Category Archives: Military

Amen, General Dempsey!

“Military leaders do not belong at political conventions”

Former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin E.Dempsey, penned an important reminder to retired generals. In the Washington Post, he writes:

“The military is not a political prize. Politicians should take the advice of senior military leaders but keep them off the stage. The American people should not wonder where their military leaders draw the line between military advice and political preference. And our nation’s soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines should not wonder about the political leanings and motivations of their leaders.”

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Filed under General Interest, Military, Politics

The Pieces of the Media Messaging Puzzle

wp-1469896090617.jpgAbove:  A few of my books.  See, I do read more than historical romance novels and decorating books;-)

The following is just another long repeat of my dissection of the Clinton mass media saturation/scorched earth strategy, which Trump “borrowed” to wage his “GOP Insurgent” primary campaign.

The reason Trump broke out of the pack was because he used the borrowed Clinton-style mass media saturation/scorched earth strategy.

That strategy is a sophisticated INFORMATION WARFARE strategy introduced into American politics by the Clinton political operatives.

The mass media saturation strategy was developed by far-left Alinskyite Marxists.  The messaging wall required for mass media saturation to succeed requires the active collusion of the mass media NEWS outlets to facilitate it, by actively and relentlessly repeating the messages of the political candidate or activists using this “buzz word, catchphrase spin (talking points messaging). Mass media saturation INFORMATION WARFARE requires mass media collusion to succeed.  This strategy can NOT succeed without mass media messaging dominance to CONTROL (“win”) the 24/7 news cycle (or as the Clinton team dubbed it – the spin cycle).

It is a form of mass media brainwashing and antithetical to American free speech principles!  To succeed this strategy requires MEDIA COLLUSION.

It can NOT work without that media collusion.

Here are the components:

  • Talking points and buzz word messaging, which are relentlessly repeated by both political operatives and the media.
  • Mass media domination of the messaging, to control the 24/7 NEWS cycle, which requires mass media collusion.
  • Relentless repetition of polling data by both the political operatives and media, to facilitate the manufacture of opinion cascades (winning in all the polls)

Only Democrats had successfully used this strategy before Trump, because the liberal media never before gave BILLIONS of dollars in free media for one GOP candidate, to run a “GOP Insurgency” for 8 months straight on all three cable news networks nor did the mass media cable networks ever collude or facilitate in the mass media messaging for any Republican candidate or cause.

Just as the Wikileaks leak has exposed the MEDIA COLLUSION between the DNC and the media to rig the system against Sanders, that SAME media collusion exists between the Potemkin Trump campaign (or the Clinton operatives who were in the shadows masterminding this charade) and the media.

Those electronic trails exist!!!

This mass media saturation requires constant messaging coordination between political operatives and the media facilitators to keep the SPIN cycle moving. Trump’s “win, win, win” is exactly like Carville’s “sex, sex, sex” during impeachment. I feel sure Trump’s MEDIA COLLUSION will be exposed before November.

And the scorched earth part of the strategy is really just the mass media saturation strategy on steroids, replete with endless character assassinations (low-energy Jeb, lyin’ Ted, little Marco, etc.) and a take no prisoners attitude.

Here’s an example of how mass media saturation plays out:

During the Benghazi hearing, Hillary sailed through that hearing and the Dems on the committee never wavered from their talking points.:

“This hearing is a right-wing witch hunt” and

“This is costing the American taxpayers $4.7 million.”

A few of those Dems, to include Congressman Cummings, groveled so shamelessly, that’s it’s obvious they wanted to secure enough Clinton brownie points to merit consideration for cabinet posts in her administration.

Every dem on that committee did what Trump has done for 10 months – repeated the same short talking points for 11 hours straight. They did not deviate. Then the media and some high-profile big name peeps did interviews to dismiss the Republicans and then the news media declared Hillary won and the polling got driven home that she “won”. You can’t break through mass media saturation. It creates a messaging wall – those talking points are what gets driven home. That is the only thing most people remember – it is mass media brainwashing! Watch any dem on TV – they repeat their talking points as often as they can and they circulate these talking points to a virtual army of media folks – TV, print media, online, they even have hordes of them on comment threads, they were on those Excite politics message boards back in 1998. The liberal media colludes to facilitate it.

