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

Category: Barack Obama/Joe Biden

  • Night raid deal largely symbolic?

    SnafuDude sends us an article from The Stars & Stripes which reports that “analysts” have declared that the deal which the US forged out with the Afghan government over night raids is just a piece of paper which has little meaning;

    “It defines it fairly narrowly, and leaves open the possibility of a counterterrorism raid conducted by a CIA paramilitary group or other unit,” she said. “That’s not to say those operations will occur regularly … but it stands to reason that if the United States had a very high-value target in its sights, it would pursue that target as it needed to.”

    Though Defense Department officials would not answer questions Monday about whether the U.S. would ever mount a unilateral night raid in Afghanistan, a counterterrorism expert said that given the right circumstances, the answer is clearly yes.

    OK, so maybe that’s what it says, I haven’t read the document, but given what I do know about this administration, I doubt that they’d be tempted to work “around the edges” of the agreement. Remember that this administration was hesitant to mount an operation against bin Laden because of the political implications of it’s failure. I don’t think they could summon the testicular fortitude to mount a similar operation once again, let alone if it meant appearing to violate this memorandum of understanding.

    It doesn’t make up for the possibility of leaks to the targets about the night raids which will go through the courts. Remember that’s why the US didn’t inform the Pakistanis about the bin Laden raid. Leaks are fairly common in that part of the world. I mean, it’s Afghan Army officers who have been more successful at killing US troops in the last few months than the actual Taliban.

  • Stein hands his firing squad the bullets

    Shithouse lawyer, Gary Stein, who is looking at a discharge after nine years of service in the Marine Corps for announcing on his Facebook profile that he’d never salute President Obama, nor follow any orders he didn’t like, is still at making up laws according to the Stars & Stripes/LA Times;

    The Marine sergeant facing discharge because of critical comments about President Barack Obama says the board that recommended his dismissal ignored the law and instead relied on “personal opinion.”

    “I believe it was more based on personal opinion on the three members than it was based on the legalities of the case,” Sgt. Gary Stein told CNN in an interview Tuesday. “They denied four expert witnesses that were there to talk about the legalities. … They didn’t even want to hear or take written testimony from them.”

    This is from the same guy who was told by his command that if he continued down his path, he would be facing disciplinary procedures. But he made his own examination of the military policies involved and unilaterally decided that he was within his rights. Now that he’s facing disciplinary procedures, he still thinks he knows the law better than his accusers.

    Stein’s aptly named lawyer, Gary Kreep threatens that he’ll take the case to the Ninth Circuit. I’m sure the Ninth Circuit will be in a tizzy over that one. One the one hand, they hate the military, and on the other hand, they hate the Constitution, so who knows how that would turn out.

    Last week, as Stein’s lawyers sought unsuccessfully to block the separation board hearing, Kreep said he suspects the Obama administration is trying to punish Stein because of his conservative views, including calling for a Republican to defeat Obama.

    “My suspicion is that someone in the White House bureaucracy watching social media saw this (Stein’s website) and said, ‘We’re going to nail this S.O.B.,” Kreep said.

    Yeah, that’s boob bait for the birthers, I’m sure the Obama Administration targeted the clown. They don’t pay attention to their generals, so why would they waste their time on a sergeant. FFS.

  • Army future not so “Strong”

    In the competition between the military services, the Army is worried that they’re going to lose their edge on the battlefield to the high tech, long distance engagement capability of the Navy and the Air Force says retired ArmyMaj. Gen. Robert Scales in the Washington Times today;

    “We have an opportunity to take this experience in Iraq and Afghanistan and really achieve dominance on the ground, just like the Air Force achieved with the F-22 and F-35 and the Navy has achieved with its modern fleet of carriers,” said retired ArmyMaj. Gen. Robert Scales.

    “But for whatever reason, the Army is going to go into the future with no major platform modernization that I can see. It’s entirely likely that my grandchildren, should they choose to go in the Army, will be fighting with equipment I was using when I was a captain.”

    Ya mean like when I was a young sergeant and still using cold weather gear left over from the Korean War and weapons that had been made during Vietnam? Facing a 1990s threat with 1960s equipment? That’s the result of having an administration that hates the military unless they can make the administration look good. Like Jimmy Carter tried to do in an election year with his Desert One operation – but the equipment that the administration didn’t want to maintain failed them.

    This administration has been fairly lucky thus far, since the operations that they hoped would make them look good didn’t depend so much on equipment as they did on people. Still they had equipment failure on the bin Laden operation that has been fairly well ignored because the overall operation succeeded.

    You’d think that the failure of that one helicopter would give the administration pause, but it hasn’t so far. It’s much sexier to stand off from a few thousand feet, or a few thousand miles, and drop bombs. Much less sexier to fight with soldiers who have to hold terrain in order to make an operation successful. Fighting with soldiers requires losses and personnel costs which, in turn, costs votes at ballot box. But just wait until military members discover that their future in the Army doesn’t look so bright and we have to take Cat IV during a relative peace time like we did during the Carter Administration.

  • That GSA clown conference, it was…whatelse…Bush’s fault

    I’m sure everyone has heard about the $1 million GSA conference in Las Vegas that taxpayers paid exorbitant prices to keep the government class entertained. Even NPR thought it was over the top, but probably only because it happened in an election year and endangered their incumbent friends. The Washington Post reports that Martha N. Johnson, the administrator of GSA has resigned;

    Administrator Martha N. Johnson, in her resignation letter, acknowledged a “significant misstep” at the agency that manages real estate for the federal government. “Taxpayer dollars were squandered,” she wrote. At the start of her tenure in February 2010 she called ethics “a big issue for me.”

    Apparently, ethics ended up being a bigger issue than she expected. We’re still waiting for someone to resign at the Justice Department, by the way, for their little conference.

    Anyway, I just saw some GSA spokespuppet on Fox News explain how this behavior was a holdover from the Bush Administration. Excuse me, but Bush has been out of office for more than three years, and I don’t remember any videos during the Bush Administration that mocked the American taxpayers like the one that was on YouTube last week.

    Even Dick Durbin has his hackles up, according to Fox News;

    “It’s an absolutely outrageous expenditure of taxpayers’ money,” Durbin said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “That kind of misuse of taxpayers’ funds is totally unacceptable.”

    But, probably because it makes Democrats look so bad in the current debate on how to balance the budget on the backs of veterans.

  • John Kerry still whining about 2004

    Apparently, because I can’t unsubscribe successfully from the Obama For America emails, it means that I get emails from whiners like John Kerry who can’t get over his loss in 2004;

    I just think it’s appropriate that on day that’s been established to remember the veterans of the Vietnam War, I get an email from the the person who least embodies that day. Yeah, I was at the “Kerry Lied” rally which was probably the precursor to the GOE rally three years later. And Kerry sunk his candidacy for President 33 years before the election when he testified to Congress about the fantasies of his hippie brethren, threw someone else’s medal over the White House fence, and then recounted how his time in Cambodia was seared into his memory.

    If “swiftboating” means telling the truth about a veterans service when he won’t, then, yeah, I guess he was swiftboated. But you’d think that after eight years, he’d shut up about it. The only worse idea than having John Kerry write a campaign letter on Vietnam Veterans’ Day would be to turn Joe Biden loose in a room full of cripples without a script.

  • Panetta denies “trend” in Afghanistan

    The Army Times reports that Leon Panetta wants the American public to ignore the elephant in the room in regards to the recent spate of murders of Americans and NATO troops in Afghanistan by suicide gun men;

    Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said Monday that the killing of U.S. and NATO troops by Afghans are sporadic incidents and do not represent a trend that should derail ongoing negotiations with the Afghans on night raid operations and other issues.

    “There are going to be those that are vengeful, there are going to be those that decide to use this as a way to express their anger and their concern,” Panetta said. “These still are sporadic incidents, and I don’t think they reflect any kind of broad pattern.”

    Yeah. Sporadic. That’s it. Nine killed in the last few weeks is sporadic. I guess compared to the larger picture, it could be sporadic. But, they could also be considered common incidents, or you might say that the incidents occur more often than we’d like. But to wave them off as “sporadic” is ignoring the problem.

    Here’s another “sporadic” effort from Fox News. Afghans have arrested 16 people in a plot to explode 16 buses with 16 suicide vests which were accidentally discovered moments before the buses were to be loaded with Afghan soldiers. The terrorists who were arrested were ANA soldiers themselves.

    Despite the fact that the attack would have killed scores of ANA soldiers, applying the Panetta Rule, it would have been just one incident and thus, sporadic. So let those guys go, the 16 who were arrested. It was just a sporadic incident, and so, not significant.

    Thanks to Kevin for the links.

  • Mark Potok on suicide watch

    Remember these goofballs, the Hutarees (put down your drink before watching);

    They were the only thing that Mark Potok, of the Southern Poverty Law Center, had that proved that there was a massive right wing movement to over throw the government. The Hutarees were arrested almost two years ago and they languished under house arrest for the last year or so, until today when the Clinton appointed Federal Article III Judge for the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan Victoria Roberts admonished the prosecutor;

    “The government’s case is built largely of circumstantial evidence. While this evidence could certainly lead a rational factfinder to conclude that ‘something fishy’ was going on, it does not prove beyond a reasonable doubt … [the militia members] … reached a concrete agreement to forcibly oppose” the government, wrote US District Judge Victoria Roberts.

    So Potok and the Homeland Security Department had pinned all of their hopes on an easy conviction of this small collection of dick weasels who couldn’t shoot their way out of a paper bag. So, if I were a member of a militia group, which I certainly AM NOT, I’d hunker down, because Potok and Napolitano need somebody locked in the Gray Bar Hotel to justify their security threat warnings more than three years ago.

    Maybe they’ll find someone who makes better videos. They’d better do it before the elections.

  • Obama to Medvedev; look for my white flag after November

    ABC’s Jake Tapper is like the only person reporting on this, even though he was with a crapload of reporters when he heard this exchange in South Korea between our President and Russia’s president Medvedev;

    President Obama: On all these issues, but particularly missile defense, this, this can be solved but it’s important for him to give me space.

    President Medvedev: Yeah, I understand. I understand your message about space. Space for you…

    President Obama: This is my last election. After my election I have more flexibility.

    President Medvedev: I understand. I will transmit this information to Vladimir.

    Yep, tell Vlad that the white flag will be flying over the White House come November, and you guys can go ahead and pick our national security policy clean to the bone.