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The 12 Worst Ways Obama Has Assaulted Our Military

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Photo Credit: Western Journalism

Photo Credit: Western Journalism

They are extraordinary Americans. It is said that they sign a blank check to their country and their countrymen pledging that they will give their all, up to and including their lives, to defend the American way of life and their fellow Americans. They are the men and women who are currently serving or have previously served in the armed forces of the United States. They take an oath to “protect and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, both foreign and domestic,” and they always live by that oath.

This blank check is readily accepted by our government and by other Americans who send these selfless individuals off to fight and die for our nation and its freedoms. Many of them have made the ultimate sacrifice and died in battle, while many others have returned home with shattered bodies and emotional scars. Unfortunately, they have often returned home to betrayal by some of their fellow Americans and particularly by their own government…

As for our government, we have a President of the United States, an administration, and a Congress that seems intent on breaking the morale of our soldiers and destroying their capability of protecting our nation. Their actions support the fact that there is an all-out assault on both our active duty military and our veterans. The elements of this assault consist of:

1) The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued a bulletin to all police agencies in 2009 naming all military veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan as potential domestic terrorists.

2) Senator Dianne Feinstein declares that all veterans have PTSD and are therefore mentally ill and should not be allowed to own firearms.

Read more from this story HERE.

Marine Vet Slams Paul Ryan’s ‘Outrageous Attitude’ Toward Military Pension Cuts (+video)

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

Two days after President Barack Obama signed a budget compromise that slashed pension benefits for military veterans, retired Marine Jessie Jane Duff blasted Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) for his “outrageous attitude” toward the sacrifices those in the armed forces have made.

Appearing on Fox & Friends on Saturday, Jessie Jane Duff, who is at the E7 level, said Ryan, who brokered the deal with Sen. Patty Murray (D-WI), does not realize that many active duty military personnel go back to civilian life “broke” and “without a job” and have difficulty getting on equal footing with their “civilian counterparts.” She noted that many veterans have had to leave the armed forces early due to injuries or are suffering from things like PTSD.

The deal Obama signed includes a provision that would “pare down annual cost of living increases in benefits for military retirees under age 62, saving the government an estimated $6.3 billion over a decade.” What that means is a sergeant first class at the E7 level like Duff who retires at age 42 would lose $72,000 in benefits over a lifetime, according to a Fox News analysis.

Read more from this story HERE.

Alaska Supreme Court Denies Permanent Fund Dividend To Soldier Deployed To Iraq (+video)

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Photo Credit: Wikipedia

Photo Credit: Wikipedia

The 172nd Infantry Brigade, the Arctic Wolves, had an extra long deployment in support of Operation Iraqui Freedom. They were supposed to go for a year, but the year turned into 16 months, with some of the brigade’s soldiers unexpectedly going back to Iraq after arriving home in Alaska. The deployment went from August 2005 to November 2006. The brigade received the Valorous Unit Award for its time in Iraq. There were soldiers killed and wounded and the separation, unexpectedly extended, was surely hard on families.

Perhaps the extra penalty suffered by Richard Heller is not that large a matter. Still it bugged him and it bugs me.

If Richard Heller had spent those 16 months at Fort Wainwright, then the home of the 178th Infantry Brigade, the Alaska Department of Revenue would have sent him a check for $1,106.96. That would be the Permanent Fund Dividend paid in 2007 to eligible Alaska residents. (As far as I know Alaska is the only state with a division of its Revenue Department dedicated to sending money to all its residents). Richard Heller arrived in Alaska on June 17, 2005, assigned to the Headquarters Company of the 172nd Stryker Brigade. He promptly registered to vote, obtained an Alaska driver’s license and changed his military records to indicate Alaska residency.

Read more from this story HERE.

A Soldier’s Christmas

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Photo Credit: Marine Corps Archives & Special Collections

Photo Credit: Marine Corps Archives & Special Collections

T’was the night Before Christmas, he lived all alone,
In a one bedroom house made of plaster and stone,
I had come down the chimney with presents to give
And to see just who in this home did live,

I looked all about, a strange site did I see,
No tinsel, no presents, not even a tree,
No stockings by the mantle, Just boots filled with sand,
On the wall hung pictures of far distance lands.

With Medals and badges, Awards of all kinds,
A sober thought came through my mind.
For this house was different, it was dark and dreary,
I had found the home of a soldier once I could see clearly
I heard stories about them, I had to see more
So I walked down the hall and pushed open the door.

The solider lay sleeping, silent, alone,
Curled up in this, His one bedroom home.
The face was so gentle, the room in such disorder
Not how I pictured a United States Solider.

Was this the War Hero of whom I’d just read?
Curled up on a poncho, the floor for a bed?
His head was clean shaven, his weathered face tan,
I soon understood this was more than a man.
I realized the families that I saw this night
Owed they’re lives to these soldiers who were willing to fight.

Read more from this story HERE.

Let’s Be Honest: Establishment GOP Broke Trust with Military Retirees

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Photo Credit: RedState

Photo Credit: RedState

Republicans in the Senate want to restore veterans benefits to the Paul Ryan – Patty Murray Budget plan.

