Archive for the 'Politics' Category

Judicial Watch.

Judicial Watch today released new Clinton emails on the Benghazi controversy that had been covered up for years and would have exposed Hillary Clinton’s email account if they had been released when the State Department first uncovered them in 2014. The long withheld email, clearly responsive to Judicial Watch’s lawsuit seeking records concerning “talking points or updates on the Benghazi attack,” contains Clinton’s private email address and a conversation about the YouTube video that sparked the Benghazi talking points scandal (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:14-cv-01242)). This Judicial Watch FOIA lawsuit led directly to the disclosure of the Clinton email system in 2015.

The Clinton email cover-up led to court-ordered discovery into three specific areas: whether Secretary Clinton’s use of a private email server was intended to stymie FOIA; whether the State Department’s intent to settle this case in late 2014 and early 2015 amounted to bad faith; and whether the State Department has adequately searched for records responsive to Judicial Watch’s request. The court also authorized discovery into whether the Benghazi controversy motivated the cover-up of Clinton’s email.  (The court ruled that the Clinton email system was “one of the gravest modern offenses to government transparency.”)

Personal coverup at the expense of dead people in Benghazi, while support was denied to the living when it was available.  What pigs.  What swine.

Via WRSA, from Matt Bracken.

I have no doubt he was promised something for this bit is silliness.  No one actually believes those things about Hillary Clinton.  With the corruption, Uranium One, the misadventures in Haiti, and the trail of dead bodies lining the streets from Arkansas to Washington, D.C., everyone knows all about the Clintons.  This isn’t hard.  It’s also not difficult to believe that no one in the audience believed a word of his speech.  The more difficult thing is to understand why anyone would care what McRaven thinks?

Let me switch gears for a moment to General Mattis.  He comes with indisputable creds form the USMC, but even then, his view of things is broken.  He upbraided Trump several days ago with these words.

“I earned my spurs on the battlefield … Donald Trump earned his spurs in a letter from a doctor,” Mattis joked at one point, in a reference to the medical deferment for bone spurs that kept Mr. Trump from serving in the military during the Vietnam War.

At another point, Mattis responded to reports that Mr. Trump called him “the world’s most overrated general” during a meeting with Democrats earlier this week. Mattis joked that he felt like he had “achieved greatness,” because he was “not just an overrated general, I am the greatest, the world’s most overrated.”

“I’m honored to be considered that by Donald Trump, because he also called Meryl Streep an overrated actress,” he continued. “So, I guess I’m the Meryl Streep of generals. Frankly that sounds pretty good to me.”

I have no problem with his upbraiding of the president.  I don’t like him.  I didn’t like the one before him, nor the one before him, nor the one before him.  What I do have a problem with is discussed here.

After the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, military brass quickly began to plan an attack on al-Qaida and the Taliban in Afghanistan. But Marines almost missed being a part of this effort, as planners including Army Gen. Tommy Franks, then CENTCOM commander, didn’t see the point in sending an amphibious force into a landlocked country. But Mattis was part of a small team of officials who crafted a plan to send Task Force 58 — amphibious ships and a landing force — into Camp Rhino in southern Afghanistan. “The minute [5th Fleet Commander Vice Adm. William Moore] pointed to a map showing landlocked Afghanistan, hundreds of miles from the sea, I knew I could land there with thousands of Marines,” Mattis writes.

Mattis indicates another clash with Franks, the CENTCOM commander, elsewhere in the book, when he describes the 2001 search for Osama bin Laden in the Tora Bora mountains of eastern Afghanistan. Mattis believed, with the use of light infantry and special operations troops, he could close off the escape routes and take bin Laden. Franks thought sending Marines and vehicles into the mountains would only repeat Soviet mistakes. Ultimately, the trap was not laid, and bin Laden would not be killed until 2011. “If I had to do it again,” Mattis wrote, “I would have called both [the U.S. Army Central Command] commander and Admiral Moore and said, ‘Sir, I have a plan to accomplish the mission, kill Osama bin Laden, and hand you a victory. All I need is your permission.'”

And he was right.  Readers from long ago may recall that my counsel would have been to put Marines on the border with Pakistan in the Hindu Kush, perhaps supplemented by Rangers, while a MEU drove him and his fighters towards the border and snared him there before he could escape to live a lot longer.  After this brief campaign, we should have withdrawn.

