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

Category: Military issues

  • The Chinese invasion

    Stars & Stripes reports that the Senate Armed Services Committee released a report yesterday that warned of a flood of Chinese counterfeit electronics which have filled the service bins of aircraft parts for our military aircraft;

    The final report uncovered 1,800 cases of bogus parts during the two-year period of 2009 and 2010, with more than a millions individual parts involved.

    The investigation found that fake parts are widespread in the military, from the Air Force’s biggest cargo plane, to Special Operations helicopters and a Navy surveillance plane.

    More than 70 percent of the fake parts originated in China, with the United Kingdom and Canada the next largest sources. Counterfeit parts are made and sold openly in China, and the government there has taken no steps to curtail the trade, the report said.

    S&S says that Senators Carl Levin and John McCain inserted language into last year’s defense budget to hinder the practice of buying counterfeit parts, but that the practice continues.

    In addition, many contractors failed to rigorously test parts for quality and durability.

  • More on the Parade In Richmond

    I’m sure Jonn will be back soon with some good photos from the event, but just wanted to pass along that the parade was a success and had some media coverage as well. From the Military Times:

    Thousands of people turned out for the parade, which ended with a free outdoor concert and what organizers call a veterans’ resource exposition. Active-duty personnel and veterans from all military service branches marched in the parade alongside high school marching bands, Army and Air Force units and the Marine Band.

    “I’m absolutely thrilled that everybody took the time out to support the military,” said Army Staff Sgt. Jason Harich, a parade participant who has served two tours each in Iraq and Afghanistan.

    “In my 17 years, I have never seen an event like this, and I am honored and thrilled that it is being done,” Harich said. “This is how I like to see our community, together as one.”

    There are also some photos at the Richmond-Times Dispatch.

     

  • Regarding Counterstrike . . . .

    Remember the outcry after publication of the book about the bin Laden raid Counterstrike? That the authors had published operational information that could hamper future operations and endanger US lives?

    Well, according to the authors, that information was given to them by the White House.

    “I was stopped by a very senior officer in the special operations community who basically wanted to rip my lungs out,” said Thom Shanker, who co-authored “Counterstrike: The Untold Story of America’s Secret Campaign Against Al Qaeda,” with Eric Schmitt.

    But, he revealed at a counter terrorism expo this week, the info came directly and officially from the White House, not some garbage can digging operation. “I said to him, ‘Sir, that information came officially to us from the podium at the White House,’” Shanker said.

    As CINC, it is the prerogative of the POTUS to authorize the release of military information.  Often this is done for political purposes. Since Eisenhower, most US presidents have done that – either accurately or via lying through their teeth. Kennedy used the nonexistent “missile gap” as a candidate, and continued to use it as an excuse for increased defense spending. (He also famously lied when asked point-blank if American troops were in combat in Vietnam, answering:  “No.”)  LBJ exposed the existence of the SR-71 (and actually renamed the aircraft in doing so – the original designation was R/S-71, for “Reconnaissance/Strike”).  Nixon’s credibility problems are legendary.  Carter openly acknowledged US satellite reconnaissance, . Reagan and also caught heat for announcing the existence of the B2 US stealth aircraft programs. Bush(43) was wrongly accused of lying about Iraqi WMD as an excuse to invade Iraq. And I’m sure that I could find other examples from most other presidencies if I tried.

    But I really wish the POTUS and his staff would think things thru better when it comes to talking publicly about US military capabilities and intentions. When it comes to divulging military capabilities, saying less is usually better than saying more.

    Because inadvertently saying too much can cost lives.

  • Posthumous Medal of Honor Awarded To Leslie Sabo for Actions In Cambodia

    Jonn wrote about the announcement of this award back in April, but I just wanted to highlight this hero once again who was awarded the Medal of Honor yesterday, albeit over 40 years late due to the loss of his paperwork.

    From Military Times:

    Spc. Leslie H. Sabo Jr. of Elwood City, Pa., was serving with U.S. forces near the village of Se San in eastern Cambodia in May of 1970 when his unit was ambushed and nearly overrun by North Vietnamese forces.

    Comrades testified that the rifleman charged up from the rear, grabbed an enemy grenade and tossed it away, using his body to shield a fellow soldier. And shrugging off his own injuries, Sabo advanced on an enemy bunker that had poured fire onto the U.S. troops — and then, pulled the pin on his own grenade.

    “It’s said he held that grenade and didn’t throw it until the last possible moment, knowing it would take his own life but knowing he could silence that bunker,” Obama recounted. “And he did. He saved his comrades, who meant more to him than life.”

    There’s more info and video at the link.

  • Gays oppose USS Harvey Milk

    Former3c0 sends us a link to a Fox News article which tells us that gays weren’t a monolithic pro vote in the discussion whether naming a Navy ship for the murdered gay activist is such a good idea. This is about a vote that took place at the San Francisco Board of Supervisors subcommittee vote;

    [Supervisor Christina Olague], the dissenter in the 2-1 vote this week, was joined in opposition by the city’s gay Democrat club named after Milk and other activists. She told the San Francisco Chronicle she prefers a national holiday honoring Milk.

    Activist Tommi Avicolli Mecca wrote in a recent blog post: “The Milk who served in the Navy and the Milk who, less than two decades later, defied the taboos of his day to have sex with men, grow his hair, smoke pot and oppose the war in Vietnam, were completely different individuals.”

