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

Author: Poetrooper

  • SWAT: Time to Rein In Excessive Response

    In my new home state of Arkansas — a beautiful, reasonably inexpensive place to live, which I recommend to all retirees — we recently had another unfortunate incident that should illustrate that the militarization of local police forces has gone far beyond the needs of the domestic communities those police forces are sworn to protect and serve.

    In Pine Bluff, an old, old man, reported to be 107, lost touch with the world in which he had lived so long and became agitated. The old codger fired a pistol at responding police officers, which immediately earned him a deadly SWAT team visit.

    Agreed, any perpetrator firing on arriving officers opens himself up to a world of hurt. You simply do not fire at men who are formidably armed and authorized to use deadly force under the auspices of their local government. Responding officers have little to no information upon their immediate arrival on the scene. Whatever transpires in that period of immediacy is usually accepted as the necessary police response required to suppress an extant threat to the public welfare with whatever amount of immediate force is required.

    But what is to be said of a heavily armed and armored tactical squad of large, fierce, armed, and armored men, who storm the small confines of a poor old man, who has endured penurious life for more than a century and whose mental faculties have surely by all that time been diminished, and shoot him dead? Yes, they used gas, but their version of events is that the gas failed to deter the intransigent old man. Excuse me, but I was a chemical and biological warfare NCO in the Army, who in years past conducted gas defense training, and I have to tell you: I don’t believe that explanation for a single minute. In the confined space of a small house, the effects of properly deployed CS gas grenades are incapacitating to young, trained, and prepared soldiers in their prime. To an old man over a hundred years, they would have to be damned near lethal.

    The explanation that the centenarian would, after such a gassing assault, be sufficiently capable of presenting a deadly threat to authorities would be laughable were it not so tragic. There’s an old military term, gung-ho, which describes an enthusiasm for the task or mission at hand. In my six years in the 101st and 82nd Airborne, it was frequently used in a positive manner, to define those dedicated to the success of a mission, but also in a derogatory manner to demean those who were too eager to accomplish the mission at whatever cost.

    And there lies the rub: based upon stories that come to us from around our country, there are far too many SWAT units being deployed to deal with situations that truly do not require their gung-ho military capabilities. It is of a piece with the growing tendency in community governments to over-respond to every minor disturbance, driven no doubt by the legal hyenas always lurking on the tort-defined peripheries of any community incident. I recently viewed a minor fender-bender in New Mexico, and present were seven emergency vehicles, including multiple fire trucks and ambulances, all with lights flashing and far too many personnel acting importantly and officiously. Four-lane traffic had to be directed to side roads — not because of the vehicles involved in the accident, but due to the completely road-covering spread of the various first-responders.

    That saddens me, because I’m a believer in effective policing and public safety within our communities. But I am fed up with this gross overreaction to minor disturbances that were once handled by an officer, or two at most, but that now require a major callout of community first responders. Every time all those people roll out, it costs the taxpayers and the insurance companies of the citizens involved unbelievable amounts. Justifications for larger annual budgets are based upon the number of times those units were deployed in the last budget cycle. Enter into this calculus the self-serving machinations of public service unions, and we are quickly looking at a scam of the taxpayers of major proportions. Ask yourself this: “How much is it costing me as a taxpayer to have all those unnecessary firemen and EMTs standing around observing the local cops sort out a fender-bender?”

    It’s the first responder equivalent of superfluous highway workers standing around leaning on their shovels while a few of them actually work. The term that survives from my youth is “featherbedding,” and it is apparently alive and well in public-service employment. That is maddening enough, but when such employment overkill and the required self-justifications result in the needless killing of a 107-year-old man, they have progressed beyond political corruption to a deadly vindicating of their existence that is unacceptable to the communities they profess to protect. That is not only sad; in some cases, it should be prosecutable.

    And please, spare me, those of you in public employment who would be eager to remind me that I wouldn’t be critical of the excessive turnout of first responders if it were my life on the line. Old, retired businessman and ex-Army NCO that I am, I would be demanding to my last breath:

    “Just what the hell is your function here?”

