It’s plain to see why the Democrats in various states don’t want to give our military personnel stationed overseas, particularly in combat theatres, elbow room to vote when time permits:

From Michelle Malkin –

What About the Camp Bastion Attack?

Three days after the bloody 9/11 siege on our consulate in Benghazi, the Taliban waged an intricately coordinated, brutal attack on Camp Bastion in Afghanistan. The murderous jihadists released video exactly one month ago this week showing off their training exercises in preparation for the assault. Where are the questions?

Where’s the accountability? Where’s the Obama administration? Where’s the press? Where’s the outrage?

Two heroic U.S. Marines were killed in the battle. Their names — Lt. Col. Christopher Raible and Sgt. Bradley Atwell — have not been uttered publicly by the commander in chief. Their arrival back in the U.S., in flag-draped coffins, was not broadcast on network TV. But their brothers-in-arms did not and will not forget. And neither must we.

Read On…

And then, there’s this one from Weekly Standard:

Charles Woods, the father of Tyrone Woods, who was killed in the 9/11 terrorist attack at the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya, reveals details of meeting Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton at the publically broadcast memorial service for the slain Americans at Andrews Air Force Base only days after the attack. And, in a recent radio appearance, Woods publicly questions who made the call not to send in back-up forces to possibly save his son’s life, as well as the three other Americans killed in Benghazi (which includes the American ambassador to Libya).

“When [Obama] came over to our little area” at Andrew Air Force Base, says Woods, “he kind of just mumbled, you know, ‘I’m sorry.’ His face was looking at me, but his eyes were looking over my shoulder like he could not look me in the eye. And it was not a sincere, ‘I’m really sorry, you know, that your son died,’ but it was totally insincere, more of whining type, ‘I’m sorry.’”

Woods says that shaking President Obama’s hands at his son’s memorial service was “like shaking hands with a dead fish.”

“It just didn’t feel right,” he says of his encounter with the commander in chief. “And now that it’s coming out that apparently the White House situation room was watching our people die in real time, as this was happening,” Woods says, he wants answers on what happened—and why there was no apparent effort to save his son’s life.

“Well, this is what Hillary did,” Woods continues. “She came over and, you know, did the same thing—separately came over and talked with me. I gave her a hug, shook her hand. And she did not appear to be one bit sincere—at all. And you know, she mentioned that the thing about, we’re going to have that person arrested and prosecuted that did the video. That was the first time I had even heard about anything like that.”

Yes, the indifference of this administration to our nation’s military, the people who put life and limb on the line on our behalf, is once again manifesting itself, not surprisingly, as it did when a campaigning B. Hussein Obama went to Afghanistan back in 2008 to talk to some brass, blatantly ignored troops who stood waiting to greet him after he arrived, then staged a fake photo op basketball shoot by himself that was supposed to look as though he were “shooting hoops” with the troops.

What an insincere hemorrhoid a whole lot of uninformed, flat out ignorant or simply America hating *ss#0!es subjected us to when they voted this creature into the White House four years ago.

Let’s hope we don’t see the same mistake made again!

It’s really something the way “progressive” ways of doing things, even after they’ve been proven wrong, dumb, suicidal, bone-headed, complete failures leading unerringly, ultimately to future disaster, always seem, rather than teaching a “what not to do, let’s learn from past mistakes” lesson, merely set a precedent for “what to do next time, and the time after that”.

The United States has for several years been secretly releasing high-level detainees from a military prison in Afghanistan as part of negotiations with insurgent groups, a bold effort to quell violence but one that U.S. officials acknowledge poses substantial risks.

As the United States has unsuccessfully pursued a peace deal with the Taliban, the “strategic release” program has quietly served as a live diplomatic channel, allowing American officials to use prisoners as bargaining chips in restive provinces where military power has reached its limits.

But the releases are an inherent gamble: The freed detainees are often notorious fighters who would not be released under the traditional legal system for military prisoners in Afghanistan. They must promise to give up violence — and U.S. officials warn them that if they are caught attacking American troops, they will be detained once again.

See what I mean?

Look at all the terrorists the Israelis have released as elements of “peace” agreements with the Palestinians, who have launched thermselves right back into terrorism.

