The Leftist Plot to Destroy the US Military

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The Plot to Destroy the US Military

- Daniel Greenfield Monday, March 21, 2011

In two generations we have gone from General Patton telling his troops to grease their tanks with the enemy’s guts to an extensive purge of Navy command officers over a series of raunchy video skits. Slowly but surely we are turning the greatest armed forces into the world, into the most politically correct disarmed forces the world has ever seen.

The USS Enterprise crackdown, like the firing of General McChrystal and the push to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”, completely ignore military realities for political objectives. A political military is also a useless military. Stalin’s purges of the Russian Army’s commanders left the Soviet Union completely unprepared for the Nazi attack. And the US military is being shaped along the same lines into a political military overseen by men whose chief credential is that they share the same politics as the politicians whom they serve.

Congressional report: US military has too many white males at the top

A congressional report now says that the US military has too many white males at the top. Women are being kept out of the highest ranks because they lack combat experience. The report calls on the military leadership to “better reflect the racial, ethnic and gender mix of American society”. Which is code for affirmative action. If we didn’t have enough incompetents at the top, we can look forward to an affirmative action military in which the generals will be there because of the color of their skin or their gender, not because they’re the best at what they do.

The mandate that every civic institution has to reflect the multicultural politics of the liberal elites reflects their determination to impose their vision on the country by hijacking its institutions. And every institution touched by their vision has become functionally useless, incapable of performing even their simplest tasks, but always needing more money. America’s great cities have become sinkholes. The Postal Service is on the verge of extinction. And now it’s the military’s turn.

Such dramatic overhauls of the military usually take place because it is culturally out of step with the government. Would-be tyrants, such as Turkey’s Erdogan, go after the military because it represents a barrier to absolute power. Others because the military is a barrier to their agenda.

Sharon destroyed the once great IDF, purging its commanders and replacing them with political generals in order to push through his ethnic cleansing of the Jewish communities in Gaza, leading to the disastrous performance in the Second Lebanon War. The Democrats may not have anything as ambitious in mind, but they are determined to bring it culturally into line with their agenda. And that will destroy the military as anything other than a politically correct corps that will occasionally show up for UN peacekeeping missions.

The left has hated the American military because it is a vehicle of national exceptionalism

This did not begin yesterday. The left has hated the American military because it is a vehicle of national exceptionalism. A strong military gives the country a sense of independence and confidence that many European countries have lost. During the Vietnam War, the Anti-War movement targeted the military as an institution and the soldier as an individual, in order to destroy America’s ability to take independent military action.

Despite the abolition of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, the left has continued its vocal opposition to an ROTC presence on campus. When a wounded Iraq War veteran spoke at Columbia, he was booed and jeered. Their excuse is that the military “discriminates” against transsexuals. And when that barrier too is dismantled, then there will be something else. It’s not about gays or transsexuals, it’s about a deep rooted ideological hostility to the military.

Not because of any specific policy, but because of what it represents as the defenders of a country and an order that the left would like to see destroyed.

The War on Terror began a new phase of leftist terror against the military, with political organizations, the media and lawyers joining forces to demonize and demoralize the armed forces. They had a limited success until Abu Ghraib opened the door to a variety of prosecutions. The message shifted from soldiers as heroes, to soldiers as villains. Washington D.C.‘s message to the military became to be unobtrusive and avoid embarrassing us—while still getting results. From the man in the field to the man in the big office, if you do something that catches the media’s unblinking eye, we will hang you out to dry. The panic that set in after Abu Ghraib kept sending shivers through the establishment. Good men were dragged through the mud to show our good faith, our willingness to burn our own at the stake of public relations.

But the bug was always in the system. Because once the initial fighting was done, Afghanistan and Iraq became political objectives. Turning a mess of tribal warlords and urban religious factions into working democracies became the mission. A political mission laid out in Foggy Bottom by men who never have to go out and die for it. And the men who did, went on dying because it was an impossible political objective. The worse the situation became, the more their hands were tied. Forgotten by the media which once turned every death into a cause, American soldiers are dying in Afghanistan because of Rules of Engagement that are meant to win over the locals. The locals have not been won over, but the graves in military cemeteries keep on growing.

Americans died on 9/11 because of a failure to identify the enemy. Americans have died since then in Iraq and Afghanistan for the same reason

Thousands of Americans died on 9/11 because of a failure to identify the enemy. Thousands of Americans have died since then in Iraq and Afghanistan for the same reason. Because our governments invested their lives into the implementation of optimistic theories about human nature and democracy. A theory they had to cobble together from bits and pieces, because the reality was too ugly and uncompromisable for them to face.

So they lied to us instead. And they lied to the men they sent off to die, so that wells might be dug and generators started, candy handed out to smiling children and elections held in crowded cities. Now the wells have been dug, and so have the graves, and the Taliban are still here, and the Mullahs spread their shadowy wings over the region.

Now two airmen are shot in Germany by a Kosovar Muslim, another child of our efforts to bring peace and democracy. And because German officials do not know enough to lie about what happened, the media winces and uncomfortably reports the truth, while Obama mumbles empty platitudes and PJ Crowley wonders aloud how you go about defining terrorism. That is another one of those political problems. Politicians and their camp followers are very much concerned with defining things, not according to their meanings, but their implications. Defining what happened in Frankfurt or Fort Hood as terrorism would require action. And not the politically appropriate kind.

Politics is about the manipulation of reality, but on the battlefield there is only reality itself

Politics is about the manipulation of reality, but on the battlefield there is only reality itself. Political objectives break against such realities, and when there is enough intellectual and cultural distance between the politicians and the soldiers, then the soldiers go on dying. Islam is one of those realities.

The Jihadi is not a figment of some right wing blogger’s imagination, as so many of the intellectual influences on the present administration would like to believe. Nor is he a member of some tiny minority that disturbs the peace of an otherwise peaceable region. He represents the hole in the ideal world that sits on antique desks in Washington and Brussels. The blind spot of their politics, their idealism and their faith that the world is becoming a better place. Even as countless politicians and academics have decided on their golden future, a knife comes flying out of the dark places of the past.

The unfinished business of history toppling the progressive towers in savagery and hate.

While the next wave of violence was being birthed in caverns and huts, the American military establishment was busy debating how to comply with the political objective of integrating gays into the military. No satirist could have come up with a more absurd scenario in wartime. But life always outdoes the satirist, if he waits around long enough. One day those solemn discussions may go down with Caligula’s horse in the Senate as moments of blinding insanity by the leaders of a great power come completely untethered from reality. They are damning because they represent a terrible disassociation from the military as a means of defending the society, to the military as a representative of the ideals of society’s political representatives.

To the politicians, the military must represent their ideals. And so the military has become the peace corps, the tolerance corps and eventually nothing but a series of defense contracts for Green energy and Global Warming defense. Give this bunch in charge another few years and the key national security objective will be defined as fighting Global Warming and the army will be recruiting environmentalists to promote sustainable living in Afghanistan. The left has never understood why we needed to fight terrorism at all, instead of its root causes, such as globalism, global warming and other things that begin with ‘G’. It is lunacy, but so was the Bush Administration’s deeply held belief that the only thing wrong with the Muslim world was a lack of voting booths.

The underlying problem is that neither administration was very clear on what the military was for. They were and are even less clear on what reality is. They used the military as a vehicle for their ideals and their global vision. The world in their minds is one great line of dominoes and they have a moral obligation to send them flying in the right direction. This childish world-image collides with reality, men die, and still the dominoes go on falling in the game rooms of their minds.

The Muslim world still understands war, a contest in which forces war to impose their will on one another. Their war is one of attrition

The Muslim world still understands war in the old sense, a contest in which forces war to impose their will on one another. Their war is one of attrition. They cannot beat us in a straight contest, but give them enough time and they can still make us retreat.

