Military retirees are outraged that Congress will start voting Thursday on a budget deal that trims military pensions, calling the move “an egregious breach of faith.”
The Military Coalition, some 27 military groups, wrote to leaders in Congress and President Obama late Wednesday about their “strong objection” and “grave concern” over the budget deal.
The deal cuts pension cost of living raises by 1 percentage point for military retirees who aren’t disabled and not yet 62 years old. Cost of living hikes are automatic raises intended to keep up with inflation.
The problem is, most military retirees are a lot younger than private sector retirees. They enlist in their 20’s and retire in their 40’s. Very few stay on till they are 62 — those who may be lucky enough to escape major injuries at war, or rose to higher echelons in the military system . . .
The average cut in pension payouts, including compounding interest, for a retiring Army Sergeant first class, would be about $3,700 each year, according to the Military Officers Association of America. Over 20 years, the total losses could balloon to more than $80,000. (Read more from “Military Retirees: You Betrayed Us, Congress” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-11-06 00:42:262016-04-11 10:56:28Military Retirees: You Betrayed Us, Congress
Far more military men are being raped by other men and experience other sexual traumas than is reported by the Pentagon because of the stigma attached to such assaults, says a new study released Tuesday by the American Psychological Association.
“Rates of military sexual trauma among men who served in the military may be as much as 15 times higher than has been previously reported, largely because of barriers associated with stigma, beliefs in myths about male rape, and feelings of helplessness,” the APA said in releasing findings published in its periodical Psychological Services.
Comparing the new study’s numbers and the Pentagon’s survey results produced some shocking statistics.
The Rand Corp., which conducted the most recent Pentagon sexual assault survey in 2014, found that about 12,000 men reported being assaulted. Sexual assault in the military is defined as unwanted sexual contact, including rape and other assaults or the attempt to commit those acts.
Extrapolating the study’s estimates of up to 15 times greater than the Pentagon’s count, it would mean that as many as 180,000 men are assaulted in one year and, of those, 57,750 are “penetrative” attacks. (Read more from “‘Gay’ Rape in Military Is Completely Underreported by Pentagon” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-11-04 01:09:162016-04-11 10:56:32COVER-UP: ‘Gay’ Rape in Military Is Completely Underreported by Pentagon
American and Kurdish commandos raided an Islamic State prison in Iraq on Thursday, freeing about 70 captives believed to be facing “mass execution” and leaving one U.S. soldier dead, U.S. and Iraqi officials said.
It was the first time a member of the U.S. military had been killed in a combat situation in Iraq since President Obama pulled out all U.S. troops in 2011.
In a pre-dawn operation, soldiers from the Army’s Delta Force, supporting a team of elite Kurdish soldiers, descended on a militant compound in the town of Hawijah, where officials believed that dozens of Kurdish fighters known as peshmerga were being held captive.
Militants from the Islamic State, the extremist group that controls a vast area across Iraq and Syria, were planning an “imminent mass execution” of prisoners, Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook told reporters later in the day.
While peshmerga captives were not present at the site, the U.S. and Kurdish forces freed dozens of others, including more than 20 members of the Iraqi security forces, Cook said. Five Islamic State militants were captured, officials said, and at least 10 were killed. In a statement, the Kurdish Security Council said more than 20 militants were killed. (Read more from “First American Soldier Is Killed in Combat in Iraq Since 2011 Troop Exit” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-10-23 00:40:202016-04-11 10:57:02First American Soldier Is Killed in Combat in Iraq Since 2011 Troop Exit
By Joseph R. John. The below article, “Disaster: The Warrior Purge In The U.S. Military,” deserves very wide distribution. It discusses how the US Armed Forces’ warriors -men of rare talent, intellect, and courage, qualities essential for victory in any armed conflict by the US Military – have been systematically purged from the US Armed Forces by the occupant of the Oval Office. The subtle purge has been underway for nearly 7 years. Over the same time frame, China, Russia, Iran, and the ISIS Radical Islamic Terrorists have grown in strength, modernized their military weapon systems, and have been honing their combat skills in Crimea, Ukraine, Yemen, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Lebanon, the Philippines, the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands, and the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea.
Obama’s priority has been to replace warriors in front line combat units with Illegal Aliens who are not proficient in English, women, transgender individuals, felons with police records, and gay members who are being recruited into Obama’s new “Politically Correct” US military. Obama has turned the US Armed Forces into the first major openly gay military force in the world, and last year 11,000 straight male members in the US Armed Forces were sexually assaulted by gays—driving the retention rate for straight males to new lows.