Harry Reid is blocking the amendment so Republicans are blaming Harry Reid for cutting veterans benefits.

That is intellectually dishonest of the GOP.

Paul Ryan, a Republican, drafted the plan with Patty Murray, a Democrat.

House Republicans overwhelming approved the plan before it even made it to Harry Reid for a vote. The Republicans could have restored the cuts themselves in the House. Instead, they voted for the plan with the cuts to veterans benefits and went home.

Read more from this story HERE.

Veterans Take the Hit – Senate Votes for $6 Billion in Military Pension Cuts

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Photo Credit: JTF Guantanamo

Photo Credit: JTF Guantanamo

A final effort by Senate Republicans to halt cuts to pensions of military retirees failed late Tuesday, after Democrats blocked an amendment to the controversial budget bill.

The two-year budget agreement, which cleared a key test vote earlier in the day, was expected to get a final vote no later than Wednesday.

Ahead of the final vote, Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., tried unsuccessfully to use a parliamentary tactic to force a vote on the amendment, which he wrote to undo the cuts for military retirees.

A provision in the already House-passed bill would cut retirement benefits for military retirees by $6 billion over 10 years.

Sessions wanted to instead eliminate an estimated $4.2 billion in annual spending by reining in an IRS credit that illegal immigrants have claimed.

Read more from this story HERE.

Chairman Senate Armed Services Cmte: We’ll Review Murray-Ryan’s Cuts to Military Retirees

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Photo Credit: DVIDSHUB

Photo Credit: DVIDSHUB

After howls of protest from military groups over pension cuts in a House budget deal, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee Friday promised to review the slash, the Military Times reported.

Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., said his committee review along with an ongoing survey by a military commission may “further bear on this issue,” the newspaper said.

“A number of concerns have been raised about the provision in the Murray-Ryan budget agreement,” Levin said in a statement.

“The Senate Armed Services Committee is going to review this change after we convene next year, before it takes effect in December 2015.”

The provision would restrict the annual pay adjustment of military pensions for working-age military retirees to 1 percentage point less than the rise in consumer prices.

Read more from this story HERE.

Under Obama, Troops Forced to Rely on Welfare, Holiday Charity to Make Ends Meet (+video)

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Photo Credit: Masterfile/Radius Images

Photo Credit: Masterfile/Radius Images

Jamie Boling and her husband, Joseph, know that providing for a military family can be trying — waiting for orders, often living on a single income, and, in especially tough cases, supporting a spouse wounded in the line of duty.

Around the holidays, the challenges — especially the financial ones — can tax families already struggling to make ends meet.

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a nonprofit D.C.-based think tank, estimates that as many as 340,000 veterans rely on federal or state rental assistance. About 900,000 veterans live on food stamps, and an additional 5,000 active-duty service members are food stamp recipients.

The nonprofit groups Operation Homefront and Fisher House Foundation stepped in Monday to provide the Bolings and about 300 other military families in the D.C. area with grocery bags filled with the fixings for a holiday meal.

“My husband medically retired in October, and it’s a big transition to go from active duty to medical retirement,” said Mrs. Boling, 29, of Gaithersburg. “It gets hard around this time of year. My husband is making about 30 percent of what he used to be making. You have to start stretching dollars. This literally puts food on the table.”

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Illegals March Across Classified Military Base (+video)

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Photo Credit: WND An investigative report from an Arizona television station reveals illegal aliens routinely are marching across a classified military base in order to enter the U.S., and the military’s perspective is that it’s not the Department of Defense’s responsibility to chase down invaders.

The report comes from KVOA-TV in Tucson, which reported that the fort, which is the home to the U.S. Army Intelligence Center and the U.S. Army Network Enterprise Technology Command, is having hundreds, perhaps thousands, of illegal aliens come across its 73,000 acres.

The site is located in the Huachuca Mountains only a few miles from the border with Mexico, and its location and uses should be a concern to Americans, according to a former Border Patrol agent.

“I think the average American should be petrified,” Dave Stoddard, a former supervisor of the federal border agency, told the station.

“That smuggling operation going through there is very, very sophisticated. They’ve been getting by with it for years. They know the formula. They know the routine,” he said. The military is unconcerned.

Read more from this story HERE.

Pentagon: Reports of Sexual Assaults Up 46 Percent

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Photo Credit: gregwest98Reports of sexual assaults in the military increased by an unprecedented 46 percent in the past fiscal year, the Pentagon said Thursday.

It wasn’t possible to know whether the spike represented an increase in assaults, an increase in the number of people reporting them, or both. Defense Department officials portrayed the sharp rise as a sign that people are more confident about coming forward now that improvements are being made to the military’s system for handling assaults.

The military received 3,553 complaints of sexual assault from October 2012 through June, compared with 2,434 reports during the same period the previous year, according to statistics presented Thursday at the start of a two-day public meeting of an independent panel looking into the issue

The report to the Response Systems Panel said an increase in complaints was registered across all service branches — Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines.

And it noted that more reports of sexual assault were made in the first three quarters of fiscal 2013 than the 3,374 reported during the entire 2012 budget year.

Read more from this story HERE.