama, but they were not enthusiastic -- fully the
correct response. |
| Obama To Skip Wreath-Laying At Tomb Of
Unknown Soldier |
Breitbart is
reporting that Barack Obama plans to spend a long holiday,
socializing, playing golf and dining-out in Chicago.
The White
House says Obama and his family will travel to their hometown on
Thursday and stay through the weekend. It will be their first trip
back home since a visit for Valentine's Day weekend in February 2009.
On Monday, Obama is scheduled to participate in a Memorial Day
ceremony at Abraham Lincoln National Cemetery in Elwood, Ill.
In
Obama's absence, Vice President Joe Biden will participate in the
customary wreath-laying ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at
Arlington National Cemetery outside Washington.
Obama is still miffed at the silent
treatment he received at the West Point commencement. |
| Military Chiefs Of Staff Object To "Don’t
Ask, Don’t Tell" Compromise |
| The chiefs of the Army, Navy, Air Force, and
Marines yesterday signed letters
objecting to a vote on the repeal of the military's "Don't Ask,
Don't Tell" policy today. Expressing concern that Congress would
make a decision on the matter before the military could complete the
time-consuming study they've been making such a fuss about, generals
like George Casey of the Army argued that this would send a message to
troops that the military is not living up to its promise to listen to
the input of servicemen and women. The letters were collected by
DADT proponent John McCain, and will give cover to Republicans today who
may wish to vote against the popular repeal. This position puts
the chiefs in opposition to Defense Secretary Robert Gates and
Commander-in-Chief Barack Obama, who support the compromise. It
also pits them against Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair Mike Mullen, who
points out that according to the legislation's language the repeal won't
go into effect until after the study is completed anyway. |
| A Right To Lawful Command |
J. B. Williams says members of the United
States Military have sworn an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution
and protect the American people from all enemies, both foreign and
domestic. Soldiers, Airmen, Sailors and Marines have voluntarily
accepted the duty to follow all lawful commands and whether Barack Obama
& Co. likes it or not, lawful command begins with a lawful
Commander-in-Chief. The US Constitution defines what a lawful
Commander-in-Chief is, in Article II, Section I, Clause V.
More
than 400 civil and criminal suits have been filed in countless courts
across the country raising a myriad of challenges to Barack Obama’s
legitimacy for the office of president, or Commander-in-Chief.
So
far, every court has declined to hear any evidence against Barack Obama.
Name one time in history when you could find not one court willing to
ask the most obvious questions on a matter as pressing as who the
president of the nation really is?
Under an unlawful commander,
every order is an unlawful order. This means that above all other
citizens, members of the military have a unique stake in the matter of
who is issuing military orders, and as a result, a very real right to
get an answer to that question.
It has been well established that
no matter who Barack Obama’s real father might be, or where on earth he
might have been born, he is NOT a "natural born citizen" of the United
States and he is, therefore, ineligible for the office he currently
holds.
Most of what Obama has stated we already know to be a lie.
He has refused to release any
records to document any part of his life, his birth, his education,
his travel, his adoption in Indonesia or his association with a laundry
list of anti-American
evil-doers. Beyond the fact that most of the public propaganda on
the man is not true, we know literally nothing about this person.
Members of the US Military are not obligated to take orders from
such an individual. Commanding our troops is an honor and a
privilege. The honor is reserved for only one individual at a
time, and that individual must meet certain specific requirements or the
honor is not theirs.
Members of the military not only have a
right to question the lawfulness of their orders, they have a
responsibility and an obligation to do so. If they act on unlawful
orders, they have lost the protection offered by their uniform.
Continue reading
here .
. . |
| Obama’s Flawed Afghanistan Strategy |
George Will
says torrents of uninteresting mail inundate members of Congress,
but occasionally there are riveting communications, such as a recent
e-mail from a noncommissioned officer (NCO) serving in Afghanistan.
He explains why the rules of engagement for U.S. troops are "too
prohibitive for coalition forces to achieve sustained tactical
successes."
Receiving mortar fire during an overnight mission,
his unit called for a 155mm howitzer illumination round to be fired to
reveal the enemy's location. The request was rejected "on the
grounds that it may cause collateral damage." The NCO says that
the only thing that comes down from an illumination round is a canister,
and the likelihood of it hitting someone or something was akin to that
of being struck by lightning.
