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More Holes in White House Denial Of Arms To Jihadists

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Photo Credit: WNDThe White House denial of supplying arms to the al-Qaida-saturated Syrian rebels may be somewhat more difficult for some to swallow now that it has been revealed the arms-to-rebels plan had been endorsed by the leaders of the CIA, Pentagon and State Department.

If, indeed, President Obama rejected the arms plan, as reported earlier by the New York Times, it would mean the White House went against the recommendations of outgoing Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and then-CIA Director David Petraeus.

The plan was said to have been generated by Petraeus and Clinton.

During Senate hearings on Benghazi yesterday, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., asked Panetta and Dempsey whether they had supported a plan “that we provide weapons to the resistance in Syria.”

“We do,” Panetta replied.

“You did support that?” McCain asked again.

“We did,” added Dempsey, who was sitting next to Panetta.

Neither Dempsey nor Panetta elaborated on their positions.

This past weekend, the New York Times reported the White House rebuffed the Clinton-Petraeus plan developed last summer to arm and train Syrian rebels.

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Report: White House Set To Cut Nuclear Arsenal By One-Third

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Photo Credit: Glyn Lowe PhotoworksPresident Obama is poised to sign off on a new internal review of U.S. nuclear weapons strategy that would reduce the arsenal by one-third, resulting in billions in savings to the Pentagon and Energy Department.

The recommended reductions were included in a draft version of a classified decision directive compiled by top defense and national security officials inside the White House, according to a report by the Center for Public Integrity issued Friday.

While the president has yet to officially approve the directive, including the recommended one-third cut to the nuclear arsenal, sources tell CPI Obama has voiced no objection to the directive’s findings.

Representatives from State Department, Strategic Command, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the office of Vice President Biden also played a part in drafting the directive.

White House officials had pushed to get the new directive finalized late last year, according to the CPI report. However, the administration pushed back against that plan.

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Pentagon To Extend Certain Benefits To Same-Sex Spouses

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Photo Credit: Jeff Sheng/APThe Pentagon has decided to extend certain benefits to the spouses of gay and lesbian personnel, according to officials and people notified about the decision, responding to the increasingly vocal appeals of same-sex couples in the military.

The military expects to announce the decision this week.

Officials at the Pentagon would not say which new benefits the department has determined it can extend to same-sex couples without violating the Defense of Marriage Act, a 1996 law that bars the federal government from legally recognizing same-sex unions. Gay rights advocates have called for benefits including housing privileges, access to base recreational facilities and joint duty assignments for couples in the military.

Legal experts say, however, that the Pentagon will be unable to extend more than 100 benefits while the Defense of Marriage Act remains in place.

The new guidelines will be departing Secretary of Defense Leon E. Panetta’s final imprint on the armed forces. They will also come on the heels of two landmark changes undertaken under his relatively short tenure: the rescinding of the ban on openly gay service members and the decision to allow women to serve in combat units.

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US Military Ends Four Army Officers’ Careers for Accidentally Sending Korans to Burn Pits

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Photo credit: Roel Wijnants

Army officials said that four Army officers and two enlisted soldiers received letters of reprimand for sending boxes of Korans from a prison library to a burn pit at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. Although an Army investigation that was made public on Monday found that the soldiers did not act out of “malicious intent” to disrespect the Koran or defame Islam, investigators concluded that they did not follow proper procedures, were ignorant of the importance of the Koran to Afghans and got no clear guidance from their leaders in a chain of mistakes.

The Marine Corps said three non-commissioned officers involved in a video that shows four Marines urinating on the body of a dead Taliban fighter received “nonjudicial punishments,” which could include letters of reprimand, a reduction in rank, forfeit of some pay, physical restriction to a military base, extra duties or some combination of those measures.

The Marine Corps did not release the results of its investigation into the episode because, officials said, there were continuing inquiries about higher-ranking officers in the unit involved, which was part of the Third Battalion, Second Marine Regiment, based in Camp Lejeune, N.C.