    Crossposted at American Thinker

  • Bear Drops Ditz in the Woods

    In one of those eerie coincidences that leaves one looking around suspiciously while the music track from The Twilight Zone echoes in the brain at 2:00 am, I early this morning finished W.E.B. Griffin’s novel, Covert Warriors. What is so eerie is the premise of the storyline that Vladimir Putin is ingeniously attempting to destabilize America’s place in the world order through infiltrating the American president’s intimate inner circle and influencing his behavior as to make him look inept and possibly unbalanced. Published in 2011 and apparently set a few years earlier, the book has a rather abrupt, unresolved, unsatisfactory ending, leading one to believe that there must be a Volume II in the works.

    The machinations of the fictional Vlad couldn’t more closely parallel current world political events.

    While I’ll stay away from the comparison of mental imbalance, although advanced narcissism is considered a psychiatric disorder, the events of the past few days show solid evidence that Putin has displayed almost Machiavellian skill in manipulating America’s chief community organizer, Little Bo Sheep, into increasingly embarrassing diplomatic and geopolitical missteps that are indeed diminishing this once all-powerful nation in the eyes of the leaders and the peoples of the world. The guy who once famously boasted of bringing a gun to a knife fight seems to have entered this mano-a-mano struggle armed with a flashy political putter while Bad Vlad brought a bear-sized battleaxe. Guess who got cut down to size.

    And if you happen to be one of those blindly loyal Obama worshipers who says, “So what?,” you need to take a look at the real geopolitical consequences of a weak and incompetent American president served by equally weak and incompetent secretaries of state. If you think even more daring and challenging moves of this sort aren’t on that big chessboard the Russians view as the world, you’re eminently qualified for low-information voter status. And you can bet the farm that where the Russians boldly tread, the Chinese will inscrutably follow.

    Admit it: as a nation, we’re embarrassed. We allowed this incompetent, unqualified pretender to greatness to usurp the seat of power because of a misplaced, loopy sense of hope, racial guilt, and racial healing, and now we are paying the easily predicted price. The chilling truth is that we are locked into three more years of such losses before we can even begin to fight back and try to regain our previous preeminence. As the expression goes, we have shown the world our a**, and they’re not buying him.

    Ronald Reagan battled the Soviet bear back through the forests of Eastern Europe and forced it into grumbling, resentful hibernation in its eastern lair. With his ill-advised Russian reset, Obama has freed the bear, and the 21st-century incarnation of that fearsome predator is the Ursus Putinus, who took our clueless ditz of a leader and left him lost in the woods of world power play.

    Crossposted at American Thinker

  • Obama’s Arkansas Fellow Traveler

    Last week I emailed my congressman, Tom Cotton, R-Arkansas, letting him know that like almost two-thirds of Americans, I am opposed to supporting Obama’s foolish, face-saving gesture of an attack on Syria. I was taken aback when my congressman, an Army combat veteran of the Middle East wars, responded to me that he was prepared to vote in support of Barack’s Folly, a meaningless shot across the bow of another Middle East brigand who will be defiantly and ineffectually undeterred by an attack which he knows to be nothing more than political theater and political cover for an incredibly weak and inept American president.

    It is dismaying that Cotton is one of only two serving combat veteran congressmen from the Republican side of the aisle who have publicly announced, in the Washington Post, no less, their intention to support Barack’s Folly. Trying to make their case, they readily acknowledge that it is the continual blundering of Barack Obama that has put us into this morass, yet they claim that it is America’s reputation in the world that is at stake here, not that of our feckless leader. I have news for them: America’s reputation in the world took the big hit when she reelected a demonstrated incompetent. Serious dissing of Obama by foreign leaders has been on a steady uptick since November.

    The two congressmen further argue that an emboldened Iran will pose a serious nuclear threat to this country if we don’t show Assad we mean business. I might be moved by that argument if we were talking about a more determined demonstration of our disapproval. Rather than debating the wisdom and effectiveness of firing a shot across Assad’s bow, how about we discuss lobbing sufficient rounds directly into the bridge of the Syrian ship of state? More of us out here might get aboard, especially veterans who are now near universally opposed to the current proposal. No one more determinedly despises useless military gestures like Obama’s shot across the bow than those whose lives may be forfeit to such puerile political posturing.