Returning from a mission, his unit
took casualties from an improvised explosive device that the unit knew
had been placed no more than an hour earlier. "There were
villagers laughing at the U.S. casualties" and "two suspicious
individuals were seen fleeing the scene and entering a home." U.S.
forces "are no longer allowed to search homes without Afghan National
Security Forces personnel present." But when his unit asked Afghan
police to search the house, the police refused on the grounds that the
people in the house "are good people."
On another mission, some
Afghan adults ran off with their children immediately before the NCO's
unit came under heavy small-arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades
(RPGs), and the unit asked for artillery fire on the enemy position.
The response was a question: Where is the nearest civilian
structure? "Judging distances," the NCO writes dryly, "can be
difficult when bullets and RPGs are flying over your head." When
the artillery support was denied because of fear of collateral damage,
the unit asked for a "smoke mission" -- like an illumination round; only
the canister falls to earth -- "to conceal our movement as we planned to
flank and destroy the enemy." This request was granted -- but
because of fear of collateral damage, the round was deliberately fired
one kilometer off the requested site, making "the smoke mission useless
and leaving us to fend for ourselves."
Counterinsurgency
doctrine says that success turns on winning the "hearts and minds" of
the population, hence rules of engagement that reduce risks to the
population but increase those of U.S. combatants. C.J. Chivers of
the New York Times, reporting from Marja, Afghanistan, says "many
firefights these days are strictly rifle and machine gun fights," which
"has made engagement times noticeably longer, driving up the troops'
risks and amplifying a perception that Marja, fought with less fire
support than what was available to American units in other hotly
contested areas, is mired in blood."
The value of any particular
counterinsurgency must be weighed against the risks implicit in the
required tactics. The U.S. mission in Afghanistan involves trying
to extend the power, over many people who fear it, of a corrupt
government produced by a corrupted election. This gives rise to
surreal strategies. The Wall Street Journal recently reported U.S.
attempts "to persuade [President Hamid] Karzai to act more presidential
by giving him more responsibility for operations inside his country."
Think about that.
Ann Marlowe, a visiting fellow of the Hudson
Institute who has been embedded with U.S. forces in Afghanistan six
times, says there have been successes at the local and even provincial
levels "but nothing that has lasted even a year." And the election
fraud last August that secured Karzai another five-year term was
symptomatic: His "government has become more egregiously corrupt
and incompetent in the last three or four years." Last month
Marlowe reported: "The Pentagon's map of Afghanistan's 80 most key
districts shows only five 'sympathetic' to the Afghan government -- and
none supporting it." She suggests that Karzai might believe that
Obama's announced intention to begin withdrawing U.S. troops next summer
"is a bluff." Those Americans who say that Afghanistan is a test
of America's "staying power" are saying that we must stay there because
we are there. This is steady work, but it treats perseverance as a
virtue regardless of context or consequences and makes futility into a
reason for persevering.
Obama has counted on his 2011 run-up to
reelection being smoothed by three developments in 2010 -- the
health-care legislation becoming popular after enactment, job creation
accelerating briskly and Afghanistan conditions improving significantly.
The first two are not happening. He can decisively influence only
the third, and only by adhering to his timetable for disentangling U.S.
forces from this misadventure. |
| Obama's Vietnam Moment |
The Washington Times
says the Democrats plan to cut and run in Afghanistan.
The
White House is clinging to Obama's ill-conceived pledge to begin
withdrawing from Afghanistan in July 2011, regardless of how the war is
going at the time. In dogmatically standing by that pledge, Obama
is virtually guaranteeing he will preside over America's second lost
war.
The issue arose last week during congressional testimony
when Central Command commander Gen. David H. Petraeus said that
withdrawing from Afghanistan would be "based on conditions" and that
"July 2011 is not the date where we race for the exits." Au
contraire, according to White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. "The
July [2011] date, as stated by the president, that's not moving, that's
not changing," he said Sunday. "Everybody agreed on that date."