Military officials said the punishments were not as light as they might seem to the public — letters of reprimand effectively end most military careers — but it was unclear how they would be viewed in Afghanistan, where the Koran burning touched off days of riots across the country and compelled Mr. Karzai to call for a public trial.

American military officials said they were hopeful that Afghans would take the news calmly. “We have conveyed our condolences to the government and the Afghan people,” said Col. Thomas W. Collins, a spokesman for the international military coalition in Afghanistan. “These were both terrible mistakes.”

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Political Correctness Causing US Generals to Ignore Islam as Cause of Increased Afghan Casualties?

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Photo credit: isafmedia

The U.S. Army command recently announced that only 25% of the lethal “green on blue” Afghan military insider attacks against U.S. and N.A.T.O. troops were attributable to the Taliban. Mere “personal grievances,” we are told, account for the other 75% of attacks committed by our Afghan allies.

How could it be that so many Muslims in the Afghan National Army (A.N.A.) have become murderously enraged over personal disagreements and accidental insults? What has caused this upsurge in murders that has killed at least 40 U.S. troops since January 2012?

The answer is buried deep in a May 12, 2011 unclassified report by a U.S. Army “Red Team.” This report, titled “A Crisis of Trust and Cultural Incompatibility,” contains a litany of bureaucratic puffery that tries to explain away these acts of murder committed against the U.S. and N.A.T.O. troops by their A.N.A. “allies.”

During a recent press conference, General John R. Allen, Commander, U.S. Forces Afghanistan, claimed that Ramadan fasting, combined with operational tempo during the summer heat, were causing the current spate of killings of his own troops by Muslim A.N.A. soldiers.

That doesn’t seem right. The U.S. Army has been in Afghanistan for 11 years, and the number of attacks has climbed enormously in the last year.

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GOP plank hammers Obama’s ‘social experimentation’ in military

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Mitt Romney does not bring up President Obama’s social revolution inside the armed forces, but the Republican Party platform, by calling an end to “social experimentation” in the ranks, does.

The platform also backs the current ban on women serving in direct ground combat units, as the Obama administration is moving toward a decision to remove the prohibition before the November election.

The Republican National Committee on Resolutions, meeting last week in Tampa, Fla., approved a plank that states: “We support the advancement of women in the military, which has not only opened doors of opportunity for individuals but has made possible the devoted, and often heroic, services of additional members of every branch of the Armed Forces.”

Elaine Donnelly, who directs the Center for Military Readiness and attended the platform markup, said the language sends a strong signal to those who would sacrifice military preparedness to advance social policies.

“We reject the use of the military as a platform for social experimentation and will not accept attempts to undermine military priorities and mission readiness,” the platform states.

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Alaskan Navy Seal who wrote book on bin Laden killing identified, faces likely probe

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On Wednesday this week, Reuters reported that a Navy Seal had written a book about the mission that killed Osama bin Laden. The book, entitled “No Easy Day: The Firsthand Account of the Mission that Killed Osama bin Laden,” was written by a former Seal Team Six member under the pseudonym of “Mark Owen” along with co-author Kevin Maurer. The publisher states that it will be released on 9/11.

According to Reuters:

The U.S. government was surprised by the news that a Navy SEAL who participated in the raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan has written a book about the operation in which the al Qaeda leader was killed, U.S. officials said on Wednesday. . . It was not vetted by government agencies to ensure that no secrets were revealed.

The agencies not consulted included the Pentagon and the CIA. The publisher, Dutton of the U.S. Penguin Group, responded:

The book was vetted by a former special operations attorney. He vetted it for tactical, technical, and procedural information as well as information that could be considered classified by compilation and found it to be without risk to national security.

After a bit of sleuthing, Fox News discovered that the author was part of the elite team that killed three Somalian pirates who had taken control of an American vessel in the Indian Ocean in 2009, and that

“Mark Owen,” the pseudonym under which the book was written, is actually 35 year-old Matt Bissonnette of Wrangell, Alaska. Bissonnette held the rank of chief in the elite Navy SEAL Team 6 prior to retiring. He was one of the first men in the room where bin Laden died, witnessing the occurrence first-hand.