    That a promising, young, up and coming congressman like Tom Cotton, who recently took the major political step up to declaring for the 2014 senate race against incumbent Democrat, Mark Pryor, can possibly be so tone deaf to the commonsense wisdom that pervades his electorate is disheartening. These folks here in Arkansas, the same as everywhere across the country, don’t see that there is any necessity to use American military forces to support either side in a fight where the likelihood is that both sides are our enemies. Cotton’s mistake is seriously compounded by the recent announcement of the incumbent Democrat, Pryor, usually an Obama water carrier, that he will not support an attack on Syria. Take time to read both accounts and see if you don’t agree that the politically astute Pryor makes the more convincing argument.

    Pryor is a cynically superior political chess player to Cotton, who appears to prefer checkers. Were Pryor not fearing an election challenge, you can bet he’d be toeing Harry Reid’s Democrat hardline on the senate vote next week. But Pryor is cleverly positioning himself as the man of the people, representing the interests of Arkansas, doing his best to define himself as a Democrat who doesn’t think in lockstep with Ultimate Leader and ruling liberal faction of the party.

    And on the checker-playing side, we have the Republican challenger, Tom Cotton, telling those he wishes to represent, “I don’t care if you’re opposed, I know better than you and I will vote to support Obama’s foolishness based on my superior, inside knowledge and not the wishes of my constituents.” Cotton’s argument is that he’s served in combat and that informs his superior position. Well I have a news flash for young Tom Cotton: There are many of us out here who also have been in combat who also have a few decades of life experience on him that informs our opinions, and we think he’s flat-out wrong. Congressman Cotton is wandering dangerously close to the McCain/Graham reservation where the operative reality is that which the senators feel to be politically beneficial, not necessarily what their constituents want. Has any aspirant to the senate ever begun a campaign with such a totally tin ear? It is readily apparent that Cotton has much to learn. Well, unless he’s already planning to be the next McCain or Graham.

    I have no specific information as to Barack Obama’s current approval ratings in Arkansas, but considering these 2012 numbers, I’m betting they’re probably somewhere in the twenties by now. What I will wager with some confidence is that no matter how low they are, come Election Day 2014, they’ll be higher than Tom Cotton’s if he insists on making himself Obama’s Arkansas fellow traveler.

    Crossposted at American Thinker

  • Just Another Case of Workplace Violence

    If you can believe it, the sycophantic, lickspittle New York Times has actually published a video that could be quite harmful to Obama’s efforts to garner support for a strike on Syria. This video shows a group of Obama’s freedom-fighters committing what any prosecutor in the world would charge as murder in the first degree and what would be tried by any world court as a war crime. In the video, a Syrian rebel commander stands before a group of kneeling prisoners with faces in the dirt and delivers a revolutionary diatribe before turning and shooting the nearest prisoner in the head. His shot triggers the rest of the waiting killers, who, standing behind the victims, open fire and complete the killing. The bodies are then shown being thrown into a hole in the ground, which will serve as their mass grave.

    The immediate question that comes to mind is, “If these are our allies, how much more viciously despicable could their enemies possibly be?” The second question has to be, “If they’re capable of this, are they not equally capable of gassing a few thousand of their own provincials to garner world support for their cause?” You just can’t help but wonder about that, now can you?

    There is a remote chance those unfortunate dead may well serve to bring justice in the future to the murderous fanatics who took their lives. First of all is the condemning video showing the killers face-on, and second is the grave, with the plentiful forensic evidence it could yield. When the winds of war blow no more in Syria, perhaps some global prosecutorial force will bring these killers into the halls of justice.

    Now consider for a moment, if that should happen, that to the left, workers are the ground troops of the proletarian revolution. With that in mind, one can’t help but wonder, if a trial of these rebel killers should come to pass, whether the lefty lawyers of the Obama Justice Department will insist to the jurisdictional court that this slaughter is nothing more than another case of workplace violence. Then of course, there is our own Genghis Jean Kerry, who is famously opposed to such barbarous battlefield behavior. It will be beyond interesting to see how Jean Fraud tap-dances around the issue of the United States providing airstrikes and missile attacks to support allies such as these.

