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

Category: Military issues

  • All guns are always loaded

    Associated Press reports that a SEAL was trying to impress a woman he’d just brought home from a bar and shot himself;

    San Diego police were called on Thursday after the accident. Police say [Petty Officer 3rd Class Gene “Geno” Clayont, Jr.] had gone to a bar and brought a woman back to his apartment and was showing her guns when he put a pistol to his head, believing it was unloaded, and pulled the trigger.

    So, ladies, is that what I’m doing wrong? Are you impressed and more likely to give me the good stuff if I disregard everything I know about gun safety?

    Yes, it’s a tragedy, but a self-inflicted tragedy. You have to wonder what was going through his mind. Besides the obvious, of course.

  • Irony, Thy Name is Iran

    Many years ago I witnessed an odd thing. A coupla neighborhood kids got into a scuffle. After a few minutes of the usual childish attempts at bluster and mayhem the apparent loser decided on discretion and took off running. Over his shoulder he breathlessly yelled out, “if you catch me I’ll beat the shit out of you”?

    Fast forward…

    A few days ago Iran was threatening our Navy  over control of traffic through the Straights of Hormuz and the Persian Gulf.

    Today we have: Iran thanks US for naval rescue operation

    In a rare display of praise for the West, Iran on Saturday applauded the US’s rescue of 13 Iranians held hostage for weeks by pirates in the Arabian Sea, calling it a “humanitarian and positive” act.

    The rescue operation took place on Thursday by the same US aircraft carrier group that Iran warned not to return to the Gulf.

    Speaking with Iran’s Arabic-language broadcaster Al-Alam, Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast said that  “we consider the actions of the US forces in saving the lives of Iranian seamen to be a humanitarian and positive act and we welcome such behavior.”

    “We think all nations should display such behavior,” AFP quoted him as saying.

    My emphasis added.

  • Laying the political groundwork for devastating security disinvestment and defense sector job cuts

    They’re coming. They’re real. After the initial rounds of cuts initiated by the Democrats and then the bi-partisan failure to insulate our national defense from indiscriminate slash and burn budgeting we are now on the precipice of the enfeebled 90’s military with 21st century commitments and enemies. The cynical tilling of the field for these cuts by the anti-military Left has been deliberate and systematic.

    Not to say that the adolescent libertarian Right is without blame. Welcome to the hell paved with stupid intentions. Any doubt about the cross-cultural nature of this stupidity can be quickly remedied by simple Google searches. Yep, that’s the perennially useless Barney Frank side by side with Chemtrail hero Ron Paul. Go get ’em guys!

    We should start with the testing ground of all new talking points in politics, the internet. Here we have on the “Real News Network’s” hosting the unbiased Jo Comerford of the “National Priorities Project“, going on about military cuts:

    A significant yet tired piece of propaganda emerges from this video. Comerford begins with, and ultimately relies upon, the idiot’s impression of the federal budget: that federal discretionary spending constitutes the most important, even most substantial, portion of government spending. It’s important to note that after her tired charade, which attempts to impress on the viewer that the portion of federal spending which constitutes military spending is the lion’s share, the circus master chimes in around the 3:00 minute mark with the reinforcing: “…because the military represents such a bigger portion of the overall budget.”

    Oh, really?

    (more…)

  • Good Idea Fairy runs rampant in Pentagon

    The Washington Post reports that the Obama Administration has an “austerity plan” to provide for our national defense. Yeah, I’d like to see their “austerity plan” for the Environmental Protection Agency.

    The document will call for a greater shift toward Asia in military planning and a move away from big, expensive wars like Iraq and Afghanistan, which have dominated U.S. operations for most of the past decade, said a senior military official.

    I hope our enemies all take this into account before they begin their respective rampages and cooperate with our new plans. How in the name of all that is holy do you “move away from big, expensive wars”? Are we just going to ignore any threats that are too big or too expensive?

