This morning FOX News ran a report about the alarming state of readiness in Marine aircraft, along with their requisite “military expert” commentary from General Jack Keane. The US Armed Forces has been in an endless state of war since 2001, so this dire readiness state rests as a natural outcome. Some truths hold true for eternity and one of those truths comes from Sun Tzu, in the chapter on Waging War:
2. When you engage in actual fighting, if victory is long in coming, then men’s weapons will grow dull and their ardor will be damped. If you lay siege to a town, you will exhaust your strength.
3. Again, if the campaign is protracted, the resources of the State will not be equal to the strain.
4. Now, when your weapons are dulled, your ardor damped, your strength exhausted and your treasure spent, other chieftains will spring up to take advantage of your extremity. Then no man, however wise, will be able to avert the consequences that must ensue.
5. Thus, though we have heard of stupid haste in war, cleverness has never been seen associated with long delays.
6. There is no instance of a country having benefited from prolonged warfare.
Everyone in Congress who sits on Armed Services committees and the White House staff, who receive Armed Forces readiness reports, should have been well aware of these looming problems for the last decade. This isn’t just some “new problem” blowing up out of the wild blue yonder; it’s the predictable outcome of more than a decade of protracted war, then compounded by President Obama’s deliberate and willful undercutting defense readiness. When you have an administration more concerned about social engineering than warfighting capability, this decline in military readiness rests as the outcome – the Obama administration deliberately has made decisions designed to weaken the US military – that’s the truth. Now, lacking an ability to prove their “motives”, the Obama chorus will recoil in outrage and insist the President cares about military readiness and national security, so let’s just say the outcome of 8 years of Obama military policy has led to a collapse of American power projection globally and the next administration inherits a US Armed Forces besieged with readiness issues that must be addressed immediately.
“The U.S. is about to start accepting a surge of Syrian refugees — all vetted in less time than originally anticipated by the federal government.
Because of a spike in Middle Eastern refugees needing placement, the Obama administration has decided to rush their vetting process to three months, from the original 18-24 months.
“While the resettlement process usually takes 18 to 24 months, the surge operation will reduce the time to three months,” the Associated Press reported Thursday.”
Great stuff from the Obama administration and the administration goal of relocating 10,000 Syrian refugees in the US is a floor and not a ceiling, according to this report, so the number could increase. You know they can’t possibly properly vet these refugees with the civil chaos in Syria and no way to check that even the passports are legit. If there is any way to undermine US national security, the Obama administration will rush to do it.
Instead of slowing down the process of bringing in Syrian refugees due to serious problems with vetting them, which includes the rampant fraud with fake Syrian passports, the Obama administration has decided to speed up the process and process 600 Syrian refugees a day according to this Washington Examiner report. The goal is to process 10,000 Syrian refugees for entry into the United States by September 30th. Now, the FBI director stated months ago that there’s no way to vet these people due to no data bases to check their passports, names, etc. against, but leave it to the Obama administration to just write another fake narrative.
Last weekend reports of CIA-backed Syrian rebels fighting Pentagon Syrian-backed militias emerged in numerous news reports. Here’s a LA Times report:
“Syrian militias armed by different parts of the U.S. war machine have begun to fight each other on the plains between the besieged city of Aleppo and the Turkish border, highlighting how little control U.S. intelligence officers and military planners have over the groups they have financed and trained in the bitter five-year-old civil war.”
War On The Rocks has a report with a very helpful map, which explains that this isn’t really the case in, “ARE CIA-BACKED SYRIAN REBELS REALLY FIGHTING PENTAGON-BACKED SYRIAN REBELS?” by Sam Heller, March 28, 2016. Heller reports:
“This is complicated, but bear with me. The Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) are not a monolithic force. Like nearly every other faction in Syria, they’re spread across an archipelago of enclaves nationwide. The SDF units clashing with Syrian rebels reportedly supported by the CIA are not supported by the Pentagon —they’re from a different enclave. The U.S. military is exclusively supporting the SDF in northeastern Syria on the other side of the Euphrates River. The Pentagon-backed SDF east of the Euphrates is fighting the self-proclaimed Islamic State, not rebels with or without U.S. backing.
Allow me to explain.
The confusion around this news story is a result of wartime Syria’s jigsaw-like map of control. The Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) and the SDF umbrella under which they operate are primarily active in northeastern Syria east of the Euphrates River, where they’ve linked what had been two isolated Kurdish enclaves to form a zone of control along much of Turkey’s southern border. But they also control a still-isolated enclave west of the Euphrates River in northwestern Aleppo province called Afrin, as well as a single neighborhood in Aleppo city. Afrin remains separated from YPG/SDF territory east of the Euphrates by a long stretch of Islamic State territory that the U.S. government calls the “Manbij Pocket.”