But instead, Mattis kept his mouth shut and allowed America to get bogged down into a two decade COIN effort as part of nation building and winning hearts and minds, all run by social justice warriors, college graduates with guns who wanted to cure the world’s evils.  Petraeus was too busy with his concubine to do much there, while McChrystal brought in ROE that hampered the effort and killed American troops.

McChrystal and his ROE was directly responsible for the boys at Joyce denying support to the Americans at Ganjgal, along with the corollary deaths of 1st Lt. Michael Johnson, 25; Gunnery Sgts. Aaron Kenefick, 30; and Edwin Johnson, 31; and Hospitalman 3rd Class James Layton, 22, and Army Sgt. 1st Class Kenneth Westbrook, 41.  Three marines and naval corpsman, 1st Lt. Michael Johnson, Staff Sgt. Aaron Kenefick, Gunnery Sgt. Edwin W. Johnson, and Hospital Corpsman 3rd Class James Layton, were killed after remaining behind to cover the withdrawal of the Afghan soldiers from the ambush site.

Yet after all of that, Petraeus and McChrystal have the temerity to continue to push for gun control over Americans, despite the oath to the constitution they swore to uphold.  There is a sense of entitlement among the military elite, as if experience in strategy and logistics enables them and gives them righteous jurisdiction over American policy.

This is an error made by not only McChrystal, Petraeus, and Mattis, but Trump as well.  Trump’s insult to Mattis is as irrelevant and unimportant as Mattis’ rebuttal.  But this is an error made by many of the American people.  Even the left will engage the error as long as the general pushes policies of which they approve, despite their hatred of everything America.

So why should anyone care about McRaven’s policy preferences?  They shouldn’t, any more than they should care about those of McChrystal or Petraeus or Mattis.  But Americans are always searching for a hero to worship, and they find them in the military elite.

Oh, and there is one more item of interest here.  McRaven is as much of a gun controller as Petraeus and McChrystal.  How do you SpecOps guys feel about that?  And McChrystal?  Didn’t you call him “The Pope?”

Via David Codrea.  I’ve had nothing but good things to say about Thomas Massie.  This is no exception.  This is an awesome reminder for the controllers to step carefully.

Watching the Military History Channel on the Bataan Death March and what eventually happened to those prisoners, one veteran wanted to walk the march with his son to help him understand what had forged who he was.  At one of the monuments, one Filipino student said something like this.

“Here in the Philippines we have so many military monuments and study this history so much, it’s hard to believe none of this is taught in the West.”  She was part of a student field trip to the monument and the lives of these students and this veteran happened to intersect.

Then she asked permission to hug him, and they all got pictures together.

No, American students aren’t taught that today.  In the public centers of communist indoctrination, they are taught that although they are girls, they may really be boys, or vice versa.

Via WRSA, this report wasn’t authored in China.  No, it was written by Nicholas Blasco, of the U.S. Army War College.

The second concern regards the use of paramilitary forces, especially as a deterrent. The Chinese military started to build up across the border from Hong Kong on 11 August. A paramilitary force known as the People’s Armed Police can loosely be equated to a stability policing unit. Stability police conducts activities along the full spectrum of conflict with one of its primary missions being the restoration of public order and security. Some NATO countries have paramilitary units with stability policing skills, particularly within the French Gendarmerie and the Italian Carabinieri. The U.S. military lacks the skills possessed by these countries’ forces to carry out stability policing operations. Whether or not the People’s Armed Police has the skills to restore order to the situation is difficult to determine or predict. They are currently running drills and exercises in full view of the media demonstrating the kinds of tactics they would use.

[ … ]

The Department of Defense (DoD) has specific mission set known as the Defense Support of Civil Authority (DSCA). More often than not, DSCA applies to natural disasters or events that are not manmade. Recently, work by the U.S. Army War College’s Homeland Defense and Security Issues Group has been focused on the DSCA subcategory Defense Support of Civilian Law Enforcement Authorities (DSCLEA). As the name suggests, research analyzes the ways the DoD can effectively aid law enforcement during times of crisis.

Key areas to analyze during the unfolding events in Hong Kong would be the role the military plays. The role in the U.S. military’s mission set is purely a support function of civil authority, whether that authority comes from a police officer or another civil servant, and any military commander, regardless of rank, must answer to that civil authority. Furthermore, once local authorities or private-sector organizations have the capacity to fulfill services being provided by the military, the military must cease providing those functions. Interesting data can be gathered whether the Chinese military is a support function or take complete command and institute martial law.