Look at the significant percentage of GITMO detainees released who have later been found to be back in Afghanistan killing U.S. troops.

In this case,

There are no absolute guarantees, however, and officials would not say whether those who have been released under the program have later returned to attack U.S. and Afghan forces once again.

“Everyone agrees they are guilty of what they have done and should remain in detention. Everyone agrees that these are bad guys. But the benefits outweigh the risks,” said one U.S. official who, like others, discussed the issue on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the program.

Despite the above, however, we must remember that President Obama epitomises the idiocy “wisdom” of liberal reasoning.

The releases have come amid broader efforts to end the decade-long war through negotiation, which is a central feature of the Obama administration’s strategy for leaving Afghanistan. Those efforts, however, have yielded little to no progress in recent years….

(my italicising, there)

…which of course doesn’t seem to matter, since while Obama’s idea of negotiating with the Republicans is “my way or the highway”, his approach to negotiating with terrorists is somewhere on the cusp of “your wish is my command….”

…. In part, they have been stymied by the unwillingness of the United States to release five prisoners from Guantanamo Bay — a gesture that insurgent leaders have said they see as a precondition for peace talks.

How a president can place our people unnecessarily in danger as our side of “peace” talks by freeing murderous terrorists committed unto their version of God to kill Americans is as far beyond me as is Obama’s war on U.S. energy independence, but that’s another story entirely.

The entire WaPo article is here. Even a “progreesive” publication like the Washington Post can’t make the administration’s policies regarding releasing these terrorists sound any kind of sane.

Don’t ask Barack Hussein Obama, he doesn’t seem to know.

The U.S. goal in Afghanistan “is not to build a country in America’s image, or to eradicate every vestige of the Taliban,” President Obama told Americans Tuesday night in a prime-time address from Bagram Air Base in Kabul.

(My emphasis above)

Tell me then, Mister President, if it’s not our goal to eradicte the Taliban, root and branch, why are we even over there? Didn’t you listen when George W. Bush briefed you prior to his moving back to Texas and you moving into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue?

If we don’t completely and summarily kick the Taliban’s butt, they and their al-Qaeda pals will only fight their way back to the status quo they enjoyed before we invaded post 9/11, and the Afghanis will once again be enslaved by an oppressive fundamentalist regime while we, once again, have a homeland security threat poised to commit terrorist acts just like they did that terrible morning in New York and at the Pentagon, headquartered in a country on the other side of the world.

Wolf, who has been to Afghanistan, once told me that while there are a lot of Afghani tribes “in country” who subscribe to the stone-age fundamentalism espoused by the Taliban, there are many more in Kabul and other, more “civilized” areas that prefer to exist in the modern world with the kind of freedom to which every human being is entitled.

We can neither pull out completely while there are Taliban cells left intact, nor “negotiate” any kind of truce with that evil entity.

To do either would be to have wasted all those U.S. and allied military lives and all that treasure, only to find the same threat to us lurking in Afghanistan shortly thereafter.

Hours later, Taliban fighters — reportedly disguised in burqas — attacked a compound housing foreign contractors in Kabul, killing at least seven people. The Taliban said the attack was a response to Obama’s surprise visit.

This was the second major attack in Kabul in less than three weeks, and it demonstrates the Taliban’s continued ability to strike in the heavily guarded capital even at a time of heightened security because of President Obama’s visit, the Associated Press reported.

See? As soon as you announced that you weren’t ready to wipe these terrorists out to a man, they showed how naive you really are.

You are as much an embarrassment to we, the people as president, Mr. Obama, as Jimmy Carter was.

…while I’m able. Luckily, or not so luckily, depending on ones point of view, some things I have to do have been delayed. This, however, leaves me more time to post, so…

I’ve been reading arguments both for and against this WikiLeaks guy, Julian Assange and what he’s been up to regarding the secret documents (91,000 of them, WOW!) he’s allegedly been receiving that detail some pretty bad stuff about our government’s exploits in Afghanistan.

According to some of this material, the U.S. taxpayer has been financing Taliban operations and other activities that are not in the best interests of either our brave troops over there nor in the interests of any sort of U.S./Allies victory.

