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Obama’s Pentagon Wants Individuals to Stop Guarding Recruiting Stations

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Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook said in a statement that Secretary of Defense Ash Carter “is currently reviewing recommendations from the services for making our installations and facilities safer – including our recruiting stations” following the July 16 attack that left four Marines and a Navy sailor dead.

“While we greatly appreciate the outpouring of support for our recruiters from the American public, we ask that individuals not stand guard at recruiting offices as it could adversely impact our mission, and potentially create unintended security risks,” Cook added.

In the days following the attack, citizens groups, veterans, local law enforcement and the National Guard have stood watch outside of recruiting offices across the country. It’s also raised questions over a 23-year-old federal policy that leaves service members unable to defend themselves on Pentagon property. (Read more from “Pentagon Wants Individuals to Stop Guarding Recruiting Stations” HERE)

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Watch: Pentagon Training Video Depicts Male Boss Groping Male Employee

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FAA085000007A Pentagon training video attempts to show how domestic and civilian employees should deal with a boss who gropes them.

A video made by the Defense Equal Opportunity Management Institute (DEOMI), which offers education and training for military active duty, reservists, and civilians, shows a male employee having to deal with his boss Miguel who is “too close for comfort.”

The head of the DEOMI, Army Col. Morris “Reese” Turner, was reassigned and put under investigation late last year for “inappropriate touching,” according to Military Times.

“I’ve worked with Miguel for about two months now,” the employee says, as images of the boss doing his best Joe Biden impression, massaging the employee’s shoulders, rubbing his belly, grabbing his cheeks, and running his hands through his hair..

“By all accounts he’s a great boss,” he said. “Just a little touchy feely for my liking. Listen I don’t have space issues but I don’t believe you have to touch me to talk to me. You can get my attention without grabbing me.” (Read more from “Watch: Pentagon Training Video Depicts Groping Boss” HERE)

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Despite Pentagon Objections, Fox News Will Air Interview With SEAL Who Killed Bin Laden

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Photo Credit: Getty ImagesInsiders at Fox News Channel said Friday that a two-day documentary featuring an interview with the Navy SEAL who killed Osama Bin Laden will air as scheduled despite objections from the Pentagon.

On Wednesday, Fox News announced that a show called The Man Who Killed Osama Bin Laden hosted by Washington correspondentPeter Doocy was scheduled for Nov. 11 and Nov. 12, but on Friday the Pentagon toldBusiness Insider that the SEALs and former SEALs who were participants do not have permission to discuss the classified 2011 mission.

The government has never identified the Navy SEALs who killed Bin Laden, the mastermind of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks of 2001, though they were profiled in the 2012 movie Zero Dark Thirty, which was controversial for its insinuation that waterboarding was an effective tool in gathering intelligence.

Read more from this story HERE.

Pentagon Calls Climate Change a Matter of ‘National Security’

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Photo Credit: APDefense Secretary Chuck Hagel on Monday described climate change as a national security threat — at a time when the U.S. military is battling the Islamic State in the Mideast, responding to the Ebola crisis in West Africa, and monitoring tensions between Ukraine and Russia.

The Defense secretary addressed the issue during a speech in Peru, as the Pentagon released a comprehensive report on the “national security” challenges posed by rising global temperatures and “extreme weather events.”

Hagel described climate change as a “threat multiplier,” saying it “has the potential to exacerbate many of the challenges we already confront today — from infectious disease to armed insurgencies — and to produce new challenges in the future.”

The Pentagon’s new report maps out four areas of climate change deemed the most threatening to the U.S. military — rising global temperatures, changing precipitation patterns, more extreme weather and rising sea levels. And it warns about the impact they could have on food and water supplies, the environment and American security itself.

“Our militaries’ readiness could be tested, and our capabilities could be stressed,” Hagel said, addressing a conference of military leaders.

Read more from this story HERE.