Before February, SDF units in Afrin had periodically clashed with Arab and Turkmen rebels in northern Aleppo province, including some that reportedly receive arms via a combined intelligence cell in Turkey that includes the CIA. Then, in February, the SDF in Afrin took advantage of the chaos caused by a Russian-backed regime offensive around Aleppo city to attack the rebels from the west and grab large sections of the northern Aleppo countryside. The Afrin SDF allegedly enjoyed Russian close air support against these rebels, although they have publicly denied these reports. Some clashes have persisted since then, but the new SDF-drawn lines have mostly held.”
Please go read the entire article at the War On The Rocks and look at the map, which makes the disposition of the two SDP forces much clearer and makes Heller’s explanation much easier to understand. News agencies should spend some time trying to acquire updated, accurate maps and talk to more analysts familiar with what’s going on before running with these stories. US policy assuredly has been a convoluted mess in the ME for a long time, but having some accurate facts from on the ground should always be sought and might help unravel some of the media’s added knots of misinformation.
Check out Rudy Giuliani describing the vulgar, vile Donald Trump at 31:09 on this video – the lies are limitless from Trump apologists. Giuliani described Trump as “gentlemanly” — the man tweeting in public about Megyn Kelly bleeding out of her wherever is really a gentleman in private…. yeah right! So, this post is going to be a recap and some thoughts on the GOP Primary Insurgency.
Last Spring the 2016 race looked like an easy GOP victory when Hillary Clinton’s private email server scandal broke. Coupled with truly terrible campaign PR, from the initial video launch to the multiple efforts to relaunch her campaign, things looked dire in ClintonWorld. The GOP line-up, on the other hand, looked like a field of many talented Republicans and then there was Donald Trump. The media created this “Year of the Insurgent” meme and while Sanders gets mentioned as being part of that meme, despite being a “Washington insider” down to his bones, for the most part the term has been a badge of honor worn by Donald Trump and the media saturation has been on Trump, not on Sanders.
Hillary, with the help of Bill Clinton’s arm-twisting and shoving his political muscle around, is poised to glide to the Democrat nomination, head held high, serenely walking up the middle, cleared by Bill Clinton’s brilliant triangulation strategy, as I’ve repeated since last Fall. If the match-up is against Trump, she will easily win is my prediction.
The GOP is headed to a train wreck of a convention, aided by virulent protesters funded by George Soros, by a duplicitous John Kasich, funded by George Soros and then there are the two “front-runners” in this GOP campaign, Ted Cruz and Donald Trump, both surrounded by enough strange antics that one can only wonder how the GOP allowed its party to be hijacked by hostile forces.
Trump’s mass media saturation for months on end last year, where the media gave him millions of dollars of free air time and where he relentlessly repeated his litany of buzz words and hollow phrases, came loaded down, not with policy, but with some of the most vicious sleaze was, in plain English, CHEATING – it was cheating and fraud on a massive scale. From many sources:
Now add in what amounted to a rock star doing a national tour with big stadium venues lined up and plenty of nationalistic jingoism and scapegoating various ethnic groups, Trump attracted quite a crowd of bottom-feeders, along with plenty of poor whites trampled on during the past 8 years of a depressed American economy and Obama vast federal government expansion and intrusion into American daily life. Trump promises to “Make America Great Again” and for millions of Americans, feeling powerless, he has become their savior.
In comments at various sites, I dubbed Trump’s most faithful, those who champion him no matter how vile, outrageous or deceitful he is proven to be, as his 5th Avenue Loyalists. They will remain loyal even if he does shoot someone on 5th Avenue and make up rationalizations to justify it. The Trump phenomenon ranks as a bizarre study in mass delusion that I hope America breaks free of soon.
As to Ted Cruz, now here is another candidate that no matter how much I would like to unreservedly support him, based on his stated conservative principles, I can’t. Cruz, a brilliant lawyer, who so carefully calculated avoiding alienating Trump supporters and refused to condemn Trump’s antics early on, hoping that if Trump fell, he could pull Trump supporters to his side, still publicly campaigns with the bizarre freak show that is Glenn Beck. Beck has been all over the political landscape – Tea Party enthusiast, down to the border to hand out teddy bears to illegals, champion of George Washington’s values, and now prognosticator of religious prophecy. Yet, Cruz still campaigns with him, in fact, Cruz traipsed down to the border in 2014 with Beck to hand out soccer balls and teddy bears to illegal immigrants and Beck highlighted all the good works of these religious charities receiving millions of federal dollars to administer these refugee and immigration services for the government. It’s a YUGE racket of corruption! (here and here and here)
Trump corners the market on being able to say vulgar, inane, idiotic, crude, and over the top bombastic things with no political fall-out. He could repeat an idiotic plan to send US troops to murder ISIS family members, all to sound tough, and his supporters excuse that as he either didn’t mean it literally or he, at least, wants to “do something”. That plan was a war crime, ISIS terrorists routinely use their family members as human shields and don’t “scare” easily, but none of this matters to Trump supporters. The Trump policy disparaged US troops, equating them to just hired muscle, who will commit cold-blooded murder without question.