So why are there pundits and letters-to-the-editor writers blasting this Assange guy for exposing vital military secrets?

It seems to me that the things he’s exposing are problems about which the government needs to do something, but haven’t been — Why? Because like the illegal alien problem we have, which was allowed to build up because politicians were able to sweep it under a rug (if the public ain’t complaining, why take the initiative, right?) due to lack of media pressure, what’s evidently been permitted to become business as usual in Afghanistan has been kept under wraps.

There’s no way anyone is going to convince me that the folks in charge over there (the ones whose salaries originate with We, The Taxpayer), as well as the fine folks in the Langley ‘hood of McLean, Virginia, haven’t been well aware of these ongoing events; If they have been, they aren’t the right people to either a) be assigned responsible charge over there, or b) be responsible for supplying the “powers that be” with intelligence from over there.

I also feel that funneling U.S. taxpayers’ dollars to the Taliban, whether they’re being diverted via U.S. military or intelligence or their Afghani counterparts, endangers our troops a whole hell of a lot more than this WikiLeaks exposing it.

I mean, C’mon! Money supplies people like the Taliban and their al-Qaeda playmates with weapons, logistics, baksheesh to bribe Afghani officials not already secretly sympathetic to their cause, maybe even a nice Swiss account ala Arafat to which some Terrorist-in-Chief can one day retire in luxury.

That sounds more dangerous to our military men and women over there than nobody knowing about any of it.

Now that everybody does know, perhaps something will be done about it.

I know, I know, politicians hate when “classified” graft, corruption, ineptitude and lack of proactive action is exposed.

But, now that it has been, regardless of the source, maybe they’ll do something about it.

I don’t know about the rest of my fellow countrymen, but I sure as shootin’ hate the idea that my hard earned tax dollars are going to the very same evil entity that our soldiers, sailors and airmen are over there fighting.

In this morning’s Jewish World Review, I found a column on Afghanistan that grabbed my attention and should grab yours…

Private security contractors protecting the convoys that supply U.S. military bases in Afghanistan are paying millions of dollars a week in “passage bribes” to the Taliban and other insurgent groups to travel along Afghan roads, a congressional investigation released Monday has found.

The payments, which are reimbursed by the U.S. government, help fund the very enemy the U.S. is attempting to defeat and renew questions about the U.S. dependence on private contractors, who outnumber American troops in Afghanistan, 130,000 to 93,000.

The report’s author called the findings of the six-month investigation “sobering and shocking.”

“This arrangement has fueled a vast protection racket run by shadowy network of warlords, strongmen, commanders, corrupt Afghan officials, and perhaps others,” wrote Rep. John Tierney, D-Mass., the chairman of the House subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs. “Not only does the system run afoul of the (Defense) Department’s own rules and regulations mandated by Congress, it also appears to risk undermining the U.S. strategy for achieving its goals in Afghanistan.”

The entire column is here.

Back from a Memorial Day spent aboard my maritime home, celebrating Memorial Day with half a dozen ‘Nam and “other places” buddies. To us, celebrating is the proper word, for we do indeed celebrate… the lives and times, the bravery and the selfless patriotism of friends and comrades who died while putting themselves willingly in harm’s way for our great country.

There were surpluses of good food (I had the modest affair “catered” by an excellent local eatery I frequent), Jack Daniels, both black and green labels, Sam Adams and Anchor Steam Beer and their dy-na-mite Porter (three of the better American brands, since imports wouldn’t be right on a day honoring fallen American heroes) and a lot of heartfelt toasts to good men gone.

This post is also on the topic of war, in this case an injustice that is apparently being done by Big Brass to cover their own asses by kicking the truth to the curb.

Many readers of Hard Astarboard are probably familiar with war correspondent Michael Yon, an ex Special Forces guy who has covered the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan as an embed who, unlike most of his “colleagues”, actually gets in there and covers his beat, risks be damned, then reports things as he sees them, without the political bias of mainstream media reporters. With his own military background, again unlike his “colleagues”, he is eminently qualified to comment knowledgeably on that which he encounters.

