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A Marine fast ropes from a UH-1Y Huey onto USS Makin Island in the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet area of responsibility, May 31, 2012. The Marine is assigned to the 3rd Battallion, 1st Marine Regiment, 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit, which is deployed as part of the Makin Island Ready Group, a U.S. Central Command theater reserve force. U.S. Marine Corps photo by Cpl. Gene Allen Ainsworth III
May 31, 2012 • Permalink
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Over at Command Posts (St Martin's Press's blog for military history, current events, and fiction), Gold Star child of the Viet Nam era, Tony Cordero, writes about Sons and Daughters in Touch:
...June 22, 1965, my father became missing in Vietnam. There were pocket communities in the Washington, D.C., area that offered some support, but for most of us, the support came later, in the form of helping other generations...
There's a lot of information there about how the group started to fill the void after Viet Nam.
Now, as you all are aware, there are more children to support:
...In the past ten years, SDIT has provided support to Gold Star families that have lost a parent since September 11, 2001, and has reached back through earlier generations to embrace sons and daughters of WWII and Korea, too.
Our message to other Gold Star children is:
This will be with you your entire life. If you want this to be an anchor, it will weigh you down. If you use it as a springboard to inspire you, to empower you, you will be ok.
Go check it out and see how you can support the message and mission of SDIT.
May 31, 2012 • Permalink
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Caring For The Defenders,
Fallen But Never Forgotten
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Matty O highlighted the NY Times puff piece about President O and his "Kill List" previously. It really is a nauseating read. But there are a couple of things that just jump off the page and show the true colors of the gutsy caller. The first is this tid bit about the fact that O personally approves all the extra-judicial killings.
But the control he exercises also appears to reflect Mr. Obama’s striking self-confidence: he believes, according to several people who have worked closely with him, that his own judgment should be brought to bear on strikes.
That is not particularly difficult to believe. Although there are other ways than "striking self-confidence", to describe that like oh, maybe narcissistic arrogance. But here is the real peach
David Axelrod, the president’s closest political adviser, began showing up at the “Terror Tuesday” meetings, his unspeaking presence a visible reminder of what everyone understood: a successful attack would overwhelm the president’s other aspirations and achievements.
Again not tough to believe, but sad nonetheless. Axelrod is a disgusting, reprehensible example of all that is foul about the political process. He is in that room because politics is what runs that operation and that is a shame. Men live or die based on the benefit or danger to the reelection prospects of Barack Obama.That is so far from right you couldn't see it from there. Sadder yet is the fact that we have stopped even attempting to capture and interrogate terrorists, again that could be messy for the Campaigner in Chief. We need to move this guy out to pasture this November. I hear Jimmy Carter is hiring at the Disgraced Ex-Presidents Society.
May 30, 2012 • Permalink
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On my weekly segment on Frank's radio show we talk about announcing the last offensive in Afghanistan. The last offensive, really? Is that because we won? or lost? or what? Then we discuss sequestration and the defense budget and a chip is used on military systems that turns to have a back door engineered into it.
You can listen to today's show here and on our Podbean [ 53:00 ] Hide Player | Play in Popup | Download (7)
May 30, 2012 • Permalink
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U.S. Navy Hospital Corpsman 3rd Class Larry Thompson with Police Advisor Team 3-2, Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment, Regimental Combat Team 6 takes part in a patrol in Sangin, Helmand province, Afghanistan, May 21, 2012. The team patrolled to maintain security in the area. Photo by Lance Corporal Sean Searfus.
May 30, 2012 • Permalink
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Made by the Palazzo hotel which hosted the event. Again, just my opinion, but I vote with my dollars and if in Vegas anytime in the future, I intend to do my best to stay at this hotel. They host this every year, have been doing it for 7 times in the last 6 years and are the only major hotel/casino that does this sort of thing. That’s worth something in my book.
Thank you to the Palazzo for this great event.
~McQ
Twitter: @McQandO
May 30, 2012 • Permalink
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Saw this OBVIOUSLY biased report in the New York Times on how the President is taking the use of a kill list very seriously. Really? What President doesn't? Probably ours. That is, unless it's an election year and he needs to seem, well, more decisive, presidential and "gutsy."
Back in 2008, we took Shane to task for releasing the names of intelligence operatives and interrogators.
This reads like a vendetta against the personnel doing time for blowing Valerie Plame's cover. But Valerie Plame gets more protection while serving canapes to political hatchetmen and has a lot less to lose than this interrogator who questioned the most vile and evil men in the history of the world...[for our opinions on the Plame issue, Google Blackfive and Plame - suffice it to say we were for severe punishment for revealing a covert CIA person].
So what is the Shill Scott Shane up to about the kill list?