    I guess they can be considered bigots, too.

    I think it’s funny that there seems to be a tiered system of activism on the Left. Apparently, “anti-war” takes precedence over “gay issues”. Anyone want to play to play rock-paper-scissors for it?

  • Women Rangers

    COB6 sends this link to an Associated Press article about the Army’s discussion whether they’re going to let women in Ranger School;

    Gen. Raymond Odierno, Army chief of staff, says he’s asked senior commanders to provide him with recommendations and a plan this summer. He says if women are eventually allowed to serve in the infantry, they would have to go to Ranger school in order to be competitive with their male counterparts as they move through the ranks.

    Going to Ranger school does not automatically mean they would be allowed to serve in one of the Army’s three elite Ranger battalions, which are Army special operations forces. Women are not allowed to serve as special operators.

    COB6 says “Every time we put a tanker in charge Rangers get f*cked!”

  • Another Neo-Nazi in the MONG

    Last week we discussed the Neo-Nazi, Ryan Riley, from the Missouri National Guard who had trained a white supremacist group in Florida. The Saint Louis Today website reports that the MONG is investigating another Neo-Nazi in it’s ranks by the name of SFC Nathan Wooten who AKO says was in the 35th Engineer Brigade;

    In March, Sgt. Nathan Wooten was fired from his $27,000-a-year state job serving on a state military honor guard that pays last respects at the funerals of Missouri veterans.

    The action came almost a year after co-workers complained that Wooten was a self-proclaimed neo-Nazi who had a portrait of Adolf Hitler in his living room, tried to recruit others to the cause and named his son after a notorious leader of the German SS. A lawyer for Wooten has denied his involvement with an extremist group.

    But, even two out of the thousands of Missouri guardsman doesn’t mean there a huge insurgency of racists into the military. And before our friends at Mother Jones and SPLC start whining that the military isn’t doing enough to keep these guys out, this guy has already been fired before anyone, including the media, found out about him. They’re also investigating Ryan Riley as soon as the FBI let them know about him. So unless the military should be following their soldiers every moment that they’re off duty, they’re doing the right thing as soon as they have actionable information.

  • Obama targets vets for votes

    The Washington Post‘s Amy Gardner reports that which we already know from reading the Reuters piece yesterday, that the Obama campaign is pressing veterans for their votes.

    “There’s a different face of the American veteran now,” said Lauren Zapf, 30, a Navy veteran who served in the Persian Gulf and who spoke recently at a gathering in Northern Virginia for Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Timothy M. Kaine. “The president’s stance on social policies, his work with military families, what he was doing with policy in both Iraq and Afghanistan — I appreciate that.”

    Republicans concede the group’s new battleground status. “Veterans are truly a cross-section of the population,” Virginia Gov. Robert F. McDonnell said in a recent interview. “I appreciate the fact that the president is engaging our warriors and their families.”

    Yeah, well, the President did his best, when he was a Senator and before that to undermine the war effort, and now that he’s slipping among his 2008 voters in the polls, he thinks he can make up for that with veterans. And as we saw yesterday, the media is more than willing to help him out.

    Like a discussion I had at the Carpool the other night with a young man who was trying to solicit my support for his particular organization, where were these people eight years ago? generally, they were giving hope to the enemy that all they had to do was wait us out and the Democrats would give them an easy victory.

    For me the evidence of that was when the Democrats won the Congress in 2006 and George Bush started the surge. When the Iraqi resistance had thought that they had the US beat with the Democrat victory, instead, Bush sent more troops, proving that the Democrat’s bullshit talk about ending the war was coming from a position of weakness. Barack Obama was among them, voting every time the issue came up in the Senate to cut off funding for the war and leave the troops stranded. It was their only strategy against a successful conclusion for the war, because the troops were just their political pawns.

    Remember, Harry Reid telling us that the surge had failed before it even began? Any complaints for Senator Obama?

    While most veterans are older and more conservative, younger veterans who served more recently in Iraq and Afghanistan include more women and minorities. Politically, they are more reflective of the nation overall: independent-minded, less socially conservative and more supportive of the winding down of the two wars the president inherited.

    In other words, he’s trying to attract the Ron Paulian veterans. Any that would jump over to Obama are lying to themselves. Like the soldier in yesterday’s discussion who said he likes his guns, but is supporting Obama. How long does he think his guns will last in an administration that doesn’t have to run for office again – not to mention the aging and ailing Supreme Court judges who will replaced in the next four years.

    “Before 2008, nobody talked about military families,” said Rob Diamond, who served in Iraq and is the Obama campaign’s vote director for veterans and military families. “Military families have become part of the national conversation. Americans realize that when you have an all-volunteer military, the sacrifice is not just by the service members but their families, too.”

    Yeah, nobody talked about military families, well, except the Bush Administration who mentioned almost every day since the war began. And since Obama didn’t mention them in 2008, no one talked about them, I suppose, because nothing happens without Obama doing it. Like that “Got Your 6” bullshit that I caught flack for not supporting this weekend. Yeah, sure, I’m all for some support for the troops and their family, even at this late date, but where the hell were these jerkwads for the last ten years? And they had to wait for the president to tell them it’s OK to support the troops? Please. Stop urinating on my leg.

    Just like IAVA morphed from their anti-Bush website OpTruth, a leopard can’t change it’s spots, and a skunk can’t change the fact that he stinks.