{"id":29122,"date":"2012-03-14T10:50:01","date_gmt":"2012-03-14T14:50:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=29122"},"modified":"2012-03-14T13:32:02","modified_gmt":"2012-03-14T17:32:02","slug":"nervous-nellies-at-dod","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=29122","title":{"rendered":"Nervous Nellies at DoD"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fox News<\/a> reports that Leon Panetta is in Afghanistan in the wake of Sunday’s shootings of 16 unarmed Afghans by a US soldier. The trip had been planned for weeks, apparently, and by happy coincidence occurred today. So at the New York Times<\/a> (by way of Bouhammer<\/a>), they recount how when Panetta was about to address a number of troops, the soldiers were abruptly disarmed;<\/p>\n

In a sign of the nervousness surrounding Mr. Panetta\u2019s trip, the Marines and other troops who were waiting in a tent for the defense secretary to speak were abruptly asked by their commander to get up, place their weapons \u2014 M-16 and M-4 automatic rifles and 9-mm pistols \u2014 outside the tent and then return unarmed. The commander, Sgt. Maj. Brandon Hall, told reporters he was acting on orders from superiors.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll I know is, I was told to get the weapons out,\u201d he said. Asked why, he replied, \u201cSomebody got itchy, that\u2019s all I\u2019ve got to say. Somebody got itchy; we just adjust.\u201d<\/p>\n

Normally, American forces in Afghanistan keep their weapons with them when the defense secretary visits and speaks to them. The Afghans in the tent waiting for Mr. Panetta were not armed to begin with, as is typical.<\/p>\n

Later, American officials said that the top commander in Helmand, Maj. Gen. Mark Gurganus, had decided on Tuesday that no one would be armed while Mr. Panetta spoke to them, but the word did not reach those in charge in the tent until shortly before Mr. Panetta was due to arrive.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yeah, I know these are tense times, but holy smoke, disarming the troops in a war zone so they don’t shoot their civilian leader is a little bit pussyish. I don’t care if it was a general or Panetta who disarmed the soldiers, I think the troops need to know that their leadership has a measure of trust and confidence in them and their loyalties. This doesn’t demonstrate much of either. On the heels of Obama’s admission that he’s “generally proud”<\/a> of the troops doesn’t help either.<\/p>\n

Added:<\/strong> From Mr. Wolf. I beheaded him at his request.
\n
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\"\"<\/a><\/center>He looks armed to me.<\/p>\n

This is from last July, Sec. Panetta meets some armed people in Afghanistan. It from the Washington Post;<\/p>\n

\"Panetta<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fox News reports that Leon Panetta is in Afghanistan in the wake of Sunday’s shootings of … Nervous Nellies at DoD<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46,84],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29122","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-barack-obama","category-military-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29122","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29122"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29122\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}