The use of polling to manufacture opinions cascades drives the polling toward the desired outcome.  The media facilitates this with relentlessly repeating the manufactured polls and on any issue or candidate, the media hypes the polling that bolsters the issue or candidate they are trying to propel ahead.  The media colludes in many ways with this mass media saturation strategy, but through decades of presenting polls as if they are a legitimate representation of the “will of the people”, the American people have been conditioned to accept polling data as sacrosanct.  Polls are just the opinions of a very small number of Americans and can be easily manipulated by both the sampling groups and how the questions are worded or even by how certain words are emphasized while asking the question.

Pundits and journalists saying something like, “Trump is leading in all the polls, don’t you need to support your leader?” to other Republican candidates in the primary helped foster this aura of legitimacy about poll numbers.  The media and political operatives also often use polls number to marginalize and silence opposing viewpoints.  For instance on a topic like gay marriage, where aggressive mass media saturation was used to mainstream that, media pundits or journalists will cast questions to someone who is opposed to gay marriage like, “Well, 65% of Americans support gay marriage, so isn’t your view out of the mainstream?”  This type of questioning casts the person with the opposing view as a fringe kook.  It works very effectively to silence dissent and to strong-arm compliance to the manufactured “public opinion”.

This same strategy is how Bill Clinton survived impeachment, where the scorched earth trashed anyone connected with the impeachment and then the Clinton mouthpieces were out there selling manufactured polling, to create the impression that the American people supported Bill Clinton and that the impeachment was just a “vast, right-wing witch hunt.”  In recent years the “hate speech” tactic has also been hyped in manufactured polling, to silence dissent.  Most Americans don’t want to be cast as bigots, racists or haters, so any poll presenting a liberal cause as over 50% of Americans support that view, is spun to cast anyone who disagrees as all three wrapped into one.

Here’s a short bio on how I came to be studying mass media saturation/scorched earth strategy:

wp-1469897003908.jpg

Above: I found this when I was a teenager.  It is one of my prize possessions.  I was with my parents looking in an old shed behind an old house, that was slated to be torn down for a new road to go through.  This report, along with learning how to play a game, called Diplomacy, with a group of boys after school, fueled my interest in military strategy.

I have been studying the Clinton “spin” since it first entered American politics and I have been studying propaganda techniques, with an emphasis on Soviet and Eastern bloc propaganda since 1980, when I was a young solider.

It took me several years in the 90s to figure out the polling data kabuki part of the strategy.  Systems analysis has always been something I do, long before I even knew it was called “systems analysis”.  I like to break down systems (mechanical, political, living, etc.) into parts and then I like to figure out how the parts work together to make the system work.  I like to figure out the flaws in systems too.  I suppose that’s why I became so interested in military strategy in my teens, because I believe that is the pinnacle of strategic-thinking.  In my opinion, it surpasses political and geopolitical strategy as far as organization goes.

This mass media saturation strategy has distinctive parts to it and it can be proven with electronic evidence on the messaging coordination, just like the Wikileaks leak exposed the DNC and media collusion.  Sure, Trump is very talented at reading the mood of the people and he has a con man’s knack for selling people anything, but this strategy relies on mass media messaging collusion and the polling kabuki to create an impenetrable messaging wall.  The relentless repetition across large swaths of the media “battlefield” assures it will dominate.

There’s plenty of information on how opinion cascades work to move public opinion via repetition messaging and polling data. Cass Sunstein has written about it – he’s into social engineering using mass media manipulation (“nudging” the American people into the “proper” views). Here’s a link to a Stella Morobito link where she gives a simple explanation on how opinion cascades work and they do work – it’s how gay marriage and global warming were mainstreamed:

http://stellamorabito.net/2016…

I wrote about this back in 1998 on the Excite message boards, where Clinton operatives descended like Genghis Khan’s horde to silence opposing views. I know how far they will go to silence opposing views.  My Messages of mhere story, albeit snarky and written in that annoying third person, is the truth.  All of the people mentioned exist in real life.  I used the user name “mhere” on the Excite message boards.