    From Deebow over at our major league team;

    Wars are not something you can fight with a coupon or try to duck out on the cheap and my bet is that we could afford a poop ton more troops and equipment if we weren’t making loans/campaign contributions to outfits like Solyndra and putting our debt at 100.3 percent of our GDP, along with all of the other Marxist crap that the OinC has decided is good for America.

    It’s as if that problem with training and sufficient equipment that we had at the beginning of this last war just suddenly appeared after January 20, 2001. Like I said, where’s the austerity plan for the EPA and the Commerce Department? Are they being asked to slash billions out of their operating budgets? Especially since their policies are killing jobs and DoD’s policies are only killing our enemies. Well, almost;

    On Wednesday, Boeing announced that it will shutter a factory in Wichita that produces military airplanes for refueling, an early casualty of what is expected to be a wave of closings among defense contractors.

    On differences;

    The strategy is different from past Pentagon reviews in that it establishes clear priorities for the military, the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the plan had not been publicly released.

    Yeah, “clear priorities” from muddled brains. There were clear priorities before Bush, too – a military that handed out MREs to the world’s hungry. As deebow points out, there is an endless list of nations that wish us ill, some of whom already consider themselves at war with us, but I guess since they don’t fit our “clear priorities”, I’m sure they’ll cooperate and not give us any trouble. Or we can depend on the Europeans to intervene where we’re unable to summon the testicular fortitude like in Libya.

    Just because the Washington Post tells us this time will be different doesn’t make it so. Like I mentioned the other day, Leftists think there wasn’t a moment of human history written before the moment of their births.

    So who wants to be the first to die for a lie?

  • Poor judgement all around

    I’m pretty sure this guy is going to get very well-acquainted with his first sergeant in the near future. It’s Corporal Jesse Thorsen a Reservist in the 402d Sapper Company in Des Moines (I verified all of that at AKO). I don’t think anyone can justify him being at a political event, endorsing a candidate wearing ACUs.

    I don’t care who the candidate is, this is a clear violation of Army Regulations 670-1 and DoD Policy Directive 1344.10. The Paulians should have known better than to put him on the stage to begin with, and Thorsen should have known that he can’t endorse a candidate or a policy, especially not in a utility uniform. The 670-1 reads;

    Uniform prohibited

    Used to be we couldn’t even stop at 7-11 to buy a cup of coffee in a work uniform.

    That doesn’t even address the fact that he’s still a corporal with ten years in the service, but apparently it’s these types of antics that have extended his career as an E-4.

    There’s more at Dave Thul’s place. Dave sent us the link.

  • Panetta: Our post-cuts military a “spoiler” force

    The front page of my New York Times greeted me this morning with this headline above the fold:

    Panetta to Offer Strategy Cutting Military

    Oh, good. Panetta, who I really don’t think is all that bad a guy, testified in November that forcing the military to take an additional $500 some billion cut, past the already pending $450 billion, would be “devastating” to the military and pose a “substantial risk” to national security. He underscored the point that our defense budget is reflective of the threat we face and reducing military spending by a trillion dollars won’t reduce the threat level, only create an enviroment were we are unable to respond to it. His most prophetic statement was this:

    …we would have to formulate a new security strategy that accepted substantial risk of not meeting our defense needs.

    Fast forward less than two months to today where the unholy alliance of “burn it all down” libertarian Republicans and anti-military liberal Democrats have produced an environment in which the sabotage of our military and its members wasn’t significant enough incentive to reach a deal. According to the NY Times:

    In a shift of doctrine driven by fiscal reality and a deal last summer that kept the United States from defaulting on its debts, Mr. Panetta is expected to outline plans for carefully shrinking the military — and in so doing make it clear that the Pentagon will not maintain the ability to fight two sustained ground wars at once.

    Instead, he will say that the military will be large enough to fight and win one major conflict, while also being able to “spoil” a second adversary’s ambitions in another part of the world while conducting a number of other smaller operations, like providing disaster relief or enforcing a no-flight zone.

