Chief Tango sends us a link to the Daily Caller which reports from the Hannity Show that former U.S. Attorney Michael Mukasey reveals that Leon Panetta, then CIA director, had a memo drafted that would have absolved the President of any blame if the bin Laden raid had failed for some reason;
“There was a memo from Leon Panetta that described the authority that was given to McCraven,” Mukasey explained. “And it was to proceed according to the risks, only according to the risks that had been outlined to the president. And if he encountered anything else, he had to check back. And you better believe that if anything else had been encountered and the mission had failed, then the blame would have fallen on McCraven. That’s what that’s about.”
Remember the note that Eisenhower drafted before the D-Day invasion, the one in which he took complete blame for what might be a failure? That’s because that’s what a real leader does.
On top of that revelation, our buddy, Aunty Brat has the story of an actual Navy SEAL’s open letter to the President asking him to stop taking credit for the operation. You should read it.
A few of you sent me the video last week from Veterans For A Strong America, but Blackfive beat us to getting it up, so I didn’t bother since most of you go over there, anyway. But apparently the video has had it’s desired effect. The Obama Administration is backing away from taking credit for the bin Laden raid. First here’s the video, in case you forgot;
I watched the Leftists blow up over the video, first at Mother Jones with that pretend veteran, Adam Weinstein who wrote “Meet the Astroturfer Planning to Swift Boat Obama“. Weinstein also has changed his profile picture over there to show him in his dixie cup, so we all know he’s a veteran, because you can’t tell by the way he throws veterans under the bus;
It’s impossible to know how many of America’s 22 million veterans are actually represented by VFSA’s political activities. “We don’t pretend to speak for all veterans,” Arends says. There is no doubt that Arends, a decorated Iraq War vet and longtime Army Reserve and National Guard member, cares deeply about his comrades in arms. But there’s little evidence that VFSA is more than a dark-money group with connections to the Republican Party, the tea party group Americans for Prosperity, and Islamophobic activists.
Yeah, when I asked him why he wasn’t concerned about the “dark money” at IAVA and VoteVets, Weinstein started calling me names, so I guess that’s not as important as Obama opponents.
Think Progress’ huge revelation is that Joel Arends was also a member of that subversive “dark money” organization “Vets For Freedom”…GASP!!! Um, TSO is one of the founders of VFF – does he look rich from all of that dark money?
Yeah, “Swiftboating” as used against the Kerry campaign, means outing a lying little prick about their military service, and it brings out some strong feelings on both sides…mostly because Americans believed veterans who spoke out against Kerry, and the Left is sorely afraid that it will happen again, so ABC is reporting, in a link sent to us by Tman, that the Obama Administration is toning down the smack they were talking last week;
A backlash against President Obama’s politicization of the killing of Osama bin Laden may be having an effect on how the president and his campaign advisers refer to the accomplishment.
Namely – the president taking first-person credit last week has turned into expressions of collective achievement this week.
“Our greatest enemy brought to justice by our greatest heroes,” says the narrator in a new Obama campaign TV ad released today.
The president’s top campaign adviser, David Axelrod , used similar language on a conference call with reporters: “We’re proud of our service people and all they’ve accomplished.”
Howard “Buck” McKeon (R) is calling on the Presidentially appointed, bipartisan Council of Governors to support his efforts at heading off the arbitrary sequestration cuts set to literally decimate the defense budget. McKeon has been a frequent and vocal advocate for vets, active and reserve service members and a robust, healthy defense apparatus in general. Previously the Council of Governors made a successful push to trim back cuts to the Air Force National Guard in their states. NIMBY politics, maybe, but effective and prudent. Now McKeon hopes that this organization of ten governors can act as a relief force for the rest of the military.
Normally I’d say that outside of their local needs most of these politicans would happily throw the military to the wolves. After all, just as Tip O’Neill once said, “All politics is local.” The good news? These politics are local. Of the ten Governors on the Council all five of the Democrats, a group normally ambivalent to defense spending as it doesn’t yield demographic patronage for their party, are the Governors of states with large military communities and/or facilities. That means jobs and money.