Probe of Silencers Leads to Web of Pentagon Secrets

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Photo Credit: WNDThe mysterious workings of a Pentagon office that oversees clandestine operations are unraveling in federal court, where a criminal investigation has exposed a secret weapons program entwined with allegations of a sweetheart contract, fake badges and trails of destroyed evidence.

Capping an investigation that began almost two years ago, separate trials are scheduled this month in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Va., for a civilian Navy intelligence official and a hot-rod auto mechanic from California who prosecutors allege conspired to manufacture an untraceable batch of automatic-rifle silencers.

The exact purpose of the silencers remains hazy, but court filings and pretrial testimony suggest they were part of a top-secret operation that would help arm guerrillas or commandos overseas.

The silencers — 349 of them — were ordered by a little-known Navy intelligence office at the Pentagon known as the Directorate for Plans, Policy, Oversight and Integration, according to charging documents. The directorate is composed of fewer than 10 civilian employees, most of them retired military personnel.

Court records filed by prosecutors allege that the Navy paid the auto mechanic — the brother of the directorate’s boss — $1.6 million for the silencers, even though they cost only $10,000 in parts and labor to manufacture.

Read more from this story HERE.

Pentagon: Islamic State Threat 'Beyond Anything We've Seen'

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Photo Credit: REUTERS / YURI GRIPAS

Photo Credit: REUTERS / YURI GRIPAS

By Missy Ryan.

The sophistication, wealth and military might of Islamic State militants represent a major threat to the United States that may surpass that once posed by al Qaeda, U.S. military leaders said on Thursday.

“They are an imminent threat to every interest we have, whether it’s in Iraq or anywhere else,” Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel told reporters at the Pentagon.

Hagel’s assessment of Islamic State, which gained strength during Syria’s civil war and swept into northern Iraq earlier this summer, sounded a note of alarm several days after the group posted a video on social media showing one of its fighters beheading an American hostage kidnapped in Syria.

Asked if the hardline Sunni Muslim organization posed a threat to the United States comparable to that of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Hagel said it was “as sophisticated and well-funded as any group we have seen.”

“They are beyond just a terrorist group. They marry ideology, a sophistication of … military prowess. They are tremendously well-funded. This is beyond anything we’ve seen.”

Read more from this story HERE.

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Report: Two times as many British Muslims fighting for ISIS as with U.K. armed forces

By Noah Rothman.

Americans were made acutely aware of the threat posed by Western jihadist fighters joining the ranks of ISIS in Syria and Iraq when a man with a London accent beheaded James Wright Foley as part of a taped ultimatum to President Barack Obama.

Inexplicably, President Barack Obama chose not to even abstractly address the nature of that threat, even though he plans to personally chair a meeting of the United Nations Security Council on precisely this subject next month.

A July intelligence estimate suggested that up to 3,000 ISIS militants were of European origin and 1,500 of those are young British Muslims, according to Birmingham MP Perry Barr. Framing the problem of Europe’s failure to assimilate its Muslim minorities perfectly, a new report indicates that there are more British Muslims fighting with Islamist militants in the Middle East than there are in the British armed forces.

According to the Ministry of Defense, there are only around 600 British Muslims currently serving in the Armed Forces, making up approximately around 0.4% of total personnel. 4.3% of the British population are Muslim.

Read more from this story HERE.

Pentagon Official: America’s Failure Is Hillary Inc’s 2016 Politics

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Photo Credit: Kevin Lamarque / Getty

Photo Credit: Kevin Lamarque / Getty

On Saturday, an embarrassed United States witnessed the full realization of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s failure in Libya. Remembering her husband’s failure to halt a 1990s Rwandan genocide — and informed by her coming presidential aspirations — Clinton advised President Barack Obama to enter the United States into an untenable situation. He listened; she left; and he failed.

On Saturday, July 26, the Department of Defense facilitated the evacuation and abandonment of the United States Embassy in Tripoli, Libya amid a rapidly deteriorating security situation in that country — some two and a half years after the United States helped to overthrow that country’s government.