They want to impose Islam on us so that we too will cry Allah Akbar, acknowledging the supremacy of their culture and race over our own .We want to impose something on them, but we don’t know quite what it is. It’s usually some muddled form of democracy, rights, freedoms, unions, multiculturalism, a dim murky mirror image of ourselves. But if the British couldn’t do it after generations of colonialism, what in the world makes us think that we can.

The Muslim world has hated us ever since it learned that we existed, sometimes with the calmly implacable hatred of the other, sometimes with the burning rage of frustrated honor, sometimes hidden behind unctuous smiles, and sometimes with full throated bellows of rage. In this contest we are the weaker party because we hate less. Often we do not hate at all.

And like tourists wandering with money in our hands through the bazaars of Cairo, that makes us vulnerable. Our enemies pride themselves not on their strength of arms, their intelligence or competence—but on the strength of their hate. It is a fevered hate that would break itself against our arms, our intelligence and our competence—if we were to actually make use of them.

It is not that we lack the ability to defend ourselves. It is that we lack the understanding and the will. Our leaders aspire to a purity of ideals that transcends self-interest, and such Gandhian austerity is another form of death. To say that we would rather die than defend ourselves is to commit suicide. To place a society’s ideals above its survival is folly, as the society’s doom is also the doom of its ideals. And those who do this are no longer following ideals, but a peculiar and fanatical faith of their own that compels them to die rather than spill a drop of the enemy’s blood. But there is a more commonplace form of folly, to define reality narrowly by those ideals and to send men out into the trenches to die for them. After doing it a few too many times, Europe decided that it would no longer send men off to die for any reason, and then was forced to do it anyway.

Now the civilized world has decided that it will not send men off to die except for wholly unselfish reasons, pure ‘good of other men’ reasons, sanctified by the blessing of the UN and the international community. Good and pure ‘feed the starving children’ type reasons. No more greedy warmongering or cynical landgrabbing. We are now a good and pure people who rarely kill, and if we kill, it is only because we have absolutely no other choice. Why we would rather die than kill, and often do.

But war is selfish, not altruistic. It is a selfish decision to take the life of another, rather than our own or that of our loved ones or our fellow men.

Its nobility comes from that very selfishness, a selfishness rooted in kinship and friendship, rather than the abstract ideals which so often come down to nothing. If we are to fight, then we must be selfish. If we are to win, then we must be realistic. Politics has no place on the battlefield. The only thing worth fighting for is ourselves. Our land, our homes, our survival. It is one thing to fight side by side in alliance with friends, but fighting wars to reform enemies is the worst sort of foolishness. We can try to transform our enemies, but then they will transform us also as well. By trying to win over Islam to our way of life, we have given it great influence over us.

To avoid casualties, we have become cleverer weaponsmiths, devising ways to avoid facing that bullet. But that cleverness often seems like cowardice. To avoid suicide bombers, Israel built up walls and border defenses. And then the terrorists began to shoot rockets over the fences.

So Israel built and deployed, ‘Iron Dome’ a counter-rocket system. And after all this effort, Israel is still under siege because the enemy is still there. An enemy that Israel could easily defeat, if its leaders had the political will. All the clever technologies create a space age ghetto, surrounded by enemies who were once enclosed, but with each retreat, are the ones doing the enclosing.

The rest of the free world is cleverly building its own ghettos, dividing so that the conquerors will have an easier time of it. Worrying over the morals and ethics of their actions. Purifying its armies to reflect its ideals of tolerance, co-existence and surrendering before the first shot has even been fired.

For now the First World has the best soldiers and the worst leaders. And it would have almost be better if it were the other way around. The generals who are the interface between the two have become politicians. The armies rot, go unused or misused, and the enemy passes right around them. We can’t win if we don’t fight, and we aren’t fighting. Not for ourselves anyway.

For the purity of our ideals, and for some notion that everyone is entitled to a voting booth, birth control and microfinance, but not for ourselves. And until we start fighting for ourselves, until we find leaders who want to defend a country, rather than a set of ideals, then we will go on spending the lives of our soldiers for nothing and the future of our civilization for a tin penny prize.

[American Patriot]

Let me be the first to say this....

I was in the military. I spent 26 years in it and yes, they have been trying to emasculate the military.

But, I'll say this anyway... the military is made to KILL people, break shit and destroy kings.

I want to see Gadaffi DEAD DEAD DEAD.

I want to see the Muslims shoved back into their fucking backwoods, backwater deserts with no hope of homicide bombing anyone again for the rest of this Century.

Fuck. Kill those bastards and anyone that stands in the way and take back Western Civilization again from them, and the sissies that want to run this world.

If we EVER ARE invaded by aliens, I pray to God we have enough men left to kill them.

[Ryan Ruck]

A pretty well written piece.

The Plot to Destroy the US Military

When 75% of the military votes against you, you've got to do something to weaken/destroy/co-opt it. What better way to covertly do that but to start forcing social instability into it and, defang it by defunding all of its newest and best technology.

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Companion Threads:

• JCF Chief: It's Time Women Served On Subs
• Gays and The Military: A Bad Fit

Army Orders Soldiers to Wear Fake Breasts and 'Empathy' Bellies

By Seth Robson Stars and Stripes
Published: February 16, 2012



CAMP ZAMA, Japan – The Army is ordering its hardened combat veterans to wear fake breasts and empathy bellies so they can better understand how pregnant soldiers feel during physical training.

This week, 14 noncommissioned officers at Camp Zama took turns wearing the “pregnancy simulators” as they stretched, twisted and exercised during a three-day class that teaches them to serve as fitness instructors for pregnant soldiers and new mothers.

Army enlisted leaders all over the world are being ordered to take the Pregnancy Postpartum Physical Training Exercise Leaders Course, or PPPT, according to U.S. Army Medical Activity Japan health promotion educator Jana York.

Developed by the Army in 2008, the course includes aerobics classes, pool sessions and classroom studies on the physiology of pregnant women. The NCOs learn special exercises for pregnant women, who shouldn’t push themselves too hard or participate in high-impact activities such as snowboarding, bungee jumping or horse riding, York said.

During the training, each NCO must wear the pregnancy simulator for at least an hour.


View Gallery (3 images)
Sgt. Michael Braden, 29, of Everett, Wash., wears an "empathy belly" pregnancy simulator at Camp Zama on Feb. 14, 2012.

“When they first come in, the males are typically timid and don’t feel they have the knowledge to teach female soldiers,” she said. “However, after three days their confidence rises.”

Sgt. Michael Braden, a helicopter crew chief who has served in Iraq, Afghanistan and Kosovo, said he was less than enthusiastic about taking part.

“I didn’t want to do it,” said Braden, 29, of Everett, Wash.

The 78th Aviation Battalion mechanic said he was ordered to do the training even though he doesn’t have any female soldiers in his unit and doesn’t see himself as the right sort of person to run the aerobics classes
that make up a large portion of the PPPT training.

Despite his misgivings, Braden strapped on the empathy belly and spent Tuesday morning learning low-impact aerobics moves like the “grapevine” and the “V-step.”

“This whole thing is pretty uncomfortable,” he said of the 25-pound pregnancy simulator. But, “body armor is a lot heavier.”

Braden said he didn’t know there was such a thing as physical training for pregnant soldiers before he started the course.

“I’ve learned that being pregnant is no excuse to avoid PT,” he said.

According to an Army fact sheet about the program, “moderate exercise promotes a more rapid recovery from the birth process and a faster return to required physical fitness levels.”

An Army study showed significant Army physical fitness test failures, height/weight failures, and increased injury and illness rates when active-duty soldiers who don’t take part in physical exercise during pregnancy return to their unit, according to the fact sheet.

The program, which is mandatory for pregnant soldiers, was set up to get them back to their units quickly after they give birth, according to Staff Sgt. Latoya Nieves-Gonzales, who is helping York train the NCOs at Camp Zama.

