This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Author: Poetrooper

  • Operation Jade Helm? Chill.

    AUTHOR’S NOTE: This article was written for the primarily civilian readership at American Thinker. Judging from their comments, the citizens of this nation are so distrusting of the Obama administration that they are willing to believe our military would turn its guns against them on Obama’s orders. That is very sad. I’ve been writing for American Thinker for more than a decade and never have I been so vilified as I was for this article. We live in interesting times.

    We’ve been getting concerned e-mails from friends in Texas as to whether or not the long-ago announced and now being staged large-scale military operation, called Jade Helm and taking place in several western states, is some sort of federal testing of the ability of the Obama government to seize control of our nation and use our military forces to disarm and subjugate our citizenry.

    The short answer is no, Operation Jade Helm is not some sort of scheme by Obama to seize control of those red states that reject his socialist views for the future of this nation. For starters, just look at the name of the operation. Rather than being the brilliant brainstorm of some radical revolutionary buried in the bowels of the White House situation room, that name, to me, a former infantry grunt, is rather prosaic. You have a bunch of military planners sitting around a table in a conference room brainstorming this upcoming operation when the officer in charge says to his subordinates around the table, “Okay, what are we gonna call this baby?” One operations type whose eyes are going bleary from hours of brain strain glances over at the wall and sees a framed photo of the installation’s commanding general in full combat gear, which just happens to include his green combat helmet, and pops up his hand: “How about Green Helmet?” Groans come from around the table until the one planning officer among them, who majored in English lit, offers, “Well, we could call it Jade Helm. Same thing.”

    So Jade Helm it is, and now, thanks to a lot of right-wing rabble-rousers, an otherwise routine military operation involving our special operations units honing their skills in urban and other populated environments takes on a menacing, threatening demeanor that becomes a source of concern to ordinary Americans who would not normally be concerned. Yes, you may see more helicopters flying about than normal, but helicopters are the means by which our special operations warriors most frequently get to their combat objectives. They’ll be gone soon.

    Those of you concerned need to consider some simple math. All of our special operations units combined likely do not equal the manpower strength of a single Army division. If an evil federal administration were planning to use military forces to enslave the red states, they certainly would require far more manpower than is currently available in our special operations forces. It is doubtful that our entire combined armed forces have the capability to subjugate this nation due to our having armed ourselves pursuant to our 2nd Amendment rights.

    Another thing to ponder: there are no dummies in special operations. You have to be top tier mentally to even be considered. On a per capita basis, they probably have a far higher IQ than any other military organizations other than perhaps the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and I wouldn’t bet the farm on that. Now, if you’re going to use military forces against the people and the nation they are sworn to defend, are you really going to pick as your vanguard the very warriors who possess the intellect to realize that you are asking them to violate their oaths of service? Of course not; you want the slugs that barely made it through basic training and will do your bidding without questioning your motives. Intelligent, thinking warriors are those who are most likely to question the legality of politically motivated orders directing them to take action against their own citizens.

    Those of you out there feeling queasy about Jade Helm? Chill.

    Crossposted at American Thinker

  • Rand Paul offended the liberal media? Oh, please…

    The true enemy of American conservatives and the American Constitution is the liberal media. The most powerful weapon the liberals/socialists/communists/Democrats have is a compliant media, which willingly carries their unchallenged message to an unsuspecting American people, far too many of whom have no idea they are being propagandized every bit as much as Soviet Russians or Mao’s Chinese.

    With that in mind, it is difficult to accept the conservative media jumping all over Rand Paul for standing up for himself and his beliefs when being “interviewed” by liberal media harpies whose claws are out, their beaks seeking political blood and their bias and harmful intent clearly and fully evident. To Paul’s everlasting credit, he has set the stage that he will be no Romney or McCain, bullied and battered by a hostile mainstream media, cowering in fear of alienating them and their broadcast powers.

    Listening to the crying conservative media, I am appalled at how they are unified in their condemnation of Paul for doing exactly what so many of us out here in flyover country find so refreshing. The Republican who will win my vote in the primaries will do just what Rand Paul has done: stand up against the liberal bullying that all Republican candidates can expect from these media necromancers, who have slavishly sold their professional souls to the cause of world socialism.

