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Items are archived in this
category chronologically or in the order of discovery. |
| It Just Boggles |
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| U.S. Commanders Are Confused By Obama's Rules |
CNSNews.com is
reporting that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), just
back from a fact-finding trip to Afghanistan and Pakistan, said he and
other senators found operational "confusion" among U.S. military
officials on how to handle detained enemy combatants.
"From the
top to the bottom, the military, the American military people that we
talked to, indicated some confusion, operationally, about what you do
when you detain a terrorist," McConnell said at a press conference on
Tuesday.
After pointing out that a U.S. military general declined
to answer questions about the handling of insurgent detainees without
the presence of his lawyer, the minority leader said: "This operational
confusion has . . . been created, it strikes me, unnecessarily and,
frankly, dangerously, by the administration."
McConnell
criticized the administration, in particular, for recently handing over
the so-called underwear bomber,
Nigerian terror suspect Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, to criminal courts
rather than to the military.
"This sort of preoccupation, if you
will, that we see on full display here in the U.S., with the example of
the Christmas would-be bomber being turned over -- not to the military
for interrogation, but to criminal courts -- and told he is entitled to
a lawyer, is a mentality that I think is very dangerous in the war on
terror," the minority leader said.
McConnell said the
administration is wrongly preoccupied with "detainee rights."
"We see this preoccupation with prisoners' rights both on foreign
battlefield[s] and here at home that seems to be consuming the
administration in this war on terror," he explained. "I think it’s
wrong-headed."
McConnell added that treating captured terrorists
as if they were American citizens who have committed a crime is not the
right way to conduct the war -- "To not be allowed to properly
interrogate and to detain, without some of the concerns that you might
have if you were an American citizen here in the United States who is
under arrest for robbing a convenience store or something, strikes me as
a pretty wrong-headed way to conduct the war," McConnell said.
The Kentucky senator concluded by stating that the prison for terrorists
in Guantanaamo Bay (Gitmo) should not be closed and that enemy detainees
should be tried by military commissions.
At the press
conference, Sen. Crapo said: "It was very clear that there was
uncertainty among our military personnel as to exactly how they are
required now and going to be required in the future to deal with the
handling of detainees."
Sen. Wicker, who also visited
Afghanistan as part of the GOP delegation led by the senate minority
leader, repeated the alleged confusion created by the Obama
administration.
A task force commissioned as part of Obama’s
January 2009 Executive Order to revise terrorist detention policy,
interrogation tactics, and close down Gitmo, issued a preliminary report
in July 2009 summarizing their legal views for the handling of enemy
combatants.
"When asked the question, 'What do we do with
captured enemy combatants?' it was clear that the, the answer is
confusion and uncertainty on the part of our troops and the Afghan
security forces," said Wicker. |
| Political Correctness And The 21st Century Battlefield |
Paul Mirengoff is
reporting that the national security panel at the Reclaim American
Liberty conference in New York on Wednesday considered (1) whether we
have the right legal architecture for maintaining our security, and (2)
whether we have the right battlefield architecture for this purpose.
He summarized the panel discussion regarding the first question
here.
Tonight he'll write about the second.
The key panelist on our "battlefield architecture" was Col. Allen
West (U.S. Army, Ret.). Col. West served as a commander in Iraq
and, after retiring from the Army, he served as an adviser in
Afghanistan.
West retired from the Army with full benefits after
being accused of misconduct in connection with the interrogation of an
Iraqi police officer. Information obtained during the
interrogation is said to have led to the arrest of two insurgents and
the cessation of attacks on West's 4th Infantry Division battalion.
At a hearing, West testified that he would act as he did if he had it to
do over again. "If it's about the lives of my men and their
safety, I'd go through hell with a gasoline can," West said.
Not
surprisingly, West was blunt about Obama's military's rules of
engagement -- they are not suited for the 21st century battlefield and
they put our troops in danger. On the 21st century battlefield,
our enemy has removed its uniforms and taken to hiding among the
population. Our rules of engagement enable them to obtain an
advantage by adopting these tactics.
West noted that in a
fire-fight, our troops typically have about five seconds before the
dying starts. Yet, we require them to hold their fire until the
intentions of the enemy have been verified and the potential for
collateral has been assessed. This can't be done in five seconds.
Thus, our troops are at a significant disadvantage.
In addition,
when the enemy holes up in a mosque, we cannot attack. Thus, the
enemy is able to use our own "politically correct" rules against us.
West argued that "top-down" rules of engagement are inherently
inadequate on the 21st century battlefield. When these rules are
driven by political
correctness, our ability to fight is undermined even more.
The same lesson applies to the homeland, which West correctly considers
part of the 21st century battlefield. The
Fort Hood massacre illustrates the
point. In this instance, political correctness prevented us from
dealing with the enemy before he dealt with us. |
| Militarized Police Force For U.S. |
On July 2nd, 2008, Obama spoke in Colorado Springs and hit themes of
national service, foreign policy, and national security. In that vein,
Obama proposed a rather extraordinary idea -- that the US should spend
as much money on a civilian national security force as it does on the
military. His actual words were:
"We cannot continue to rely on our military
in order to achieve the national security objectives we’ve set.
We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as
powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded."
Now, Prison Planet is reporting that A recent study
commissioned by the U.S. Army and written by the RAND Corporation calls
for the creation of a "hybrid" military/law enforcement unit which could
be put to use in the United States to take charge of riot control and
SWAT duties, according to the authors.