Only Sanders and Cruz made any dent against the mass media saturation/scorched earth strategy and they did it by grassroots campaigning – not with mass media campaigning.  As Trump and the media have hyped how many millions Jeb’s campaign spent on ads and got nowhere, they don’t mention the BILLIONS of dollars in free media and 24/7 NEWS cycle control the media GAVE  to Trump.  Paid ads can NOT compete with a candidate who has 24/7 NEWS cycle control in the mass media, replete with relentless repetition of messaging and manufactured opinion polls.

Liberal CNN and MSNBC gave Trump 24/7 coverage for 8 months to run his “GOP Insurgency”, but in late February they switched to Clinton scorched earth, where there was about a week and half of “Trump the fascist” incidents, which led up to that Chicago rally, where Soros paid mobs were waiting. Trump cancelled that rally, but after that CNN and MSNBC stopped giving Trump the 24/7 megaphone.

FOX has stayed all-in for Trump. Liberal news networks don’t “give” Republicans 24/7 news cycle control and they sure don’t give them that for 8 months straight. It was a set-up to throw the GOP primary into chaos.

Here’s the sequence of events when  CNN and MSNBC made the switch to Clinton scorched earth in late February:

Here’s the timeline on those Trump fascist memes:

February 28, 2016 – Trump retweets a Mussolini quote and refuses to denounce David Duke on a Sunday talk show.

March 3, 2016 – GOP debate where Trump defends Mussolini quote and doubles down on his committing war crimes to defeat ISIS.

March 5, 2016 – Trump does a staged raised arm pledge rally where the Nuremberg imagery smacked you in the face. He read a prepared card with that pledge. I’d love to know who came up with that pledge rally idea and if it was Trump, did anyone try to dissuade him.

March 10, 2016 – Michelle Fields claims she was strong-armed by Lewandowski leaving a press briefing. I have wondered if he was a handy Clinton middleman, because it sure seemed like he was set-up as the thug in that Michelle Fields controversy. I watched that video over and over and did not see him grab her arm where the bruises were and I believe she sounded very deceptive in interviews.

The Trump controversy builds. And then he walked into the home of wacko leftist central, Chicago.  The timeline suggests that  Trump was duped into setting up his own bonfire and lighting it, before he was tossed into it by the left-wing mob.

March 12, 2016 – Leftist ground zero, Chicago, Trump faces massive organized leftist mobs and cancels his rally.

Those protests in Chicago were staged and funded by leftists – and Soros very likely played a large role.  This riot in San Jose is just part of that continued staged agitation propaganda to try to incite violent clashes with Trump supporters.  I still wonder who in Trump’s campaign egged him on with this strong-man themed garbage?  Was that pledge rally a Trump brain storm or was Trump sold on it?   Soros and other far-left groups are likely funding, organizing and staging these riots and street clashes, but who in Trump’s campaign came up with these strong-man talking points in the first place???   That’s what I would like to know, because it sure looks like he was massively set-up.  When he did that pledge rally, where the liberal press was primed with making that Nuremberg rally comparison immediately, almost like they had received some talking points.  Was there MEDIA COLLUSION and if so, with whom???

Note:   CNN banned key Trump mouthpiece, Roger Stone in late February and MSNBC banned Stone in April, rather extreme measures to silence Trump’s former campaign manager.  Oddly, enough CNN immediately hired Corey Lewandowski, in June,  when he was fired as the Trump campaign manager, which certainly makes me wonder if Lewandowski was a Clinton mole in the Potemkin Trump campaign all along.

FOX News opened shop to fuel the right-wing cable news venue to counter the liberal news in America.  FOX News has gone all-in to promote the Trump “GOP Insurgency”.   Why FOX is all-in for Trump is an open question.  The American CEO of FOX News, Roger Ailes, was fired on the very same day as Donald Trump became the Republican nominee, with the news reporting that Rupert Murdoch would be running FOX News for now.  Very strange coincidence with that timing, in light of this unprecedented mass media collusion to promote the GOP Insurgent.