Some have called Fox’s decision to publicize Bissonnette’s name and location “astonishing” as it most certainly puts the former Navy Seal at risk of reprisal by Islamic fanatics.  Fox disagreed, noting that anyone who publishes such a book loses any reasonable expectation of privacy.  The network also contended that Bissonnette’s goal is to publicly confront Obama for “taking credit” for the raid, since he had cited the need to “set the record straight.”

It now appears that Obama may be attempting to preempt this confrontation. According to Reuters, Bissonnette is likely to face a Department of Defense probe over his failure to have the book “cleared” prior to publication:

Colonel Tim Nye, spokesman for the U.S. Special Operations Command, or SOCOM, which directs operations by Navy SEALs and other special operations forces, said on Thursday that SOCOM did not review the book before publication, nor had the SEALs.

Nye said that because the book had not been subjected to appropriate pre-publication review, it could become a target of “potential investigation” by government authorities.

Unfortunately for Obama, “any such inquiry was unlikely to be launched until after the book’s publication, scheduled for the anniversary of the September 11 attacks on the United States.”

 

Afghanistan: America’s forgotten war

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It was once President Barack Obama’s “war of necessity.” Now, it’s America’s forgotten war.

The Afghan conflict generates barely a whisper on the U.S. presidential campaign trail. It’s not a hot topic at the office water cooler or in the halls of Congress – even though more than 80,000 American troops are still fighting here and dying at a rate of one a day.

Americans show more interest in the economy and taxes than the latest suicide bombings in a different, distant land. They’re more tuned in to the political ad war playing out on television than the deadly fight still raging against the Taliban. Earlier this month, protesters at the Iowa State Fair chanted “Stop the war!” They were referring to one purportedly being waged against the middle class.

By the time voters go to the polls Nov. 6 to choose between Obama and presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney, the war will be in its 12th year. For most Americans, that’s long enough.

Public opinion remains largely negative toward the war, with 66 percent opposed to it and just 27 percent in favor in a May AP-GfK poll. More recently, a Quinnipiac University poll found that 60 percent of registered voters felt the U.S. should no longer be involved in Afghanistan. Just 31 percent said the U.S. is doing the right thing by fighting there now.

Read more from this story HERE.

Army suicides hit grim milestone: most self-inflicted deaths in a single month

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Photo credit: expertinfantry

Army suicides hit a new single-month record in July, when 38 active-duty and reserve soldiers took their own lives, according to official figures released Thursday.

The toll, up from 24 in June, prompted a wave of renewed anger and frustration among Pentagon leaders and veterans advocates.

“I was pretty shocked when I saw the number,” said Tom Tarantino, legislative director for Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. “This has been a continuous problem. This really stems from the military, and the [Department of Veterans Affairs], for that matter, basically the entire military and veteran community, really coming to this issue several years late.”

“It really wasn’t until 2007-2008, really 2009, that they started thinking about it at the level they need to be thinking about it,” he said.

Despite efforts from high-profile military leaders — including Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Ray Odierno, former Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen and former Army Vice Chief Gen. Peter Chiarelli — the wider Army is losing this battle, critics say.

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New Research Finally Provides Answers to Soaring Suicide Rates in U.S. Military

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When researchers asked 72 soldiers at Fort Carson, Colo., why they tried to kill themselves, out of the 33 reasons they had to choose from, all of the soldiers included one in particular — a desire to end intense emotional distress.

“This really is the first study that provides scientific data saying that the top reason … these guys are trying to kill themselves is because they have this intense psychological suffering and pain,” said Craig Bryan, co-author of the study by the National Center for Veterans Studies at the University of Utah that will be published in the coming months.

Suicide within the military has soared since 2005 as the military has waged two wars at once, and this year may set a record with troops committing suicide at the rate of one per day, according to Pentagon figures.

But military scientists say that finally, after years of congressional funding and the launch of randomized studies of a subject rarely researched, a few validated results are beginning to surface.

The findings by the Pentagon-funded study offer perhaps some guidance on how to attack the problem, said Army Col. Carl Castro, who is coordinating $50 million in research into suicide prevention and treatment.

Read more from this story HERE.

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