The study (PDF)
was released last year but has garnered fresh attention following
comments made by one of its authors, Terry Kelly, in an interview with
an online news website, said, "If there were a major disaster like
Katrina it could be deployed in the U. S. but that’s not the purpose of
the research."
"It’s important to point out that the goal was to
create a force that’s deployable overseas. If it’s to be used in
the United States it would be a secondary thing and then only in an
emergency."
Kelly said that the main focus of the force would be
in places like Iraq, Afghanistan or Haiti, in light of the earthquake
disaster, adding that it could operate as a U.S. force under U.N.
authority.
However, the report itself uses language that leaves
open the exact agenda of the force, and makes it clear that domestic use
has been considered at length.
It states that a Federal
"Stabilization Police Force" of 2–6,000 personnel would work best under
a civilian federal agency or the military police.
"They (the data) suggest that the U.S.
Marshals Service (USMS) and the MP options are the only credible
ones. The Marshals Service has sufficient baseline
capabilities and a policing culture to build a competent SPF, and
its location in the Department of Justice makes it well suited to
achieve broader rule-of-law objectives. This finding is
consistent with a significant body of academic and policy research,
which strongly concludes that civilian agencies are optimal for the
execution of policing functions." (page 123)
The study concludes that the use of the Marshals
Service is more favorable in order to avoid a breach of the long
standing Posse Comitatus Act, which forbids the domestic use of the
military for law enforcement purposes.
The report also states
that the force could both augment and be augmented by "additional
federal, state, or local police from the United States."
Continue
reading
here . . . |
| We Have Bigger Problems Than "Don’t Ask Don’t Tell" |
What was Barack Obama’s
call to scrap
the "Don’t-Ask-Don’t-Tell" rule barring homosexuals from military
service doing in the middle of the speech? Why is Obama addressing
this difficult, both politically and legally, issue now? We have
bigger problems than normalizing homosexuality.
Obama, an
advocate for the homosexual agenda, announced his desire to allow
homosexuals to serve openly in the military during his first State of
the Union address Wednesday night, saying, "This year, I will work with
Congress and our military to finally repeal the law that denies gay
Americans the right to serve the country they love because of who they
are," Obama said.
The Clinton-era rule, which skirted the
outright ban on homosexuals serving in the military, would likely take
an act of Congress to change, said Elaine Donnelly, president of the
Center for Military Readiness, and "voters are concerned about national
security, and they don’t want America’s military to be used for any
purpose other than national defense." |
| Obama Takes Credit For Success In Iraq |
Move America Forward, the nation’s largest grassroots pro-troop
organization
took
offense last night as Barack Obama tried to take credit for the
success of the Iraq War when he was a bitter opponent of the successful
troop surge implemented by President George W. Bush. Obama
proclaimed "I promised I would end this war, and that is what I am doing
as President."
Shawn Callahan, Executive Director of Move
America Forward, said "Without the surge America would have left Iraq
with the war lost to the insurgents. If Obama had been in charge
of the Iraq war, it would have been lost along with the needless loss of
potentially thousands of innocent Iraqis who would have been at the
mercy of the terrorists and criminals. Americans would be further
at risk with a more emboldened terrorist network."
"It is
reprehensible for the President to take credit for a war his predecessor
won. Then-Senator Obama criticized the Iraq war, called it a dumb
war, said our troops would fail and that the surge would make things
worse. History has proved him wrong, and yet he still tries to
somehow take credit for our troops’ success without even congratulating
them on the good job they have done."
His speech offered only a
few minutes to the subject of national security after speaking at length
about a multitude of other issues that Obama felt were more important
despite the fact that the country is at war. Obama also failed to
address security in several other ways:
•The President failed to recognize America’s
"war on terror." His Administration continues to treat
terrorism as a police action despite the threat against America by a
group of extremists who have declared war on us.
•The President makes no mention of
Guantanamo Bay, nor does he acknowledge that his own Administration
has found terrorists held there who should be detained indefinitely.
•The President talked tough about nuclear
disarmament with respect to North Korea and mentioned Iran, but his
pandering around the world has brought no success in stopping their
nuclear ambitions.
•Obama refused to address complaints that
the Christmas bomber is being treated as a criminal defendant with
full constitutional rights instead of an enemy combatant who should
be in the hands of the U.S. military and intelligence agencies.
|
| A Great Achievement |
Andrew Malcolm
says the same Barack Obama and Joe Biden who opposed the Iraq war,
its tactics, and predicted failure, are now prepared to accept credit
for its success.
Biden, in an
interview with Larry King, said he is certain that Iraq will turn
out to be one of the Obama-Biden administration's greatest achievements
-- No, really! He did.
Here's how Biden put it:
"I
am very optimistic about -- about Iraq. I mean, this could be one
of the great achievements of this administration. You're going to
see 90,000 American troops come marching home by the end of the summer.
You're going to see a stable government in Iraq that is actually moving
toward a representative government."
"I spent -- I've been there
17 times now. I go about every two months -- three months. I
know every one of the major players in all the segments of that society.
It's impressed me. I've been impressed how they have been deciding
to use the political process rather than guns to settle their
differences."
Biden did not elaborate on what the
administration's other "great achievements" were. |
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Copyright Beckwith 2010
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