    A word of advice to the rest of the Republican candidates who will ultimately enter this 2016 presidential contest: do not be cowed by the media’s negative response to Rand Paul’s fine stand against media bias. Embrace Paul’s bravery and emulate it. Let the American people see how poorly they are served by this media monstrosity that is nothing more than the propaganda bureau of the Democratic Party. Do not let them roll over you with their elitist arrogance and coastal chutzpah. Stand up as Rand Paul did, and let them know that their days of dominance are over. Remember this: you are the candidate, and that makes you newsworthy to them. If you are defiant and unwilling to be rolled, you then become even more newsworthy, and they will seek you out with even more fervor and with a more combative intent to make you look bad. They will not ignore you, no matter what your campaign experts tell you. Like blood, controversy leads.

    Do not lose sight of this truth: As long as you stand up and fight them, you will be igniting the patriotic blood of tens of millions of Americans who are sick and tired of living in a nation where the national and regional media represent only the liberal political view. Oh, and we don’t care if the liberal interviewers are female or male; rip their rears without regard for gender. Those info-babes tout themselves as tough feminists who should be treated as equals? Well, fine. Treat them as equals, and bust their butts just as embarrassingly as you possibly can.

    Show some courage, dudes; it’s damned near a lost quality in the Republican Party.

    Crossposted at American Thinker

  • Felipe Trujillo Roybal; Another Warrior Lost to History

    Felipe Trujillo Roybal; Another Warrior Lost to History

    FELIPE TRUJILLO ROYBAL

    We lost another one of those three-war, two-star, CIB recipients recently. Command Sergeant Major Felipe Trujillo Roybal, 82d Airborne in WWII, jumping in Normandy, a Korean War veteran and Special Forces in Vietnam, made his final jump off into that great unknown March 22d in William Beaumont Army Medical Center in El Paso. CSM Roybal served from 1937 to 1972, a truly historic three and a half decades of American military history encompassing three of the four major wars that American troops served in during the 20th Century. I’m sure the Sergeant Major could have written one hell of a book.

    We are losing these WWII veterans at an increasing rate and I would remind those who read here that if they know of a WWII vet who is capable of travel, you should bust your butt to see that they get to see their beautiful and wonderful memorial in Washington D.C. if at all possible. I took my father-in-law a couple of months after it opened and it was one of the most meaningful experiences of my life which I wrote about here.

  • Grounding Bergdahl’s escape turkey

    Grounding Bergdahl’s escape turkey

    Now that Bowe Bergdahl is facing the prospect of prosecution by the Army for deserting his post and for misbehavior, his liberal defenders, those who swallowed whole Susan Rice’s assertion that he served with honor and distinction, will be raising defenses for his crimes. Aware of the leftist media support for its client, Bergdahl’s defense team is already floating tales intended to at least mitigate, if not excuse entirely, the cold fact that this soldier deserted his guard post in the presence of the enemy, sought out that enemy, and remained with them until he was bartered back to this country.

    Bergdahl’s attorney, Eugene Fidell, is quoted by the Seattle Times under this unbiased headline: “Bergdahl charged despite torture, attempts to escape.”

    “This is a hellish environment he was kept in for nearly 5 years, particularly after he did his duty in trying to escape,” Fidell, a former military lawyer now in private practice, told The Associated Press on Thursday. “There is no question in my mind that a convening authority would not be doing his or her duty without taking into account the circumstances under which Sgt. Bergdahl was held.”

    In the same article, Bergdahl claims to have attempted escape about a dozen times. So it is obvious that despite intelligence reports that he moved about freely among his captors, sometimes armed, a key element of Bergdahl’s defense is going to be that he was held in close confinement from which he tried to escape repeatedly.

    And my response is, “So what?”

    That response counts, because it’s coming from someone who served as an NCO in infantry units in two sister regiments of Bergdahl’s 501st Parachute Infantry in an earlier war. In that capacity, I could have sat on his courts martial board at one time. My response reflects a view that I will wager is ingrained in many of those officers and NCOs who may be called upon for that duty at some time in the future.

    Let me explain. Bergdahl did not like the Army, a dislike he made clear in his writings home. Those writings demonstrate that like many young soldiers, his very limited view of the big picture led him to erroneous conclusions typical among the ranks. His self-assured sense of knowing better than his superiors led him to chafe under their leadership, in his case far more than is normal. Bergdahl likely had a flower-child upbringing, and the rigid and regulated routines necessary to maintain good order and discipline in a military unit may have constrained him to a greater extent than most soldiers. An example of that is that according to his platoon mates, he harbored some dreamy desire to go out into the mountains in some sort of rite of passage – a walkabout, as the Aussies call it – a pastoral stroll among the primitives to India.

    And if Bergdahl chafed under Army restrictions on his freedom, imagine how constrained he felt in his new life among the people he had once idolized. They would doubtless have proved every bit as determined to curb his transcendental dreams of traipsing through the poppies.

