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

Category: Terror War

  • Defense budget fight begins

    The Stars and Stripes reports this morning that the arrival of the 2010 defense budget has triggered a battle that the Obama Administration may not have anticipated;

    Virginia Democratic Sen. Jim Webb expressed deep concerns about reductions in Navy shipbuilding. Another group of senators lead by Alaska Democrat Mark Begich sent a letter criticizing proposed cuts in missile defense.

    House Armed Services Committee Ranking Member John McHugh of New York called the budget cuts too drastic for a nation still fighting overseas. Republican Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma called it a plan to “disarm America,” adding “never before has a president so ravaged the military at a time of war.”

    Even supportive lawmakers, who praised Defense Secretary Robert Gates and the White House for making tough fiscal decisions to rein in military spending, emphasized that now they’ll be the ones to determine which programs actually need to be funded.

    Yeah, seein’s how the world has become more dangerous in the last few months and Obama has decided we’re going to kiss everyone’s ass instead of kicking them in the ass, the least he could do is make sure we can still kick their ass four years from now. Think we’ll get help from Republicans in the Senate? I wouldn’t count on it;

    Gates and President Barack Obama may have an unlikely ally in their effort to convince Congress to uphold the cuts: Sen. John McCain.

    The unsuccessful Republican presidential candidate, still the ranking member on the Senate Armed Services Committee, called Monday’s budget plan “a major step in the right direction” and said he strongly supports the decision to restructure the way major defense programs are handled.

    Yeah, we’ll cut future weapons system development and cut personnel costs in defense while adding billions to the coffers of ACORN with the money we save on essential defensive measures and that’s a step in the right direction? Thanks, McCain – keep that in mind when you wonder why you got beat in 2000 and 2008.

    Added: Great opinion piece at Wall Street Journal on the subject.

  • North Korea and the community of nations

    Of course, everyone knows that North Korea launched their missile over Japan this morning which has prompted a series of angry remarks (Washington Times);

    North Korea carried out its threatened launch of a long-range rocket over Japan on Sunday, defying international warnings and sparking an angry response from its Asian neighbors and the United States.

    Japan immediately called for an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council, which said it would hold that meeting Sunday afternoon. South Korea decried the launch as a “reckless act.”

    Yeah, so what will the Security Council do? Probably something along the lines of President Obama’s response (Washington Post);

    In a speech grimly punctuated by current events, President Obama Sunday called for a world without nuclear weapons shortly after North Korea defied global warnings to fire a long-range rocket.

    Yeah, that’s the ticket – we’ll all disarm. That’ll embarrass the North Koreans into abandoning their nuclear objectives. Well, the UN has approved the emergency meeting (Fox News);

    Mexico’s mission to the United Nations set the meeting for 3 p.m. EDT (1900 GMT), spokesman Marco Morales said. Mexico holds the 15-nation council’s presidency this month.

    That approval came after Japan submitted a formal letter requesting an emergency session of the United Nations council that handles threats to international peace and security. “We received a letter and there will be a meeting,” Morales said.

    So what can they do? Sanctions? What’s left to sanction? The wind? Dust? That’s all they’ve got left. The North Koreans did it because they know how weak and ineffectual the world is with Obama at the helm of this country – like we were a paper tiger when Carter was president. Is this the test Biden warned us about? Well, it looks like there’s going to be a failing grade.

    Any want-wit knows that if someone on our side had shot the missile down as soon as it left Nork airspace, that would have been the strongest message we could send. Obama missed his opportunity, Japan missed their opportunity. Anything they do now is just farting in a hurricane.

  • Israeli children attacked by axe-wielding Palestinian

    So as the world and the media discuss what terrorism means, a Palestinian terrorist provides us with an excellent example on the West Bank (Fox News/AP link);

    An ax-wielding Palestinian militant went on a rampage in a West Bank settlement Thursday, killing an Israeli 13-year-old and wounding a 7-year-old boy before fleeing the area.

    The attack posed an important test for Israel’s new prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who has promised a firm hand against militants and expressed skepticism about prospects for peace. Government spokesman Mark Regev called it a “senseless act of brutality against innocents.”

    So I’m just waiting for some ANSWER clown to defend this as a legitimate response to Israeli apartheid. Brian Becker?

    A murky militant group calling itself the Martyrs of Imad Mughniyeh claimed responsibility for the attack in an e-mail sent to the AP.

    The group is named for a Hezbollah mastermind killed in Syria last year in what is believed to have been an assassination by Israeli intelligence.

    Oh, well, that justifies it completely.

  • Levin: Expect painful defense cuts

    To go along with all of my other warnings of cuts in Defense spending (here, here, here and here), TSO sends the latest;

    It happens every time the Democrats get control of Congress and the White House. They take money from defense and put it into social patronage programs. They win elections without the military vote, so what can it hurt them? Then when a Republican gets into office and tries to fix defense, they (and the media) scream to High Heaven about their spending. Reagan had to fix Carter’s neglect of the military, Bush had to repair the damage done by the Clinton years. Think there were shortages during the Bush years, you just watch – the difference now is that our troops are under fire (despite their best attempts to change the language so it doesn’t seem so). What happens when there’s no ammunition for training now? What happens when there are no more cruise missiles this time?

    And you have to ask yourself why Levin isn’t being specific about the cuts. More than likely it’s because there’ll be some major cuts in personnel expenses. Things like pay, bonuses, recruiting, retention and training. That will place a drag on manpower needs. Lucky for Obama, Jimmy Carter brought back draft registration after Nixon ended it. Then watch the cuts to veterans’ benefits. BOFO.