Furthermore, because the U.S. military is limited to a support function, it leaves policing authority to law enforcement, as the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 prohibits the U.S. military from arresting American citizens. However, the U.S. military could support police forces in the form of intelligence, logistics, and communications support. The Posse Comitatus Act can be interpreted as the government’s respect for the country’s federalist system. The Chinese’ centralized form of government does not have the same respect for local authority and separation of power.  This has been expressed by the unfulfilled promises of more democracy in Hong Kong. Given the current governmental policies accompanied by the inability to regain control of the situation, Beijing has determined it will intervene if necessary.

Currently, there is very little research focused on the DSCLEA issue in the DoD. The U.S. is a relatively stable nation with few events that require escalated use of force and resources provided by the federal government. A close eye should be kept on Hong Kong and Beijing’s posturing in the region. Any actions or inactions taken by the Chinese government will provide valuable information on how to determine proper use of force during a crisis that requires a military response in the homeland.

It reminds you why the founders were opposed to a standing army, yes?  And is there really any difference between a militarized police and a standing army?

The way to gain acceptance of an idea is first to engage in so-called “scholarly” flirtations with it.  The idea of use of our very own standing army in the “homeland” is in its embryonic stage.  Expect it to keep growing, because I assure you, it will.  They will not abort this baby because it all has to do with control.  Controllers study and discuss controlling.  It’s what they do.  It’s who they are.

This video is a little dated, but informative.

PJM.

So it turns out that the acting director of the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management, William Perry Pendley, has denied the Left’s “climate change” mythology, and opposes jihad violence and illegal immigration. CNN’s Andrew Kaczynski is out for blood, trying to get Pendley for heresy, that is, for his dissent from Leftist orthodoxy.

Leftists want you and your family to suffer – to terraform the nation, to see violence and to redistribute your wealth through whatever means they can concoct (e.g., anthropogenic global warming).

The Holy Writ says that “The good man leaves an inheritance to his children’s children.”

Breitbart.

“Over time, I realized having a gun made me feel smaller, not bigger,” he said during a conversation about guns with a BuzzFeed reporter as part of his bus tour in Iowa.

The mayor was asked about his feelings on guns as a veteran who served in Afghanistan in the Navy Reserves but apparently did not engage in combat.

Okay.  So we have to talk about feelings, do we?

Then here’s mine.  I have the same attitude for him as I do for all of the other progressives who participated in OIF or OEF.  They all wanted to lawyer the campaigns to death while playing social justice warrior with a gun.  I detest them all, and there are many lives broken and lost and many limbs lost, many eyes lost, many brains that can’t function right from TBI.  They should feel responsible for each and every one of them.

I have wept over veterans who have no legs because of that damned war.  The social warriors should feel as responsible as should Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney and Wolfowitz.  They are detestable, every one.  I loath them all.

And I notice that Mayor Pete apparently didn’t feel so ashamed that he refuses to allow that ridiculous picture of him to be displayed holding an M4 as if he’s something special.  Hey, Pete.  Go get a combat action ribbon like my son did and then maybe I’ll debate you.  Until then, I’ll just keep believing that you are the product of a set of hippie, Marxist parents who wanted some military creds for your future in politics so you could use that to get elected and tear down America like you tore down your own sense of morality and decency.

I think you’re a sniveling, snarky smartass – a poor excuse for a man.

Via David Codrea, this disturbing report.

Prosecutors said Weed was attending the fair Friday with his family when he was “harassed and followed by a group of teens.” The prosecutor said the teens were angry Weed would not give them a dollar bill, and that’s when they allegedly hit him in the head.

“There was some sort of dialogue that ensued after that that made it a negative situation. There was a punch that was delivered to the back of the head by the 16-year-old, at that point in time there was a number of minutes that elapsed after that at which point in time, you all saw the video, the younger 15-year-old came flying through, lands a deadly blow to the victim,” said Frederick County State’s Attorney Charlie Smith.

David is kind, saying “his own actions show he can’t be trusted outside of a cage and needs to stay in one until he can be.”

I’m not such a nice guy as David.  Put him to death.  He’s guilty of premeditated murder.  That’s the Scriptural prescription, and besides, I don’t believe in the rehabilitative power of prisons, a fact my readers know full well.  That prison is rehabilitative is a notion of modernism.

The Scriptural prescription for murder, kidnapping and rape is death.  The Scriptural prescription for theft is slavery to the offended person until the debt is paid.  There is no such thing as a biblical idea of a debt to society.