Defense Budget - Feathering fighter bird nests?

Posted By Uncle Jimbo

The defense budget for 2014 is starting to take shape and we are going to be taking a good look at some of the items in it. Money is obviously tight, so we need to make certain that it is spent wisely and for the right reasons. All too often politics, lobbying and factors that have nothing to do with national security push programs and spending. In an era of austerity we simply can’t afford this.

The Chairman’s mark of the Defense Authorization Act is out and there are many good things in there. Rep. Buck McKeon is a solid advocate for a strong defense and this is his chance to comment on priorities and goals for defense funding. Most of the relatively short document relates to policy and has some requirements for explanations of debacles like Benghazi. But there are also some funding items that don’t make much sense.

One of these is a requirement to buy F-18 aircraft, which is a bit of a head scratcher. We cancelled the F-22 program before we bought anywhere near as many true air superiority fighters as we should have. We have cut back severely the number of F-35s that we plan to buy, but somehow we can find the money to buy a completely different and significantly less capable bird. That smells distressingly like some corporate welfare for Boeing, who makes the F-18.

I am unaware of any purely tactical or strategic military argument for splitting the funding for our fighter aircraft. There was a time back in the day where we had the F-14, 15 & 16 birds with different mission profiles and we let Northrop, Boeing and Lockheed duke it out to see how many of each we were going to buy. But we came to the logical conclusion that too often led to a contest between retired generals to feather their own company’s nest.

Now we have gone to an up front competitive model, where the mission profiles required are determined and then the contractors compete to see who can build the best bird. You can question whether this limits the strength of our defense industrial base with a winner takes almost all approach, but it makes more sense than trying to build, field and support multiple platforms that all require separate design, manufacture and support infrastructures.

We had a competition for the Joint Strike Fighter and Boeing lost. I am sure that was a very sad day in Washington state, but that is the way the game is played. The question then is why we are buying another of their older and nowhere near as survivable aircraft, the F-18. Fielding two birds with essentially the same mission means we have to train two sets of maintenance folks, build two separate supply chains and take resources away from the aircraft we are counting on to keep us in control of the skies. Maybe Sen. Durbin can shed some light on that.

The Senate Appropriations Defense subcommittee is bringing in two service chiefs and the Pentagon’s top weapons buyer to testify on the F-35 program next week.
The panel, chaired by Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), announced the hearing on Friday.

Running a defense company is complicated and damned hard, but that doesn’t mean tax payers should be on the hook for keeping it afloat. Boeing has tens of billions of dollars in contracts and paid less than zero dollars in taxes. They actually got a $124M refund in 2010. Seriously?

 If someone can articulate an actual case for why we need these birds, I will listen. But corporate welfare for a company that seems to be able to avoid paying any taxes doesn’t seem like one to me. The Russians are sending some pretty advanced surface to air missiles to Syria and have basically told us a no fly zone is a no go for them. We can’t assume that we will have unopposed air superiority anywhere we decide to fly. That means we need to be spending our money on the most effective aircraft to achieve that mission.

Russia resets on Syria

Posted By Uncle Jimbo

Our dear friends the Russians are pushing the reset button on plans to help out the rebels in Syria. I guess someone missed the fact that they happen to be very good friends w/ Mr. Assad.

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia, a veto-wielding member of the U.N. Security Council, will not permit no-fly zones to be imposed over Syria, Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said on Monday.

"I think we fundamentally will not allow this scenario," Lukashevich told a news briefing, adding that calls for a no-fly zone showed disrespect for international law.

I wonder how they will feel when we are arming the folks fighting their allies? My guess is they will not be tickled.

Father's Day- Vietnam version

Posted By Uncle Jimbo

Posted this last year and it seems appropriate again. Thanks for all of it Dad.

A couple of pics of my Dad from his days in uniform.

Vietnam 1st tour w/ the Big Red One

And 2nd tour w/ 11th ACR

Happy Father's Day and thanks for everything.

Obama plays wag the dog w/ Syria

Posted By Uncle Jimbo

Un-Freakin'-Believable.