The commanding officers of combat forces that once were warriors are slowly being replaced by briefcase-carrying “yes” men and “yes” women, more interested in driving the Social Experiment On Diversity into the military, driving the “Political Correct” agenda requirement for promotion, hollowing out the strength of the US Armed Forces, and purging thousands of senior enlisted Non-Commissioned Officers who oppose massive social change in the US Armed Forces. The leaders of Obama’s US Military seem to care more about their careers than about the Obama administration’s downsizing of the US military and the steady degrading of the National Security of the Republic.
The last two Chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Michael Mullins and General Martin Dempsey are culpable. They
(1) covered up why armed and ready armed aircraft sitting on the tarmac in Italy and a rapid deployment US Marine Force sitting on the tarmac in Europe were not dispatched to save the lives of the four Americans who were murdered in Benghazi by Radical Islamic Terrorists;
(2) forced the new and dangerous Rules of Engagement (ROE) on US Combat Forces in harm’s way. Those ROE were responsible for increasing combat deaths by 458% per year and they increased the wounding and maiming of thousands of military personnel by 378% per year;
(3) supervised the downsizing of the US Navy to the number of ships the Navy had in its fleet before WWI, reduced the strength of the US Army to the manning level it had before WWII, and allowed the US Air Force to become a smaller and older air force than at any time since 1947;
(4) presided over the purge of hundreds of Senior Officers, General Officers, and Flag Officers, and the removal of thousands of senior enlisted Non-Commissioned Officers who opposed Obama’s systematic hollowing out of the US Armed Forces;
(5) allowed Obama to drive the destructive “Social Experiment On Diversity” into the US Armed Forces resulting in the degrading of unit cohesiveness, unit moral, and the “Combat Effectiveness” of the US Armed Forces;
(6) systematically drove women into tip of the spear combat hardened units such as US Marine Corps Infantry Units, US Navy Seal Teams, and US Army Ranger Battalions; and
(7) for nearly 7 years, along with the new slate of Politically Correct Flag and General Officers promoted by Obama, failed to oppose the hollowing out of the US Armed Forces, nor did any of them threaten to resign unless the degrading of the US Armed Forces ceased.
For almost 7 years, Obama has not only down-sized the US Army to a lower manning level than the Army had before WWII, but he has changed the warrior leadership philosophy of the US Army, an Army that was once led by warriors like Generals Pershing, General MacArthur, General Patton, General Bradley, Army Air Force General Curtis LeMay, General Ridgeway, and Genera Schwarzkopf. Obama’s generals are entirely different, having passed his litmus test for “Political Correctness”.
For over a year, Obama’s generals have presided over the Uniform Code of Military Justice case for Bowe Bergdahl, for “Desertion and Misbehavior In The Face Of The Enemy” for leaving his post during combat operations in Afghanistan in June 2009. The case should have been adjudicated in 90 days after Bergdahl returned to the US in May 2014. It now appears that the Article 32 Fact Finding Hearing Officer, LTC Mark Visger, USA (JAG) is recommending that Bergdahl be released with no jail time and that he not receive a punitive Dishonorable Discharge for the charge of “Desertion and Misbehavior In The Face Of The Enemy.”
The Convening Authority, General Creighton W. Abrams, Jr, USA, Commander, US Forces Command, refused to allow the members in Bergdahl’s platoon to testify, even though they witnessed Bergdahl’s desertion, and excluded recorded transmissions from the Taliban saying Bergdahl was joining their combat units as evidence in Bergdahl’s Article 32 Hearing. Bergdahl would have been executed in WWII for “Desertion and Misbehavior In The Face of The Enemy.”
We encourage you to read the below listed article and forward it to those in your address book who would support halting the continued hollowing out of the US Armed Forces.
________________________________________
Needed Warriors Are Now Being Purged From the U.S. Military
By Robert K. Wilcox. “Where do we find such men?”
That memorable line comes from James Mitchner’s Korean War novel, The Bridges of Toko-Ri. It refers to intrepid aviators lifting from a carrier, flying into untold danger. They know they may not return. They launch anyway. In boldness unfathomable to many, they willingly, artfully fly into peril. They are warriors, men of rare talent, intellect, and courage – a combination essential for victory.
