Yeah, so why are you politicizing the deaths of four Americans? It was a long time ago, why haven’t you guys forgotten about it yet? I mean, we’ve been stonewalling for months now. I’ve been doing my best to not use bad words so you guys aren’t blocked by filters, that’s why I’m going to shut up now.
Category: Barack Obama/Joe Biden
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Dempsey on “decimated” al Qaeda
Chief Tango sends us a link to the Daily Caller in which the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs tries to explain what the President said about the “decimated” al Qaeda;
“My understanding of what the president has said is that the ‘al-Qaida core’ has been decimated,” Dempsey said at a lunch for reporters sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor.
“You know, the ideology, or the movement, has clearly spread to the Arab peninsula to Horn of Africa to North Africa to West Africa. And the president has been very clear that he recognizes the al-Qaida threat among its affiliates persists. But the al-Qaida core — that is to say those responsible for the 9/11 attacks and al-Qaida senior leadership that have heretofore provided their kind of ideological hierarchy — they have been, they have been decimated.”
Now I don’t remember the President saying that the “core” of al Qaeda being “decimated”, he said the whole group of terrorists had been “decimated”, which probably coincides with my initial interpretation that decimated means to reduce the enemy’s numbers by 10%.
I do wonder if the reporters on this particular story had to slide a microphone under the President’s desk in order to hear Dempsey, though.
“I mean, that’s where the president is coming from, and I agree with that as a strategy,” he added.
No shit, Marty? You agree with the President on something. A red-letter day indeed.
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Benghazi questions unanswered
I know, I’ve been distracted with the surge in ass clowns this week, but there have been other things going on apparently. Fox News is still waving the Benghazi bloody shirt while the rest of the media is more interested in gay basketball players or something. They have an interview with a “special operations member” who says that he watched the whole Benghazi unfold from a place where he claims that him and his team could have responded in four to six hours and changed the outcome that day.
I’m not sure that I believe him, but only because I’m a cynic who has watched a lot of people say they knew stuff when they really knew nothing recently. But what he says is kind of jibing with what COB6, a former special operations guy himself, wrote to us in the opening hours of the fiasco on September 11th.
He says that he wants to hide his identity because he’s afraid of retribution. And he’s not the only one apparently. In another Fox News article, they report that some of the Benghazi survivors have been threatened by the Obama Administration;
Victoria Toensing, a former Justice Department official and Republican counsel to the Senate Intelligence Committee, is now representing one of the State Department employees. She told Fox News her client and some of the others, who consider themselves whistle-blowers, have been threatened by unnamed Obama administration officials.
“I’m not talking generally, I’m talking specifically about Benghazi – that people have been threatened,” Toensing said in an interview Monday. “And not just the State Department. People have been threatened at the CIA.”
The threats seem to be threats against the potential whistleblowers’ careers rather than death threats. But, yeah, lets have a national discussion about gay basketball players instead.
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Obama slashed Office for Bombing Protection
I don’t even know what the Office of Bombing Protection could possibly do to prevent the bombing in Boston, but the UK’s Daily Mail reports that a former Bush Administration official, Robert Liscouski, claims that the Obama Administration has slashed funding for that office from $20 million to $11 million.
Today the OBP describes its mission as ‘enhanc[ing] the Nation’s ability to prevent, protect against, respond to, and mitigate the terrorist use of explosives against critical infrastructure, the private sector, and Federal, State, local, tribal, and territorial entities.’
Its website says it works to ‘coordinate national and intergovernmental bombing prevention efforts’ and ‘enhance counter-IED capabilities.’
I guess if you believe that government is efficient enough to protect us and can save us from ourselves, you’d believe that an Office of Bombing Protection would be useful and you’d be outraged that Obama cut their funding. But me, not so much. The only thing that could have foiled that plot yesterday would be better police work or a more vigilant public. Certainly not a bunch of bureaucrats sitting in a conference room noodling about the subject.
Liscouski works for a security company now, so I’m sure he thinks more funding would be the answer since he can try to get his grubby little paws on the cash.
Thanks to Preston for the link.
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Balancing the budget on the backs of veterans
I was in the room, back in August, 2010 when the president told the American Legion Convention in Minneapolis that he wasn’t going to balance the national budget on the backs of the military and veterans. Well, at that very moment, his Secretary of Defense, Leon Panetta was planning exactly that. By that time, retirees had already seen two years with no Cost of Living Allowance increases despite the rocketing costs of gasoline and food. Last year, DoD tried to ram through increases in premiums for the military healthcare system, which were blocked in Congress. I’ll remind you that those increases were being shepherded by the Administration despite the fact taht there was a $770 million surplus in Tricare – which DoD promptly raided. Now it seems that the Administration is once again trying to fore go their committment to veterans as well as the active duty force according to the Army Times;
The Pentagon again is seeking increases in Tricare fees with a revamped and more expansive proposal that would touch all beneficiaries but would fall hardest on working-age retirees under 65.
For Medicare-eligible retirees in the Tricare for Life program, the budget proposes an annual enrollment fee based on a percentage of retired pay. For 2014, the fee would be capped at $150 for family coverage for most retirees and $200 for retired flag and general officers.
And, oh, by the way, they capped pay increases for the active force at 1% – about half of what Congress had proposed. And they’re looking for more base realignment – while I agree that there are probably things they could do to save money, at some point, to keep hacking away at the Defense Department has to begin affecting national security – and hacking away at bases will have that exact effect.
