Just in one week, Pentagon officials announced they see no security threat in bringing Middle Eastern personnel to train on our military bases, while they believe there is a threat if we don’t continue the Kabul urban renewal project, aka the Afghan war. At the same time, another decorated soldier died over there, just after Congress passed a defense bill dealing with everything except for defense of our soldiers. “Invade the world, invite the world” is still the guiding vision of our broken Pentagon leaders.

Sgt. 1st Class Michael Goble, a Green Beret and Bronze Star recipient, was completing his final tour in Afghanistan when he was killed Monday in the northern Kunduz province, in a roadside bombing. His remains were flown home to his family on Christmas day. Whereas in years past, a soldier solemnly removing his hat when informing the family members of the death was able to look the loved ones in the eyes and tell them how the soldier died while we were taking vital ground in a clear mission, today there are no words to describe the vanity of the mission.

This year, 24 soldiers have died in Afghanistan, the most since 2014. Every single special ops group has lost a soldier this year. This is two and a half years since Trump promised a new strategy there. But as I noted at the time, there is no strategy. The Afghans are just as compromised as ever. Our soldiers are engaged in the most dangerous combat — counterinsurgency patrolling in villages where they are ambushed, often by the very forces they are “mentoring.”

We can have the strongest military in the world, but there is no way we can send isolated units into these types of cities on foot patrol and leave them there indefinitely without any defensive lines or strategic offensive vision, while any suicide bomber dressed as a civilian can attack them directly or with a roadside bomb. This isn’t a war; this is a social work operation in a war zone – the worst combination of all.

It is truly shocking how even after the Washington Post published an exhaustive expose showing that the Pentagon brass knew Afghanistan was an incorrigible and counterintuitive mission, this administration is still pressing on. The expose, which was based on thousands of interviews compiled by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, found decades of deceit and obfuscation about “progress” in the theater. Nothing was done in the defense bill to rectify the situation except that more money was thrown at the Afghan military and we are bringing in thousands more to become immigrants in America! To top it off, the defense bill Trump signed last Friday even pays for Taliban expenses during negotiations.

Shockingly, Army Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said last week he doesn’t believe the soldiers died for nothing.

“I do not. I absolutely do not,” he said at a news conference on Friday responding to the Washington Post expose. “I could not look at myself in the mirror. I couldn’t answer myself at 2 or 3 in the morning when my eyes pop open and I see the dead roll in front of my eyes. So no, I don’t think anybody has died in vain, per se.”

OK, so what did they die for? The mythical “Afghan military?”

These are the same generals Trump once referred to as being “reduced to rubble,” yet instead of draining the swamp, he has promoted them. On September 4, 2013, Milley, then a three-star general, said about the Afghan military, “This army and this police force have been very, very effective in combat against the insurgents every single day. And I think that’s an important story to be told across the board.”

Defense Secretary Mark Esper, another swamp monster promoted by Trump, said, “We have a mission in Afghanistan, and that is to ensure that it never again becomes a safe haven for terrorists.” Standing next to General Milley at Friday’s press conference, he promised to remain in the godforsaken country “until we are confident that that mission is complete, we will retain a presence to do that.”

The problem with that, as the 9/11 commission staff report said, is that 9/11 was all about visas and immigration because “terrorists cannot plan and carry out attacks in the United States if they are unable to enter the country.” Yet, thanks to these policies, we are sending our soldiers there to build up an Islamic military, and then we are bringing some here to train. This very defense bill that Trump bragged about signing added another 4,000 special immigrant visas for Afghanistan. We’ve been bringing in about 10,000 a year! Prior to 9/11, we barely had immigrants from there. Now, aside from 2,500 dead and tens of thousands of wounded soldiers, we have nothing to show for the war other than 100,000 largely unvetted new Afghani migrants. This is something George Orwell couldn’t have choreographed.

Worse, at the same time, the Pentagon is now saying it sees no threat of terrorism in the military training of foreign military personnel on our bases in light of the Pensacola attack. Last Thursday, the Pentagon announced that following background checks on all Saudi military trainees in the country, it found no “immediate threat scenario.” Remember, these are the same people who, in 2017, found no threat from Mohammad Alshamrani after he tweeted jihadist material. I guess the immediacy of a threat is all relative.