Needed warriors are now being purged from the U.S. military. If America went to war right now with China or Russia, we could lose because of these purges. We’re losing top-level warrior-leaders to make the crucial differences in battle. They’re being systematically drummed out as politically incorrect. When the going gets tough, political correctness (PC) is useless. Then the brilliant, wily fighters, the coolest heads, the most courageous warriors, are needed to lead regardless of social views or record.
Today, in large measure, our fighting forces are led by briefcase-carrying busybodies, yes-men more interested in enforcing political beliefs and social change than leading in battle. They care more about their careers than what’s happening to the military and thus the country. Just last week, a new downsizing of the army was announced – without a protest.
Warriors are not prized. They are criticized and ridiculed. Up-and-coming warriors who admire the purged want to emulate them, see what’s happening, and are exiting as a result. (Read more from this story HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-10-21 00:02:352016-04-11 10:57:07Disaster: The Warrior Purge In The U.S. Military
In the end, President Obama was forced to listen to his generals — not his political instincts — on Afghanistan troop levels, and he decided to split the difference.
Mr. Obama is keeping 5,500 troops in Afghanistan beyond his presidency, about half the strength recommended by his top general in-country. It marks the sixth time he has rejected the advice of a ground commander on the force size in the long Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Military experts call that streak unprecedented for a commander in chief.
Like the current 9,800 U.S. troops there, the drawdown force of 5,500 will maintain a noncombat stance in training Afghan forces and hunting al Qaeda terrorists, Mr. Obama said Thursday. Administration officials said the U.S. will spend about $14.6 billion a year to house the troops at a total of four bases in Kabul, Kandahar, Jalalabad and Bagram — an increase over the estimated $10 billion annual cost of keeping a force at the U.S. Embassy in the Afghan capital.
The president had wanted to deliver a speech saying that all American troops were out of Afghanistan at the end of next year, as he did in 2011 for the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq. But he was swayed by the dark picture of the Afghan conflict that the top brass has been drawing for him, and now Mr. Obama will pass the war onto the next president in 2017 . . .
“The security situation in Afghanistan is so far from stable that to pull out all the troops, even for this president, doesn’t make any sense,” said retired Army Gen. John Keane, who devised the 2007 Iraq troop surge and has advised Afghan commanders in the past. (Read more from “Obama Ignores Generals’ Advice on Troop Levels for Unprecedented Sixth Time” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-10-16 01:17:292016-04-11 10:57:19Obama Ignores Generals’ Advice on Troop Levels for Unprecedented Sixth Time
How much longer are we going to continue investing precious military lives, time and treasure into nation building and refereeing multiple sides of Islamic factions who hate us? When will we begin to make the right investments in those who actually ally with us and protect our strategic interests?
Just consider what is transpiring around the Middle East and how our military and resources are so misappropriated in a way that is antithetical to our national security interests.
Failure Across the Middle East
While there is much outrage over Russia’s decision to commence an air campaign in Syria protecting Bashar Assad and targeting the American-backed “Syrian rebels,” the bigger outrage is that our government is backing these rebels in the first place. The Syrian rebels are full of radical elements and have proven incompetent in fighting IS, Al Nusra, and Assad. In fact, why would anyone want to involve themselves in this incorrigible and multi-pronged Islamic civil war to begin with?
Yet, last December, as part of the FY 2015 “Cromnibus” bill, Congress dutifully handed the Pentagon $721 million to train, equip, and recruit Syrian rebels with no broader strategy or direction towards a definitive outcome. After training just 70 individuals, only four remain in the field! But once again, instead of cutting off funding to this Islamic Mujahedeen, Congress rubber-stamped $600 million for this program next year in the NDAA (section 1225) that passed the House last week. Remember, the Free Syrian Army has already been overrun a number of times by Al Nusra, making it likely that our weapons have fallen into the hands of terrorists (assuming the rebels themselves are not terrorists).
Over in Iraq, we have at least 3,500 U.S. military personnel on the ground refereeing the Sunni-Iran/Shiite civil war, with reports of American military members sharing bases with Hezbollah-backed militias. To the extent the Iraq army isn’t backed by Shiite militias, they are completely inept and have already lost over 2,300 U.S. armed Humvees to IS. We are also arming the Lebanese Army, which is backed by Hezbollah. We just can’t seem to bring ourselves to allow our two enemy factions to fight each other without gratuitously tipping the scales to one side or sticking our necks between their crossed swords.
In Afghanistan, 14 years after the initial invasion, our soldiers are still dying on a weekly basis towards an end game nobody can articulate. They can’t even do their ‘social work’ missions without being prosecuted by the politicized military leadership for roughing up Islamic terrorists.