    Every officer and NCO has to deal with soldiers like Bergdahl, who simply can’t abide the considerable limitations on their freedom so necessary to preserve good order and discipline. Some soldiers can have their attitudes adjusted sufficiently to allow them to serve out their time with minimal success. Others, like Bergdahl, fueled by a self-righteous sense that only their way will ever be the right way for them, simply walk away. Those are the ones who never come back, which is the essential element of desertion under the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

    So if Bergdahl did attempt to escape the Afghans, a claim we have but his and his attorney’s words for, what was his motivation? Was he seeking to return to the American unit he so despised, or was he seeking to continue on his way with his idyllic walkabout through the Himalayas to India, as he had previously told fellow troopers he wished to do? Were I weighing that question as a member of Bergdahl’s courts martial, I’d have to ask myself, “If he’d already felt so repressed by Army discipline that he’d walked away, would he wish to return to that, or, once free of the Afghanis, would he be inclined to continue his flower-child journey to nirvana on the sub-continent?” Knowing how much Bergdahl despised my Army, its leadership, and our bedrock concept of good order and discipline, I think I know how I’d come down on this crucial question of that foolish young man’s intent.

    Are you listening, Counselor Fidell? Keep launching that turkey of an escape excuse; like a real turkey, it’s not gonna fly very far among those who count.

    Crossposted at American Thinker

  • 60 Minutes and Women in Combat Training

    60 Minutes and Women in Combat Training

    Last weekend, 60 Minutes managed to set aside its usual liberal camera and interviewing angles to film female Marine officers attempting to pass the historically secretive Combat Endurance Test, an entrance requirement to the Corps’s Infantry Officer Course. In the past, the Marine Corps has kept details of this very difficult course and its entrance requirements under wraps in the belief it is better for our adversaries not to know exactly what goes into the making of a Marine infantry officer. That the Corps allowed CBS to film as much of it as they did was surprising to many Marines. My belief is that the Corps wants the world to see firsthand that it is the physical requirements of Marine infantry officer training keeping females out, not some bull-headed misogyny, as so many feminists contend.

    CBS correspondent David Martin focused on one female 2nd lieutenant, a very determined and prepared young woman, and followed her through the grueling 14-hour physical test. An overabundance of both strength and determination are essential to completing the 16-mile course that is riddled with difficult obstacles, both physical and mental. To make the test even more challenging, the candidates do it in full combat gear, which can approach or even exceed a hundred pounds. And just as the Corps has maintained since the push for women in the infantry began a few years ago, it ultimately is the combination of that weight and lack of upper body strength that keeps women from completing the course. The promising young candidate whom reporter Martin followed was done in, like so many others, by a rope climb, where upper body strength is paramount.

    I watched this 60 Minutes segment and just shook my head – my belief, as a former infantry non-commissioned officer, once again confirmed that women simply are not physically suited for the unique physical needs of a combat infantryman, and not just in matters of strength. I thought nothing more about it until today, when I received an e-mail from a buddy retired in Guam that contained collected observations on the 60 Minutes piece from some of his many Marine friends around the world. Most were surprised, as I was, by the fair and balanced presentation, but some of them wished that CBS would have shown the courage to address stickier issues.

    My combat was in tropical Vietnam, so I’m familiar with field conditions there. Over the years I’ve conversed with enough infantry veterans of our Middle East wars and the medics who cared for them to confirm my suspicions about field conditions in that region – particularly in Iraq, where we were fielding very large units spread over very large, remote areas of desert terrain. The one condition of infantry field conditions that has held constant from the first war our nation fought to present battlefields has been that it is a physically dirty business, an extremely unsanitary process that exceeds in filth anything you are likely ever to experience in civilian life.

    Due to excessive sweating, constant contact with dirt and dust, and very infrequent opportunities to bathe, even most superficially, dermatological disease is rampant, from opportunistic fungal infections the troops refer to as “crotch rot” or “foot rot” to untreated cuts, scratches, and insect bites that become secondarily infected to the point of requiring hospitalization and intravenous antibiotics. In Vietnam, I went on patrols, set up ambushes, and conducted other ground operations with young men so filthy that their own mothers couldn’t have picked them out of a lineup. Many had open, suppurating sores and boils caused by the omnipresent thorn bushes and the unrelenting biting insects. Leeches were common, fleas and lice less so but still there.

