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

Category: Military issues

  • Nice try, Reuters

    Old Trooper sent us a link to a Reuters article entitled “Weary warriors favor Obama” which tells the story of some guy, who I can’t find in AKO, who was supposed to have retired last year after thirty years in the Army. A guy who hangs out at gun shows and “drools” over the weapons there, but he’s voting for Obama because he “plans to vote for the candidate least likely to wage “knee-jerk reaction wars.””

    If the election were held today, Obama would win the veteran vote by as much as seven points over Romney, higher than his margin in the general population.

    Yeah, I’m sure, because, we all look forward to a weakened and more expensive health care system and and a weakened national security, so we can keep buying food stamps and big screen TVs for people who’ve never had a job.

    And how many of you guys in the 82d have a 82nd Airborne Division yearbook;

    In his study, below a movie poster of “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly,” McDowell, the Ron Paul supporter [who is now intending to vote for Obama], flipped through pages of an 82nd Airborne Division yearbook, lingering on photographs of dead comrades. He recalled their ages, how many children they had, and how they died.

    And this supposed 20-year Air Force veteran who voted for Santorum in the SC primary is dismissed in the article;

    The Graftons’ votes, however, like many veterans’, can’t be taken as evidence of a hard-line military stance. Registered Republicans, they cast their ballots for Obama in 2008 because he promised to bring the troops home from Iraq.

    The end of our participation in Iraq was determined long before Obama took office, so of course, he could promise to bring the troops home. But, in reality, the article only names one veteran (about whom I have doubts as to his service), Mack McDowell, who says he’s voting for Obama as evidence of massive support for Obama. I checked every McDowell in AKO (because I understand Mack might be a nickname) and unless he’s a woman or was in the National Guard, there are no Army Master Sergeants by that name.

    But, like Old Trooper, I wonder how Reuters could publish this POS with a straight face.

  • GOP moves to spare defense, Democrats whine

    Fox News reports that the House Republicans are finally stirring their lazy asses to spare the Defense Department from shouldering the entire burden of the $1/2 trillion in cuts they’ll endure because the super committee couldn’t be super last year. And of course, the Republicans are targeting “entitlements” – you know the same kind of things that veterans are expected to take in the ass from the Defense Department’s Panetta Hatchet Brigade. And just as expected, the Democrats are popping smoke to protect their constituency;

    “They have a totally lopsided approach,” said Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., accusing Republicans of protecting special interests at the expense of the poor. “The result is they whack everybody else.”

    So I guess now veterans are a “special interest group” and the Democrats want to pit us against the people who are expecting their benefits having accomplished nothing except successfully navigating the birth canal.

    And the White House has issued a veto threat over the Republican bill.

    An administration statement released Wednesday evening said the bill “would impose deep budget cuts that cost jobs and hurt middle-class and vulnerable Americans.”

    But, what about the ‘deep budget cuts” in our defense budget in a time of war? Not to mention the veterans who are subjected to increased costs on fixed incomes so someone who hasn’t worked a day in their lives can afford their cable bill for their big screen TV? Of course, having not seen anything from the Republicans, I have no doubt that they’re willing to subject veterans to those increases anyway – the difference being that I don’t hear anyone coming to our defense like that shrieking moron Van Hollen is rushing to the defense of welfare checks and food stamps.

  • On whose behalf?

    I read this earlier today, but i wanted to think about it for a bit, but the Weekly Standard quoted the president during an interview with ABC yesterday, which the media tells me to think was a “watershed moment” in American history when the President decided to come out of the closet and declare that, suddenly he’s all for gay marriage, after saying since before the 2008 election that he wasn’t so much. But, it’s the way he framed his sashay out of the closet that sticks in my craw. here, you read it;

    “I have to tell you that over the course of several years as I talked to friends and family and neighbors, when I think about members of my own staff who are in incredibly committed monogamous relationships, same-sex relationships, who are raising kids together; when I think about those soldiers or airmen or marines or sailors who are out there fighting on my behalf and yet feel constrained, even now that ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ is gone, because they are not able to commit themselves in a marriage, at a certain point I’ve just concluded that for me personally it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same sex couples should be able to get married.”