U.S. Marine Embassy guards, along with Marine infantry reinforcements deployed over the last month under the banner of Task Force Tripoli, drove approximately the 100 remaining U.S. Department of State personnel in an armored convoy 70 miles across the border into neighboring Tunisia under the cover of U.S. fighter aircraft.

The effects of the U.S. departure from Libya are both tangible and symbolic, and are indicative of a failed U.S. policy toward that country and the Arab Spring movement on a whole.

From the onset of the Libyan civil war, both the Department of Defense and the Central Intelligence Agency determined that there was no discernible U.S. national security interest in Libya. Accordingly, then-Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and then-Director of Central Intelligence Leon Panetta advised against U.S. military intervention in Libya.

Read more from this story HERE.

Joseph Miller is the pen name for a ranking Department of Defense official with a background in U.S. special operations and combat experience in Iraq and Afghanistan. He has worked in strategic planning.

Pentagon Press Conference Turns Into Heated Debate Between Top Generals From US And China

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Photo Credit: DoD

Photo Credit: DoD

A top Chinese general Thursday strongly defended Beijing’s territorial claims over disputed islands in the South and East China Seas and charged that the U.S. rebalance of forces to the Pacific was encouraging unrest in the region.

Gen. Fang Fenghui, chief of the general staff of the People’s Liberation Army, said “the rebalancing strategy of the U.S. has stirred up some of the problems which make the South China Sea and the East China Sea not so calm as before.”

Fang warned that China would respond to any attempts by Vietnam, Japan or other neighbors to assert their own claims over the disputed islands and reefs.

“We do not create trouble but we are not afraid of trouble,” Fang said at a Pentagon news conference after meetings with Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Dempsey appeared to be slightly irritated as he waited to comment while listening to a long-winded response by Fang on the current dispute with Vietnam over offshore oil drilling rights.

Read more from this story HERE.

N.Korea Poses ‘Growing’ Threat to US: Pentagon

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Photo Credit: AFP Photo/Jung Yeon-JeNorth Korea poses a mounting threat to the United States due to its pursuit of long-range missiles and nuclear weapons, the Pentagon said Tuesday in its latest strategy document.

Describing the regime in Pyongyang as “closed and authoritarian,” the Defense Department said the US military would maintain a major presence in the region and keep up investments in missile defense.

The North represents “a significant threat to peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula and in Northeast Asia and is a growing, direct threat to the United States,” said the Quadrennial Defense Review, an update of the military’s global strategic outlook.

US forces would continue to collaborate closely with South Korea’s military “to deter and defend against North Korean provocations,” it said.

The release of the Pentagon’s strategic review came as North Korea flexed its military might three times over the past week, firing short-range Scud missiles and rockets into the sea. The test launches were timed to coincide with joint US-South Korean drills that Pyongyang opposes.

Read more this story HERE.

Pentagon Fumes as Afghanistan Frees Taliban Fighters with ‘Blood On Their Hands’

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Photo Credit: UNITED STATES FORCES AFGHANISTAN

Photo Credit: UNITED STATES FORCES AFGHANISTAN

Afghani officials freed 37 insurgents and Taliban fighters with “blood on their hands” in what the Pentagon called a “major step backward” for the rule of law in the war torn nation.

The hardened fighters were among 88 prisoners who were being held by the U.S. and being transferred to the emerging Afghan criminal justice system. U.S. authorities said many had directly participated in attacks that wounded or killed scores of U.S. military personnel and Afghan citizens, yet were freed by the Afghan Review Board.

“The ARB is releasing back to society dangerous insurgents who have Afghan blood on their hands,” the United States Forces-Afghanistan said in a statement. “This extra-judicial release of detainees is a major step backward in further developing the rule of law in Afghanistan.”

Many of those freed were Taliban fighters who were connected by forensic evidence to specific IED attacks. Several were captured in possession of bomb materials and some even admitted taking part in attacks on coalition forces. At least two had been captured, freed and recaptured.

Read more from this story HERE.