“Pregnant soldiers were trying to do [regular Army] physical training and they couldn’t do a lot of the exercises,” she said.

Soldiers have six months to meet the Army’s height and weight standards and pass a physical training test after they give birth, she said, adding that nine pregnant soldiers do PPPT training at Camp Zama each morning.

“In the last year, we have only had one soldier who didn’t meet those standards and she was already in the weight-reduction program before she got pregnant,” she said.

Female soldiers typically add 25-30 pounds during a pregnancy, said Nieves-Gonzales, who put on 20 pounds before the birth of her own son, Xavier, six years ago in Würzburg, Germany.

That was before PPPT training was mandatory.

“My unit said: ‘You can’t do PT with us so just sleep in,’ ” she said.

Still, soldiers used to mounting up with rucksacks and rifles were not too keen on the idea of strapping on a big belly and fake breasts.

“I’m not looking forward to wearing the pregnancy simulator,” said Sgt.

Matthew Prout, a 26-year-old member of the 88th Military Police Detachment at Camp Zama.

The Army Combatives instructor said he was worried that the frontal weight would throw his balance off during aerobics routines.

“It gives me a better sense of what the pregnant woman is going through as she is going the exercises,” he said. “It will allow me to see both sides.”

It never occurred to Prout, when he joined the Army, that he’d learn to train pregnant soldiers, he said.

“My initial view of the Army was just kind of – we train, we fight,” he said. “But my eyes have been opened up to the family aspects of the Army as
opposed to just the single soldier view.”

Prout, who is single, said he hoped the PPPT training would help him relate to his future wife when she gets pregnant.

“A lot of people when their wives get pregnant just say, ‘good luck,’ but I will be able to be there step by step,” he said.

[American Patriot]

Men are d(*)(*)med

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Companion Thread: Obama names CIA chief Panetta to Defense Secretary Linked to Communist Spies

Marines Are Testing Women for Combat Leadership

By: Pasha Skirko | 3 weeks ago



“Change doesn’t come easy to the United States Marine Corps,” said Gen. James Amos to the National Press Club. “But when it does, when it’s rooted, it lasts forever. So I think we’ll work our way through it.”

What do they need to work through? Apparently, some anxiety from male Marines as female officers work their way into combat jobs.

Amos says that the early steps moving women into tank air defense, infantry, and combat engineering units have been successful, but the test is what lies ahead.

In September, female Marine officers will attend the grueling infantry officer school at the Marine Corps’ Quantico Base as part of an experiment to gauge whether women can handle the physical and psychological stress.

Two women have volunteered for the 13-week course, which generally sees only 75-80 percent graduate when only males are attending.

Officials will evaluate the females and give the data and a recommendation to U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta.


FLASHBACK:
Obama’s Emasculation of America’s Military Must Be Stopped

By Shaun Kenney | Thursday, January 26th, 2012 | Policy, Politics, Virginia

$500 billion.

Not millions… but b-b-billions. With a capital b.

That’s $500 billion of cuts to the Defense Department over the next 10 years. Not budget cuts, but real and tangible defense spending.

Obama has in just three short years in the White House has done more damage to American prestige and power than Jimmy Carter could have dreamed of accomplishing. Obama has bent over and kowtowed to every anti-American regime in the world, instigated an “Arab Spring” that put Islamists in power over the moderate voices in Islam, emboldened parallel voices in China and Europe to allow them to challenge the Pax Americana…

This list could go on.

Of course, there are liberals cheering across America as our nations men and women in uniform were just told to go to hell. Here’s Senator Mark Warner’s thoughts on the matter:

Addressing our $15 trillion national debt will require a balanced approach that includes entitlement reform, tax reforms that generate additional revenues, and spending cuts across all of our federal spending. No area of government spending should be exempt, but before we authorize another round of base closings and realignments we should first determine if there is excess capacity not just here but also at our overseas installations, especially in Europe.

Translation to America’s troops — jump into a fire and die.

Rep. Randy Forbes (VA-04) didn’t take kindly to the emasculation of American military prestige and power:

The President’s defense strategy embraces weakness by a thousand cuts. PLA Admirals will welcome the news that the President has no plans to catch up to China’s sixty attack submarines nor to invest in a missile defense system that can rival China’s mounting arsenal of missiles. North Koreans will feel more secure as America prepares to dismiss almost 1 in 6 soldiers. Tehran will be pleased that one-third less American cruisers are slated to patrol the world’s sea lanes. Foreign shipyards will embrace a shift toward outsourcing defense manufacturing jobs.

This Administration is not building a military that is lean, agile, and flexible. It is dismantling our nation’s greatest strategic asset and accepting grave risk in the process. Virginians will undoubtedly suffer as a result of this Administration’s budget proposal – so too will our allies – but it is our men and women in uniform who will suffer the most. They are the ones who will face America’s unforeseen enemies under-prepared, under-resourced, overworked and late to the battle. America is a superpower on a dangerous and rapid course towards mediocrity.

Rep. Scott Rigell (VA-02) fires back:

As a strong advocate and voice for Hampton Roads and as a member of the House Armed Services Committee, a BRAC Commission potentially focused on domestic bases is completely unacceptable. With respect to the Secretary’s comments on TRICARE, I firmly oppose to any increase in fees and will fight back against that.

Oh you didn’t know this foolishness involved cuts to military health care? By the way… is anyone wondering aloud why Obama is screwing with private health care when he can’t even fix the military health care system?!

Rep. Rob Wittman (VA-01) nails it:

Our nation’s debt and deficit pose serious challenges, and there’s no doubt that our federal government must be more efficient with taxpayer dollars. That said, providing “for the common defense” as stated in our Constitution must be a top priority. Congress and the House Armed Services Committee have a lot of work ahead of us to assess the risks built into this budget to ensure that the priority is on our strategic needs rather than simply allowing the budget to drive our military strategy. (emphasis added)

…and that right there is what burns Democrats and the progressive left so much. The United States military is in our Constitution.

Massive entitlement systems aren’t. Neither is the massive web of socialist policies that our American military protects so that they can drive electric cars and soak of future generations of Americans with pension plans and other enormities backed by the other half of America working for the luxury of camping in a tent and “occupying” something.

Worse still… the progressive left simply hates America. George Soros would love nothing more than to see the United States demote itself to a first among equals (or something worse). They hate the Pax Americana, because that power prevents the 1% that the left rails against — yet still funds their every protest… ever wonder why that is? — from taking advantage of every Third World nation out there.

The American military is the wall of iron that protects the Jeffersonian “empire of liberty” from the likes of communist China, imperial Russia, or the socialist European left. Under the Pax Americana and in the wake of the fall of Soviet Communism, more of the world lives under democracies than at any time in the history of the world. American power extends across the globe.

Free trade has never been better. The world economy, hobbled only by the very socialism we sought to defeat in the 1980s, has enabled more human beings to live free and be prosperous. Americans have never before enjoyed a standard of living higher than what we have experienced in the first decade of the 21st century. Large scale war has devolved into small scale terrorism. Democracy — not totalitarianism – is the order of the world.

Who makes this possible? The American military.


OBAMA'S PLAN DISARM AMERICA: OBAMA'S EMASCULATED MILITARY ADVISERS

Monday, October 27, 2008

First watch this .... I'll wait.

When I read Bruce Bawer's article, The Peace Racket, in the summer of 2007, I never imagined that the "peace department" would/could indeed become a reality. Neither did I believe the extreme example Ayn Rand put forth in her masterwork, Atlas Shrugged, to demonstrate her philosophy and prove her epistemology would be rendered pale, almost timid, by the Orwellian plot to overthrow capitalism by the Marxist messiah.


The Peace Department will be a reality in the incoming Marxist administration. And it's not just the staggering budgetary concerns that overwhelm, it's the ideology - imagine the impact on our public school and university curriculum.