    Now, why would he want to drag the troops into a discussion that has little to do with them? How many gays are the service who want to marry some-damn-body? There certainly aren’t legions of them, but it’s like the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell was supposed to solve our non-existent manpower problems in the military, they need victims and bloody shirts to wave in our faces. Yeah, someone will trot out a few as examples, but seriously, how many can there really be? 10? 20? Even a hundred would be statistically insignificant.

    But let’s get to the most egregious part of that quote; “…those soldiers or airmen or marines or sailors who are out there fighting on my behalf….” I remember that my oath of enlistment said something about defending the Constitution, not any particular politician, and certainly not the President. This isn’t a “…for King and Country” kind of nation. Now I swore that I would follow the orders of my superiors, but there was nothing in the oath about fighting on anyone’s behalf. Unless he considers their salaries a “commutation fee” for them to fight in his place.

    But, in my opinion, it was just a way for him to remind the country that he’s commander-in-chief and to stand on the broad shoulders of our fighting forces to campaign for office. I’m pretty sure they don’t like being dragged into this campaign, whether it’s by Obama or Ron Paul, especially when it’s on the gay marriage question. Just like abortion in this country, the Defense of Marriage Act is law, whether you agree with it or not, and unless they want to mount a campaign in Congress to change the law, it doesn’t really matter what the President thinks about it. But the last thing the President and Commander-in-Chief should be doing is dragging the troops into the discussion to illustrate an ill-considered point.

  • Legislation for AR and TX shootings Purple Heart again

    Yeah, this is kind of old/new news, but once again Congress is thinking about passing legislation that would qualify the survivors and the fallen of the Fort Hood, Texas and Little Rock Arkansas shootings for the award of the Purple Heart, according to the Washington Times;

    Top lawmakers on Capitol Hill are challenging the U.S. military to rethink how it classifies terrorist attacks on U.S. soil after the Defense Department decided the 2009 attack at Fort Hood and the attack on a recruiting office in Arkansas were domestic killings rather than flash points in the global war on terrorism.

    Those classifications mean the dozens who were wounded or killed at Fort Hood, Texas, and those killed or injured in Little Rock, Ark., were not eligible for Purple Heart medals — a ruling that House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Peter T. King and Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Joe Lieberman want to change.

    They have introduced legislation that would allow domestic attacks on service members to be reviewed the same way as international terrorist attacks when it comes to awarding the Purple Heart, which is the military’s decoration for troops wounded or killed while in combat zones.

    Yeah, while I don’t think it will go anywhere, I would sure like to see the debate in this, an election year. And I’d like a list of names of Congress members who think that the terror war has been over since before the Arkansas recruiting station shooting, and I’d like to see the President veto it because those were cases of workplace violence, again in the election year. And that’s probably why it won’t make it out of committee before November, because Harry Reid doesn’t want that on his voting record.

    Either way, Democrats loose. If they admit that those shootings of US soldiers on American soil were indeed terrorism, they admit that war has followed them home. If they vote against it, they’re admitting that they refuse to look at the realities of the world.

    But I’m sure I misspelled a word somewhere in there that Joe would much rather discuss for a few hundred comments than the failure of the Democrats to see clearly.

  • Marine Corps tests drone trucks

    Julie Huang at New Media Animation sent us this video of the Marine’s plan to field remote controlled cargo vehicles.

    In a world full of IEDs, this could save lives and money.

  • Washington Times: Defense budget casualties light on civilian side

    The Washington Times reports that after an increase of about 61,000 DoD civilians during the Obama Administration, only about 1% are facing cuts in an age of slashing the number trigger-pullers and their armaments.

    Some defense analysts say this was not supposed to happen.

    In the summer of 2010, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates announced a series of cost-saving initiatives that included keeping civilian employees to that year’s number of 778,000. The services started issuing press releases on the number of civilian jobs they had erased.

    Two years later, civilian employment has risen by 23,000 personnel.