The Obama administration has concluded that Syrian President Bashar Assad's government used chemical weapons against the rebels seeking to overthrow him and, in a major policy shift, President Obama has decided to supply military support to the rebels, the White House announced Thursday.

Scandalabra has been kicking his regime's butt and dragging him down, but hey nothing a good war can't cure. I mean Syria-ously what has changed since this was well known months and months ago. If there was ever a time to support the rebels, it was a year and about 100,000 dead Syrians ago. Now the Islamists have firm control of the rebel groups and so we are trading a bad guy for equally bad guys.

Just out of curiousity, what do we get out of a proxy war with Putin's client state? That is quite a reset.

Doing HuffPost Live now

Posted By Uncle Jimbo Doing HuffPost Live about defense contractors spying on us for pay at 6:35 http://live.huffingtonpost.com/r/segment/defense-department-contractors/51b5eaebfe34441e8c000436

The IRS has a SWAT team?

Posted By Uncle Jimbo

Sadly yes.

 Rep. Jeff Duncan wants to know why IRS law enforcement agents are training  with AR-15 rifles.

As chairman of the House Homeland Security oversight subcommittee, Duncan  (R-S.C.) toured a federal law enforcement facility in late May and noticed  agents training with the semi-automatic weapons at a firing range. They  identified themselves as IRS, he said.

“When I left there, it’s been bugging me for weeks now, why IRS agents are  training with a semi-automatic rifle AR-15, which has stand-off capability,”  Duncan told POLITICO. “Are Americans that much of a target that you need that  kind of capability?”

I have known about this for many years. One of the low lights of my career came when I gave some door-kicking training to one of the IRS SWAT teams. They had all the gear and none of the skills necessary. This is another symptom of the militarization of law enforcement in this country, and even worse the empowerment of bureaucracy with the ultimate tools of the state. Comply or we will kill you.

I can say that I didn't do anywhere near as good a job training the IRS folks as I could have. Mainly it involved trying to get them to stop forming the semi-circle of death and shooting each other. Plus stopping all of them from yelling conflicting instructions at the same time to the people they were trying to arrest. I also audited their gear and levied a tax on several items I had a better use for than they did. Fair is fair.

First verified lie from Ed Snowden

Posted By Uncle Jimbo

NSA leaker Ed Snowden claimed to have broken both of his legs while training for Special Forces.

In 2003, he enlisted in the US army and began a training program to join the Special Forces. Invoking the same principles that he now cites to justify his leaks, he said: "I wanted to fight in the Iraq war because I felt like I had an obligation as a human being to help free people from oppression".

 That is simply not true as the statement from the Special Warfare Center & School below clearly points out.

Snowden was never a student at SWCS. He broke his legs while at Fort Benning. His intent was to enter the X-ray program – but that never happened and would not have  happened because he only had a GED. Hope this helps.

 Janice Burton

Deputy

Office of Strategic Communications

The 18 X-ray program is a way to go directly from the street to the Special Forces course. You first would attend basic and advanced individual training and then airborne school. Upon successful conclusion of those you head to Bragg for some prep training and the Special Forces Assessment and Selection course. If you pass all of those, then and only then do you start Special Forces training.

Mr. Snowden wasn't even eligible for this program as he didn't even graduate from High School. So the claim that he broke his legs in Special Forces training is BS and that makes him a poseur. Well actually not even a poseur, he claimed to be training to be SF, so that makes him a poseur wannabe, or a wannabe poseur. I'm not real sure how the semantics of that work out. But either way, not really a great way to build credibility. He also made this claim that never rang true when I first read it.

 He recounted how his beliefs about the war's purpose were quickly dispelled. "Most of the people training us seemed pumped up about killing Arabs, not helping anyone," he said.

Right, so the people who weren't training you for Special Forces also happened to be knuckle-dragging troglodytes who were simply looking for a chance to go smoke some A-Rabs. Well I'm not buying it Eddie. I ran into plenty of your types in the military, disaffected losers who never actually finish anything but always have a bucket-load of excuses and who were always whining about how the system sucks. They were never responsible for their own failures, it was always oppression by the man. They were just too smart for the fools running things to recognize their brilliance. Sound familiar? They were also all varying flavors of bats**t as well. Check out Ed's spymaster tradecraft.