If you look at the signatories in Congress that have signed on to the "Peace Department" - every single one is a ........ Democrat.

"We need to make two points about this movement at the outset. First, it’s opposed to every value that the West stands for—liberty, free markets, individualism—and it despises America, the supreme symbol and defender of those values. Second, we’re talking not about a bunch of naive Quakers but about a movement of savvy, ambitious professionals that is already comfortably ensconced at the United Nations, in the European Union, and in many nongovernmental organizations. It is also waging an aggressive, under-the-media-radar campaign for a cabinet-level Peace Department in the United States. Sponsored by Ohio Democratic congressman Dennis Kucinich (along with more than 60 cosponsors), House Resolution 808 would authorize a Secretary of Peace to “establish a Peace Academy,” “develop a peace education curriculum” for elementary and secondary schools, and provide “grants for peace studies departments” at campuses around the country. If passed, the measure would catapult the peace studies movement into a position of extraordinary national, even international, influence"

The Peace Racket Bruce Bawer

An anti-Western movement touts dictators, advocates appeasement—and gains momentum.

Summer 2007

If you want peace, prepare for war.” Thus counseled Roman general Flavius Vegetius Renatus over 1,600 years ago. Nine centuries before that, Sun Tzu offered essentially the same advice, and it’s to him that Vegetius’s line is attributed at the beginning of a film that I saw recently at Oslo’s Nobel Peace Center. Yet the film cites this ancient wisdom only to reject it.

After serving up a perverse potted history of the cold war, the thrust of which is that the peace movement brought down the Berlin Wall, the movie ends with words that turn Vegetius’s insight on its head: “If you want peace, prepare for peace.”

As if the routing of the basic fundamental principles of the great American experiment wasn't terrible enough, Obama will simultaneously disassemble the greatest military force on earth. Is it any wonder that the only real "voter suppression" is the Democrats soldier voting scandal. America's finest young people fighting for our very way of life are being denied the right to vote, while Democrats and their proxy ACORN, furiously work to register felons and illegal aliens. [UPDATE: 98 % of Military Ballots Rejected in Virginia]

In Obama's pursuit to disarm America, Jonathan Scott Gration is one of Obama top military guys.

Who is Major General Jonathan Scott Gration? (hat tip Randall - all links, text)

Gration is now considered one of Obama's three top military advisers, along with Richard J Danzig, the former secretary of the Navy during the Clinton administration, and Gen. Merrill A. McPeak, the virulent anti-semite and former Air Force chief of staff.

So what do we know about these guys? Gration wants to disarm the US of all nuclear weapons completely.

Quoting from the Newsweek article:

The general also has some strong views of his own: 'I believe if you could get rid of all the nuclear weapons this would be a wonderful world,' he says.

Hmm we catch Richard Danzig saying

Mr Danzig told the Centre for New American Security: "Winnie the Pooh seems to me to be a fundamental text on national security."

He spelT out how American troops, spies and anti-terrorist officials could learn key lessons by understanding the desire of terrorists to emulate superheroes like Luke Skywalker, and the lust for violence of violent football fans. (article here)

Winnie the Pooh, Luke Skywalker and British football hooligans could shape the foreign policy of Barack Obama if he becomes US President, according to a key adviser.

and we find some more interesting material on Danzigs' role model

According to The Washington Post [10],

"In both style and outlook, Danzig is an unusual figure at the Pentagon. He's an expert on the pacifist Mohandas Gandhi, the subject of his doctoral dissertation at Oxford University. And he has denounced the U.S. military's budgeting process as a 'communist system' and its officer corps as 'predominantly a white man's milieu."

source: New Totalitarians which has more choice statements about Danzig's theatrics at the Pentagon

[Randall's note: Apparently Danzig has not served in the military as a soldier at all]

And as for General Merrill A. McPeak we find the following sentiments

"I grew up, I was going to college when Joe McCarthy was accusing good Americans of being traitors, so I've had enough of it," McPeak said. And last month McPeak had to retract his statement that as president, Obama would not be reduced to "crying fits" like Mrs. Clinton

Well, it is likely that Obama will soon be having to retract Merrill McPeak. McPeak, who was arrested last year for driving under the influence, apparently has a problem controlling more than his thirst for fermented beverages. He also has a penchant for bashing Israel or, more particularly, Jews who oppose negotiating with terrorists.

McPeak has a long history of criticizing Israel for not going back to the 1967 borders as part of any peace agreement with Arab states. In 1976 McPeak wrote an article for Foreign Affairs magazine questioning Israel's insistence on holding on to the Golan Heights and parts of the West Bank. (source: Spectator)

So there you have it.

Gration - N0 nuclear weapons (what about those Russian submarines?)

Danzig - feminization of the Armed Forces and adulation of Ghandi and let's get along with misled terrorists who aren't really that bad, after all

McPeak - bash Israel for not cooperating with terrorists

I think we now have a good idea of where Barack is headed, after the election, since these three men are his military advisors
...... and Richard Danzig is set to become the National Security Advisor

The Winnie the Pooh article also highlights what Danzig thinks about terrorists.

Now I see why the millions of foreign dollars are pouring in. Wonder what Danzig knows about all of this?

[vector7]

Companion Threads:

• The Islamification of America, and the Emasculation of the U.S. Military
• Obama Guts the Military
• Eliminating The Marine Corps
• Army 2-star fired for criticizing Afghans
• Obama names CIA chief Panetta to Defense Secretary Linked to Communist Spies
• Gays and The Military: A Bad Fit
  

Goodbye To The Army And Marines As A Fighting Unit: Political Correctness Has Taken Over

BY Herschel Smith
1 day, 6 hours ago

As precursors to my analysis, take note of the following inconsistencies and contradictions. First, Dr. Steve Metz, Professor at the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, in response to Sharia is coming, left this comment:

“Should we worry about the creeping influence of the Boy Scout laws? More people follow that in the United States than sharia.” Note well. Steve is comparing Boy Scout law with Sharia law. This Boy Scout law – compared to this sharia law.

On the other hand, because of political correctness, in the Spring of this year, US Army Lieutenant Colonel Matthew Dooley was condemned by the Joints Chiefs of Staff (JCS) and relieved of teaching duties at Joint Forces Staff College for teaching a course judged to be offensive to Islam. The course he taught, Perspectives on Islam and Islamic Radicalism, was an elective course that Lt. Col. Dooley’s superiors judged as presenting Islam in a negative way. His superiors were persuaded to come to this conclusion after receiving an October 2011 letter in which 57 Muslim organizations claimed to be offended by the course. The fact that Lt. Col. Dooley is a highly decorated combat veteran with nearly 20 years of service under his belt apparently held little or no sway with the JCS. As a matter of fact, JCS Chairman General Martin Dempsey “personally attacked” Lt. Col. Dooley on C-Span on May 10, 2012, during a Pentagon News Conference.

Next, take note of the fact that females are now matriculating at infantry officer training at Quantico. This is certainly in line with Andrew Exum’s counsel concerning his own branch of the service: “I see no compelling reason why women should not be allowed to attend Ranger School. As far as I am concerned, if a woman really wants to run around a sawdust pit at two in the morning screaming “Ranger!” while periodically stopping to low-crawl for 50 meters, we have a constitutional — nay God-given — responsibility to allow her to do so.”

But now consider what Former Spook observes concerning women in combat MOS.

Almost 20 years ago, columnist Fred Reed published results of an Army study, comparing fitness levels among male and female soldiers. The data reaffirms that most women simply lack the upper body strength and endurance required by an Army infantryman, a Marine rifleman, or most special forces MOS’s.

The average female Army recruit is 4.8 inches shorter, 31.7 pounds lighter, has 37.4 fewer pounds of muscle, and 5.7 more pounds of fat than the average male recruit. She has only 55 percent of the upper-body strength and 72 percent of the lower-body strength… An Army study of 124 men and 186 women done in 1988 found that women are more than twice as likely to suffer leg injuries and nearly five times as likely to suffer fractures as men.