These states are Washington (PSNS/Naval Base Kitsap/JBLM/Naval Base Everett), Maryland (NSA/Aberdeen/Andrews/contractors galore), North Carolina (Bragg/Pope/Lejeune/Cherry Point), Oklahoma (Tinker/Sill), Hawai’i (MCB Hawaii/Pearl Harbor) and Missouri (Whitman/Leonard Wood). This may be the best chance yet for a bipartisan commission of the President’s own choosing to rebuke the pending cuts. If you live in any of these states you should be looking up the contact info of both your Governor and your State Rep and demanding they back Rep McKeon. With the election looming Obama must scramble to preserve jobs, even if they come from the “evil” military-industrial complex. This is exactly where we should be hitting him.
I know…it’s best to let sleeping dogs lie. But I swear, this bit about Romney not liking animals because he strapped a dog carrier to the top of his car and transported his dog in it has me wondering just what kind of wimps are running the Democrat campaign. Well no, that’s not entirely true. I confess that I’ve considered David Axelrod a wimp since the first time I heard his whiny voice. Can you imagine that wussified elitist standing in front of a formation and calling out commands? Or running beside one and calling cadence? Didn’t think so.
So what, exactly, are the Democrats flapping their gums about in the Doggie Wars? Flapping ears? What, in their minds, was wrong with what Mitt Romney did in strapping Seamus, his setter, in a canine carrier on top of his car, granting Fido his fondest wish? It seems Axelrod and the Democrats are as out of touch with dogs as they are with ordinary people.
Anyone who’s spent any time at all around dogs knows that the very thing canines love most about cars, well other than lifting a leg on alloy wheels, is an open window to poke their heads from as the oncoming airflow pushes back their gums into a joyful grin and their ears flap wildly about their heads. Out here in cowboy country, the border collies run freely in the backs of pickups and one thing you can bet the rent money on is that when the vehicle is in motion, the dogs’ muzzles are facing into the wind. Follow one of the trucks down the highway and you will often see the mutts running back and forth, from one side to the other, poking their noses around the cab. It almost appears that they are seeking the side with the greatest wind velocity.
This is such a universal behavior that I recently asked our country veterinarian about it. She grinned and responded, “You know, you’re right…they do seem to love the wind, don’t they? I have no idea why.” So, while the why remains a mystery, the fact that dogs love the wind in their faces every bit as much as bikers, remains an observable truth. But the real mystery “why” is, “Why did the Democrats make Seamus an issue in the first place?” Why all the flapping gums over flapping ears? Good grief, please don’t anyone show those Democrat pussies these pictures or they’ll be soiling their silkies. Furthermore, the thought just occurred to me that those SEAL’s are making those poor puppies jump out of perfectly good aircraft because their chain of command has ordered them to do precisely that.
POSTSCRIPT: a talking head on FOX just reminded me that you-know-who likes to take all the credit for the success of the raid on Osama bin Laden. Well, excuse me, Mr. Axelrod, but doesn’t that mean that your dog-eating Dear Leader directly and deliberately caused a canine to come under hostile fire? Omigod, the horror of it all! And Axelrod wanted a Doggie War? What’s next in his brilliant strategy, attacking Romney because he didn’t have to pay his own college tuition?
No you heard right, there is going to be a Ron Paul video game to help his failing race for the White House. You know, the race in which he has yet managed to claim a single state in the primaries?
Yep this is not satire or from the Onion, this is a real project.
Ron Paul may not be the most avid gamer — but the leading libertarian certainly wouldn’t want to stop you playing his character in an upcoming videogame from Texas-based programmer Daniel Williams.
“Ron Paul: The Road to REVOLution” is a side-scrolling adventure game that echoes console classics of days gone by. Players take control of Dr. Paul as he sprints across the U.S., collecting coins (made of gold, of course) and delegates in a race for the White House.
The browser-based game has one level for each of the 50 states, and 13 boss fights — one for each branch of the Federal Reserve. Once released, it’ll be free to play.
So do not be suprised to see this spammed into your inbox or facbook page in the near future.