We lost 2,500 men at Normandy freeing a continent and saving civilization; what can be said of 6,500 fatalities in the Middle East that has only resulted in the strengthening of both Iran and the Sunni Islamist factions?
After more than two decades of perpetual terrorism, we are still sending the “Palestinian” government almost a half billion in foreign aid per year, including military training of their terror outfit, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades. Moreover, at roughly $275 million a year, the U.S. is the largest donor to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, a multinational group that has long harbored Palestinian terrorists under the guise of humanitarian aid. Just this week, Al-Aqsa (not Hamas), which is affiliated with the Fatah-backed government, murdered an Israeli couple in front of their four children in the heart of Samaria.
Is it too much to ask that we refrain from funding terrorist groups? Is it too much to demand that we stop falling on our swords nation-building and refereeing civil wars for people who hate us and each other?
Keeping Focus on True Strategic Interests and Allies
I say the following as an ardent hawk, not as an isolationist. Sure, we need to keep a robust presence ready to protect our national security interests and our allies in the region, but why not focus on allies?
At this juncture, there is simply no game play to be made in Syria and Iraq outside of walling off an autonomous Kurdistan, and that is not necessarily a bad thing. If the Sunnis, Shiites, and Alawites want to fight each other, and Russia seeks a death warrant for themselves by entering an endless battle with the Sunni population, let that be their problem. They might strengthen Assad from the near-collapse of his regime, but the Russians will never be able to put the Sunni insurgency back in the bottle.
We should focus on helping the Kurds – the only stable and reliable ally in the region – preserve and protect their boundaries and eventually create a nation-state. A separate Kurdistan can also serve as a safe haven for persecuted Christians, Assyrians, and Yazidis. [In the coming days, I plan to elaborate on this point in greater detail.]
This is not a commitment that even requires a military presence on the ground. The Kurds have demonstrated their ability to fight for themselves. They simply lack the resources. This can be rectified by directly arming the Kurds, giving them robust economic aid, and bombing any of the other warring Islamic factions away from their strategic points. All of the funds needed to help the Kurds could easily be transferred from the blood money we give to the Syrian “refugees,” rebels, and Iraqi Shiite and Sunni warring forces.
If we want to show leadership in the Middle East and thwart Russian and Iranian hegemony, while leaving the Sunnis and Shiites to battle out their own future, focusing on the creation of a Kurdistan would serve as the best multiplying force to serve our interests in the region. If we are going to engage in nation-building, let’s build a nation that will actually hold together, appreciate our help, serve as a beacon for those who are truly persecuted, and drive a strategic dagger through the hearts of ALL our enemies in the region.
Unfortunately, Congress failed to address any of these issues in a meaningful way in the budget bill or the defense bill. Many of the presidential candidates have also been off message and focused on the wrong issues in Iraq and Syria.
Obama’s malfeasance on foreign policy is self-evident and transparently on display before the public. But the eventual GOP nominee needs to lay out a vision that will not only shun the failed policies of this administration but eschew the cycle of failure that has persisted since after 9/11. (For more from the author of “Why the U.S. Should Stop Investing in Failure Abroad” please click HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-10-06 23:28:532016-04-11 10:57:39Why the U.S. Should Stop Investing in Failure Abroad
For decades, DARPA, the secretive research arm of the Department of Defense, has dreamed of turning soldiers into cyborgs. And now it’s finally happening. The agency has funded projects that involve implanting chips into soldiers’ brains that they hope will enhance performance on the battlefield and repair traumatized brains once the fog of war has lifted.
“Of the 2.5 million Americans who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, 300,000 of them came home with traumatic brain injury,” journalist Annie Jacobsen told NPR. “DARPA initiated a series of programs to help cognitive functioning, to repair some of this damage. And those programs center around putting brain chips inside the tissue of the brain.”
In her new book about the history of DARPA, “The Pentagon’s Brain,” Jacobsen writes that scientists are already testing “neuroprosthetics” brain implants, but that despite her multiple appeals to the Defense Department, she was not allowed to interview any of the “brain-wounded warriors.”
However, Defense One, an online magazine that covers the military, reported last year on DARPA’s work on brain chips to treat PTSD, and said that DARPA was not yet in the testing phase. “The military hopes to have a prototype within 5 years and then plans to seek FDA approval,” according to Defense One. When DARPA launched its RAM (Restoring Active Memory) program last year, it projected it would be about four years until researchers were implanting chips in human.
