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

Category: Barack Obama/Joe Biden

  • Criticism for OPSEC video

    SO, it had to begin; folks are beginning to come out to criticize the people at OPSEC who released a video last week complaining that the Obama Administration is releasing secrets for political purposes and that Obama is taking personal credit for things that the military and intelligence community has done over the last decade.

    General Dempsey, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff joins the chorus;

    “If someone uses the uniform, whatever uniform, for partisan politics, I am disappointed because I think it does erode that bond of trust we have with the American people,” Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey said in an interview with Fox News while flying back from a trip to Afghanistan and Iraq.

    “Is their criticism valid? I won’t comment on that,” Dempsey said onboard a C17 military aircraft en route back from the Middle East. “Is it useful? No, it’s not useful. It’s not useful to me.”

    The Associated Press reports the one-way conversation from Admiral McRaven, President Obama and John Kerry;

    “Make no mistake about it, it was the president of the United States that shouldered the burden for this operation, that made the hard decisions,” the leader of the raid, Adm. Bill McRaven, said at this summer’s Aspen Security Forum.

    “I don’t take these folks too seriously,” President Barack Obama told the newspaper The Virginian-Pilot on Monday. “One of their members is a birther who denies I was born here, despite evidence to the contrary.” Special Ops OPSEC member ret. Maj. Gen. Paul Vallely, who appears in the group’s film, has publicly questioned Obama’s birth in Hawaii.

    Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., compared the group’s campaign to the “Swift Boat” attacks that questioned his service during the Vietnam War. Though later discredited, the claims were partially blamed for unseating his 2004 presidential campaign.

    John Kerry? Really? The guy who all but wore his uniform every day of the 2004 Presidential Campaign?

    I don’t see anyone criticizing Jon Soltz who uses his military service like a shield from criticism. He runs VoteVets which is supposed to advance the political careers of veterans, but in the last election, they funded Harry Reid’s campaign. Harry Reid who fit their own definition of a draft dodger as they apply the definition to Republicans.

    Did anyone criticize Paul Rieckhoff when he attacked the Bush Administration while he was still a captain in the Reserves when he presented the Democrat’s opposition to a Bush radio address?

    And what about in New Hampshire the other day when Democrat Senator Jeanne Shaheen introduced the President as the guy who led the raid that got Obama? I didn’t hear the President refute that and humbly give credit where it was due.

    And, oh, yeah, read the President’s comment above again – and you wonder why I’ve been saying that birthers aren’t helpful Obama disparaged the whole group because they had one birther among them. Never mind that there are Democrats and people who voted for Obama in OPSEC, their good intentions are cast aside because of one birther.

    “They have a good point. I wish there was better OPSEC (operational security), and fewer leaks,” said retired Navy SEAL Capt. Rick Woolard, who commanded several SEAL units. “But I would prefer that SEALs and other special operators would sit down and shut the hell up.”

    Yeah, if they’d shut up on both sides of the issue, your criticism would be valid, Captain.

    More from Mr. Hanson.

  • Transparency? Here’s some Real Transparency

    Good grief! How stupid does the Obama campaign think Americans are? How much contempt do those Chicago elitists have for those of us out here clinging to our guns, our religion and because of them and their incompetent leader, our livelihoods? I’m referring, of course, to this latest bit of preposterousness emanating from the White House spinmeisters: the turnout crowds at Obama campaign events are intentionally small because we’re deliberately controlling access to maintain an atmosphere of intimacy between the great one and our true Kool-Aid drinkers.

    Excuse me, but Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!!!

    Sure you are, Axelrod. As any successful political campaign consultant will tell you, it’s really smart to keep the crowds small and make that really close, confidential connection. Sure it is, especially at fundraisers, hmm?. That’s a real formula for winning, know what I mean? Who wants the tens of thousands of enthusiastically cheering voters who are turning out at the Romney/Ryan events? That’s just so gauche and totally unbecoming, not to mention a testimony to the coarseness and unsophistication of those spiritual, gun-loving knuckle-draggers who unfortunately occupy such a large geographical portion of America. Bunch of damn Tea Party fools, don’t you agree Mr. Plouffe? When you and Axelrod write your book chronicling the disastrous and failed campaign you concocted in 2012, perhaps the chapter on limiting the crowds at Obama events should be titled:

    Crowds? We don’t need no stinking crowds!

    Truth is folks, this transparently laughable idiocy isn’t aimed at the kinds of Americans who read American Thinker; no, it’s hard targeted on those who are hopelessly unaware and eternally naive, which means most of California, New York and Michigan and all of Massachusetts and Illinois. Unaware and naive are the nicest possible excuses you can make for people willing to believe that a messianic politician really doesn’t want to be greeted at every stop by massive, adoring, idol-worshiping crowds like he was the last time around.