The mass media also colludes to aid and abet other leftist political objectives.  Hostile foreign intelligence agencies engage in active measures – some have stayed active to destroy America from within for many decades.  The Chinese and Russian intelligence services operate robust efforts to fuel anti-American beliefs within America, in all of our institutions, particularly in our mass media and educational system.  Soros funds much on the left – to include BLM. Saudi Arabia and some other Arab states have funded the spread of Wahhabism in black communities, and black colleges, since the late 1970s.   The Obama collusion with the black grievance purveyors, like Al Sharpton, are working to incite racial tensions, to use as cover, to implement their political agenda, like federal control of policing and implementation of draconian speech codes.  Even, American allies operate efforts to influence the mass media in America.

The mass media saturation strategy was developed by far-left Alinskyite Marxists. Once again,  the messaging wall required for mass media saturation to succeed requires the active collusion of the mass media NEWS outlets to facilitate it, by actively and relentlessly repeating the messages of the political candidate or activists using this “buzz word, catchphrase spin. Mass media saturation INFORMATION WARFARE requires mass media collusion to succeed.  This strategy can NOT succeed without mass media messaging dominance to CONTROL (“win”) the 24/7 news cycle (or as the Clinton team dubbed it – the spin cycle).

THIS ENTIRE 2016 ELECTION HAS BEEN RIGGED!

In the end there, we have  Bill Clinton’s triangulation strategy perfectly executed…. Bernie the kook on the left, Trump the kook on the right and the middle path to the White House cleared for Hillary,

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Filed under Messages of mhere, Military, Politics, Public Corruption, The Media

Escalation of tensions…

“Putin sacks EVERY commander in his Baltic fleet in Stalin-style purge ‘after top brass refusal to follow his orders to confront Western ships'”

“TRIBUNAL REJECTS CHINA’S EXPANSIVE SOUTH CHINA SEA CLAIMS”

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More Obama “fundamental transformation”?

Here’s a Washington Post opinion piece:

“Obama plans major nuclear policy changes in his final months”

An old LB blog post with my opinions on Global Zero:

“Global Zero: Another Nothing-Burger Plan”

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“Fundamental Transformation” defined

Words matter.

From Merriam-Webster:

Full Definition of fundamental

    1. 1a :  serving as an original or generating source :  primary <a discovery fundamental to modern computers>b :  serving as a basis supporting existence or determining essential structure or function : basic

    2. 2a :  of or relating to essential structure, function, or facts :  radical <fundamental change>;also :  of or dealing with general principles rather than practical application <fundamentalscience>b :  adhering to fundamentalism

    3. 3:  of, relating to, or produced by the lowest component of a complex vibration

    4. 4:  of central importance :  principal <fundamental purpose>

    5. 5:  belonging to one’s innate or ingrained characteristics :  deep-rooted <her fundamentalgood humor>

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fundamental

And:

Full Definition of transformation
1
: an act, process, or instance of transforming or being transformed
2
: false hair worn especially by a woman to replace or supplement natural hair
3
a (1) : the operation of changing (as by rotation or mapping) one configuration or expression into another in accordance with a mathematical rule; especially : a change of variables or coordinates in which a function of new variables or coordinates is substituted for each original variable or coordinate (2) : the formula that effects a transformation
b : function 5a
c : an operation that converts (as by insertion, deletion, or permutation) one grammatical string (as a sentence) into another; also : a formal statement of such an operation
4
: genetic modification of a bacterium by incorporation of free DNA from another bacterial cell; also : genetic modification of a cell by the uptake and incorporation of exogenous DNA

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/transformation

And:

Full Definition of transform

  1. transitive verb
  2. 1a:  to change in composition or structureb:  to change the outward form or appearance ofc:  to change in character or condition :convert

  3. 2:  to subject to mathematical transformation

  4. 3:  to cause (a cell) to undergo genetic transformation

  5. intransitive verb
  6. :  to become transformed:change

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/transform

Americans need to wake-up to what President Obama’s “fundamental transformation” really means, very soon.  The Obama administration “fundamental transformation” continues at warp speed. He has hacked away at The Constitution,  while his administration openly and brazenly engages in corruption, then feeds the American public “narratives” (made up stories).