The Commission heard an abundance of expert testimony about the physical differences between men and women that can be summarized as follows:

Women’s aerobic capacity is significantly lower, meaning they cannot carry as much as far as fast as men, and they are more susceptible to fatigue.

In terms of physical capability, the upper five percent of women are at the level of the male median. The average 20-to-30 year-old woman has the same aerobic capacity as a 50 year-old man.

Finally, take note of the undercurrents in the suicide prevention department of the DoD. We can trust our men with the most lethal weapons known to mankind, but the desire now is to give commanding officers authority over personally owned weapons. As one commenter has noted, the concept of “at risk” is subjective, which is the same reason that such medical assessments cannot ever be allowed to preclude the right to own firearms in the civilian community.

My son routinely hauled 120 pound(+) kit off the line as a fleet Marine, including his time in Fallujah, Iraq, between body armor (including SAPI plates), backpack, weapon, SAW drums plus ammunition, hydration system, and so on and so forth. Recall this picture from the assault into Helmand in the summer of 2009?

This Marine is carrying his kit plus a mortar plate. He is probably crossing the line at greater than 150 pounds.

My son trained as a fleet Marine before the age of political correctness. Strong, male Marines – not reserve Marines, but hard core regular duty infantry Marines – would need to take several shots of whiskey and 1000 mg of Ibuprofen to kill the pain prior to their twenty miles humps with full kit on 100 degree F (+) days at Camp Lejeune. Negligent discharges brought a season in the so-called “room of pain.” Laying back on the humps brought time in the room of pain. Failing to qualify well on the range brought time in the room of pain.

Fun time involved laying down to sleep in the swamp overnight at Camp Lejeune (as ordered) and having to strip naked the next morning so that your buddies could burn the leeches off with cigarettes. Or, how about that extended time at Fort A.P. Hill when the NCOs gradually removed everything the Marines had, from tent, to sleeping bag, to food, to winter clothing. Then, it was time to sleep one winter night on that outing, and there was no way to stay alive unless Marines huddled, hugged, laid down together, shivered and threw leaves over themselves for the night.

You get the picture. But my son left the U.S. Marine Corps because, in his own words, “the Corps is changing.” He couldn’t train his boot Marines the same way he was trained. He wasn’t allowed. He had initially intended to extend so that he could go to Afghanistan with his boot Marines because he felt responsible for them. But he believed that a lot of good men would perish in Afghanistan, and that he couldn’t make a difference in that. So he left, along with all of the other Marines who had experience from Iraq.

If you have some sort of androgynous, genderless vision for the armed forces – if you believe that Navy Corpsmen should be able to treat the field diseases of both men and women and understand what mud and parasites in the various different cracks and crevasses and holes of men and women do, if you believe that men and women are on equal footing pertaining to physical abilities, if you believe that machines like the ridiculous Army future combat systems robotics and the silly machines like the big dog can ever replace mules and the backs of infantry Marines, if you believe that men and women will be able to interact socially as a cohesive fighting unit without the behavior that attends the opposite sexes – I think you’re weird and creepy. Not that we can’t be friends, but just that you’re weird and creepy, at least to me. Machines cannot replace strong men, and even the Russians found out in Afghanistan that women had a higher number of lower extremity injuries than men, causing severe under-manning of forces. Exum believes that we have a constitutional and God-given duty to allow women in Ranger school. I’m a constitutional aficionado with seminary training, and I don’t think Exum can prove either of those assertions.

As for Steve Metz, he isn’t stupid, he has just let his political and religious bigotry cloud his scholarship, leading to the stupid things he said about Sharia law. But it’s okay to have Steve Metz saying those things as long as we don’t let contrary positions be taught. We wouldn’t want to offend anyone, would we?

As for the personal possession of guns by Soldiers and Marines, how about this proposition. We remove the ridiculous rules of engagement under which they operate and give them a coherent strategy, and see how our fighting men respond. If not well, then I would be willing to spend some extra dollars to help assess PTSD. But I’m betting I won’t have to spend a dime of that money.

As for the Army, I kind of expect this sort of thing. But the Marines were supposed to be different. They’re not, and political correctness proves it. It’s a sad thing to watch the diminishing of the U.S. Marine Corps, once the greatest fighting and strike force on earth, to political hackery. I hold the Commandant of the Marine Corps responsible, at least in part. I also hold responsible a public who allows this kind of thing without pulling the plug on the absurdity of the use of our armed forces for every social engineering experiment that appeals to the self-professed intellectual elites. And finally, it’s a shame that I have to mention the Commandant of the Marine Corps and the nations “intellectual elite” in the same breath. How very sad is all of this?

From the view of the Cultural Left:

1. The Marine Corps was the ultimate Joe Sixpack organization. Consequently, it has to be destroyed.

2. The purpose of the military is to get shot and lose wars. If some of those shot are women, so much the better. The US has no moral right or duty to project its power outside the boundaries of the US and there is some argument that we have no right of defense inside the boundary either because our culture is immoral and illegitimate.

[American Patriot]

So... I was sitting in the tire shop the other day. There was a Specialist, black female sitting there making small talk about things in the world with me. (I was wearing my USAF Retired hat so she knew I was former military).

Obama came on Television and was doing an Ad against Romney. She snorted at the video in a kind of derisive manner and when she caught my surprised look she said, "What? Because I'm a black woman I'm supposed to vote for that fucker? I hate Obama."

I said, "Well, I don't like him very much but in general when I was in uniform I didn't say anything bad against the President."

She laughed and said, "That's back when we were the ARMED FORCES of the United States. Now we're the politically correct disarmed services of America. That man doesn't stand up for me. He's a woman hating muslim and he needs to be voted out of office or something worse!"

About that time they called me to collect my keys and truck. So I walked over and said, "Ma'am thank you for your service, good luck and I hope there are a lot more like you who are voting."

She smiled and said, "Oh, there are... there are..."

[Ryan Ruck]

Well, in your defense you would have had a 96-98% chance of being right if it were based on skin color alone though the military aspect changes those chances a bit:

Attachment 963

[vector7]

The Obama Administration is aware of this...

Military Times Poll: Romney bests Obama, 2-1

Economy, not military issues, tops concerns By Andrew Tilghman - Staff writer
Posted : Sunday Oct 7, 2012 10:34:55 EDT



The professional core of the U.S. military overwhelmingly favors Mitt Romney over President Obama in the upcoming election — but not because of any particular military issues, according to a new poll of more than 3,100 active and reserve troops.

Respondents rated the economy and the candidates’ character as their most important considerations and all but ignored the war in Afghanistan as an issue of concern.

The Military Times Poll is a secure email survey of active-duty, National Guard and reserve members who are subscribers to the Military Times newspapers (see How We Did It, below).

This population is older and more senior than the military population at large, but it is representative of the professional core of the all-volunteer force.

The 3,100 respondents — roughly two-thirds active-duty and one-third reserve component members — are about 80 percent white and 91 percent male. Forty percent are in paygrades E-5 through E-8, while more than 35 percent are in paygrades O-3 through O-5.

Almost 80 percent of respondents have a college degree — including 27 percent with a graduate degree and more than 11 percent with a post-graduate degree — while an additional 18.5 percent have some college under their belts.

And they are battle-hardened; almost 29 percent have spent more than two cumulative years deployed since 9/11, while a similar percentage has spent one to two cumulative years deployed.

The Military Times poll shows that Republicans continue to enjoy overwhelming support among the military’s professional ranks.

“There is really an affinity for Republican candidates, even though [troops] say that what counts is character and handling the economy,” said Richard Kohn, who teaches military history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Poll results indicate that about 66 percent of those surveyed support Romney, compared with about 26 percent who say they will vote to re-elect President Obama.