    And these are the fools who look down their elitist noses at the rest of America…

  • Jon Soltz swiftboats OPSEC

    I really dislike Jon Soltz of VoteVets and if you don’t dislike him, you won’t not dislike him after watching this video from MSNBC in which he faces off with Navy Seal, Gabriel Gomez, from the OPSEC folks. Gomez actually gives credit to President Obama for making the decision to go after bin Laden at about 2:45 into the video.

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    It took 10 seconds into Soltz’ diatribe to mention that he was in Iraq. After Gomez tries to be gracious and says that VoteVets is non-partisan (they are not, VV has never supported a Republican for any political office in their six year history), Soltz just plows ahead and without saying why, he calls the whole video a lie. He calls Gomez a liar without explaining what he thinks Gomez is lying about.

    The VoteVets Facebook page says about the video; “Swiftboating of Obama Smacked Down by VoteVets.org Chairman Jon Soltz on Hardball on MSNBC.” Yeah, it wasn’t smacked down, Gomez tried to be polite while Soltz played the bully and leaned on the grade school playground tactic of calling Gomez names. Soltz might not have so brave if he’d been in the same room as Gomez, though.

    Trolling through the Facebook page, you can see countless examples of whoever is running that POS page (disksmith went to Veterans’ Affairs with the rest of the VV crew, so I know it’s not him) of VV taking cheap shots at veterans who were in the video. They accuse Scott Taylor of releasing SEAL secrets on a Discovery Channel program “The Secrets of SEAL Team Six” because the Discovery Channel is the best place to release classified information, I suppose.

    They also link to a Business Insider article that claims that another member of OPSEC, Fred Rustmann, had defended Scooter Libby’s outing of Valerie Plame on *gasp* Fox News’ Hannity Show, although Scooter Libby had nothing to do with outing Plame, who was out years before she was outed, anyway. I mean, the cover of Vanity Fair is a strange place to be announcing you’re a CIA agent if you’re trying to be covert, isn’t it?

    Anyway, so much for VoteVets’ non-partisan support of issues that matter to veterans.

  • OK, you can rest easy now

    All of you folks still in Afghanistan who might have been worried that you’d be a target of “insider” attacks can breathe easy now, the president is on the job, finally. The Associated Press reports that he told the media today; “we have got to make sure we are on top of this”.

    I don’t know how he figures he can do more…I mean, he let them turn their desks so the troops could face the door. How much can one man do? Oh, and the “Guardian Angel Program” where one person the room gets to be armed and watches the Afghans who come in the room. Don’t forget the fact that he let them put bullets in their weapons. Hasn’t he done enough already?

    The article goes on to say that “the military needs to beef up its vetting process for Afghan troops”. yeah, see, it’s their own fault they’re getting shot to shit – the Americans aren’t vetting the Afghans well enough. Not that the Afghans aren’t vetting their troops well enough…it’s the military who isn’t doing their job. Because all they have to do ask the prospective recruits if they plan on shooting up some Americans and they’ll always answer truthfully.

    Meanwhile Obama “plans to speak to Afghan President Hamid Karzai as well”. That’ll help loads. And, really, hasn’t he already talked to Karzai about this? Why does he think that talking to Karzai will help now? Didn’t Leon Panetta have a conversation with Karzai this weekend, right before this last attack on a US soldier?

    Maybe he’s worried because the LA Times did an article today entitled “Afghanistan ‘insider’ attacks pose threat to West’s exit strategy“. Yeah, when your only strategy is withdrawal and you can’t do that right, and the LA Times notices, something’s vastly wrong.

    But don’t worry, you folks who have your asses on the line over there, I’m sure the president is going to focus on this problem and get to a solution like he’s done to so many problems he’s faced. Like fixing the economy and closing Guantanamo, a solution is right around the corner.

  • I can’t wait for the movie

    Sparky sent us this video. It proves that the OPSEC folks are on the right track.

    Introducing President Obama at a campaign event in New Hampshire, Democrat Senator Jeanne Shaheen said that the president “led the mission that brought Osama bin Laden to justice”:

    And the bobbleheads in the audience just clapped and cheered on cue.

    It looks and sounds to me like the Democrats are swiftboating the SEALs who accomplished what few in this country could have done.

  • John Kerry on “Swiftboating” Obama

    From our buddy, Gateway Pundit comes the news that John Kerry took to the internet to defend President Obama from what he calls “Swiftboating”. Well, actually, he didn’t defend the President, all he did was try to make us feel sorry for him that the truth about his service was made public. From Democrats.org;

    Seeing the new outrageous attacks made against President Obama from a shadowy Republican-allied veterans group called OPSEC, which take issue with the mission to kill Osama bin Laden, remind me all too well of the notorious “Swift Boat” attacks I faced in the 2004 campaign. I honor and appreciate the service of my fellow veterans, but a false attack is a false attack—no matter who’s making it. It’s not enough to wish them away or dismiss them because they come in part from “birthers” who still won’t concede that President Obama was born here in the United States.>

    Yeah, former presidential candidate John Kerry, if the claims against you were false, why haven’t you signed your SF 180 yet? He said he would during the campaign, but here we are eight years later, and nothing has changed.