    Perhaps the most difficult thing to accept about these politically correct fools who rule us is that they are completely tone-deaf and blind as to just how incredibly absurd they make themselves look to us and the rest of the world — the real world. Unfortunately, the world looks at us and says, “Hey, fools, you elected this incompetent jerk!”

    Twice…

    Crossposted at American Thinker

  • Jean Fraud Kerry: Leading the Charge of the Lie Brigade

    Obama’s choice of John Kerry to lead the charge for war against Syria demonstrates once again just what a tin ear this administration has. When you have a hard sell from the get-go, it helps to have a credible spokesman. Has every member of the president’s inner circle forgotten the 2004 election and how John Kerry was shown by former members of his naval unit in Vietnam to have huge credibility issues regarding his own war record and his untruthful testimony before Congress about American atrocities in Vietnam? Have they never considered that the reason John Kerry never followed through on his promise to sue those sailors who had portrayed him as a fraud and his war record as phony, for defamation, libel and slander was due to the simple fact that a complete defense to such charges is if their statements happened to be true?

    John Kerry’s former shipmates rose up, almost to a man, and deprived him of the presidency with vicious lies and he didn’t sue? With the potential for damages that such a case would present? With the opportunity of righteous retribution against those who had harmed him so grievously? With the promise of vindication before the entire world and the means to clear his name? I’ll wager every lawyer reading this will tell you that his failure to sue was due to that one little issue of truth. He sought neither vindication nor punitive damages because as a lawyer himself he understood that legal discovery and testimony would not only destroy his legal position, it would destroy what remained of his political career.

    So John Kerry tucked tail, despite being mocked for doing so, and let the issue die away quietly so that he could retain his senate seat and survive to head the state department, a job where many believe the ability to lie blatantly and convincingly is considered essential. The problem, however, lies with the millions of Americans, particularly millions of veterans like me, who wouldn’t take John Kerry’s word on any topic, but especially on an issue that involves such a malodorous misuse of our military. My own informal sampling around the Internet tells me that any Obama Red Line attack draws a red flag from most veterans, a cohort notable for standing strongly in support of any legitimate implementation of military force.

    Some will say that since Kerry is Secretary of State and has friends in Congress, he should be leading this campaign. But many millions of us are convinced Kerry’s carefully crafted career is based entirely on lies pertaining to military operations, both his and others. Apparently our sage leaders in the White House think Secretary Botox sufficiently detoxed from his 2004 debacle to lead this Charge of the Lie Brigade, a widely unpopular military proposal, with an outcome likely similar to its Crimean counterpart. It’s truly questionable who’s dumber, the fools in the administration who picked Kerry to sell this suspect story or the fool Republicans in Congress who are sucking it up.

    Consider that most of those in Congress are lawyers so they have to be fully aware that Kerry didn’t sue in 2004 because he couldn’t risk the trial discovery process. They know he’s a fraud who lied about his war record and the so-called Vietnam atrocities, yet his former Senate colleagues have just bought the self-serving lie this administration huckster is selling. What a bunch of cheese-eater weasels.
    Hey, at least I’m not alone here. This guy definitely agrees with me. Jean Fraud Kerry indeed.

    Crossposted at American Thinker

  • Show Us the Evidence, Mr. President

    As I stated in an earlier post, it is a sad state of affairs when we find the diplomatic reasoning of our old Cold War nemesis, Russia, to be more thought provoking and believable than the arguments for military action against Syria being advanced by our own government. Applying but a modicum of common sense to the issue renders the Russian account more credible than that coming from the Obama administration. The Russians sensibly point out that it would be totally counterproductive for Assad to defy the world community by using chemical weapons in a war he is already winning by conventional means. As the Russians note, the Assad regime doesn’t need to use WMD to defeat the acrimonious amalgam of rebel organizations that are trying to unseat him. The despot is doing quite well with conventional warfare, thank you.

    But on the other hand, on the other quite tentative, uncertain side of the fight, all those less than fungible factions fighting Assad for disparate reasons have every motive in the world to manufacture an incident that would help capture world interest and sympathy. Pontificating politicians and mournful moderators on television delivering dirge like discourses of the horrors of death by nerve agent, play strong on the sympathies of those whose thinking is ruled by the touchy feelings on their sleeves and not the machinations of their minds. For those on the losing side, it’s all about controlling the media narrative and cynically manipulating the good feelings and intentions of the caring people around the world.