Trump’s supporters hear Trump tough talk and cheer – no matter what the content! However, Cruz is supposedly so smart, so why would he recently revert back to this language of “carpet bombing” bombast from earlier in his campaign, knowing this language carries with it so much negative political fall-out? It makes no sense, just as his campaigning with Glenn Beck makes no sense.
Now, we get to the present tabloid trash phase of this GOP Insurgency, where Kasich stands smugly on the sidelines, hoping Trump and Cruz implode, basking in Soros cash and the GOP primary moves to the gutter of the Kardashians and Paris Hilton looks like a class act compared to Trump and Cruz. Sure, there are those who will wail that Cruz is a victim and that Cruz’ wife was trashed with that Trump retweet of the unflattering picture of Heidi Cruz. Sure, there are those who blame Cruz for the Super PAC release of public photos of bare-bottomed Melania Trump being splashed in papers. And sure, Trump is close friends with Pecker, who now published the exposé of Cruz and a handful of women Cruz is alleged to have had affairs with in the National Enquirer.
All of the above can be attributed to Cruz or Trump, but something is rotten in this entire GOP primary – Cruz who can’t get along with anyone in the Senate and just created endless agitation propaganda stunts there and now we have Trump the reality TV insurgent tearing the GOP apart, but promising to bring in “Democrat converts” to rejuvenate the GOP… So, how does Trump who brags about hiring the best people hire a sleaze of the first order like Roger Stone, who published a book, “The Clintons’ War on Women” in Oct. 2015 and the “Jeb! And the Bush Crime Family” in Feb. 2016? How did Corey Lewandowski rate as part of the pool of best among campaign managers? And how on earth did this former twit, Tea Party activist, Cruz senatorial campaign volunteer, Katrina Pierson, end up on Trump’s list of “best” candidates for campaign spokesperson? And what are the odds that such a woman would be part of a National Enquirer spread meant to take down Ted Cruz?
Who doubts for a moment that despite all this “bad blood,” that if push comes to shove, Cruz would, in a heartbeat, jump at the opportunity to be Trump’s vice president, if offered the job? Look at the transformation of the “nice” Dr. Ben Carson, who was vilely trashed by Trump, now singing Trump’s praises??? Look at Chris Christie???
Here’s a link to Trump with some golfing buddies, Bill Clinton and Rudy Giuliani… Rush Limbaugh is also a Trump golfing buddy. Bill O’Reilly another Trump long-time friend. Geraldo, of tabloid trash TV, another long-time friend of Trump. Jeanine Pirro – another Trump long-time friend – check out her ex-husband, whose corruption derailed her career, btw. She divorced him and rebounded with this FOX news gig. Allegations abound about her own corruption as DA too, so who knows… Trump’s corruption is epic and well-known, but his supporters airily dismiss it.
There’s a lot of strange stuff going on in this GOP hostile takeover and we haven’t even scratched the surface on who the real power players behind the scenes are in trying to implode the GOP. Impacting soon, I’m sure!
As if we don’t have enough evidence that Donald Trump is UNFIT to ever be commander in chief, here’s a short piece by Kerry Jacoby, at the American Thinker, “Donald Trump and China: Read This before You Vote”. Jacoby recalls his memories of Tiananmen Square in 1989. He writes:
A year later, in a Playboy interview, here is what Donald Trump said of the Chinese government’s handling of the Tiananmen Square massacre:
“When the students poured into Tiananmen Square, the Chinese government almost blew it. Then they were vicious, they were horrible, but they put it down with strength. That shows you the power of strength. Our country is right now perceived as weak … as being spit on by the rest of the world” –
Then the interviewer changed the subject.
So, no, Trump fans, I will not vote for this man. Not in the primary, not in the general.
I saw the pictures. Nothing can excuse that statement.
Before our very eyes, the corruption of cultural standards begets the corruption of law and politics. The coarsest part of the debate was Trump’s boorish boast (for which I’m willing to take him at his word, lest the next debate sink to a new low). The most egregious part, though, was Trump’s vow that, as commander-in-chief, he would compel the finest, best-trained armed forces in the history of the planet to commit war crimes — because there are evil people doing unspeakable things, as if that never happened before.
For a number of years in the mid-aughts, we debated the merits vel non of waterboarding. I defended the legality of this interrogation method — in the restrained practice of the CIA, not as cruelly administered historically — mostly based on a strict interpretation of the federal torture statute. It was not an endorsement of the tactic in any particular case. The opposition’s point was well taken that the existence of a legal justification (which they did not concede) would not necessarily make the use of waterboarding good policy. We volleyed ticking-bomb scenarios and slippery slopes back and forth.