When asked about the most important issue guiding their vote this year, about 66 percent of respondents cited either “the economy” or “the character of the candidate.” Less than 16 percent of troops surveyed cited “national security.”

And the war in Afghanistan is barely a blip on the radar: Just more than 1 percent put that conflict at the top of their list of concerns. That’s in stark contrast to troops’ feelings about the war in Iraq in the Military Times 2008 election poll, when 16 percent cited that conflict as their top concern.

Pocketbook issues

“When I talk to my soldiers, it’s not social issues. It’s almost not even military issues. What it comes down to is pocketbook issues,” said one 28-year-old Army captain who took the survey in late September. “They currently see Mitt Romney as being stronger for their pocketbook.

“It comes down to taxes — how much are they going to have to pay — and are they going to be able to find jobs if they leave the military,” said the captain, who, like most troops interviewed by Military Times, requested anonymity before discussing personal political views.

But some Obama supporters said they don’t believe a vote for him will necessarily hit them in the wallet.

A Navy fire controlman first class noted that Obama proposed to increase taxes on upper-income earners, specifically those making more than $200,000 a year, or $250,000 for a family.

“How many people in the military make more than $200,000 a year?” the sailor said.

Although service members have their health care needs covered by the military, the state of national health care is important to an Air Force technical sergeant at Dyess Air Force Base, Texas.

“I grew up in a low-income family that never had health care,” the airman said. “You waited until you were extremely sick, and then my mother would take us to an emergency room.

“I’m in favor of everyone having health care,” he said, adding that the Obama administration’s health care plan may not be “the best one out there, but it’s better than nothing.”

The airman also is disappointed in Romney’s continued lack of details on his plans.

“He seems to tell you what you want to hear but doesn’t back it up with specifics,” he said.

Many Romney supporters cite their candidate’s business experience as an asset, especially in times of national fiscal trouble.

Capt. John Bowe, a Marine military policeman stationed at Fort Leonard Wood, Mo., said he’s voting for Romney because it’s clear Obama is doing a poor job with the nation’s finances.

“You cannot add $6 trillion to the [national] debt in 3½ years and not expect massive repercussions,” he said.

Yet some in the Obama camp say Romney’s career as a chief executive for an investment company does not necessarily prepare him well for the White House.

“The guy is all about making money, which is great, but government doesn’t work like a business,” the sailor said. “It just doesn’t work that way. It’s not a for-profit industry.”

A Navy commander and helicopter pilot who is a registered Republican said he plans to vote for Romney, but added, “I don’t have much faith in either” candidate.

Obama “has proven that he can’t fulfill his campaign promises. And I don’t have much faith in Romney to be able to fulfill his,” the commander said.

UNC Chapel Hill’s Kohn, who reviewed the poll results at the request of Military Times, said this year’s responses “really track with traditional views of the military, regardless of President Obama’s reaching out to military families.”

Obama edges upward

While Obama supporters in uniform are clearly a minority, the president’s standing among Military Times readers has improved 3 percentage points since the 2008 poll, when he was a first-term senator facing off against Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona. In 2008, 23 percent of respondents supported Obama, while 68 percent backed McCain.

That may suggest that the GOP’s dominance on military issues is ebbing, if very slowly, said Peter Feaver, an expert on civil-military relations who teaches at Duke University.

“[For] several decades, the Republicans had what is known as ‘issue ownership’ on national security,” said Feaver, who served as a special adviser to the National Security Council under President George W. Bush. “The last five to six years has produced a little bit of a swing of the pendulum.”

He cited several reasons for the potential shift, including a perception that the Bush administration mishandled the Iraq War.

The death of Osama bin Laden at the hands of U.S. special operations troops also was a boost to Obama’s national security image, and Democrats have courted military voters by emphasizing veterans’ benefits and trying to recast the traditional view of which party supports the military.

“If the national security issue can be re-imagined as an entitlement program, then that fits the Democratic narrative pretty well,” Feaver said. “It’s clearly the way Obama most naturally feels comfortable talking about the military. He’s quite eloquent when he talks about honoring the commitments made to those who serve.”

Still, most respondents to the Military Times poll were highly critical of Obama’s performance as commander in chief, especially his handling of the defense budget and national security strategy.

Sixty-two percent rated his handling of the defense budget as only fair or poor, while 57 percent applied the same rating to his handling of the war in Afghanistan.

But troops were less critical of Obama’s decision to withdraw all U.S. troops from Iraq last year, with 47 percent giving him a fair or poor rating on that issue.

Kohn said the troops’ views on Iraq are driven by firsthand experience.

“They are the ones on the ground. They are pretty well-informed people, and they see that there was not a great deal more they could do [in Iraq] … with a reasonable amount of time and a reasonable amount of resources,” Kohn said.

Bowe, the Marine military police captain, added that the Obama administration’s handling of Libya after Moammar Gadhafi was deposed amounted to “colossal mismanagement” and ultimately cost the life of a U.S. ambassador.

“If you’re not an effective manager … you can’t run anything else,” Bowe said.

The strong views expressed by Bowe and the other poll respondents were not uncommon in this year’s election survey. Although the military strives to stay apolitical as an institution, it’s clear that many troops are highly engaged in what some experts have called the most potentially significant presidential election in years.

“You kind of expect your soldiers to go home at night and play Xbox and drink beer — which they do — but I’ve heard them talk about [the election] quite a bit,” the Army captain said. “They’re more dialed in than some might think.”


When Obama's poll numbers begin to fall in the Military...


Is the Obama administration suppressing the military vote?


By: Hope Hodge Follow @MissHedgeHodge
9/27/2012 10:42 AM

Voter assistance programs for the military – specifically targeted for improvement with $75 million after low military turnout in 2008 – have been left to languish by the Obama administration and the result may be depressed military turnout. Again.

The situation is especially alarming for the Mitt Romney campaign, because polls have consistently shown that Romney’s support from military voters and their families exceeds that of Barack Obama’s support by double digits.

In other words, the less the administration puts a priority on military voter outreach, the more the president is helped in the election.

The situation is reaching a crisis point, as members of the military face deadlines for absentee ballots in some states in just a matter of days. So far, military ballot requests are at a dismal low.

In the pivotal swing state of Ohio, roughly 9,700 absentee ballots had been requested by military and overseas voters as of Sept. 22, compared with well over 32,000 in 2008 total ballots cast for those groups. In Virginia, another swing state with a significant military presence, the nearly 12,300 military and overseas ballots requested so far are something less than 30 percent of the more than 41,700 absentee military and overseas cast four years ago.

A survey released late last month by the Military Voter Protection Project showed that in eight military-dense states, early figures indicated the same trend. Ballot requests were down across the board by big margins.


“I think we’re going to see the lowest participation rates in more than a decade by military service members and their spouses,” said project CEO Eric Eversole. “We’re pushing as hard as we can to reach out to service members while there’s still time.”

These figures are particularly disconcerting in that the 2008 election already represented a low turnout in military voting, with about 54 percent of service members casting a ballot, compared with a 64 percent overall voter turnout.

Military voter outreach falls short

The problem was so acute that the Military and Overseas Voter Empowerment Act was enacted in 2009 as part of the defense authorization bill to counter the apparent barriers to military voting. It required blank absentee ballots to be sent to service members who requested them at least 45 days before an election and called for the creation of dedicated voting assistance offices on every non-deployed military installation.

But while these offices were dutifully set up at many installations, early numbers suggest they are ineffective, and a recent Inspector General investigation found that representatives in those offices are, up to half the time, unreachable or unresponsive.

Of 229 installation voting assistance offices officials tried to contact by telephone, or email, more than 49 percent could not be reached at all. Furthermore, surveys conducted by the Defense department after the 2010 election, which showed the offices were effective in helping troops to vote, were found to be misleading because the surveys had a low response rate and respondents were largely self-selecting.