    To add to my skepticism regarding the Obama administration’s version, expounded by the president himself and his phony war hero secretary of state, there exists somewhere in my mind a niggling wariness that the same folks who are doing their best to sell this dubious story to the world are the very same folks who told us that the Benghazi uprising was the result of a video created by some poor shmuck who unwittingly made himself the perfect fall guy to hide criminal negligence in the Obama administration.

    To compound my skepticism, the administration, claiming it has solid evidence to prove that the Assad regime conducted the chemical strike, refuses to reveal that evidence, hiding behind the convenient shield of national security. What, some staff wienie ventured out onto the green at the eighth hole and showed it to you on her IPod? But we, the people, can’t be trusted to see it? Excuse me but that’s another truck load of Barack Obama, Chicago style, pure, unrefined bull crap. You have the convincing evidence, Mr. President? Then the American people are entitled to see it before we send our young warriors into harm’s way. Show us the evidence.

    I don’t know about the rest of you out there, but I get just a little queasy about committing American forces into a strike against Syria, defended as it is by Russian control of its air defenses, when the only justification we are getting for such a strike comes from an administration that is demonstrably dishonest, especially when it comes to military matters in the Middle East. Incredibly, and shamefully, it appears the Russian government and its leader, Vladimir Putin, is being more honest with the world than our own leadership. It’s damned near breathtaking how the liberal Democrats have managed to diminish this country in the eyes of this world in only five years. Their ineffectual deceptions are becoming a laughingstock; as is their maximum leader. Once again, I ask simply, show us the evidence, Mr. President.

    Crossposted at American Thinker

  • A Sad State of Affairs

    Indeed it is when I find myself lending more credence to Vladimir Putin than I do this dithering, incompetent cowbird the Democrats put in our White House. One charge you most certainly cannot lay on the serving President of Russia is incompetence and our clueless Prez is about to learn that lesson first hand when he travels to Moscow this week for the G20 Summit. I wonder what lines the Vegas odds makers are laying on our permanent campaigner/dedicated duffer coming away from that conference with anything more than his tail, and, by extension, America’s, between his legs. Think about that matchup: we send a former community organizer to lock eyeballs with a former KGB colonel. Good grief! Talk about bringing a knife to a gunfight! And it’s a liberal-approved, school-safe, rubber knife at that.

    Don’t kid yourself that there aren’t plans afoot in the Kremlin to take every advantage of Barack Obama’s crumbling credibility and by now globally recognized ineptitude. Russians have long experience in how to deal with an inexpert opponent who foolishly ventures onto the thin ice. Worse, there is probably feverish planning going on in world palaces and foreign ministries all round the world, from major allies to tinhorn despots, seeking ways to exploit the bumbling, fumbling disaster that is the Democrat foreign policy as expounded by Obama, Hillary and Kerry. It’s enough to make you want to push your index finger right in the collective face of the Democrat power structure and scream, “See? See what you get when you sacrifice good governance of our country for pure political expediency?”

    I’m almost to the point of wondering if we might not be wise to run John McCain again in 2016. Let Hillary landslide bury our own RINO bumbler and inherit the mess that Obama will most assuredly leave to whoever follows. Let Hillary deal with the crumbling economy, the disaster of Obamacare and America’s third-rate diplomatic status compared to Russia and China on the world stage. Give Hillary four years to make things even worse with her own discredited socialist programs and then run a strong, conservative Republican in 2020 to set things right once again. It’s the old “Give ’em enough rope…” ploy. And make no mistake, the Democrats with their unworkable socialist policies are committing a slow form of political suicide.

    Let’s just hope they don’t kill our country in the process…

    Thereby threatening Israel’s existence.

    And possibly plunging the planet into global war.

    Crossposted at American Thinker

  • Another View on Displaying Your Vet Status

    Yesterday, Jonn posted an article about yet another wannabee that apparently had an entire phony Marine career depicted in decals on the back window of his pickup. Numerous commenters noted that they display little to absolutely nothing on their vehicles or persons with some going so far as to express some degree of contempt for those who do. I’d like to offer a bit of a different perspective on the topic.