This FBI charade, giving Hillary Clinton a free pass, set a new legal standard – “extremely careless” (ABOVE THE LAW). Today’s Congressional testimony by FBI Director Comey pained me to watch – he admitted that Hillary’s interview to the FBI wasn’t even under oath. She allowed her IT people and her lawyers access to classified information, despite them not having the security clearance required to handle that information or having a need to know that information. Director Comey sacrificed his integrity in such an obvious manner, that his parsing rivaled former President Bill Clinton’s amazing linguistic feints. One off-hand comment of Comey’s says it all. He said he can argue both sides of any case…… indeed. He did a spectacular job defending Hillary Clinton today. Her entire home-brew email server was set up to hide her State Department emails from scrutiny (that’s her INTENT). She walked away from the State Department with all of the official State Department records she generated housed in her home. Her lawyers destroyed around 30,000 of those emails without any outside review and Comey insists there was no intention to obstruct justice or harm the United States… Director Comey sullied not only his reputation today, but he tarnished the FBI’s reputation today too.

The hearing today was the same old partisan kabuki theater – the Democrats will declare it a right-wing witch hunt, the liberal media will bury the story and focus on destroying Donald Trump. Some of the Republicans do act out of partisan motives too. So, once again we have the partisans engaged in this same old game, but the Clinton/Obama corruption has reached epic levels The entire system is not only rigged, this is wholesale public corruption.

Then there’s Donald J. Trump, pretending to be the “GOP Insurgent” working at redefining the Republican Party, all while keeping the GOP 2016 presidential campaign ensnared in endless controversies. He spouts a mishmash of mind-blowingly idiotic comments and rah-rah tough talk, with no core principles. He’s a total fraud.

President Obama’s “fundamental transformation” includes our military and includes a rapid and ruthless social engineering restructuring, downsizing, all while military readiness remains dangerously insufficient.

Every American should be very worried with our federal ship of state…

It’s heading toward an iceberg…

Impacting soon…

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Filed under American Character, Culture Wars, General Interest, Military, Politics, Public Corruption, The Constitution

Obama’s final “transformation”

Obama’s final transformation (read DESTRUCTION) of the US military is now on the table:

The Pentagon’s controversial plan to hire military leaders off the street

Defense Secretary Ash Carter wants to open the door for more “lateral entry” into the military’s upper ranks, clearing the way for lifelong civilians with vital skills and strong résumés to enter the officer corps as high as the O-6 paygrade.

The idea is controversial, to say the very least. For many in the rank-and-file military, it seems absurd, a bewildering cultural change that threatens to upend many assumptions about military life and traditional career paths. But while it’s not universally embraced, there is interest in Congress and among some of the military’s uniformed leaders — even, they say, in exploring how the services could apply this concept to the enlisted force.

This is a key piece of Carter’s “Force of the Future” personnel reform. Unveiled June 9, it aims to help the military bring in more top talent, especially for high-tech career fields focused on cyber warfare and space. Advocates say it will help the military fill important manpower shortfalls with highly skilled professionals and, more broadly, create greater “permeability” between the active-duty military and the civilian sector.

At the same time, it suggests eroding the military’s tradition of growing its own leaders and cultivating a force with a distinct culture and tight social fabric, which many believe to be the heart of military effectiveness. Critics worry it will create a new subcaste of military service members who are fundamentally disconnected from the traditional career force.” (bold is my emphasis)

If this happens, the US Armed Forces is finished as the finest fighting force in the world.

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A tougher ISIS plan

My thoughts on what to do about ISIS follow.

We need to use military force to a purpose and “crushing” terrorists, who are widely dispersed in more than 80 countries isn’t feasible. The military force needs to be about taking away territory controlled by ISIS and insuring a political situation on the ground follows that does not embrace radical Islam. The proponents of “go crush them” almost invariably are the same ones who don’t want us getting bogged down in the ME again and a common refrain is “we go crush them and come home”, except that is a ridiculous idea, because unless there’s a dramatic, long-term political change on the ground, Islamic terrorist groups keep springing up in the ME.