The scope of the withdrawal is yet to be decided, but according to
Emanuel, the start date is necessary because it has "created a sense of
urgency" among the allies to get the job done. Another thing
creating a sense of urgency is the significantly degraded security
situation in Afghanistan since Obama set this deadline. Insurgent
attacks and coalition casualties are up; the areas of the country in
which the Taliban are active have increased; and Afghanistan President
Hamid Karzai is watching the United States with increasing wariness,
knowing that soon he will have to face the Taliban alone.
A
recent study by Anthony H. Cordesman at the Center for Strategic and
International Studies delves into the problems presented by this
arbitrary "begin the withdrawal" date. The study advises against
"timelines based on national politics, exaggerated expectations, and
past failures [which] can lose the war before it can be won."
Setting unrealistic timelines will pressure the International Security
Assistance Force (ISAF) into "trying to do too much, too quickly,"
"undermine faith in the U.S. and ISAF commitment to stay in
Afghanistan," "embolden insurgents in their war of political attrition"
and "pressure Afghans and others in the region to hedge against U.S.
departure and compromise with insurgents."
Attempts to get
results before the deadline will lead to wasting Afghan troops by
throwing them into the fight unprepared and generating a climate of risk
aversion elsewhere in the government because no one will want to stick
his neck out if America is going to abandon them. Meanwhile,
Pakistan will begin to weigh its options for the post-U.S. regional
environment, and Iran will be more active in expanding its influence.
The report notes that "President Obama's efforts to cap the size of
the U.S. military effort have been broadly misinterpreted as a sign the
U.S. plans to start major withdrawals after mid-2011." But
according to Emanuel, this is not a misinterpretation but a method, a
way of fomenting panic instead of counseling patience. Some
critics have said that setting a withdrawal start date will enable the
enemy simply to wait out the United States, but rather than sitting
back, the enemy is pouring it on. The worse conditions in
Afghanistan get, the more the arbitrary withdrawal start date looks like
retreat in the face of a superior enemy, like cutting and running.
The proper time to leave Afghanistan is when the United States has
achieved its strategic goals. Maybe this will have happened by
July 2011, or maybe not. But it is an abrogation of leadership to
cling to an arbitrary date regardless of the facts on the ground.
Obama should spend more time listening to his generals telling him how
to win wars and pay less attention to ideological functionaries advising
him on the most politically expedient ways to lose one. |
| What The Heck Was McChrystal Thinking? |
Breaking news: In an extraordinary article published in
Rolling Stone, the commander of the 142,000 foreign troops in
Afghanistan was quoted as denouncing the US envoy in Kabul while his
aides dismissed Barack Obama and mocked his deputies.
Marc
Ambinder
asks, what in the heck was Gen. Stanley McChrystal thinking? I
mean, I know what he was thinking: he was tired of being the victim of
what he believes is a concerted effort on behalf of Ambassador to
Afghanistan Karl Eikenberry and others to undermine everything he was
given 18 months to do. He was tired of being perceived in the
press as a neoconservative killer, Dick Cheney's hired assassin, or
disloyal to Obama and his staff. He was angry at being blamed for
leaking the draft of his report to the Obama to Bob Woodward. (He
did NOT leak the document). He was miffed that a large number of
mid-ranking soldiers and battalion commanders and enlisted guys didn't
support his strategy.
What I don't know is which of McChrystal's
aides thought it would be a good idea to let his senior staff speak on
background to Rolling Stone, of all publications, venting McChrystal's
frustrations and their own.
Because if there was ONE thing
McChrystal could do to reduce trust between himself and the National
Security Council leading up to December's planned policy review, it was
to allow a staffer to mock Joe Biden and call the national security
adviser a "clown" ... and to put words in McChrystal's own mouth that
denigrate Eikenberry.
I don't think McChrystal intended to do
this. Nevertheless, he did. And as for whether there was
some miscommunication about attribution, or whether McChrystal thought
no one would really notice, or whether he thought a tick-tock like this
would help his cause ... those questions are unanswerable right now.
Eikenberry's beef with McChrystal goes back to the time when
McChrystal was the Pope. The Pope is the head of the Joint Special
Operations Command. The nickname goes back to an off-hand remark
that Janet Reno made after failing to obtain information from JSOC after
the raid at Waco. (JSOC operators were on the ground but did not
assist in the raid itself.) She called JSOC the Vatican. And
the head of the Vatican is ... the Pope.