That said…

The military has cut short a war correspondent’s embed, and there may be evidence that the decision may have been part of a smear campaign against the writer.

Michael Yon, a former Green Beret, has been covering Iraq and Afghanistan for six years. He has also covered conflicts in Thailand, the Philippines, and Nepal. Following a string of events covered by Yon that cast a negative light on two top NATO commanders, the military decided to terminate Yon’s embed prematurely, citing reasons that didn’t add up.

ISAF’s reason for disembedding Yon was “embed overcrowding.” Yet in an email to Admiral Gregory J. Smith, an ISAF public affairs officer, Yon wrote, “I rarely see journalists. Those journalists I see have been doing drive-by reporting.”

Yon states that he has forwarded to his attorney “compelling evidence” of a smear campaign perpetrated by members of Gen. McChrystal’s staff. He says that the general’s staff have released official statements that are “defamatory and libelous.”

“A writer must be able to spot libel just as a soldier must be able to spot IEDs,” writes Yon. “It’s part of the job. If you can’t spot it, you will get hurt.”

So here they go, members of the military top brass, purportedly looking to save their own skins by using a technique favored by propagandizing, low life commie liberals “progressives”.

Sweep the man under a rug, render him inoperable in hopes of preventing him from imparting the truth to the people.

In March, Yon began investigating a possible weapons mishap by Canadian Brig. Gen. Daniel Menard, the top Canadian general in Afghanistan and also Commander of Task Force Kandahar. Reports say that Menard nearly shot Canada’s Chief of the Defense Staff, Gen. Walt Natynczyk while preparing to board a helicopter at Kandahar Airfield. According to Yon, Menard didn’t acknowledge the incident until ISAF learned that Yon was looking into the matter. Menard was found guilty of negligent discharge and fined $3500 on Tuesday.

Menard has operational control over three battalions of U.S. Army soldiers. And as Yon points out in his website that “while Canada increasingly shies from combat, American units under Canadian command will spill blood under Canadian military leadership that answers to Ottawa.”

The Canadian general’s defense counsel stated Menard “accepted full responsibility.” But in a separate incident just days before the shooting, Menard took absolutely no responsibility for a fatal incident on a strategic bridge near Kandahar when a suicide bomber killed a U.S. soldier.

On the morning of March 1, a suicide car bomber attacked a U.S. convoy as they crossed the Tarnak River Bridge leading to Kandahar. The bridge is a chokepoint on a crucial route between Kandahar Airfield and the town of Kandahar, and on out to Helmand Province. The bridge was damaged in the attack, which killed U.S. Army Specialist Ian Gelig, several Afghan civilians, and wounded several other soldiers. Numerous missions were canceled as the river could not be crossed.

The Stryker Brigade that Yon was embedded with was tasked with keeping the roads open. And the British Royal Air Force is responsible for much of the ground around Kandahar Airfield, including the land around the bridge. And the Afghanistan National Police, mentored by U.S. military police were guarding the bridge. However when Yon investigated the matter, he was informed by multiple officers that Menard was ultimately responsible for the bridge at the time of the attack as it belongs to Task Force Kandahar.

“Menard ultimately had responsibility for the bridge,” Yon stated in an interview. When Yon investigated the matter, he was informed by multiple officers that the bridge at the time of the attack belonged to Task Force Kandahar. Menard tried to pin the blame on his supervisor, British Maj. Gen. Nick Carter. Yet during a meeting with ISAF officials, U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Ben Hodges took full responsibility, although Yon did not believe him.

When asked why the U.S. military would possibly cover for Menard, Yon replied, “I think the cover was in the interest of Coalition warfare. An American putting it to a Canadian would have had political ramifications.”

I’ve followed Yon’s reporting and photo-journals for a long time, now, and, even though he was a blanket-head in service (that’s what we used to call those Army dudes with the berets back in my time), he was still a member of the elite community of warriors and one whose word I would take over some self-serving career officer’s line of lube any day of the week.

Yon has stood alone in his criticism of Menard and received heavy fire for doing so. He called Menard incompetent and said he needed to be fired. He also stands alone saying the same about McChrystal. Yon recently wrote, “This is clear as day: General Stanley McChrystal will lose this war.”