And if you think that the Chiefs of Staff are going to pull our fat from the fire, think again;
Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, said the budget proposal “lowers manpower costs, reduces excess infrastructure, and makes healthcare more sustainable.”
“Most importantly, it protects investment in our most decisive advantage — our people,” he said. “It treats being the best led, trained, and equipped military as a non-negotiable imperative.”
I wonder how the reporters heard Dempsey when he, obviously, was under the President’s desk in the Oval Office.
While I understand that the budget needs to be trimmed, manpower costs and legacy costs are not the place to do the cutting – since that will affect future abilities of the government to attract a volunteer force. But, then that’s probably what they’re shooting for – a seriously weakened defense structure – regardless of the fact that national defense is one of the things that the Constitution says that government does, not all of that other meaningless bullshit that isn’t on the chopping block.
Thanks to Chief tango for the link.
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Vets push Benghazi issue
The Washington Times reports that two groups of special operations veterans are calling for more scrutiny in regards to the attacks on the Benghazi consulate on September 11th, 2012;
In separate letters to House members, the groups Special Operations Speaks and Operational Security (OpSec), urged support for the resolution introduced by Rep. Frank R. Wolf, Virginia Republican, calling for a special congressional committee of inquiry to look into the deadly attacks.
“The traditional committee [oversight] process has failed stalled out,” OpSec founder Scott W. Taylor, a former Navy SEAL, told The Washington Times.
In a second letter to every member of the House signed by 700 retired military personnel, Special Operations Speaks demanded a “full accounting” of the Benghazi attack, listing lingering questions about the incident and the Obama administration’s responses.
What with all of the distractions of North Korea, gun control legislation, immigration reform, the civil war in Syria, Iran’s nuclear intentions, Benghazi seems to have fallen off our national radar screen. At least some veterans haven’t forgotten.
Our buddy Susan Katz Keating says that a fifth person died in that assault on our consulate. Sean Hannity spoke to Pat Smith, the mother of Sean Smith who died in that assault, and she told him that the Obama Administration asked her to shut up about her son asking for more security and asking questions about the circumstances of his death.
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Norks are coming!
According to the Associated Press, the North Korean leader, Needle Dick; the Bug F*cker, has given his military the equally impotent permission to attack US and South Korean militaries in South Korea;
North Korea warned early Thursday that its military has been cleared to attack the U.S. using “smaller, lighter and diversified nuclear” weapons, while the U.S. said it was strengthening protection in the region and seeking to defuse the situation.
Despite the intense rhetoric, analysts do not expect a nuclear attack by North Korea, which knows the move could trigger a destructive, suicidal war that no one in the region wants. It’s not believed to have the ability to launch nuclear-tipped missiles, but its other nuclear capabilities aren’t fully known.
According to the Washington Beacon, China is gearing up for a possible reopening of hostilities in the war that has been fairly stagnant for 60 years;
The Obama administration, meanwhile, sought to play down the Chinese military buildup along the border with Beijing’s fraternal communist ally despite the growing danger of conflict following unprecedented threats by Pyongyang to attack the United States and South Korea with nuclear weapons.
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The buildup appears linked to North Korea’s March 30 announcement that it is in a “state of war” with South Korea after the United Nations imposed a new round of sanctions following the North’s Feb. 12 nuclear test and because of ongoing large-scale joint U.S.-South Korea military exercises.
I don’t know about the rest of you, but I can’t help but feel a little excited at the potential of millions of North Koreans presenting themselves as targets here. It’s the next best thing to the Zombie Epoch. I hope they wait until I can sight in my new Model 700. But I do have aiming stakes set up for the potential drop zone that my deck overlooks – it’s going to happen just like “Red Dawn”, right?
I hate to bring you down, but it’s probably all bluster. I’m pretty sure that the Obama Administration is loading up a plane right now with bags of money that Jimmy Carter can deliver to ND;tBF.
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Rolling out the BS
Lance Cooley sends us a link from Fox News that disputes the figures that the president is using to push his universal background check agenda. Apparently the president said something to give the impression that 40% of guns are sold with no background checks;
The oft-cited figure, it turns out, was pulled from a 1997 study done by the National Institute of Justice. In the study, researchers estimated about 40 percent of all firearm sales took place through people other than licensed gun dealers. The conclusion was based on data from a 1994 survey of 2,568 households. Of those, only 251 people answered the question about where they got their guns.
PolitiFact tracked down the co-author of the study, Duke University professor Philip Cook, and asked him if he thought the 40 percent estimate is accurate.
“The answer is I have no idea,” Cook reportedly told PolitiFact. “This survey was done almost 20 years ago.”
Even the Washington Post, through editorial tears, squeezed out three Pinocchios for the lie.
Two months ago, we were willing to cut the White House some slack, given the paucity of recent data. But the president’s failure to acknowledge the significant questions about these old data, or his slippery phrasing, leaves us little choice but to downgrade this claim to Three Pinocchios.
Yeah, well, anyone would know it was a lie, since only 25% of weapons sold at gun shows are done without background checks. I’ve gone through background checks for every single weapon that I own. I guess next time I shoot with Old Trooper and his Hillbilly Hunt Club in Minnesota, they’ll make me go through background checks again.