At some point, I think
in 2005, one of McChrystal's task-forces-that-didn't-really-exist did
something in Afghanistan that angered Eikenberriy, who was in command of
the region at the time. The two men exchanged words and built
mutual mistrust. They have not worked well together ever since.
McChrystal blames Eikenberry for trying to influence policy by leaking
information and by impeding McChrystal's efforts to build better
relationships with Afghanistan's fragile government.
During the
strategy review, Eikenberry didn't think McChrystal's surge could work.
He told the White House that contractors would have to pick up the slack
for years to come. McChrystal insisted that he could execute his
COIN strategy with a heavy presence of special operations forces ... and
be out in 18 months (i.e, troops would begin to be drawn down).
The White House ultimately sided with McChrystal.
But there were
tensions. Even though McChrystal voted for Obama and told him so
during their first meeting, he sensed that a number of senior White
House aides didn't really believe that the former commander of the
military's special missions unit during the Bush-Cheney years was
suddenly on their side. National Security Adviser James Jones, who
is a bit of cipher to McChrystal's team, may or may not have been one of
these aides. No one in the West Wing bought all that liberal
Internet chatter about JSOC's alleged crimes -- but no one really didn't
buy it, either.
Within hours after today's Rolling Stone story
broke, McChrystal was called by the White House, the Secretary of
Defense, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. They were
not happy.
Neither the Pentagon nor the White House would
comment. |
| Most In Military Will Say McChrystal Was
Right |
NewsBusters.com
says Contessa Brewer got a lot more than she was likely looking for
when she interviewed Col. Jack Jacobs [ret.] this afternoon about the
McChrystal situation. The MSNBC host wanted to focus on the
impropriety of McChrystal publicly airing his criticisms of Obama and
others in the chain of command.
But while the Medal of Honor
recipient readily agreed that McChrystal was out of line, and would
probably pay with his job, Jacobs also went out of his way -- twice --
to add an inconvenient truth: that when it comes to the substance of the
criticism, most in the military think McChrystal "was right."
CONTESSA BREWER: It's about the sort
of disdain for authority. And that worries me.
JACK
JACOBS: Well it should worry you, and I think he's going to
wind up getting fired because of that; at least partially because of
that.
BREWER: But is his view not only about the
President but about Joe Biden, about Jim Jones, the National
Security advisor, about Karl Eikenberry [US ambassador to
Afghanistan], on and on down the list: Richard Holbrooke --
JACOBS: Those views are very widely held, by the way, inside
the military and outside the military, about those people.
That they're ineffective, that Jim Jones, the National Security
Advisor, does not have an impact on national security policy, that
he has very little access. That Holbrooke hasn't done anything
and so on. Those views are widely held. They're not just
held by McChrystal's staff for example.
Contessa didn't respond to Jacobs' startling
assertion. And when a bit later she closed with more concerns
about respecting the chain of command, the colonel took a tough parting
shot.
BREWER: There are hundreds of
thousands of enlisted men and women in the military who are taught
not to question authority; they don't go outside their chain of
command. What kind of message does this send to people at the
lower levels in the military?
JACOBS: Well, it's not a
very good one. But let me tell you what's going to happen.
Gen. McChrystal can't stay in his position. He's probably
going to tender his resignation, and it's probably going to be
accepted -- or demanded in the first place. He might stay.
There are certain circumstances in which he might stay. Likely
as not he is going to be gone, and he's probably going to wind up
retiring.
And in the end, this is what the rank and file of
military establishment is going to say, privately. They're
going to say: absolutely right: you can't do this, you can't
countenance your subordinates speak to the press and say that the
rest of the chain of command above you are a bunch of knuckleheads.
But they're going to say: you know what? He was right.
|
| McChrystal’s Real Offense |
Byron York
says there is a lot of uproar about Gen. Stanley’s McChrystal’s
disrespectful comments about his civilian bosses in the Obama
administration, and Obama would be entirely justified in firing
McChrystal for statements McChrystal and his subordinates made to
Rolling Stone. Obama is a deeply flawed commander-in-chief who
doesn’t want to be fighting a war on terror, but he is the
commander-in-chief. He should have a general who will carry out
his policies without public complaint until the voters can decide to
change those policies.