    Kerry continues;

    Faced with all this, it shouldn’t be a surprise that Romney and his allies are resorting to the same national security smear tactics I faced in 2004.

    Smear tactics? Really? All I needed to see was the short clip of John Kerry on patrol by himself in Vietnam to know the rest of his stories were false. Who does that? And the fact that he left Vietnam, left his troops behind as soon as he had his three Purple Hearts. What real leader does that – irrespective of how he was awarded the Purple Hearts.

    And, oh, since “swiftboating” means bringing a phony’s true military record to light, how can Obama be “swiftboated” when he has no military record to bring to light?

  • Swiftboating poor Obama

    They still don’t know what the term, “swiftboating” means;

    I guess the attacks on Obama for pretending to be a ‘war president” from the various special operations troops who’ve been sticking up for the troops who are actually fighting the wars are starting to sting, because the Obama campaign has been attacking those veterans on this new webpage.

    It’s funny because their charges against these guys range from “worked on the McCain campaign” to making appearances on Fox News. They go after our friend, Larry Bailey for organizing the “Vietnam Veterans For Truth” – my first conservative rally and precursor to Gathering of Eagles.

    So, there’s really nothing surprising about the revelations on this web page. Veterans are generally conservative, and conservatives generally supported George W Bush over John Kerry or Al Gore. Duh. The webpage concludes;

    It is not surprising that the attacks these groups are launching lack any credibility. The President is committed to protecting our troops and our country’s security. The only way to mislead Americans about his record on national security is to resort to dishonest and overtly political smear campaigns that do a disservice to Americans who deserve to know the facts about the President’s record.

    The President’s record on national security and support for the troops is indeed glaring. When he took his political advisers’ advice for the Afghanistan surge instead of his generals, we know what he was thinking, and it wasn’t about national security. Supporting the troops? Really? Was that he wanted service-connected veterans to buy their own insurance? Is that why his Homeland Security Department warned the nation to watch out for crazy vets? Is that why he’s raising the cost of Tricare for veterans as a means to lower everyone else’s health care costs?

    But what I think is strange, they attack veterans who campaign against Obama for not disclosing their conservative links, but I don’t see anyone except TAH disclosing IAVA’s liberal links. In fact, we were attacked in 2008 for exposing Phil Carter, Obama campaign veteran advisor, as a founding member of IAVA. And we were attacked for connecting IAVA to Paul Rieckhoff’s first anti-conservative venture OpTruth (which was nothing more than IVAW in suits).

    And don’t get me started on VoteVets.

    So I don’t think that it’s surprising that conservatives oppose Obama, because, from what I’ve heard, liberals oppose Romney.

    Thanks to Daniel for the link to the Obama page.

  • Panetta notices that “there is a war going on”

    Apparently, the guy in charge of slashing defense spending and leading the withdrawal from Afghanistan is upset that neither Romney nor Ryan mentioned the war in Afghanistan when they rolled out their partnership this weekend according to Politico;

    Neither Mitt Romney nor Paul Ryan mentioned the war in Afghanistan during their big running mate roll-out in Virginia Saturday. Barack Obama gives it only a brief mention in his own stump speeches.

    Leon Panetta seems to have had enough.

    “I realize that there are a lot of other things going on around this country that can draw our attention, from the Olympics, to political campaigns to droughts, to some of the tragedies we’ve seen in communities around the country,” the defense secretary said at Tuesday’s Pentagon press briefing. “I thought it was important to remind the American people that there is a war going on.”

    From the guy who spends $33,000 every weekend to be with his family while all of the deployed soldiers in his charge don’t get the same privilege. Speaking of pretentious idiots;

    “From watching the campaign debate so far, it’s hard to tell America is still a country at war,” said Paul Rieckhoff, executive directotr [sic] of the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. “Neither candidate nor party has focused enough on Afghanistan, or on the issues facing our troops, veterans and their families at home. Our men and women are fighting and dying overseas for our country and both candidates have a responsibility to drive the national dialogue about issues of war and defense.”

    Says the guy whose main focus over the last few months has been to urge NYC’s mayor Bloomberg to throw Rieckhoff a welcome home parade. I say throw Rieckhoff a parade because it seems that he’s the only one who wants one.

    I don’t know why the American public would be disengaged for the war issue. Well, except that the Obama Administration has been ranting and raving about how the war is over because he got bin Laden and focusing on the fact that the troops are coming home.

    While I agree that both parties need to talk more about the war, their plans and about veterans, what does panetta really expect? He’s slashing defense spending, eroding veterans’ benefits and yet he expects us to believe that he thinks there’s a war going on?