    My tour in Vietnam with the 101st Airborne was in ’65-’66. Back stateside, I spent six months with the 82d Airborne and then left the Army to go back to West Texas, get married and return to college on the newly-extended G.I. Bill. Anti-military bias on campus in those days was ran very high and while I didn’t advertise my service with decals or bumper stickers, I didn’t try to hide it either, frequently getting into heated arguments and almost coming to blows with know-nothing little squirts who vociferously opposed the war and despised our military.

    Upon obtaining my degree, I went to work selling pharmaceuticals and because of my military background I soon was promoted into government sales. At that point, I learned quickly that it was good for business to make my clients aware that I had been one of them, could speak their language and understood their limitations in making procurement decisions. To that end, I usually wore a miniature set of jump wings or a miniature division patch as a tie tack or lapel pin. Did I take advantage? Of course I did, but then, when you think about it, not nearly to the extent of using my service to obtain a government job, a perfectly legitimate resume enhancer.

    It was sometime in the early ‘80’s that I began wearing military ball caps when at leisure and putting service connected décor on my vehicles and I did it for a specific reason. I was sick and damned tired of hearing the liberal media depict all Vietnam veterans as drug addicted losers and dropouts who couldn’t cut it in mainstream America. Damn it all, I was a Vietnam veteran and while I might have taken a toke now and then I wasn’t a damned drug addicted loser. I’d worked hard to get a degree and a good job which enabled me to buy a nice home, nice cars and even an ill-advised sailboat; I was a Vietnam veteran who was an American success story and tired of being constantly and wrongly maligned. And there were millions of others out there just like me. So by damned, it was time to wear the colors proudly, and I have done so ever since with 101st, and 82d patches and jump wings caps on my head and veterans’ license plates and frames on my vehicles. Do I flaunt it? Bet your ass, troop, but for what I see as damned good reason.

    And if you think those attitudes towards Vietnam vets don’t continue to exist, you’re dead wrong. Just a five years ago, forty years on, while sitting at a table at the country club, a woman across from me asked the folks at the table, “Oh, did any of you see that poor Vietnam veteran outside the supermarket this afternoon; the one with the sign, who was begging for money?” A couple of others nodded or murmured that they had and she then said, “They’re all like that, you know, just a bunch of pathetic drug addicts who never got over losing.” I’d seen the guy as well and he wasn’t nearly old enough to have served in Vietnam but because he was scruffy, long-haired and wearing a filthy old field jacket, he fit the media-created image that this woman and tens of millions like her believed accurate. Looking across the table, I fixed her with a hard stare and said, “I’m a Vietnam veteran sitting here in your damned country club; you think I’m a pathetic loser?” That shut her smug mouth and presumably taught her a lesson.

    Another thought: All you veterans of our recent wars should give thought to letting your fellow citizens know that you are among them, a part of the fabric of their daily lives. It is all too easy for the American people to forget that there are those of you out there risking it all on their behalf with your families making the accompanying sacrifices. Sure, the TV commercials for wounded veterans appeals to your fellow citizens’ patriotism and generosity, but they also need to know that those who defend them also walk among them and work and play beside them. Screw being invisible and anonymous, allow your presence and contribution to be recognized. Most Americans truly respect your service and are pleased to know that you are just like them, so make them happy to know you are there in their communities, warriors now neighbors, solid anchors to the safety and viability of the environment where their children are being nurtured.

    Look, if you’ve been there, you know that real heroes don’t brag. Those who have fought and had the honor to fight with those warriors who achieved that true hero status, in our eyes, not those of clueless civilians in the media, but honestly judged heroes by their fellow warriors, know that post-battle, the brave don’t boast of their accomplishments. My MoH roommate at Ft. Bragg threatened to kick my ass if I didn’t knock off the questions about how he’d earned the award. I believed him fully capable and shut it down. So, the point is, don’t look at it as bragging but rather as a show of solidarity with your former comrades in arms and a demonstration of pride in your honorable service.

    And you’ll never believe how many conversations your military ball cap will lead to that go something like this, ”Uh, yeah, I wanted to join up, but…”