Trump tough talking points aren’t a strategy, they’re his usual mindless bluster and what he thinks will play well in the polls. Trump decides merits on the polls – national security is just a huge popularity contest to him – if most people agree with it, it’s “great”. You want to see how Trump really operates, just peek at the internal chaos inside his campaign or that he’s at the general election stage and still doesn’t have a viable ground game or that none of his plans is ever well-thought out with clear, coherent planning. You want to see what Hillary is like, well,  just look to the carefully focus-group tested parsing she engages in as she tries to find the right words to sell herself. In real world tests of foreign policy chops – look at the mess in Libya as exhibit A on her foreign policy “successes”.  Both of them are unfit to be commander-in-chief and both lack any real understanding of foreign policy. Their foreign policy ideas are always about what words and phrases will poll best, not about sound national security strategy.

I’m all for profiling and being tougher, but tougher needs to be smart and it starts with a comprehensive national strategy that incorporates every tool of national power to deal with the real problem and that’s not primarily ISIS, it’s a much larger threat – the collapsing Islamic civilization. As their civilization keeps falling apart its tremors and eruptions keep impacting us more and more. Some of our strategy needs to be offensive, but a lot of it also needs to be defensive to protect Americans from the fall-out. We can’t go in and fix Islamic civilization, so we need to use our military options carefully and where we have regional leaders working with us to stabilize the situation on the ground and we need to choose the areas we expend military force to ones that are of vital national interest to us.

My views are controversial. Frankly, jumping into the hot mess that is Iraq and Syria impetuously isn’t smart imho. The Russian are there, the Iranians are there – we will only get played for fools if we rush into Syria. In Iraq, Obama walked away and Iran now is the driving force behind the Iraqi government. The Iraqi government relies on Shia militias to fight ISIS and those militias are funded and controlled by Iran, so our military actions are bolstering Iran in Iraq these days, not doing a thing to defeat ISIS. The Shia control in Baghdad assures the Sunni insurgency (ISIS and other Sunni tribal groups) will continue. Let Iran and the Russians cope with that. We need to use our military force where it benefits us and rushing into Syria is a strategic trap where we will end up being the dupe.

I would engage in some tough foreign policy talks with regional leaders and Russia and China, before blabbing about carpet bombing ISIS or destroying ISIS. That entire “moderate Syrian rebels” malarkey was an hostile foreign propaganda coup and that the Institute for the Study of War was a prime spreader of that should raise a lot of red flags. It was a wild goose chase, because vetted US intelligence knew early on that the Syrian rebels were radicalized early and all of those groups were Islamist – some more Islamist than others, but nonetheless Islamist. These “experts” pushing for us to rush in and destroy ISIS are 3rd rate checkers strategic players. Putin would love to see us bogged down in Iraq/Syria, as he and the Chinese make military moves elsewhere and we are unable to respond. We need to wake-up and play the “diplomacy” game like chess players and quit being the 3rd rate checkers player on the world stage!

Obama has gutted our military and infested it with social engineering policies designed to destroy military cohesion and effectiveness. We need to rid the military of Obama’s policies and rebuild our military. We aren’t ready for some ramped up ISIS war or carpet bombing for that matter. That’s the real truth and that alone should scare every American. We need to rebuild our military

I think we should use the laws already on the books and place a ban on immigration from several radical Islam hot bed countries due to the political instability in those countries and then we need to have an across the board standard that every immigrant or refugee coming into America needs to be thoroughly vetted. Obama wants to let in 10,000 before he leaves office. It goes without saying we should have secured our borders all along – why we haven’t is a national disgrace. Putin, Soros and and other American enemies are fueling this entire “refugee crisis” – they are using it to destabilize Western countries – that is obvious. All sorts of “NGOs” are set-up from the fake passport shops to locations all along the route into Europe to feed, clothe, direct the flow of “refugees”, provide them cell phones, etc. There are Soros-funded groups in America to promote the “refugee” policy here too, but even more alarming is many Christian charities get big bucks from the federal government to provide “refugee services” and they are propaganda machines too.

As to domestic policing – how about we untie their hands and let’s quit with all the Islamophobia hype and focus on finding these ISIS terrorists and connections in America. We can do that while still protecting the civil liberties of all Americans.