As a lawyer, I instinctively believed we should be able to write rules clarifying the extremely rare circumstances in which aggressive tactics could be used. Critics forcefully countered that the very writing of rules was an authorization that would be stretched to cover non-dire circumstances. Jonah Goldberg reminded us about the “hidden law,” which as applied here, counsels forbidding across the board that which should be forbidden in almost all situations, in the belief that if a dire emergency did arise, good people would act outside the law, do what had to be done, and hope that others would understand and forgive.
Since I have already vented in the comments on Mr. McCarthy’s piece, let me just paste it here and be done for today:
Please, if the choices are Hillary or Trump – America is doomed, PERIOD! Trump is not some lifesaver of the Republic, he’s an insurgent intent on burning the system down! You reap what you sow when you enable sociopaths and those two are extreme sociopaths, who don’t believe rules apply to them.
I am keeping a list, for future reference, of every Republican mouthpiece, who uses the phrase, “that’s just Donald Trump being Donald Trump,” to excuse his excesses. Duncan Hunter, yesterday morning, a vet, no less was interviewed on FOX news in the morning about Trump’s Thursday night doubling done on his killing ISIS family members policy. Hunter said he hadn’t seen the debate, deflected, then tried to excuse Trump by asserting Trump was “just a little bit inarticulate”. I am disgusted that a former Marine Corps officer could excuse Trump’s assertion that he would ORDER U.S. troops to commit war crimes. There’s another Trump mouthpiece, a former Navy seal, who was on FOX doing the same thing. They are a disgrace to the US Armed Service and have dishonored themselves and are unfit spokespeople for we, the heirs of General George Washington’s Continental Army!
All this to promote an obvious sociopath, out of venal political motives. Rudy Guiliani, a man I respected, did the same “that’s Donald Trump being Donald Trump” excuse last weekend on FOX News and I lost all respect for him. He has been an “unofficial” Trump adviser for months and was well aware of Trump’s war crimes spiel, because Trump has repeated it several times. NRO should do a heading at the top of their page, to click on, and chronicle, names, dates and statements of all these Trump enablers – they deserve to be remembered for this.
As a vet myself, and the spouse of a Grenada and Desert Storm vet, I am disgusted that these people are excusing Trump and the murmurs of he’s trying to be tough – well, here’s the rub – the strategic challenges to defeat Islamic terror, which Mr. McCarthy has written very informatively about in his books, are complicated and very challenging, as it is, but for some fool like Trump uttering those words, he just added to the problem exponentially and he is UNFIT to ever command the US Armed Forces. It’s not just that Trump’s “strategy” is a war crime, it’s also that anyone with a brain knows that a military strategy based on killing innocent civilians in hopes it hurts the morale of enemy combatants is IDIOTIC and unhinged. YUGE blowback, in kind, would be the result of Trump’s policy.
His words were heard by every world leader and our enemies.
Trump walking that back should not be forgotten – remember it and remind all Trump enablers, because his foolish and idiotic utterance put US Armed Forces, operating in an already dangerous area of the world, in more danger! Anyone aspiring to be commander in chief, who would say he will order our military to commit war crimes, is a threat to The Constitution and to the troops he aspires to command!!! Wake up, this is no longer just the Trump reality TV show -Mr. Draft Deferment, just put US troops in danger with his careless and idiotic blustering – all to “sound” tough.
Let me add that, yes, I am aware that the Trump campaign issued a statement late yesterday, avowing that Trump would obey the law as President, but NEVER forget what his first policy was and that he only backtracked for political expediency, not because he conceded his war crimes policy was immoral and illegal. He is Hillary’s twin brother when it comes to saying or doing whatever it takes to get what he wants – they are both corrupt to the core and they will corrupt all who follow them!!!
Rachel E. VanLandingham and Geoffrey S. Corn 3:53 p.m. EST March 3, 2016
The GOP front-runner’s intent to order war crimes would pit the president against his troops.
It’s not unusual for presidential candidates to say things on the stump that they really don’t mean. But Americans should reject any candidate who proudly espouses his commitment to lead the American military into the underworld of war crimes. This nation simply cannot condone a presidential candidate who makes war crimes a central plank in his national security platform. Instead of making “America great again,” such policies would destabilize the foundations of our professional military while pitting military leaders against their commander in chief. The military cannot ignore these risks, and American voters must not either.
Rachel E. VanLandingham, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel and judge advocate, is an associate law professor at Southwestern Law School and vice president of theNational Institute of Military Justice. Geoffrey S. Corn, a retired Army lieutenant colonel and formerly the Army’s top law of war adviser, is a law professor at South Texas College of Law.
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