But the bigger problem with McChrystal’s
leadership has always been the general’s devotion to unreasonably
restrictive rules of engagement that are resulting in the unnecessary
deaths of American and coalition forces. We have had many, many
accounts of the rules endangering Americans, and the Rolling Stone
article provides more evidence. In the story, a soldier at Combat
Outpost JFM who had earlier met with McChrystal was killed in a house
that American officers had asked permission to destroy. From the
article:
The night before the general is scheduled to
visit Sgt. Arroyo’s platoon for the memorial, I arrive at Combat
Outpost JFM to speak with the soldiers he had gone on patrol with.
JFM is a small encampment, ringed by high blast walls and guard
towers. Almost all of the soldiers here have been on repeated
combat tours in both Iraq and Afghanistan, and have seen some of the
worst fighting of both wars. But they are especially angered
by Ingram’s death. His commanders had repeatedly requested
permission to tear down the house where Ingram was killed, noting
that it was often used as a combat position by the Taliban.
But due to McChrystal’s new restrictions to avoid upsetting
civilians, the request had been denied. "These were abandoned
houses," fumes Staff Sgt. Kennith Hicks. "Nobody was coming
back to live in them."
One soldier shows me the list of new
regulations the platoon was given. "Patrol only in areas that
you are reasonably certain that you will not have to defend
yourselves with lethal force," the laminated card reads.
For a soldier who has traveled halfway around the world to fight,
that’s like telling a cop he should only patrol in areas where he
knows he won’t have to make arrests. "Does that make any
f–king sense?" Pfc. Jared Pautsch. "We should just drop
a f–king bomb on this place. You sit and ask yourself:
What are we doing here?"
|
| Obama Bypassed Military |
Michelle Oddis says that at Tuesday’s
confirmation hearing of David Petraeus to head ground efforts in
Afghanistan, the four-star general stated that no one in the military
had ever recommended Obama’s mandatory Afghanistan withdrawal date of
July 2011. (video)
Ranking member on the Senate Armed Services Committee John McCain (R.-Az)
asked Petraeus if at "any time during the deliberations that the
military shared with the President when he went through the decision
making process, was there a recommendation from you or anyone in the
military that we set a date of July 2011?"
"There was not,"
answered Petraeus.
"There was not by any military person that
you know of?" repeated McCain.
"Not that I am aware of," said
Petraeus. |
| Troops Punished For Defending Themselves |
Joseph Farrah
says violating the U.S. military's "Rules of Engagement" in
Afghanistan could guarantee a U.S. soldier a court martial, according to
sources, even though there are significant concerns the rules actually
damage the ability of soldiers to protect themselves in the heat of
combat with the Taliban.
U.S. soldiers are being told to consider
an Article 15 investigation "as part of the AAR process," or After
Action Review, one informed source said. "This is simply
incredible. It's like saying 'court martials (sic) will happen,
just consider that to be part of your counseling process,'" the military
source said.
G2 Bulletin reported last December that the new
rules of engagement ostensibly designed to protect Afghan civilians were
putting the lives of U.S. forces in jeopardy as the Taliban began to
learn to game plan their imposed limits. The ROEs were put in
place in response to Afghan President Hamid Karzai's complaints over
mounting civilian casualties during firefights.
But soldiers are
worrying that the rules, said to be classified U.S. and NATO Secret,
imposed serious restrictions to include no night or surprise searches,
warning villagers prior to searches and no firing on insurgents if they
are walking away from having just planted an explosive.
The more
restrictive rules were imposed by Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the former
U.S. forces in Afghanistan commander. He recently was dismissed
over his published comments criticizing the national security civilian
leadership and replaced by Gen. David Petraeus.
Military sources
said the rules offer a six-step escalation of force (EOF) to include
visual warning, audible warning, non-lethal weapons and tactics, point
weapons at potential threat, disabling shot and shoot to kill.
But they are complicated by the necessity to protect such sites as
hospitals and religious and historical sites. And the rules also
must be coordinated with a page-long list of specific points imposed by
Karzai.
These
charts and statistics
describe the results of Obama's military leadership. Our
casualties in Afghanistan have soared in the last 18 months, almost
equaling the casualties from the preceding eight years. |
| |
©
Copyright Beckwith 2010
All right reserved
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