“The reason stated for my disembed was ‘overcrowding.’ Clearly this is untrue,” Yon said. “The war is going poorly and it is widely known that I will call the ball where it lands. We are losing the war and it seems likely that McChrystal and staff don’t want me in combat reporting their failures.”

So with the upcoming operation in Kandahar – which would be commanded by Menard – it seems entirely possible that ISAF wanted Yon out of the theater. His criticism of not only Menard but of ISAF commander Gen Stanley McChrystal could well be the reason behind the ending of his embed.

While the military may view Yon’s dispatches as controversial, the American people deserve the truth. And as Kay Day from the US Report says, “No one reporting on the Global War on Terror has done a more effective or honest job than Michael Yon.”

Past statements by Yon were initially viewed as controversial – such as being the first journalist to say the “Surge” was working, or that Iraq was experiencing a “civil war.”

However, these events would soon become conventional wisdom. Could his assessments of Gens. Menard and McChrystal soon become conventional wisdom as well?

Perhaps a comment from a reader at the United States Naval Institute sums it up best:
Frankly, I trust Yon more than I trust McChrystal at this point.

The man who took part in the cover-up of [Army Ranger and former professional football player Pat] Tillman’s death has lost quite a bit of credibility. In fact, McChrystal admitted as much – years later – before the Senate.

Yon, meanwhile, was right about Iraq. He was right about Afghanistan. He was right about Petraeus. He was right about Menard.

And I suspect he’s right about McChrystal.

The Tillman link above was added by me, to refresh the memories of anyone who may not recall any of the details.

Hell, to my way of thinking, while Michael Yon is a proven force in his area of endeavor, General McChristol is, as I said, a career officer and, more to the point, he is acceptable to President Barack Obama, or he wouldn’t be there.

Now, knowing how we at this blog feel about the lack of scruples and the paucity of American patriotism present in the Obama Administration, what kind of a reference is that?

…I have to give credit where credit is due, even if it hurts (ouch!).

To tell you the truth, I’m somewhat impressed.

While our socialist president and his administration are beyond weak where homeland security is concerned (I wouldn’t hire Janet Napolitano as a security guard in a pet shop), Barack Hussein apparently realizes how important it is that we win in Afghanistan.

As I posted once before, a loss in Afghanistan would mean that the Taliban and their al-Qaeda butt buddies would be in a position to join their Islamofacist allies in Pakistan and help those evil Mohammedans overthrow the government in Islamabad (yes, Islam is bad, but that’s beside the point).

That, in turn, would give the forces of Islamofacism possession of a nuclear armed country from which to employ said nuclear arms in their war against We, The Infidels and as we know, those madmen and madmanettes wouldn’t hesitate, just as Ahmadmanjihad in Iran won’t hesitate once he’s got his nukes on-line and on the business ends of appropriate delivery systems, to commence a nuclear holocaust.

But once again, I digress.

From today’s L.A. Times:

The CIA received secret permission to attack a wider range of targets, including suspected militants whose names are not known, as part of a dramatic expansion of its campaign of drone strikes in Pakistan’s border region, according to current and former counter-terrorism officials.

The expanded authority, approved two years ago by the Bush administration and continued by President Obama, permits the agency to rely on what officials describe as “pattern of life” analysis, using evidence collected by surveillance cameras on the unmanned aircraft and from other sources about individuals and locations.

Yes, B. Hussein Obama, demonstrating something of the will to beat the Taliban, has continued the use of drones to wax terrorists who are badly in need of waxing, in an effort to wage a winning war, despite the fact that this kind of thing would seem to be totally counter to the sort of Queensbury Rules approach most “progressives” would prefer to apply to a war against a profoundly malevolent enemy who is chaffing at the bit to butcher every infidel, man, woman and child, they can lay hands on.

The information then is used to target suspected militants, even when their full identities are not known, the officials said. Previously, the CIA was restricted in most cases to killing only individuals whose names were on an approved list.

The new rules have transformed the program from a narrow effort aimed at killing top Al Qaeda and Taliban leaders into a large-scale campaign of airstrikes in which few militants are off-limits, as long as they are deemed to pose a threat to the U.S., the officials said.

