Posts Tagged ‘military’

Admiral Mike Mullen, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that “the greatest threat to our national security is our debt.” Senator Coburn said on “Morning Joe” on Feb 13 that “$100 billion could be cut.” Ron Paul says that only about half the defense budget is for defense, the other half is for militarism abroad.

So here are 16 ways to cut its waste, fraud, and abuse of American taxpayers.

Read more by Jon Basil Utley at AmericanConservative.com

It’s one of the most fundamental political questions of our time: What’s driving the growth in government spending? And it has a relatively straightforward answer: first and foremost, spending on health care through Medicare and Medicaid, and other major social insurance and entitlement programs.

But I thought it was worth reviewing the evidence in a bit more detail. There are a few surprises along the way, some of which liberal readers might like and others of which will please conservative readers.

The Web site usgovernmentspending.com has an abundance of data on federal, state and local spending at different points in time. My focus will be on how government has been spending its money in the present and the past, rather than evaluating any future budgets or projections.

Read more by NATE SILVER at fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com

Why is the Obama Campaign trying to disenfranchise military votes and at the same time, trying to make sure that illegal aliens remain on state voter rolls? Why are both political parties pandering for the Latino vote? Can illegal aliens vote now? The answer is yes, but I’ll get to that in a minute.

King_ObamaAs Obama’s so-called Department of Justice sues numerous states to block military votes from being counted in the upcoming November election, they are also suing states to keep them from purging known illegal voters from voter registration files.

Read more by JB Williams at RightSideNews.com

Panic is never pretty. When it involves a politician scrambling desperately to stay afloat, it is ugly. When it involves a president of the United States trading national-security secrets for political gain, it is obscene.

Twice last week, The New York Times published insider accounts of Obama-administration decisions. One involved “kill lists” of terrorists targeted by drones. The other described cyberwarfare attacks against Iran.

The articles revealed details of top-level meetings and quoted the president’s comments. They were so gushingly favorable to him that it’s clear they were based on authorized leaks by the White House designed to make Obama look tough against terror. Flattery was part of the bargain.

Read more by Michael Goodwin at NY Post.com

A very strange story, that 6,000-word front-page New York Times piece on how, every Tuesday, Barack Obama shuffles “baseball cards” with the pictures and bios of suspected terrorists from around the world and chooses who shall die by drone strike. He even reserves for himself the decision of whether to proceed when the probability of killing family members or bystanders is significant.

The article could have been titled “Barack Obama: Drone Warrior.” Great detail on how Obama personally runs the assassination campaign. On-the-record quotes from the highest officials. This was no leak. This was a White House press release.

Read more By Charles Krauthammer at Washington Post

To those who served: American Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines and Coastguardsmen,

THANK YOU!

Uncle Sam is getting a little weird. Make that a lot weird. Having dumped hundreds of billions of dollars into a sinkhole called Afghanistan — populated by misogynistic, pederastic, tribalistic and religiously supremacist primitives — to no avail, he has hit on a new plan for winning those ever-elusive Afghan “hearts and minds.”

Uncle Sam has decided that the answer lies in the latrine with the U.S. Marine Corps. No kidding. When nature calls, Uncle Sam has decided he wants every U.S. Marine equipped with a map and compass, or some other way of knowing direction. This is to ensure that no U.S. Marine in Afghanistan urinates in the direction of Mecca ever again.

Read more by Diana West on Townhall.com

Read more by Tony Capaccio at BusinessWeek

Uganda? Where else are we going next?

American militants like Anwar al-Awlaki are placed on a kill or capture list by a secretive panel of senior government officials, which then informs the president of its decisions, according to officials.

There is no public record of the operations or decisions of the panel, which is a subset of the White House’s National Security Council, several current and former officials said. Neither is there any law establishing its existence or setting out the rules by which it is supposed to operate.

Read more by Mark Hosenball at Reuters

The NYPD now has anti-aircraft capability.

New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly tells “60 Minutes” that the NYPD has “some means to take down a plane” in what he termed an “extreme situation,” during an interview tonight on CBS, according to a transcript of the exchange.

Under fire by some for police counterterrorism tactics highlighted in a series of Associated Press articles, Kelly doesn’t elaborate to interviewer Scott Pelley exactly how cops could take down a plane, but when asked point-blank whether the police have the equipment and training to pull off such a feat, Kelly responds, “Yes”

“Do you mean to say that the NYPD has the means to take down an aircraft?” Pelley asks.