Meanwhile, these same swamp generals refuse to pay attention to our own border, even as they fund endless security programs and even border wall construction in the Middle East. At some point, conservatives must ask which swamp we are draining. (For more from the author of “The Pentagon Continues to Push Our Soldiers in Afghanistan While Bringing in More Middle Eastern Military Personnel to Train Here” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE

The US military is conducting wide-area surveillance tests across six midwest states using experimental high-altitude balloons, documents filed with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) reveal.

Up to 25 unmanned solar-powered balloons are being launched from rural South Dakota and drifting 250 miles through an area spanning portions of Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin and Missouri, before concluding in central Illinois.

Travelling in the stratosphere at altitudes of up to 65,000ft, the balloons are intended to “provide a persistent surveillance system to locate and deter narcotic trafficking and homeland security threats”, according to a filing made on behalf of the Sierra Nevada Corporation, an aerospace and defence company.

The balloons are carrying hi-tech radars designed to simultaneously track many individual vehicles day or night, through any kind of weather. The tests, which have not previously been reported, received an FCC license to operate from mid-July until September, following similar flights licensed last year.

Arthur Holland Michel, the co-director of the Center for the Study of the Drone at Bard College in New York, said, “What this new technology proposes is to watch everything at once. Sometimes it’s referred to as ‘combat TiVo’ because when an event happens somewhere in the surveilled area, you can potentially rewind the tape to see exactly what occurred, and rewind even further to see who was involved and where they came from.” (Read more from “Pentagon Testing Mass Surveillance Balloons Across the U.S.” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE

House lawmakers passed an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) last week that ordered the Pentagon to reveal whether the U.S. military made ticks into biological weapons.

The amendment, proposed by Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., requires the Pentagon to examine “whether the Department of Defense experimented with ticks and other insects regarding its use as a biological weapon between the years of 1950 and 1975.” . . .

“If true, what were the parameters of the program? Who ordered it?” Smith said during a debate for the amendment. “Was there any accidental release anywhere or at any time of any of the diseased ticks?”

He said he was inspired to add the amendment after reading material that suggested: “significant research had been done at U.S. government facilities including Fort Detrick, Maryland and Plum Island, New York to turn ticks and other insects into bioweapons.”

Smith, a long-time advocate for raising awareness about Lyme disease, is also the co-chair of the House Lyme Disease Caucus. Earlier this year, he introduced a bill that would authorize $180 million in funding for Lyme disease research, prevention and treatment programs. (Read more from “House Orders Pentagon to Reveal Whether It Turned Ticks into Biological Weapons” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE

By Fox News. The Pentagon has finally uttered the words it always avoided when discussing the possible existence of UFOs — “unidentified aerial phenomena” — and admits that it still investigates reports of them.

In a statement provided exclusively to The Post, a Department of Defense spokesman said a secret government initiative called the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program “did pursue research and investigation into unidentified aerial phenomena.”

And while the DOD says it shut down the AATIP in 2012, spokesman Christopher Sherwood acknowledged that the department still investigates claimed sightings of alien spacecraft.

“The Department of Defense is always concerned about maintaining positive identification of all aircraft in our operating environment, as well as identifying any foreign capability that may be a threat to the homeland,” Sherwood said.

“The department will continue to investigate, through normal procedures, reports of unidentified aircraft encountered by US military aviators in order to ensure defense of the homeland and protection against strategic surprise by our nation’s adversaries.” (Read more from “Pentagon Makes Startling Admission Regarding UFO Investigations” HERE)

____________________________________________________

Internal Memo Orders Military to Restrict Information It Shares with Congress

By The Washington Post. Acting defense secretary Patrick Shanahan has mandated new restrictions on the way the Pentagon shares information with Congress about military operations around the world, a move that is straining ties with key Republican and Democratic lawmakers.

In a May 8 internal memo, which was obtained by The Washington Post, Shanahan lays out the criteria for when Pentagon officials may provide congressional offices or committees information they request about operational plans and orders.

The memo comes as lawmakers from both parties complain that the Trump administration has withheld information that prevents them from executing their constitutionally mandated oversight role. Some lawmakers are also concerned about whether Shanahan has allowed the military to be drawn too deeply into President Trump’s immigration agenda. (Read more from “Internal Memo Orders Military to Restrict Information It Shares with Congress” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE