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

Category: Congress sucks

  • Adam Schiff introduces authorization to half-ass the war against ISIS

    Adam Schiff introduces authorization to half-ass the war against ISIS

    Andy11M sends a link to Yahoo News which reports that California Democrat Congressman Adam Schiff is prepared to introduce legislation for the Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) that would replace the 2002 version which allowed troops into Iraq the following year, but would seriously hamstring troops who are currently facing the ISIS in Iraq and Syria;

    Rep. Adam Schiff’s Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) would impose strict limits that the Pentagon publicly opposes, forbidding the use of U.S. ground troops to carry out combat missions and limiting military action to Iraq and Syria.

    There are over 2000 US troops in Iraq now and another 1000 paratroopers of the 82d Airborne Division are on their way this week. I guess they won’t be surprised that Congress wants them to half-ass this portion of the war against terror, too.

    Back to Schiff;

    “If the circumstances change, and the president finds it necessary to use combat troops in combat missions, then he should come back to the Congress to seek that authority,” the lawmaker said. “Likewise, on geography, we are not authorizing the country to go to war with (Nigerian extremists) Boko Haram. If circumstances change, then the president can come back and ask us for more authority.”

    Yeah, because I’m sure that ISIS will hold off any of their plans long enough for Congress to debate the President’s options. I remember being 15 kilometers inside Iraq in 1991 while Congress debated the use of force against Iraq that year, you know, after we had already engaged in firefights with Iraqi tanks and artillery. And then, without being defeated, we were forced to withdraw back to Saudi Arabia while we took fire from the Iraqis. That’s not a good feeling, you know, being uncertain about what your own politicians are going to do, while you’re engaged with an armed enemy.

  • Army Times; the military’s shift Left

    The Army Times writes that members of the military are slowly shifting to the Left in their political leanings. That’s because they’ve begun to accept the social engineers’ programs like gays in thee military and women in combat. But it also states that support for the President has fallen from 30% to 15% in their poll.

    At the same time, they report that “44 percent think both major political parties have become less supportive of military issues in recent years” which is what they should really take away from their little poll, not that military folks are more liberal.

    The military has always supported gays in the military – I knew of a few who were in when I was in and as long as they did their job, I didn’t care. My views on women in combat haven’t changed either and I think I’m in line with most members of the military when I say that all women should have the opportunity to prove that they can meet the current, time-tested standard and serve with men. I knew a few of those women, too. But, I don’t think anyone would accuse me of being a liberal. So, the folks at Army Times are reading what they want in the poll. Conservatives are defenders of equal opportunity for all Americans, in the traditional sense, not the new liberal backwards definition where everything is normed to groups.

    The truth is that members of the military are as conservative as ever, but they’re not Republicans. The GOP has lost our faith. The first people to call for cuts to personnel costs during the current wars were Republicans – Bachman, Graham, McCain, Coburn – the same people who sent the troops to war in the first place.

    Republicans didn’t have the political and testicular fortitude to avoid sequestration and they’ve done nothing since the White House plan took effect to change it and restore funding to the military. They’ve done little to hold the Pentagon’s feet to the fire to cut wasteful spending. Republicans cleaved to the personnel cuts because it’s the easiest thing to cut without much thought or plan.

    Chief Tango, who sent us the Army Times link, also sends this from the National Review, which picks up on what I’ve written above;

    Those service members who consider themselves Republicans have slowly dropped from nearly half of those surveyed to just 32 percent this year. The Times poll notes that “increasingly, readers are more likely to describe themselves as libertarian (7 percent) or independent (28 percent).” Democrats and liberals make up some 8 percent of the poll respondents.

    The take away is; people in the military don’t trust politicians, and that’s not new. What’s new is that we used to trust Republicans more than we trusted Democrats to fight for us while we’re fighting for the country. That’s not true anymore, at least in the perception of the troops. The Democrats have been very good at saving welfare and food stamps for their traditional constituents, but the Republicans have been very bad at representing their traditional constituents – the military and veterans, the people who earned what they expect from the government.

  • Bob Kerrey slams “torture report”

    Bob Kerrey slams “torture report”

    Former Democrat Senator, Medal of Honor recipient and a Navy SEAL Bob Kerrey took sometime yesterday to criticize in USAToday his colleagues in the Senate for the so-called “torture report” that they released the other day. Apparently, he’s not too happy with it for many of the reasons that folks on the other side have cited;

    I do not need to read the report to know that the Democratic staff alone wrote it. The Republicans checked out early when they determined that their counterparts started out with the premise that the CIA was guilty and then worked to prove it.

    When Congress created the intelligence committees in the 1970’s, the purpose was for people’s representatives to stand above the fray and render balanced judgments about this most sensitive aspect of national security. This committee departed from that high road and slipped into the same partisan mode that marks most of what happens on Capitol Hill these days.

    […]

    The Senate’s Intelligence Committee staff chose to interview no one. Their rationale – that some officers were under investigation and could not be made available – is not persuasive.

    […]

    I will continue to read the report to learn of the mistakes we apparently made. I do not need to read the report in full to know this: We have not been attacked since and for that I am very grateful.

    I’ve mostly liked Kerrey, because he has been one of the few who took his job in the Senate seriously, unlike his similarly-named colleague who also served in Vietnam. He makes valid points in this opinion piece – mostly that it had it’s roots in dealing punishing blows to the historical record and to cover up their own failings in regards to the war against terror.

    Kerrey also points out that there are no recommendations in this report to avoid that which the Senate Democrats consider corrupt or distasteful. Not that it makes any difference – there were recommendations in the 9-11 Commission’s report which were never adopted either.

    Democrats have generally been more opposed to Republicans than they are opposed to terrorism. I can only hope that they take notes from Kerrey, and for the next two years put the country’s interests ahead of their own petty political agenda. Yeah, I know, I had a hard time typing that with a straight face, too.

  • Senate Democrats Want Retribution for the Election

    Senate Democrats Want Retribution for the Election

    waterboarding

    So, I guess the Senate Democrats, on their way out of control of Congress, want to leave their mark on history by releasing the details of the “enhanced interrogation techniques” used in the early days of the war against terror, despite recommendations of even the presidential administration. From Fox News;

    Tensions grew Sunday over the impending release of a Senate report examining the alleged use of torture by the CIA, with a top House lawmaker saying that the release will cause “violence and deaths” abroad.

    The comments by Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich., the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, came after Secretary of State John Kerry on Friday urged Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., the senator in charge of the report on CIA interrogations, to reconsider the timing of the release. Obama administration officials said they still support making the report public.

    Rogers is regularly briefed on intelligence assessments. He told CNN’s “State of the Union” that U.S. intelligence agencies and foreign governments have said privately that the release of the report on CIA interrogations a decade ago will be used by extremists to incite violence that is likely to cost lives.

    “I think this is a terrible idea,” Rogers said. “Our foreign partners are telling us this will cause violence and deaths…Foreign leaders have approached the government and said, ‘You do this, this will cause violence and deaths.’ Our own intelligence community has assessed that this will cause violence and deaths.”

    Of course, unless the report says that we beheaded detainees (and I’m 100% positive that it doesn’t) I don’t see what’s to get the “world” upset. We already know that torture these days includes heinous behavior like keeping someone awake for a few days, playing loud, crappy music from 80’s Hair Bands, and washing a subject’s face with a wet wash cloth. We don’t cause real pain, just discomfort, but because of our own personal guilt trips, we’ve armed the enemy with propaganda. Would you rather spend five years at Guantanamo or five years living like Bowe Bergdahl? With the threat of the fate of Daniel Pearl every day?

    The worst thing that has happened to any of our detainees is that a really ugly chick from West Virginia pointed at their genitalia. And she was punished for it.

    Our only real crime was allowing stank-ass hippies to define what is terror. And now Senate Democrats are holding us hostage by threatening to release the information on their way out the door. Go ahead and release it, Feinstein, I don’t give a rat’s ass. It’s just like the valor thieves who threaten to release my military records – do it. Get it over with. It’s just another wet firecracker, anyway.

    And that stupid excuse “we’re better than they are” is wearing thin. How’s that working out for us?

    But the bottom line is that this administration thinks that terrorists will attack Americans worldwide if these reports are released, and the Senate Democrats just don’t care who gets killed as a result. Because their side paid a price for bad policy.

  • DoD negotiates cuts to troops’ compensation

    DoD negotiates cuts to troops’ compensation

    Stars & Stripes reports that the Department of Defense, the White House and Congress has reached a deal on how much they can screw the troops;

    The White House and the Defense Department earlier this year proposed cuts to benefits including raises, allowance and health insurance, and planned to save money by retiring the Air Force’s A-10 Thunderbolt aircraft, mothballing some ships and curbing other equipment costs.

    Top brass came to Capitol Hill and made their case to lawmakers for a spending reduction plan that covers the next decade, saying mandatory budget caps set to kick in 2015 will put the Pentagon in a money crunch. The Senate backed many of the military proposals but the House balked at finding savings by carving out troop benefits.

    So, I’m sure the other agencies, the EPA, the Department of Education, the Department of Commerce, Health and Human Services and all of the rest will be marching into Congress to demand cuts to their own employees’ compensation packages, too. But, I’m not holding my breath.

    Concerned Veterans For America says that Congress is planning to lard up the Defense Bill with non-defense related stuff;

    CVA is deeply concerned about reports that lawmakers are attempting to add non-defense related spending riders to the FY2015 NDAA- including funding for a women’s history museum and the acquisition of more public land for the federal government. At a time when our nation is facing record level of debt and the Pentagon is making tough choices due to a shrinking defense budget, it is absolutely disgusting that lawmakers would use an important piece of national security legislation like the NDAA as a vehicle to fund pet projects and reward political supporters – especially while our nation still has brave servicemen and women risking their lives in combat every day in Iraq and Afghanistan.

    So, yeah, way to be frugal, guys, and way to show the troops that you’re sticking up for them. You can also cut your own compensation packages and show the rest of us how it’s done. You can cut staff, cut your expense accounts, turn in your free cars. There’s lots of ways that 535 folks can find places to cut before they start cutting the pay of the folks doing the really heavy lifting of government.

  • So, That “IRS Thing” Was Just a Rogue Operation, Eh?

    Well, then explain this:

    Sen. Shaheen briefed on IRS targeting plot in 2012, memo shows

    Sounds to me like someone in NH really needs to be sent packing.  And it also sounds to me like those claims that the scandal was due to a couple of folks gone rogue are, well, absolute bullsh!t.

    But we already knew that last point, didn’t we?

     

  • House Dems ask for troops to have “contact” with African Ebola patients

    House Dems ask for troops to have “contact” with African Ebola patients

    health-clinic-south-africa

    The Hill reports that ISIS’ representative in Congress, Keith Ellison along with Karen Bass and Barbara Lee, both representatives from the state of California, have sent a letter to President Obama asking that the military personnel in Africa “provide direct care and…have contact” with Ebola patients.

    “We write to urge you to consider building on the current response to the Ebola epidemic by allowing military medical and technical personnel to provide direct care to and to come into contact with patients in West Africa,” the representatives wrote in a letter to Obama.

    The call comes as the World Health Organization says that there could be as many as 10,000 new Ebola cases every week within two months.

    The lawmakers raised concerns that there would not be enough trained staff to care for Ebola patients if the U.S. did not directly intervene.

    The President and the Pentagon have said that troops deployed to the region will not have direct contact with Ebola patients according to the Stars & Stripes article we linked earlier today;

    Defense leaders have repeatedly promised that thousands of troops headed to Liberia in coming weeks to fight the outbreak won’t be in contact with Ebola patients.

    On Wednesday, Maj. Gen. Darryl Williams, commander of the mission, said that as a result, most troops faced “very low to no risk” from infection. Troops are kept separate from infected people, avoid direct contact with any locals and pay assiduous attention to hygiene, he told Army officials and reporters via Skype from Monrovia, Liberia.

    The three jihadists from Congress, who obviously have no concern for the health and well-being of the folks who are being sent to Africa to answer their nation’s call have also opposed a travel ban from the affected countries.

  • Senators criticize lack of strategy

    Senators criticize lack of strategy

    last convoy out of Iraq

    The Washington Post reports that Senator John McCain is doing his knee-jerk thing again calling for sending more troops to Iraq, you know, like he did when Syria was a problem;

    Sen. John McCain said Sunday that President Obama is “either in denial or overwhelmed” with regard to the Islamic State and called for “additional U.S. troops” to help combat the extremist group.

    The Arizona Republican, speaking on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” added that U.S. forces should play only a support role.

    I’m not sure what more support troops would do to help defeat ISIS, unless we plan to bury them in hand receipt and inventory paperwork for all of the US equipment that ISIS now owns.

    The Post also reports that Senator Diane Feinstein says that Obama is moving too slowly in Iraq;

    Feinstein also acknowledged that Obama’s description of the Islamic State in January as a “JV team” was inaccurate. “I think it’s a major varsity team,” she said, adding, “I see nothing that compares with its viciousness.”

    The senator also suggested that the United States was caught off guard by the Islamic State’s capabilities and its rapid advances in Iraq.

    “I mean, they crossed the border into Iraq before we even knew it happened,” she said. “This is a group of people who are extraordinarily dangerous, and they’ll kill with abandon.”

    Yeah, we were “caught off guard”. They took Fallujah in February and then spent six months building up their forces while we sat on our hands and made promises to Iraq for equipment we didn’t bother to deliver, and still haven’t delivered with the Islamic State at the gates of Baghdad. So I’m thinking while Feinstein’s and McCain’s criticism is justified, they’re moving too slow, too.