Politifact, the nominally non-partisan “fact checker” which takes a statement by a politician, surveys a group of “experts” of their own choosing and then coughs up a “truth-o-meter” score, has landed in hot water, again. Previously it was when the liberal media establishment got all asshurt over Politifact calling the claim that Republicans were trying to end Medicare the “Lie of the Year”, much to the amusement of columnists like Mark Hemingway over at The Weekly Standard. Hemingway had previously worked to expose so called “fact checking” organizations as being fundamentally misrepresentative highlighting, among other things, the absurdity of using AP reports as the arbiter of proper military analysis after Politifact went after Romney on a Iran statement.
This time around it again concerns our military. (more…)
They’re coming. They’re real. After the initial rounds of cuts initiated by the Democrats and then the bi-partisan failure to insulate our national defense from indiscriminate slash and burn budgeting we are now on the precipice of the enfeebled 90’s military with 21st century commitments and enemies. The cynical tilling of the field for these cuts by the anti-military Left has been deliberate and systematic.
Not to say that the adolescent libertarian Right is without blame. Welcome to the hell paved with stupid intentions. Any doubt about the cross-cultural nature of this stupidity can be quickly remedied by simple Google searches. Yep, that’s the perennially useless Barney Frank side by side with Chemtrail hero Ron Paul. Go get ’em guys!
We should start with the testing ground of all new talking points in politics, the internet. Here we have on the “Real News Network’s” hosting the unbiased Jo Comerford of the “National Priorities Project“, going on about military cuts:
A significant yet tired piece of propaganda emerges from this video. Comerford begins with, and ultimately relies upon, the idiot’s impression of the federal budget: that federal discretionary spending constitutes the most important, even most substantial, portion of government spending. It’s important to note that after her tired charade, which attempts to impress on the viewer that the portion of federal spending which constitutes military spending is the lion’s share, the circus master chimes in around the 3:00 minute mark with the reinforcing: “…because the military represents such a bigger portion of the overall budget.”
An unholy alliance has been formed in Washington D.C.
Libertarian Republicans and liberal Democrats are moving to both destroy the military and cut off at the knees the families who have given the most this past decade. The first person to sound the alram in the mass media was former President George W. Bush’s Ambassador to the UN John Bolton in July of 2011:
Every indication is that the debt-ceiling negotiations are leaving the defense budget in grave jeopardy. By exposing critical defense programs to disproportionate cuts as part of the “trigger mechanism,” there is a clear risk that key defense programs will be hollowed out.
While the trigger mechanism comes into play only if the Congressional negotiators fail to reach agreement on the second phase of spending cuts, it verges on catastrophe to take such a national security risk.
Defense has already taken hugely disproportionate cuts under President Obama, and there is simply no basis for expanding those cuts further. Republican negotiators must hold the line, since the Obama Administration plainly will not.
He spoke out again making it clear that if (when) the so called Super-Committee failed the DoD and its membership would be left devastated.
In the deal’s second stage, the yet-to-be-named Congressional Joint Commission will have wide discretion on what to agree on, but if no agreement or only partial agreement is reached, the deal’s sequestration mechanism will be triggered. Broadly speaking, if that happens, defense spending will bear fifty percent of the total cuts, with non-defense spending bearing the remaining fifty percent, up to the amount necessary to raise the debt ceiling by the minimum $2.4 trillion required by the deal. This approach risks grave damage to our national security.
There is no strategic rationale whatsoever for cuts of this magnitude. There is, in fact, every strategic rationale to the contrary. While the appropriations process may still be able to decide which specific programs will be cut, this is no consolation. Cuts of this size are effectively indiscriminate.
It’s at this point in which I know I don’t actually need to remind this readership of this blog where the true burden of our tax dollars rest. I’d hope we all know where the rest of this is heading…
I’ll sound the alarm now for the 6.1 million of you whose jobs are tied into defense. Your time is coming in what is referred to by insiders as the coming train wreck. Entire US companies are looking to get out of the business of defending the United States and taking their people elsewhere. (more…)