Instead of just a few dozen attacks per year, CIA-operated unmanned aircraft now carry out multiple missile strikes each week against safe houses, training camps and other hiding places used by militants in the tribal belt bordering Afghanistan.

As a matter of policy, CIA officials refuse to comment on the covert drone program. Those who are willing to discuss it on condition of anonymity refuse to describe in detail the standards of evidence they use for drone strikes, saying only that strict procedures are in place to ensure that militants are being targeted. But officials say their surveillance yields so much detail that they can watch for the routine arrival of particular vehicles or the characteristics of individual people.

“The enemy has lost not just operational leaders and facilitators — people whose names we know — but formations of fighters and other terrorists,” said a senior U.S. counter-terrorism official, speaking on condition of anonymity. “We might not always have their names, but … these are people whose actions over time have made it obvious that they are a threat.”

Great! Kill ‘em all, or as close as you can come…

At any rate, I just thought that a president with whose every other aspiration for America and every other policy I take unmitigated umbrage should get at least two “attaboys” and one “way to go” for not discontinuing this particular Bush-initiated strategy.

President Bush secretly decided in his last year in office to expand the program. Obama has continued and even streamlined the process, so that CIA Director Leon E. Panetta can sign off on many attacks without notifying the White House beforehand, an official said.

Missile attacks have risen steeply since Obama took office. There were an estimated 53 drone strikes in 2009, up from just over 30 in Bush’s last year, according to a website run by the New America Foundation that tracks press reports of attacks in Pakistan. Through early this month, there had been 34 more strikes this year, an average of one every 3 1/2 days, according to the site’s figures.

{Above emphasis mine}

Go get ‘em, B. Hussein. Kill ‘em all, and let Allah sort ‘em out!

Okay, well, first off, James Taranto got me started earlier while I was reading Best Of The Web Today.

Who says President Obama hasn’t accomplished anything since taking office? To his Nobel Peace Prize and two Grammys, we can add a sports record, Politico reports:

Obama has only been in office for just over nine months, but he’s already hit the links as much as President Bush did in over two years.

CBS’ Mark Knoller–an unofficial documentarian and statistician of all things White House-related–wrote on his Twitter feed [Saturday] that, “Today - Obama ties Pres. Bush in the number of rounds of golf played in office: 24. Took Bush 2 yrs & 10 months.”

Yes, we can!

Meanwhile, the Associated Press reports from Kabul that “eight American troops were killed in two separate bomb attacks Tuesday in southern Afghanistan, making October the deadliest month of the war for U.S. forces since the 2001 invasion to oust the Taliban.”

We know what you’re thinking, but this is not Obama’s fault.

Afghanistan is someone else’s mess, so why don’t you grab a mop? As White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel told CNN last week:

It’s clear that basically we had a war for eight years that was going on, that’s adrift. That we’re beginning at scratch, and just from the starting point, after eight years. . . . Before you commit troops, which is–not irreversible, but puts you down a certain path–before you make that decision, there’s a set of questions that have to have answers that have never been asked. And it’s clear after eight years of war, that’s basically starting from the beginning, and those questions never got asked. And what I find interesting and just intriguing from this debate in Washington, is that a lot of people who all of a sudden say, this is now the epicenter of the war on terror, you must do this now, immediately approve what the general said–where, before, it never even got on the radar screen for them.

Hang on a second. It has now been 51 weeks since Obama was elected president, and more than nine months since he took office, and he’s just now getting around to asking the “questions . . . that have never been asked”?

But that’s not really fair to Obama. After all, he has a busy schedule, what with golf games and pitching the International Olympic Committee and date nights and Democratic fund-raisers and health care and the U.N. Security Council and Sunday morning talk shows and saving the planet from global warming and celebrating the dog’s birthday and defending himself against Fox News and all.

Remember how the lefties used to rail at George W. Bush every time he took a break at his ranch, played a round of golf or spent a weekend at Camp David as though he were goofing off, knowing fully well that he was, like any POTUS, “on duty” 24/7?

At least Dubya addressed problems directly and did what he had to do with neither procrastination nor the blatant indecision we see festering in the Oval Office today.