...Mr. Obama has placed himself at the helm of a top secret “nominations” process to designate terrorists for kill or capture, of which the capture part has become largely theoretical...
That's not an overtly bad thing at all, even if you pull Shane's lips off of the President's ass. But how did this become a major piece in the NYT?
...In interviews with The New York Times, three dozen of his current and former advisers described Mr. Obama’s evolution since taking on the role, without precedent in presidential history, of personally overseeing the shadow war with Al Qaeda...
Three dozen?
THREE DOZEN?!
Look, one advisor is a leak. But, as one of the Blackfive authors stated in a conversation about this piece, three dozen is an organized campaign effort to make the President look more, well, presidential in his conduct of the war. This campaign ad HAD to have had the President's approval. Those 36+ advisors ought to be worried that Shane might out them as he has done before...oh wait, those were agency employees, not political appointees...Good on the NYT for resisting that effort. /sarc
In my book, if President Obama wants to be more presidential, then he should set out to win the war, rather than hold staff meetings about how to wordsmith "defeat."
May 30, 2012 • Permalink
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Bust Their Chops
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Seriously though, go read Ranger Up founder Nick's latest about Chris Hayes...
MSNBC’s Chris Hayes proclaimed on Memorial Day that he was uncomfortable labeling fallen troops as heroes as he felt the term is used as an excuse to engage in “Unjust Wars”.
Somewhere Michael Moore, Bill Maher, and the Westboro Baptist Church just had a Douchegasm...
And it just gets better after that.
Go check out ultimate in chops busting.
May 29, 2012 • Permalink
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No, this story, followed by this story is not from the Onion or the Daily Update on Comedy Central...
The USS Illinois, the first Navy submarine to be staffed by an all-female crew, received the support of the White House on Memorial Day.
Please tell me that this is not the answer to the all male infantry battalion. What the hell is the US Navy thinking?
I know from just my own life that I can't get 5 women in a bachelorette party to agree on the next bar we are going to and then program the address into the Tom Tom without at least one argument, 4 catty remarks about clothes or hair and 10 minutes of backseat driving. HTF are they going to get anywhere?
In a recent study I saw in the Discovery Channel, 100 men vs. 100 women parallel parking a Mini Cooper. The average time for men: 1 minute, 18 seconds. The average time for women: 3 minutes 6 seconds. Now they are going to drive a ship? A ship without windows, an e-brake, or an automatic transmission.... With 110 backseat drivers. Sounds like a new reality show to me.
What are they going to do if the ship breaks down? Press the big blue OnStar button?
My wife told me that the worst thing about being a woman is having woman friends. Now you are trapping them together in a steel tube? A big steel tube full of hate, jealousy, snide remarks, catty moods and short showers. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.... Or a whole mess of them..... On a Fast Attack Boat.....Talk about the ultimate weapon.
I kill myself.... There is so much comedy gold to be mined here that I don't want to crash the server....
So if you ladies would like to spend 3 months away from home never seeing the sunshine except during port visits (more comedy gold), knowing the time of day it is by the meal being served, and hot-racking while your buddy is on watch, you get down with your bad selves.
Please, discuss amongst yourselves...
May 29, 2012 • Permalink
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Current Affairs,
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A boy waves American flags as Marines march in the Larchmont Memorial Day parade as part of Fleet Week in New York, May 24, 2012. Fleet Week has been New York's celebration of the sea services since 1984. The Marines are assigned to the 1st Battalion, 9th Marine Regiment. U.S. Marine Corps photo by Lance Cpl. Martin Egnash.
Retired U.S. Army Command Sgt. Maj. Sterling R. Cale, a 90-year-old Pearl Harbor survivor, takes a moment in the shrine room of the USS Arizona Memorial during the the USS Arizona Memorial 50th anniversary commemoration ceremony, May 27, 201. The ceremony honored the 1,177 service members who lost their lives during the Japanese attack on the USS Arizona on Dec. 7, 1941. U.S. Air Force photo by Tech. Sgt. Michael Holzworth.
Jason had one poured for Major Mat Schram at the Sands Harbor Hotel Bar in Pompano, FL. Thanks, man. If you ain't Cav!...
Army Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, talks with a child with the TAPS organization at the 18th annual TAPS National Military Survivor Seminar and Good Grief Camp in Arlington, Va. TAPS, or Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors, is a nonprofit group that supports surviving families of fallen service members. DOD photo by D. Myles Cullen
Kathy Cardona, right, embraces her daughter, Julianna Blamire, both of Connecticut, after observing the name of Cardona's husband, Army Staff Sgt. Ronald Cardona, on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial during a Memorial Day event in Washington, D.C., May 28, 2012. "It's my third time here," Cardona said. "But it's never easy." DOD photo by Linda Hosek
May 29, 2012 • Permalink
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