  • CPL Jonathan Ayers tribute

    In case you didn’t know, there was a ceremony for awarding a Silver Star posthumously to 173rd paratrooper Corporal Jonathan Ayers this weekend in his hometown, Snellville, GA. Uncle Jimbo from Blackfive was there to capture the ceremony on video including the breifing Ayers’ company commander gives on Ayers’ part in the battle of Wanat where he lost his life.

    Jimbo is one versatile guy – last weekend with TSO and me surrounded by ANSWER moonbats, and this weekend surrounded by heroes. I recognize at least one of the paratroopers on stage from our Silver Spring adventure last summer with Jimbo, concretebob and tankerbabe.

    McQ, also from Blackfive, was there as well and writes his account.

    I’m still waiting to hear from tankerbabe who was there, as well. She has a video at her place From Cow Pastures to Kosovo, of the tribute to CPL Ayers that his own high school enacted. I sure wish I lived in a town like that.

  • Terrorists threaten man-created disaster

    See how easily I adapt to the new administration’s lexicon? The Associated Press reports that they got a phone call the other day to warn us that we’re going to be in the midst of a man-created disaster (you can call them terrorist attacks if you want to be a gun-clinging wingnut. Me? I’m enlightened);

    Baitullah Mehsud, who has a $5 million bounty on his head from the U.S., said Monday’s attack outside the eastern city of Lahore was in retaliation for U.S. missile strikes against militants along the Afghan border.

    “Soon we will launch an attack in Washington that will amaze everyone in the world,” Mehsud told The Associated Press by phone. He provided no details.

    I don’t understand how this can happen. The North Koreans are getting ready to launch rockets, the Mahdi army and al Qaeda in Iraq are staging a comeback, Hugo Chavez is trying to undermine the dollar with a proposal for an oil-based currency and calls Obama an ignoramus. We’re still trying to figure out how to fight piracy. Russia is planning on stationing bombers in Cuba and Venezuela.And, oh, did I mention that Iran thinks it has a role in determining our troops strength in Afghanistan? British police arrested five under the Terrorist Act.

    Shouldn’t all of this stuff ended on Inauguration Day? Or is it just beginning now that we’ve had a change in the government that indicates to all of the thugs that we’re soft and weak? And where’s my damn unicorn?

  • Global War on Terror ends

    I wrote last week that the Obama Administration intended on dropping the “Global War on Terror” label in it’s efforts to keep us safe from the language. The Pentagon denied that there was any conscious effort to avoid the term, while admitting there was a conscious effort to avoid the term.

    Well, Hillary the Clinton confirms that there is indeed a conscious effort to avoid using the Global War on Terrorism term to describe the global war on terror;

    “The (Obama) administration has stopped using the phrase and I think that speaks for itself. Obviously,” Clinton told reporters traveling with her to The Hague for a conference on Afghanistan, which Bush called part of his “global war on terror.”

    Obviously? What is so obvious about it?

    Why change the term? Well, because George Bush called the Global War on Terror a global war on terror – that’s their only reason. In a childish shift, reminiscent of Eric Shinseki issuing black berets to improve the Army’s combat readiness, the Obama Administration has decided to change the name.

    So let me get this straight – Obama’s Hope and Change in the war on terror means to do everything that Bush was doing, just change the name of it? That’s why the hippies and ne’er-do-wells voted for him?

    I feel safer – how about you?

  • The odd case of Terry C. Holdbrooks

    Olga sent me a recent article about Terry C. Holdbrooks who I wrote about last month in a post about Guantanamo guards. I wanted to check out his story so I asked the good folks at POW Net to get his records for us. Well, they came back and I know even less about him than I did before I asked for his records. He was in the 463rd MP company who were in Guantanamo during the period he claims he was there, but other than that his record is a big blank. Don’t believe me? Look for yourself – this how his Form 2-1 looked when I got it;

    It’s almost all blackened out. Well, here’s the story he tells Newsweek;

    At Holdbrooks’s next station, in Fort Leonard Wood, Mo., he says things began to unravel. The only place to kill time within miles of the base was a Wal-Mart and two strip clubs—Big Daddy’s and Big Louie’s. “I’ve never been a fan of strip clubs, so I hung out at Wal-Mart,” he says. Within months, Holdbrooks was released from the military—two years before the end of his commitment. The Army gave him an honorable discharge with no explanation, but the events at Gitmo seemed to loom over the decision. The Army said it would not comment on the matter.

    Yeah, there are plenty of Muslims in the Army who don’t get harassed and tossed out early. The way his record looks and the way the Army isn’t commenting makes me think he was up to something. If you read my first post about him, you’ll notice he demeans Christians and the United States because we’re mostly Christians.

    Holdbrooks tones it down for Newsweek making himself seem more of a sympathetic character than he did for the UC Davis Human Rights Project on Guantanamo.

    Oh, yeah, I have my doubts about his claim that he was discharged two years early. According to his FOIA, he did three years;

    But it was an odd number of months. As near as I can tell from his Form 2-1, he went to basic and AIT at Leonard Wood in December 2002, the his unit and Guantanamo from July 2003 – June 2004 and then he was discharged October 2005. The Army blocked out his Duty MOS so I don’t know what his job was while he was stationed at Leonard Wood, but if he was acting as nutty as it seems he was acting at Guantanamo (I’m sorry but all night chats with prisoners is just nutty), I’m sure the Army was a little reticent about letting him patrol the post with a loaded handgun and a badge. And hanging out at WalMart isn’t normal behavior, either.

    Anyway, maybe someone from his unit can fill in the blanks for us.