Next!

Thomas Sowell talks about what amounts to the dismantling of America by the Obama Administration.

Just one year ago, would you have believed that an unelected government official — not even a Cabinet member confirmed by the Senate, but simply one of the many “czars” appointed by the President — could arbitrarily cut the pay of executives in private businesses by 50 percent or 90 percent?

Did you think that another “czar” would be talking about restricting talk radio? That there would be plans afloat to subsidize newspapers — that is, to create a situation where some newspapers’ survival would depend on the government liking what they publish?

Did you imagine that anyone would even be talking about having a panel of so-called “experts” deciding who could and could not get life-saving medical treatments?

Scary as that is from a medical standpoint, it is also chilling from the standpoint of freedom. If you have a mother who needs a heart operation or a child with some dire medical condition, how free would you feel to speak out against an administration that has the power to make life and death decisions about your loved ones?

Does any of this sound like America?

How about a federal agency giving school children material to enlist them on the side of the president? Merely being assigned to sing his praises in class is apparently not enough.

How much of America would be left if the federal government continued on this path? President Obama has already floated the idea of a national police force, something we have done without for more than two centuries.

Read the entire Thomas Sowell column here.

Yep, that’s what millions of irresponsible Americans placed at the helm of the United States last November, and may they pay twice as much for their stupidity as the rest of us.

Shame on them!

…from today’s Washington Times Online. I’m somewhat pressed for time this morning, I have some people to meet, but figured I’d share them.

Here we have a fine example of the term, “haste makes waste” in action, in this case mongers of political agendas in such a hurry to blow our hard earned tax money that they misinformed the public, largely through failure to do their homework and largely to get their itinerary pushed through in a hurry, in an un-thought-out, unconstitutional, just plain stupid act, part of the idiotic and ill advised TARP program.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and former Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. misled the public about the financial weakness of Bank of America and other early recipients of the government’s $700 billion Wall Street bailout, creating “unrealistic expectations” about the companies and damaging the program’s credibility, according to a report by the program’s independent watchdog.

The federal government last October loaned Bank of America and eight other “healthy” financial institutions a total of $125 billion - the initial payout from the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP - in an attempt to avoid a series of major bank collapses that would push the sputtering economy into a free fall or depression.

The rationale for giving money to stable banks and not failing ones, regulators said, was that such institutions would be better able to lend money and thus unfreeze tight credit markets - a major factor in last year’s Wall Street losses.

Right. Now the American taxpayer gets to pay the price for the blatant miscalculations due to political agendas and faulty thinking of a number of general purpose assholes.

Moving right along, we have the messiah Barack Hussein, whose military expertise evidently outshines that of his generals, coming up with excuses as to why he’d rather allow U.S. servicemen and woman to die than to commit more troops where General McChrystal says they are needed. What does McChrystal know, anyway, right? He’s just a general, whereas Obama, the guy who once, for campaign reasons, said the war in Afghanistan is justified in order to compare it to Iraq (according to his excellency, unjustified) is so much more knowledgeable about warfare that, well,

One day after an attack in Afghanistan killed eight American soldiers, President Obama’s national security adviser downplayed both the importance of U.S. troop levels and the possibility of a Taliban return to power.

National security adviser James L. Jones suggested that Gen. McChrystal’s call for more troops must be tempered by diplomatic considerations as the president weighs how to deal with the 8-year-old war.

“Well, I think the end is much more complex than just about adding ‘X’ number of troops. Afghanistan is a country that’s quite large and that swallows up a lot of people,” the retired Marine general said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

Right, let’s here more, Jones. What else did Obama instruct you to say, and being an ex-military man yourself, how does it feel to be a party to it?

The rest of the story can be found here.

…in an email.

Enjoy.

THIS IS ROUGH TO READ, BUT REALLY INTERESTING!

If you are language sensitive, don’t even bother to start reading. This country’s history never changes.

This is from a Reconnaissance Marine in Afghanista
It’s freezing here. I’m sitting on hard, cold dirt between rocks and shrubs at the base of the Hindu Kush Mountains along the Dar ‘yoi Pomir River watching a hole that leads to a tunnel that leads to a cave. Stake out, my friend, and no pizza delivery for thousands of miles.