WASHINGTON — The source had instructed his media contacts to come to Hong Kong, visit a particular out-of-the-way corner of a certain hotel, and ask — loudly — for directions to another part of the hotel. If all seemed well, the source would walk past holding a Rubik’s Cube.

A Rubik's Cube, now there is a really good way to remain nondescript. Or this bit of counter-surveillance wizardry.

He is deeply worried about being spied on. He lines the door of his hotel room with pillows to prevent eavesdropping. He puts a large red hood over his head and laptop when entering his passwords to prevent any hidden cameras from detecting them.

A red hood? Even the writer who is taking in all of this BS and peddling it to the public is making fun of you dude. Why do I get the feeling Ed also had a ninja outfit and throwing stars?

Whether or not Ed has any information that the government was doing illegal or even improper things is a completely separate discussion. The fact that Ed is a BS-peddling wannabe poseur is now established and ought to be taken into account when judging his words and actions.

UPDATE: Jonn Lilyea at This Aint Hell is also looking at the other things about Snowden that seem to have an air of barnyard ordure about them and had a pretty good idea the PNG wasn't in the Q course earlier this week.

NSA leaker "trained" to be Special Forces

Posted By Uncle Jimbo

The guy who dropped all the NSA info to the Guardian has poked his head up and it is sitting atop a pencil neck. While all of the surveillance being conducted is properly shocking nothing released so far shows any crimes. It is a stunningly far-reaching program that definitely should be questioned, but so far appears to have been done legally.

That matters, and the leaker is not a whistleblower unless that changes. He is simply another guy who disagreed with policies and decided to break the law himself to make sure everyone knew about them. That will get you a bunk next to Bradley Manning.

I will have a more in depth look at secrets, leaks and spies soon, but for now I have a question. Has anyone in the community heard anything about this guy going to the Q course? This is in his story.

In 2003, he enlisted in the US army and began a training program to join the Special Forces. Invoking the same principles that he now cites to justify his leaks, he said: "I wanted to fight in the Iraq war because I felt like I had an obligation as a human being to help free people from oppression".

He recounted how his beliefs about the war's purpose were quickly dispelled. "Most of the people training us seemed pumped up about killing Arabs, not helping anyone," he said. After he broke both his legs in a training accident, he was discharged.

So that would have been 10 years ago, making him a 19 year old 18X candidate. I can't imagine that many people broke both their legs in a training accident, so if anyone can validate this story at all, let me know. jimbo at unclejimbo dot com. And do go watch the video at the link. The guy is very coherent and tells a reasonable tale. But as I said so far he has not blown the whistle on anything other than policy disagreements. You handle that at the ballot box, or through the official channels. You do not get to release classified info just because you don't like what is going on.

Obama reaps the lack of trust he has sown

Posted By Uncle Jimbo

Outargeous outrage of the day. Obama team forces Verizon to turn over all of their phone records, millions state they "feel violated", me included. A little reality check from a guy on our team who knows the real deal,former federal prosecutor Mr. Andy McCarthy of NRO.

Here is what they don’t tell you. Telephone record information (e.g., the numbers dialed and duration of calls) is not and has never been protected by the Fourth Amendment. The Supreme Court held as much in its 1979 Smith v. Maryland decision. Understand: the phone record information at issue here is very different from the content of telephone conversations. Because the latter involve higher privacy expectations, they are heavily regulated under not only the Fourth Amendment but both Title III of the federal penal code and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Under these laws, the government is not permitted to access communications content absent court authorization based on probable cause either that a crime has been committed or that the surveillance target is an agent of a foreign power (such as a terrorist organization or a hostile government).

So Barry's jack-booted phoned thugs are actually not stepping over the line, they are well on the side of simply doing what I and many of you expect them to do.