Here’s an excellent big picture piece by Daniel Greenfield on the civilizational crisis in the Islamic world:

Islam’s Violence is Rooted in Instability

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Filed under Foreign Policy, General Interest, Islam, Military, Politics, Terrorism

A “great” American history revisionist

Aside from his many talents and all-around “greatness”, joining the ranks of Elizabeth Warren and her Cherokee heritage and Hillary being named after a world-famous explorer,  we can now add American history revisionist  to  Donald J.  Trump’s  resumé.

From www.redstate.com:

“WAIT! Donald Trump Is To Give A Speech Near The Site Of A Civil War Battle He Made Up?”:

“I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.

Next week, Donald Trump announced that he was going to give major campaign speech and had selected the Trump National Golf Club in Sterling, Virginia, as the venue.

The event planning then played out in front of reporters.

“I don’t even know where yet. I think we are gonna do it in Washington at the club,” Trump said about delivering the speech at Trump National Golf Course in suburban Virginia. “Let’s do it at the club,” he said, turning to Hope Hicks, his top press aide. “I wouldn’t mind doing it on the Potomac.”

“I almost would love to do it right at the flag,” Trump said.”

The Redstate article references a November 2015 NY Times story:

STERLING, Va. — When Donald J. Trump bought a fixer-upper golf club on Lowes Island here for $13 million in 2009, he poured millions more into reconfiguring its two courses. He angered conservationists by chopping down more than 400 trees to open up views of the Potomac River. And he shocked no one by renaming the club after himself.

But that wasn’t enough. Mr. Trump also upgraded its place in history.

Between the 14th hole and the 15th tee of one of the club’s two courses, Mr. Trump installed a flagpole on a stone pedestal overlooking the Potomac, to which he affixed a plaque purportedly designating “The River of Blood.”

“Many great American soldiers, both of the North and South, died at this spot,” the inscription reads. “The casualties were so great that the water would turn red and thus became known as ‘The River of Blood.’ ”

The inscription, beneath his family crest and above Mr. Trump’s full name, concludes: “It is my great honor to have preserved this important section of the Potomac River!”

Like many of Mr. Trump’s claims, the inscription was evidently not fact-checked.”

Further on in the story, several Civil War historians are quoted refuting Trump’s claim that this was the site of his made-up “River of Blood” and he is quoted responding:

“Mr. Trump repeatedly said that “numerous historians” had told him that the golf club site was known as the River of Blood. But he said he did not remember their names.

Then he said the historians had spoken not to him but to “my people.” But he refused to identify any underlings who might still possess the historians’ names.

“Write your story the way you want to write it,” Mr. Trump said finally, when pressed unsuccessfully for anything that could corroborate his claim. “You don’t have to talk to anybody. It doesn’t make any difference. But many people were shot. It makes sense.””

That’s his story and he’s sticking to it…

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The winds of war blow hotter

My favorite analogy about geopolitical strategy is one which I don’t remember where it came from or I would attribute it appropriately. There’s a pack of dogs standing around and suddenly one dog steps away from the pack, puts his nose high in the air, ears perked up, and hones his eyes far into the distance, sensing danger.  The other dogs continue to amble about unaware of the threat.  That dog who sensed danger early is your geopolitical strategist.

Hopefully, there are a lot of US national security dogs who’ve stepped away from the pack and are looking at the internal US political situation, a leader-from-behind CINC totally clueless on geopolitics, an American public distracted by a sideshow presidential election and a US military that has been ruthlessly gutted by President Obama.  Let’s hope they are stepping into America’s most determined adversaries’ shoes and gauging our adversaries’ escalating military provocations accurately.  If you were going to escalate matters, you would choose a time when America is completely distracted.  The polarized political climate leaves America  ripe for internal factionalized hostile agitation propaganda efforts and staged riots to divert attention to domestic,  rather than foreign issues.

Time to keep scanning the far horizons and staying alert!

The last few months of escalated Russian and Chinese military provocations should have some US national security dogs on alert – things are brewing.

U.S.: Chinese jet makes ‘unsafe’ intercept of Air Force plane

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More on the “great” General David Petraeus

New documents say FBI found hundreds of classified files on Broadwell’s computer

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/article82469027.html#storylink=cpy

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