I also glance at the area around my ass every ten to fifteen seconds to avoid another scorpion sting. I’ve actually given up battling the chiggers and sand fleas, but them scorpions give a jolt like a cattle prod. Hurts like a bastard.

The antidote tastes like transmission fluid but God bless the Marine Corps for the five vials of it in my pack.

The one truth the Taliban cannot escape is that, believe it or not, they are human beings, which means they have to eat food and drink water. That requires couriers and that’s where an old bounty hunter like me comes in handy. I track the couriers, locate the tunnel entrances and storage facilities, type the info into the handheld, shoot the coordinates up to the satellite link that tells the air commanders where to drop the hardware, we bash some heads for a while, then I track and record the new movement.

It’s all about intelligence. We haven’t even brought in the snipers yet. These scurrying rats have no idea what they’re in for. We are but days away from cutting off supply lines and allowing the eradication to begin.

I dream of bin Laden waking up to find me standing over him with my boot on his throat as I spit a bloody ear into his face and plunge my nickel plated Bowie knife through his frontal lobe. But you know me. I’m a romantic. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: This country blows, man. It’s not even a country. There are no roads, there’s no infrastructure, there’s no government. This is an inhospitable, rock pit
shit hole ruled by eleventh century warring tribes. There are no jobs here like we know jobs.

Afghanistan offers two ways for a man to support his family: join the opium trade or join the army. That’s it. Those are your options. Oh, I forgot, you can also live in a refugee camp and eat plum-sweetened, crushed beetle paste and squirt mud like a goose with stomach flu if that’s your idea of a party. But the smell alone of those ‘tent cities of the walking dead’ is enough to hurl you into the poppy fields to
cheerfully scrape bulbs for eighteen hours a day.

I’ve been living with these Tajiks and Uzbeks and Turkmen and even a couple of Pushtins for over a month and a half now and this much I can say for sure: These guys, all of ‘em, are Huns. Actual, living Huns. They LIVE to fight. It’s what they do. It’s ALL they do.

They have no respect for anything, not for their families or for each other or for themselves. They claw at one another as a way of life. They play polo with dead calves and force their five-year-old sons into human cockfights to defend the family honor. Huns, roaming packs of savage, heartless beasts who feed on each others barbarism. Cavemen with AK47’s. Then again, maybe I’m just cranky.

I’m freezing my ass off on this stupid hill because my lap warmer is running out of juice and I can’t recharge it until the sun comes up in a few hours.

Oh yeah! You like to write letters, right? Do me a favor, Bizarre. Write a letter to CNN and tell Wolf and Anderson and that awful, sneering, pompous Aaron Brown to stop calling the Taliban ’smart.’ They are not smart. I suggest CNN invest in a dictionary because the word they are looking for is ‘cunning.’ The Taliban are cunning, like jackals and hyenas and wolverines. They are sneaky and ruthless and, when confronted, cowardly. They are hateful, malevolent parasites who create nothing and destroy everything else. Smart. Pfft. Yeah, they’re real smart.

They’ve spent their entire lives reading only one book (and not a very good one, as books go) and consider hygiene and indoor plumbing to be products of the devil. They’re still figuring out how to work a Bic lighter. Talking to a Taliban warrior about improving his quality of life is like trying to teach an ape how to hold a pen; eventually he just gets frustrated and sticks you in the eye with it.

OK, enough. Snuffle will be up soon so I have to get back to my hole. Covering my tracks in the snow takes a lot of practice but I’m good at it. Please, I tell you and my fellow Americans to turn off the TV sets and move on with your lives.

The story line you are getting from CNN and other news agencies is utter bullshit and designed not to deliver truth but rather to keep you glued to the screen through the commercials. We’ve got this one under control. The worst thing you guys can do right now is sit around analyzing what we’re doing over here because you have no idea what we’re doing and, really, you don’t want to know. We are your military and we are doing what you sent us here to do.

You wanna help? Buy Bonds America.

Saucy Jack
Semper Fidelis

A great big hat tip to Shana!