    “While the fighting force is coming down, the overhead continues to grow,” [Arnold Punaro, a retired Marine Corps Reserve major general ] said. “It was an adverse ratio to start with, and it’s getting worse. You want to put your money in the tip of the spear, not in the rear with the gear.”

    So, I guess the only thing the Defense Department is tasked with defending is the unemployment rate. In the article, the Defense Department defends the increases because they’re improving acquisition and health care with civilians, they call it “InSource” – converting contractor jobs to civilian employees. But if there’s nothing to acquire and they’re slashing healthcare for veterans, why the increases in manpower to service those areas?

    Looked at another way, the Pentagon’s 801,000 civilians exceed the combined size of the active-duty Navy and Air Force.

    Congressional Republicans are proposing that the civilian workforce at DoD be cut by 10%, still a smaller cut than total force will suffer, but a much more realistic reduction. But, Leon Pannetta who makes $32,000 trips to his California home every weekend at the taxpayers’ expense is fighting to keep the civvies on the payroll;

    The issue came to a head as Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta appeared, with Mr. Hale, before the House Appropriations subcommittee on defense.

    “Frankly, I don’t think you should de-trigger sequester on the backs of our civilian workforce,” Mr. Panetta testified. “I mean, I realize that savings could be achieved there, but the civilian workforce does perform a very important role for us in terms of support.”

    But, it’s fine to balance the budget on the backs of the veterans and on the back of our national security. Yeah, Panetta was a brilliant choice for the guy we need in charge of defending our country. I’m sure that the unions love him.

  • Army: No trauma to CPT Clark

    The Army is saying that there was no trauma, other than a broken nose, to CPT Clark’s body when they found it last week when he died while on Skype with his wife, according to the Associated Press.

    Christopher Grey, a spokesman for the Army Criminal Investigation Command, said Monday that no bullet wound was found in Clark’s body. An autopsy is being done to determine the cause of death and the investigation is still under way, Grey said.

    “But the important thing is that there was no bullet wound, no trauma,” except that Clark’s nose was possibly broken when he fell on his desk, Grey said in a telephone interview.

    “We can positively say that Captain Clark was not shot,” Grey later said in a statement.

    So, I guess we’re still waiting for Big Army to decide what they’re going to tell us about it, but CPT Clark’s body arrived at Dover AFB yesterday.

  • SGM Teresa King returns to her job

    You guys are probably ahead of me on this one, but I guess while I was watching the antics of the Guantanamo chimps, several of you sent me links to an article that announced that SGM Teresa King was reinstated to her job as the commandant of the drill sergeant academy at Fort Jackson. You already know what I think about it, the same as most of you.

    First of all, I don’t why someone would want to return to a job that they’d been rightly or wrongly fired from, unless it’s being prideful and to wave her finger in someone’s face. Secondly, I sure wouldn’t go around saying things like she has said like “If I had been a man, this wouldn’t have happened”. Yeah, if you’d been a man, you wouldn’t have got your job back, either. An man would be smart enough to go through the proper channels and get the punishment expunged and wouldn’t have hired lawyers and threatened a lawsuit.

    And the PC Big Army caved and returned an unqualified person to a position she didn’t deserve in the first place. This isn’t a look of surprise on my face.

    [King’s deputy, Sgt. Maj. Robert Maggard] who is retiring this week from the Army, said he heard many comments that King had been the subject of “way too much media.”

    Maggard said that even though only one former commandant of the drill sergeant school out of about a half dozen had been deployed to a combat zone in the past, much was made of the fact that King had not been deployed in combat. Those who serve in a combat zone are allowed to put a special patch on their uniform.

    “This all came down to the fact she was female, non-combat patch and possibly envy of a black female,” Maggard said in an interview.

    Yeah, it was because she was a Black female, not because she’s in charge of the school that trains soldiers to prepare other soldiers for combat and she hasn’t been to combat. Envy isn’t any part of it. there are more than likely a hundred men who are more qualified than King, but Big Army wants good press more than it wants well-prepared combat troops.

    The Army should be booting their senior NCOs who have been hiding out at the schoolhouse for the past ten years and reward the soldiers who have actually fought the wars instead of the assholes who’ve been pointing out cigarette butts on the parade fields.