Creating super soldiers isn’t the only thing that DARPA is trying to do. According to Jacobsen’s new book, published by Little, Brown, government scientists hope that implanting chips in soldiers will unlock the secrets of artificial intelligence, and allow us to give machines the kind of higher-level reasoning that humans can do. (Read more from “DARPA Is Implanting Chips in Soldiers’ Brains, According to This New Book” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-09-28 00:40:522016-04-11 10:57:58DARPA Is Implanting Chips in Soldiers’ Brains, According to This New Book
In his last phone call home, Lance Cpl. Gregory Buckley Jr. told his father what was troubling him: From his bunk in southern Afghanistan, he could hear Afghan police officers sexually abusing boys they had brought to the base.
“At night we can hear them screaming, but we’re not allowed to do anything about it,” the Marine’s father, Gregory Buckley Sr., recalled his son telling him before he was shot to death at the base in 2012. He urged his son to tell his superiors. “My son said that his officers told him to look the other way because it’s their culture.”
Rampant sexual abuse of children has long been a problem in Afghanistan, particularly among armed commanders who dominate much of the rural landscape and can bully the population. The practice is called bacha bazi, literally “boy play,” and American soldiers and Marines have been instructed not to intervene — in some cases, not even when their Afghan allies have abused boys on military bases, according to interviews and court records.
The policy has endured as American forces have recruited and organized Afghan militias to help hold territory against the Taliban. But soldiers and Marines have been increasingly troubled that instead of weeding out pedophiles, the American military was arming them in some cases and placing them as the commanders of villages — and doing little when they began abusing children.
“The reason we were here is because we heard the terrible things the Taliban were doing to people, how they were taking away human rights,” said Dan Quinn, a former Special Forces captain who beat up an American-backed militia commander for keeping a boy chained to his bed as a sex slave. “But we were putting people into power who would do things that were worse than the Taliban did — that was something village elders voiced to me.” (Read more from “Horrific: U.S. Soldiers Told to ‘Ignore’ Afghan Allies’ Abuse of Boys” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-09-21 00:32:192015-09-21 00:32:19Horrific: U.S. Soldiers Told to ‘Ignore’ Afghan Allies’ Abuse of Boys
The U.S. and Russia are ending an 18-month freeze in military-to-military relations and initiating talks about how to pursue “deconfliction” of the American and Russian forces that are now both involved in the Syrian civil war, a Pentagon official said Friday.
The moves comes as Russia builds a large military base in Syria with troops and aircraft, apparently with the aim to provide direct support to the embattled regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad, which the U.S. opposes.
A top U.S. commander said Wednesday that the Russian activity could put U.S. pilots at risk and vastly complicate the current American-led air campaign to defeat the Islamic State militants who control large swaths of both Iraq and Syria.
The Pentagon expects to begin a “military-to-military conversation about what is happening on the ground … to avoid any possible miscalculation or misunderstanding,” said one senior defense official on Friday.
The U.S. suspended military-to-military relations with Russia in March 2014 shortly after Moscow invaded and annexed the Crimea region of Ukraine. (Read more from “U.S., Russia Resume Military Relations to ‘Deconflict’ in Syria” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-09-18 23:38:282015-09-18 23:38:28U.S., Russia Resume Military Relations to ‘Deconflict’ in Syria
The founder of a Houston-based technology company admitted to spying for Russia while in the U.S. and conspiring to export microelectronics to Russian military and intelligence agencies.
Alexander Fishenko, a dual Russian-U.S. citizen, was scheduled to go to trial this month on charges of scheming to illegally supply Russia with computer chips and other high-tech goods. He pleaded guilty Wednesday in Brooklyn, New York, federal court to all charges, said his lawyer, Richard Levitt . . .
“Fishenko lined his pockets at the expense of our national security,” Acting U.S. Attorney Kelly Currie said in a statement. “This prosecution highlights the importance of vigorously enforcing United States export control laws.”
The technology exporter founded Arc Electronics in 1998 and shipped about $50 million worth of technological products to Russia, according to prosecutors. He and co-conspirators are alleged to have evaded export licensing requirements and provided false information about goods to U.S. officials. At one time, Arc falsely claimed to make traffic lights even though it operated exclusively as an exporter, prosecutors said. (Read more from “Military Technology Exporter Admits to Spying for Moscow” HERE)