    Another constant problem on the battlefield is intestinal disorders that many times result in uncontrollable and explosive diarrhea. I couldn’t count how many times I saw a young trooper suddenly dump his gear and drop his trousers right on the trail, in full view of every member of his team. And no one thought anything of it, save the poor guy who had to squat there with his naked butt and his family jewels on full display while he loudly evacuated his bowels to the hoots, laughter, and catcalls of his team. Even routine defecation and urination are public functions for infantrymen, including officers and NCOs. When you are in Indian country, there is absolutely no expectation of privacy, or even a desire for it, because to be out of sight of your team for even minutes is to be at risk of sudden death or capture.

    In spite of all the physical misery they had to endure, those tough young paratroopers I so proudly served with sucked it up, cussed their officers and the Army, and continued the mission, because they did not want to be medically evacuated, leaving their buddies shorthanded in battle. It is this “serving while sick with no privacy” aspect of service in the infantry that those of us who have lived it and survived it would like to see included in every discussion of whether or not women should serve in the infantry.

    It looks like the Marine Corps is well on its way to demonstrating the validity of the lack of upper body strength issue, but it would be interesting to hear what an objective panel of gynecologists, preferably some who have served in the infantry and combat at some earlier point in their lives, have to say regarding the hygiene problems associated with menstrual events and increased risks for feminine disease that women in the infantry might experience under conditions such as I’ve described above. And now that I think of it, how about a panel of military psychologists examining the effects on young women of public urination and defecation while surrounded by grinning, highly aggressive young males, who you can bet your last dime of combat pay aren’t about to avert their eyes?

    How about addressing those issues on a follow-up segment, 60 Minutes, and then another follow-up dealing with the sexual ramifications, which is another critical issue unto itself?

    Crossposted at American Thinker

  • Those unintended liberal consequences continue…

    Conservatives have long maintained that when liberal social policies are implemented by organizations and governments, there are inevitable, unforeseen, negative consequences that end up hurting the very people such policies are designed to help. The definitive example of this principle is LBJ’s Great Society legislation, which has done so much to destroy the concept of family in the black community, just as predicted by New York U.S. senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Moynihan, in his famous report, “The Negro Family: The Case for National Action,” noted:

    The steady expansion of welfare programs can be taken as a measure of the steady disintegration of the Negro family structure over the past generation in the United States.

    What Moynihan didn’t factor into the social equation was the catalytic effect that liberal political activism, particularly the opportunistic racist activism of so-called black leaders like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, would have in spreading that disintegration, harming even those black families that had maintained cohesion. And today, a primarily black community is suffering a very real negative consequence of the most recent social justice project these black “leaders” and sympathetic white liberal and socialist activists took upon themselves. Fusion.net has posted an article reporting that home values in Ferguson, Missouri have dropped drastically since the demonstrations and rioting that occurred last summer following the police shooting death of Michael Brown.

    An article entitled “Ferguson home values are plummeting, and residents are feeling the pain” reports that prior to Brown’s death, the average 2014 selling price of a home was $66,764. For the last quarter of the same year, that average selling price dropped 46% to $36,168. And the trend downward is even more dramatic so far in 2015, where the average selling price is now down to $22,951. Consider the impact such a dramatic reduction in the value of your home would have on your life.

    That is a real estate disaster, folks, and it is directly attributable to the fact that so-called black leaders including Eric Holder, and Barack Obama, decided to insert themselves into a tragic but fairly routine black community shooting death and turn it into a national incident by claiming that it was both unjustified and racially motivated. As we all now know, both of those claims have since been disproved and the police exonerated. So where are those black leaders and white social activists now that the smoke and violence of rioting have dissipated, and another community is left bearing the expense of their liberal political grandstanding?

    How do you suppose those homeowners in Ferguson who had no part in the demonstrations may feel about social justice at this moment? Like most Americans, their homes are the bedrock of their personal wealth. Our home’s value is the key factor in virtually every aspect of our financial lives, where one’s net worth and credit rating are measures applied impersonally, without consideration for the unforeseen consequences of liberal social activism, by the financial institutions that determine what we can or cannot afford to own.

    Worse, the destruction caused by these unintended liberal consequences doesn’t stop with homeowners, but extends to every aspect of local government and education, all funded in large part by local property taxes. During the Ferguson crisis, it was reported that citizens were unhappy with local police for writing too many tickets as a city revenue source. Well now that the primary revenue source for local government, property taxes, has been cut to less than half of what it had been, how many tickets are the police going to need to write just to keep the doors to the station house open? What will the school board do – raise taxes? That’s just what citizens who’ve had their net worth cut to the bone need: a larger tax burden.

    There’s an old saying that you should never foul your own nest. Critics of black rioting have pointed out the truth of that old folk wisdom for years. Sadly, too many black communities like Ferguson have learned that the hard way. I suspect that the so-called black leaders and the liberal socialist do-gooders know it quite well.