In a Sept. 13 hearing of the House Armed Services Committee’s subcommittee on military personnel to discuss the Inspector General report, Rep. Austin Scott (R-Ga.) suggested the problem lay with Obama administration priorities.

“It seems to me that the DoD made sure that they got the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell surveys (determining the effects of a repeal) to every member of the military, to every spouse, to everybody that they were supposed to,” he said. “But when it comes to military voting, it seems that we’re not able to get the absentee ballots to our soldiers…it seems to me that there’s a different standard there when it comes to voting versus a survey that the DoD or the administration actually wanted a response to.”

Military vote leans Romney

The military vote, which has historically bent conservative, appears to be leaning even further to the right this election cycle. While Republican presidential candidate John McCain won the support of military voters by 10 percentage points in 2008, a Rasmussen poll conducted in July found that Romney leads Obama 59 percent to 35 percent for Obama among likely voters with military service. More recently, several Wall Street Journal/NBC/Marist polls showed Romney with a lead of between 12 percentage points and 20 percentage points ahead of the president among veterans in the swing states of Ohio, Virginia, and Florida.

Anecdotal evidence shows that, whatever the reason, the message that troops should take time to exercise their constitutional right to vote is not always promoted or given priority among the fighting forces.

Rep. Joe Heck (R-Nev.), who also sat in on the recent panel on military voting, said his own experience as a senior officer in the U.S. Army reserves made him doubtful of how much attention voting assistance was given.

“I can say as someone who was deployed in 2008, the extent of my command emphasis was a notice that was posted on the unit bulletin board about where the voting office was and who the contact was,” he said.

A Marine infantry sergeant stationed at Camp Lejeune, N.C., who asked not to be identified by name, said that he had received no information from his unit about voting. “The military never talks about voting, period,” he said. “It has not been something they’ve really talked about for most of us. I haven’t voted on anything since I joined.”

The local base paper did include a recent short story discussing the importance of voting and how to get help, but for those who work in the infantry, and, like this sergeant, are deployed or recently returned from a deployment, these messages may not be enough.

With little time left and roughly 480,000 absentee military votes (the number cast in 2008) at stake, Eversole said his organization’s immediate priority is to spread the word that troops should exercise their right to vote.

“From our organization’s perspective we’re going to continue pushing the best we can to get the word out,” he said. “Most Americans have family members serving. If they do, then they really need to emphasize to them that it’s not too late. It’s really important to reach out to them and let them know.”

In the long term, he said the laws in place to assist the troops were strong; they just needed to be enforced. “Our DoD needs to comply with federal law,” he said.




Obama bogging down the military vote

America’s warriors want Romney

By THE WASHINGTON TIMES
The Washington Times
Tuesday, October 2, 2012



Illustration Military Votes by Alexander Hunter for The Washington Times more >

No one has a greater claim to participate in the process of setting the nation’s direction than America’s warriors. They risk their lives to defend their countrymen, but they have received little regard at the ballot box in return. As the race between Democratic President Obama and GOP challenger Mitt Romney remains too close to call, voters in uniform could have a decisive impact on the outcome. It’s clear Mr. Obama’s supporters don’t want that to happen.

The Military Voter Protection Project labels as “bleak” the prospects for Americans in uniform who use absentee ballots to have their voices heard. The organization, set up to help servicemen vote, surveyed ballot requests in various states and found applications were only 33 percent of the number requested in 2008. “While the number of absentee ballot requests will increase in the coming weeks, especially as the election draws near, the amount needed to meet 2008 levels is staggering,” said the group’s Aug. 31 report. Defense Department resistance to congressionally mandated voter assistance requirements is to blame.

Those in military life are often stationed far from home or overseas, which makes voting more difficult. In the 2008 presidential contest, only 20 percent of the 2.6 million military voters had their ballots counted. Many states were tardy sending out absentee ballots to servicemen, causing completed ballots to arrive after Election Day. Consequently, Congress enacted the Military and Overseas Voter Empowerment Act in 2009, which mandated absentee ballots be sent to servicemen requesting them at least 45 days prior to Election Day. This year, that deadline expired on Sept. 22.

Another key provision of the law requires the Defense Department to open voter assistance offices on military bases to help personnel file their absentee ballot requests. However, a recent report from the Pentagon inspector general’s office said that many of the offices proved hard to contact or non-existent: “Results were clear. Our attempts to contact [Installation Voting Assistance Offices] failed about 50 percent of the time.” If soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines have trouble getting voter assistance, it’s unsurprising that absentee ballot requests are lagging.

The Pentagon blamed the poor results on inspectors using outdated contact information, but for Sen. John Cornyn, Texas Republican, this isn’t the real issue: “Today, many of the on-base voter assistance offices that do exist are grossly inadequate, and at least half of them are either closed or completely unstaffed,” he wrote in a Sept. 7 letter to Defense Secretary Leon Panetta.

It’s no secret that military personnel are displeased with Mr. Obama. While the latest Rasmussen Reports daily tracking poll has Mr. Obama with a 3-point edge among the general public over GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney, a Rasmussen poll in July showed military voters back Mr. Romney by a 24-point margin.

America’s warriors deserve a say in choosing their commander in chief. The administration shouldn’t drag its feet on implementing the overseas voting reform law simply to avoid the likely result.

The Washington Times

Military Absentee ballots may have been destroyed in crash

Associated Press – 14 hrs ago

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — Federal officials say that absentee ballots being sent to U.S. military serving in Afghanistan may have been burned in a plane crash.

A top official in the Federal Voting Assistance Program this week notified election officials across the nation that a transport plane crashed at Shindad Air Base on Oct. 19.

The crash resulted in the destruction of 4,700 pounds of mail inbound to troops serving in the area.

Federal officials in their email to state election offices said they did not know if any ballots were destroyed. They also said the lost mail was limited to one zip code.

But they recommended that election officials resend a new ballot to anyone who requested one since the first ballot may have been destroyed in the crash and fire.

[Ryan Ruck]

Draft Of New U.S. Army Handbook Must Be Scrapped

December 28, 2012

After the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” the erosion of our military’s moral principles, regretfully, continues.

A recent Wall Street Journal article described the U.S. Army’s final-draft handbook, which indoctrinates our military personnel heading to Afghanistan in how to be sensitive to and accept Muslim and Afghan 7th-century customs and values — or possibly be killed by our Afghan partners.

Unbelievable. This is being done to prevent the so-called “green-on-blue” attacks, which have cost 63 American lives this year.

According to the Army’s Combined Arms Center at Ft. Leavenworth, Kan., it is our military’s ignorance and lack of empathy for Muslim and Afghan cultural norms that is the basic cause for our Afghan military partners to react violently and kill our troops.

For example, if our military personnel hear or witness an Afghan soldier sodomizing a young boy, the handbook tells U.S. service members to voice no objection, accept it or ignore it, or they could be killed. If an Afghan beats, rapes or kills a woman in the presence of a U.S. serviceman, they are not to interfere or stand up for women’s rights or else they might be killed.

What the Army is saying, in effect, is that if Afghan partners conduct violence against U.S. service personnel, it is the serviceman’s fault. This is mind-boggling. We know, according to former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen, that nine out of 10 Afghan military personnel are illiterate and cannot be counted on in combat. Endemic corruption is embedded in Afghan culture and certainly extends to their military. They cannot be trusted.

Other cultural norms our professional U.S. military must accept without reservation by our Afghan partners is desertion, drug use, thievery, dog torture and collusion with the enemy, the Taliban. Also, U.S. military members must not discuss Islam in any form.

All of this guidance is un-American. It is totally against our core principles and everything we stand for as Americans. It threatens to further diminish our military principles, stature and fighting spirit. As columnist Diana West stated in a recent article, if this handbook directive is implemented, we will be forcing our military to submit to Islam and its governing Shariah law or die — exactly the choice offered to infidels who have been vanquished by jihad. Our military’s silence and acquiescence would be the humiliating price for their existence.