To which Kelly responds: “Yes, I prefer not to get into the details but obviously this would be in a very extreme situation.”

“You have the equipment and the training,” Pelley follows up.

“Yes,” Kelly answers.

Read more By PHIL HELSEL in the NY Post

Military official’s careful approach slows pace of Mohammed trial

The military officer overseeing the prosecution of Khalid Sheik Mohammed is taking a go-slow approach that would bring the confessed Sept. 11 mastermind to trial months, or perhaps years, from now.

It was seven years ago that the CIA in Pakistan captured KSM, as the former senior al Qaeda officer is known, and eventually turned him over to U.S. military custody for a war crimes trial at the Navy base in Guantanamo, Cuba.

It was six months ago that Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. relented to political pressure in New York and Washington, and reversed his decision to try KSM in a civilian court in the Big Apple.

Since then, retired Navy Vice Adm. Bruce MacDonald, who as the “convening authority” is overseeing prosecutions of terror suspects by military commissions, has set out a step-by-step process behind the scenes to begin the most prominent trial of the five 9/11 co-conspirators held in Cuba.

–SNIP– “People want justice for the acts of 9/11,” Mr. Stimson said. “Justice delayed, in their minds, is justice denied, as the saying goes.

Read more by Rowan Scarborough at The Washington Times

Still no trial??

Palin’s vision of US military policy: If we have to fight, we fight to win. To do that, we use overwhelming force.

In May, Governor Palin gave a speech at a “Tribute to the Troops” event at Colorado Christian University. As part of this speech, Governor Palin outlined a clear vision of American military policy, which has now become known as the Palin doctrine by many:

There’s a lesson here then for the effective use of force, as opposed to sending our troops on missions that are ill-defined. And it can be argued that our involvement elsewhere, say in Libya, is an example of a lack of clarity. See, these are deadly serious questions that we must ask ourselves when we contemplate sending Americans into harm’s way. Our men and women in uniform deserve a clear understanding of U.S. positions on such a crucial decision. I believe our criteria before we send our young men and women—America’s finest—into harm’s way should be spelled out clearly when it comes to the use of our military force. I can tell you what I believe that criteria should be in five points.

First, we should only commit our forces when clear and vital American interests are at stake. Period.

Second, if we have to fight, we fight to win.

Third, we must have . . .

Read more in an Op-Ed by Whitney Pitcher, a writer who is a member of Conservatives4Palin, writing 8/26/2011 in Israel National News

America and Afghanistan are close to signing a strategic pact which would allow thousands of United States troops to remain in the country until at least 2024, The Daily Telegraph can disclose.

Read more at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/afghanistan/8712701/US-troops-may-stay-in-Afghanistan-until-2024.html

Walk For The Fallen
Sunday, August 21 at 10:00a.m.

Milwaukee VA Medical Center

Meet at Lake Wheeler

In support of Being There – Reaching Out, a Wisconsin non-profit which supports the Wisconsin families of our fallen Armed Forces.

From http://www.fisherhousewi.org/?p=25

Walk For the Fallen Flyer

These men died with honor, but the president dishonors their memories

Thirty American troops came home to Dover Air Force Base last week.

They died when their helicopter was shot down in Afghanistan by Taliban with rocket-propelled grenades. Many were members of SEAL Team Six, the fabled special operations unit that flew stealth choppers into Pakistan after Osama bin Laden, putting the old monster down in a pile of his porno tapes.

Nineteen of the 30 families asked for no media coverage of the ceremony at Dover — that request for privacy was, of course, honored.

By everyone, that is, except Barack Obama.

He slipped in a personal photographer, who snapped a dramatic photo of the president saluting in silhouette.

This was not an item for the private Obama scrapbook, to go beside a copy of the Standard & Poor’s letter downgrading America’s credit rating. The White House pushed it to every major media outlet, and made it “Photo of the Day” on its official website. It was an obvious attempt to carve an iconic image into the American consciousness with a mass-media chisel.

By JOHN HAYWARD, NY Post, 8/14/2011

Read more at http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/obama_cheap_shot_VxalLSSU0kmrCmfVdk5lOI