    They just don’t give a damn, because it’s not their nest.

    Crossposted at American Thinker

  • God Bless Those Georgia Gate Guards

    Media was reporting yesterday on an incident down at Robins AFB, Georgia, where base administration had come under fire because the contract civilian gate guards were, upon checking entrants’ identifications, waving them on with a cheerful, “Have a blessed day.” As you could well expect, some disgruntled airman contacted a civilian organization, Military Religious Freedom Foundation, which was founded and now managed by a disgruntled former Air Force officer and now lawyer, “Mikey” Weinstein, who are now raising a stink. Yep, know what you’re thinking: The dude wants to be taken seriously in matters of great legal and spiritual import, and he calls himself Mikey?

    Reading that news account brought back a memory that has made me laugh for years every time it pops back into my mind. I was a pharmaceutical sales manager handling field sales operations to the military, a job which took me to almost every military installation in the continental U.S. and some foreign located American bases. One of my calls was the Pentagon and to gain access to that huge facility on a routine and repeat basis, one needed to get a laminated photo pass which had stamped in large letters on one side PEN, which I quickly learned was an almost magical “Go Pass Go” identity card. From coast to coast, down to Puerto Rico and Panama and over in Germany that PEN identity card gained me unchallenged entrance to hundreds of military installations. Civilian German gate guards actually snapped to attention clicked their heels and saluted. That Pentagon pass became my magic key that got me onto military installations everywhere.

    Until the morning I pulled up to the gate at Robins AFB, GA, the same facility now under media fire. A contract guard in full southern cop regalia right down to the Smoky Bear ranger hat with its brim aggressively cocked down over his face, reached out for my proffered Pentagon pass and gave it a quick glance before pointing to the visitors’ center and snarling, “Git over there and git yourself a visitors pass!”

    When I protested that the piece of plastic he was holding permitted me to enter the Pentagon, the military holy city, its Mecca, he thumb-tipped his brim up very slightly, pulled his Sam Brown belt up over his substantial belly and in the perfect image of Buford T. Justice, explained reality to me, “Sonny, that there is a Pentagon pass an’ this here is Robins Air Force Base, Georgia. Now git your ass over there and git yourself a visitors pass.”

    As ticked as I was at having to go wait in line for a visitors pass, I couldn’t help but laugh at the irony that out of all the gate guards from coast to coast and overseas who had breezily waved me through because of that Pentagon pass, it took a good ol’ boy, Georgia cracker to correctly recognize that a Pentagon pass is good only for entrance to that great five-sided circus, not Robins Air Force Base nor any other military installation.

    It’s good to see those ol’ boys apparently haven’t changed much, God bless ‘em.

    Crossposted at American Thinker

  • Perhaps he’ll see it on Al Jazeera

    Perhaps he’ll see it on Al Jazeera

    In what can only be truthfully described as a farce of a presidential administration, our truly lame chief executive has once again assured the American people that he knew nothing of Hillary Clinton’s overt and ongoing violations of national security policies until he was made aware of it, like the rest of the world, by the New York Times. Right…like we all believe that.

    That “read it in the papers” is a dodge this shifty president has used multiple times in the past to absolve himself of responsibility for failures within his administration. It’s wearing thin – very thin, dangerously razor-thin. What this joker of a president and his clown crew administration don’t seem to realize is that political power does not in and of itself confer limitless credibility and deniability. In the affairs of governance, there is a stretching to breaking point, and this bunch has pushed it to the breaking limit. That is driven home to the American public when the president’s transparent I read it in the newspapers is the only transparent thing about his promised transparent administration.

    What the American people have now is a transparently dishonest president whose apparent contempt for us is such that he has no compunction about responding to the Hillary Clinton e-mail scandal by saying that he learned about it in the media just like the rest of us. Well, I have news for the Choom Prexy: many of us are a bit better grounded than you appear to be, and we are left with two explanations for your deceitful responses. Either you are so out of contact with the national security of this nation that your inept administration would permit this sort of major security breach to occur and threaten our very existence without your knowledge, or you are a serial liar who purportedly wanted to lead this nation but obviously has no clear clue how to do that and repeatedly has refused to accept any responsibility for the failures resulting from that demonstrated inability to provide the level of leadership required of any chief executive, let alone the American president.

    What I’d like to know is this: should Iranian nuclear missiles turn the most dynamic country in the Middle East into a smoking wasteland, are you going to claim that your first knowledge of that cataclysmic event came from the media?

    Al Jazeera, perhaps?

    Crossposted at American Thinker