This should be seen as another attempt to undercut our professional military and our warrior reputation that has guaranteed our freedom and way of life for the past 236 years.

None of this humiliating guidance should come as a surprise. The Obama administration has had a massive purge under way to remove all training manuals, lectures and instructors who link Islamic doctrine and its governing Shariah law in a factual way to Islamic terrorism. These manuals are being removed from all government agencies, including the Department of Defense and intelligence agencies. All our training manuals have been purged of the true nature of the threat from Islam and Shariah.

The degrading of our military’s fundamental principles should be viewed in a much broader perspective. We cannot overlook the fact that with or without sequestration, we are unilaterally disarming our military force. This is happening in spite of an uncertain world situation with the Mideast still in a state of turmoil and evolving threats posed by China, Russia and Iran.

Separately, we see our First Amendment rights being trashed by our secretary of state through her participation in the Istanbul Process championed by the 57-member-nation Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC). The OIC is sponsoring a United Nations mandate that would make it a crime to express anything they consider blasphemous against Islam or the Prophet Muhammad. This same theme was expressed by President Obama in his September speech to the U.N. General Assembly in New York.

If these attacks on America’s exceptionalism and core principles are collectively analyzed, it appears that there is an insidious agenda at work to fundamentally change America. All of these negative factors must be challenged and defeated. As a first step, the Army’s draft handbook should be trashed.

Second, Congress must take positive action to protect our First Amendment rights and force the Obama administration to withdraw from any further participation in the Istanbul Process. Third, the unilateral disarmament of our military must be reversed. It’s time for members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to take a position that supports the oath they took to protect and defend our Constitution.

[Malsua]

We need to just leave Afghanistan. If it gets out of hand again, we'll nuke it from orbit.

[American Patriot]

Where do they get these stupid motherfuckers that write that we should IGNORE absolutely disgusting and evil acts of violence against women and little boys?

Who the FUCK are these guys? They need to be immediately removed from any kind of position of authority.

Any son of a bitch that tells me to ignore something like that I will fucking kill myself!

[Ryan Ruck]

Inspections Found Air Force Porn, Offensive Items

January 18, 2013

Hoping to fight sexual assault in its own ranks, the Air Force said today a sweep of air base offices worldwide found thousands of suspect materials ranging from pornographic films to a beer bong.

It's not clear what the inspection, and the odd assortment of items it turned up, tells Air Force leaders about the link between the workplace environment and the growing problem of sexual violence. But it was meant to impress on Air Force commanders that they need to attack the underlying problem of unprofessionalism.

"When airmen work in a setting consistent with our core values, they perform with honor and distinction," the Air Force chief of staff, Gen. Mark Welsh, said when he ordered the inspections in late November.

Officials conducted such a sweep at MacDill Air Force Base in December.

The Air Force fell into the public spotlight on this issue partly because of revelations of sexual abuse of female recruits. An investigation last year found that 23 instructors allegedly engaged in inappropriate or coercive sexual relationships with 48 recruits at Air Education and Training Command at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio.

Gen. Larry O. Spencer, the Air Force vice chief of staff, said today the inspections of offices and other work spaces at about 100 facilities in December found more than 32,000 items judged to be pornographic, unprofessional or offensive.

"This was not a witch hunt," Spencer said in a telephone interview. It was designed to reinforce the idea that every member of the Air Force should be treated with respect and that sexist attitudes must change, he said.

The Air Force said the no-notice or short-notice inspections found 631 items judged to be pornographic, including magazines, calendars, photos and videos.

They also turned up 3,987 items deemed unprofessional. Examples: a pubic hair in an office logbook (), a beer bong () and World War II-era airplane nose art depicting a fully clothed but "promiscuous" woman (), according to an Air Force document listing all the items.

Among 27,598 items categorized by commanders as "offensive": a postcard depicting women in bikinis, lewd cartoons, a copy of the Air Times newspaper's "Hot Shots 2013" calendar with women in "provocative" poses, a picture of professional football player Tom Brady shirtless, a Confederate flag and a poster of Osama bin Laden.

( )

Asked what this tells him about a relationship between problematic workplace items and the effort to combat sexual abuse, Spencer said it's a mixed picture and that the goal is to ensure professionalism in the workplace.

"Most of the items that were found some might find offensive (but) weren't in the category of vulgarity or pornography, although there was some of that out there and those were taken care of," he said, adding that he's not sure there is a clear link between offensive materials in the workplace and the problem of sexual assault.

"Whether offensive material is directly connected to someone creating a sexual assault or being involved in sexual assault, I can't draw that line directly," Spencer said. "But I think it all starts with the culture that we want to have out there, and that is a professional environment and that everybody is treated with respect."

Don't let the Air Force see any of their history books lest someone be offended...











I can post these all day but I think I've made my point. We've become such a ball-less nation.

[American Patriot]

Ryan, you've not quite got to the point... can you post a few more prominent points for me?

[Ryan Ruck]

I'll leave that to you and Google Image search. You can explain to the wife it's just research.

[American Patriot]

Lol

[vector7]

Panetta to lift ban on women in combat

Published January 23, 2013
FoxNews.com


Women in all branches of the military soon will have unprecedented opportunities to serve on the front lines of the nation's wars.
Leon Panetta, in one of his last acts as President Obama's defense secretary, is preparing to announce the policy change, which would open hundreds of thousands of front-line positions and potentially elite commando jobs after more than a decade at war, the Pentagon confirmed Wednesday.

The groundbreaking move recommended by the Joint Chiefs of Staff overturns a 1994 rule banning women from being assigned to smaller ground combat units. Panetta's decision gives the military services until January 2016 to seek special exceptions if they believe any positions must remain closed to women.

"This policy change will initiate a process whereby the services will develop plans to implement this decision, which was made by the secretary of defense upon the recommendation of the Joint Chiefs of Staff," a senior defense official told reporters on condition of anonymity.

Some front-line military roles may open to women as soon as this year. Assessments for others, such as special operations forces, including Navy SEALS and the Army's Delta Force, may take longer.

A defense official told the Associated Press that the military chiefs must report back to Panetta with their initial implementation plans by May 15. The announcement on Panetta's decision is not expected until Thursday, so the official spoke on condition of anonymity.

Panetta's move expands the Pentagon's action nearly a year ago to open about 14,500 combat positions to women, nearly all of them in the Army. This decision could open more than 230,000 jobs, many in Army and Marine infantry units, to women.

Senator John McCain, R-Ariz., said he supports Panetta's decision.

"The fact is that American women are already serving in harm's way today all over the world and in every branch of our armed forces," he said in a statement. "Many have made the ultimate sacrifice, and our nation owes them a deep debt of gratitude."

In recent years the necessities of war propelled women into jobs as medics, military police and intelligence officers that were sometimes attached -- but not formally assigned -- to units on the front lines.

Women comprise 14 percent of the 1.4 million active military personnel.


Continued:
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013...oles-to-women/

[Ryan Ruck]

A couple observations I had when I heard about this yesterday:

1) Funny how he is doing this as he is on his way out the door.

2) Also funny how he is doing this now that we are drawing down combat ops with a reduced risk to our combat troops.

3) I didn't see it mentioned in the article but with this, the military will apparently be looking to move to a "universal standard" for both men and women. Does this mean that women looking to join combat roles will have to meet the same standards men do now? Nope. It means the standards for men are going to be lowered to accommodate women thus meaning a less effective fighting force.

[American Patriot]

Ding ding ding.... Number three above. Absolutely.

Right now the Air Force has significantly different standards for not only gender but age groups as well. The older you get the less fast you have to run.

The Army standards are similar - but still plenty different.

(Ex. Males 17-21 run 2 miles in 12 minutes, women 15 minutes)