    Pentagon officials, in the meantime, are in final deliberations about potential cuts to virtually every important area of military spending: the nuclear arsenal, warships, combat aircraft, salaries, and retirement and health benefits.

    For those who remember history it was our “peace dividend” post World War Two “spoiler” force which was left to defend South Korea as an avalanche of North Korea soldiers flooded the peninsula before finally being stopped at Pusan by an ad-hoc fire brigade of old World War Two Marines brought together from every naval garrison and motor pool in the world. Once you get over the 100,000 wounded and 37,000 dead Americans it was a triumphant spoiler of a conflict. The millions of North Koreans living in a waking nightmare this very moment might have some other thoughts but hey, guns or butter, right?

  • SF SFC arrested with explosives in TX airport

    Tman sends us a link from Associated Press article in regards to a special forces Sergeant First Class who sits in the jail at Midland, TX for attempting to board an airplane with some explosives.

    [Trey Scott Atwater, 30] was detained after a routine Transportation Security Administration (TSA) check noticed he had explosives in his carry on luggage while trying to board an American Eagle flight from Midland International Airport to Dallas Saturday morning, according to an FBI statement.

    Officials declined to speculate on the reason Atwater had the explosives, which city officials said were in “military grade explosives wrapping” in his bag.

    It’s nice to see that TSA finally caught someone. It’s also nice to see that Associated Press actually checked with the military before just running with this story;

    Lt. Col. Tom Bryant, a spokesman for Army Special Operations Command at Ft. Bragg confirmed that Atwater is an Army Sergeant First Class in the elite Green Berets, assigned as an instructor at the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School at Ft. Bragg, where he is a member of the Special Forces Engineers.

    But, just in case, I checked AKO and found he is indeed an instructor at the Special Warfare Center and in an 18-series MOS. I’m just happy to see everyone doing their job here. Well, everyone except Atwater, apparently.

  • The Rambo remake gets to be based on a “true” story

    If you haven’t yet girded yourself for the post Iraq/Afghanistan round of “crazy vet” movies and other slanderously anti-military entertainment narratives coming out of the liberal enclave of Hollywood you better start now. The latest unfunny anecdote which will no doubt trump the mountain of evidence about vets is a story out of my backyard in Seattle. From Fox News:

    Authorities are conducting a manhunt at Mount Rainier National Park in Washington State after a park ranger died in a shooting Sunday following a routing traffic stop, authorities said.
    Sheriff’s spokesman Ed Troyer said late Sunday afternoon Benjamin Colton Barnes, a 24-year-old believed to have survivalist skills, was a “strong person of interest” in the slaying of Margaret Anderson. A parks spokesman said Barnes was an Iraq war veteran. Authorities recovered his vehicle, which had weapons and body armor inside, Troyer said.

    Barnes was also a suspect in the early Sunday morning shooting of four people at a house party south of Seattle, police said.
    Authorities believed the gunman was still in the woods, with weapons. They asked people to stay away from the park, and for those already inside to leave.
    “We do have a very hot and dangerous situation,” Troyer said.
    Troyer said authorities were following tracks in the snow they believe are from the gunman, and crews planned to bring an airplane through the area with heat-seeking capabilities.
    “We believe we have a good track on him, but he’s way ahead of us,” Troyer said.

    The local Fox affiliate (via the Chicago Tribune here) is circulating a short bio, and this rather unflattering photo of Barnes:

    They also assert he was picked up for DUI in 2009 and has a restraining order by the mother of his child. They also speculate (without an evidence) that he’s a currently serving member of the Reserves or Guard. The family and friends of the victims have my sincere condolences. I’m not sure if they’re actually aware of any evidence of his “strong survival skills” aside from being a vet. At this point nobody even seems to know what it is he did in the military.

    I hope that those in positions which can make a difference make the best effort to keep things in perspective as they discuss our community.