By gathering massive amounts of telephone traffic information, the government is able to establish phone call patterns, which is vital for mapping terrorist organizations. Without this, you cannot have preventive, intelligence-based counterterrorism – i.e., counterterrorism whose goals are to identify terror cells before they strike and to stop atrocities from happening. To be sure, Congress could deny the government this kind of information by statute. If lawmakers did that, however, we would be in a September 10 counterterrorism paradigm – i.e., rather than prioritize prevention, we would be contenting ourselves to investigate and prosecute only after attacks have occurred and Americans have been killed.

Can the kind of information gathering the government is doing – and has been doing in this fashion since 2006 – be abused? Could the Obama administration use its national-security authorities as a pretext for spying on Americans? Of course it could. All information collecting can be abused. It may sound trite to point out that elections have consequences, but it really matters who we elect to run the executive branch.

Amen to that brother, we the people bought the bill of goods Obama and his Chicago crew were selling and then bought it again. Now we are paying the price. That doesn't mean we can't enjoy the show as their use of the federal police state to punish their enemies gets the front page attention it deserves. GOOD! We the people need to wake the hell up.

Obama appoints tool as National Security Adviser

Posted By Uncle Jimbo

Susan Rice is now the National Security Adviser. I haven't felt this safe since our Absentee President sent Chuck Hagel's miniature intellect to the Pentagon and made F John Kerry our Diplomatic Douche-in-Chief. I am trying to care about Samantha Powers becoming our UN Ambassador, I mean she is at least as big an ass-clown as the rest of these chumps. But it's the UN, who gives a rat's ass? Plus she is replacing Rice, so the bar could not be much lower.

Hmmm, not bad. That is about 100 words and I have slammed (deservedly) our sorry excuse for a CinC and the bulk of the buffoons he counts on to help him prostrate America to the world. I dominate the ad hominem, and I'm like butter because I'm on a roll. Don't stop me because it's not over until the Nazis bomb Pearl Harbor.

 I could throw all the rest of his senior staff in the mix, but why waste valuable pixels or your time. This administration has more shit birds than the aviary at the sewage treatment plant. They all suck Hoover and for that I am thankful. It was going to take some serious jackassery to shake the American people out of the government subsidized stupor they have been lolling about indolently enjoying on their couches. It is not like the Obama and his team of over-educated, under-achieving, non-productive  political parasites were not identfiable to anyone able to locate the clue bag. But when you have virtually the entire media busy airbrushing rainbows and unicorns into each picture of Barry the 1st with his head tilted at that nauseating angle, haloed by a light staring off into the crushed dreams of all the hard-working Americans his administration was beating into submission with the ever-expanding organs of Leviathan, oh s**t what was I saying?

Oh yeah they Fu**ed Up! They believed their own BS and now it is biting them all over their asses. That may actually be enough to remind the American people that "I'm from the government and I'm here to help" is the scariest sentence in the English language. Now that the media lapdogs found out that they don't actually get to sleep in the house and their chow is soylent scrivener, they have actually begun doing their jobs again. Every day we get a tasty tidbit of tabloid worthy trash that was actually perpetrated by the highest officials in the land. I couldn't even make up s**t as stupid as these, hold on I'm ruinning low on insults.....pin-headed pustules pass off as their officical duties.

I gotta cut this off, I am spent. But dag it felt good to cut loose and revel in the just desserts being shoved into the far-too-often flapping cakeholes of the criminally incompetent cadre running the ship of state right into Reality Reef. That bell is tolling for thee and thee and she and tee freakin' hee, so sayeth we.

Free Bradley Manning at Meade

Posted By Uncle Jimbo

Not actually giving away free samples, just whining that treason is not important enough to lock someone up for. Friend of UJ and the site "the One-Eyed Jack" took one for the team and drove through the gaggle of dirty, nasty, patchouli-smelling hippies  to give us this report.

Here is a quick update about the “event”:

1.       Ft Meade command was expecting/planned for about 1200 protestors: that is the number that the organizers told the powers that be would show up at Ft Meade

2.       Total number of protesters who ACTUALLY showed up was about 300 or so (my personal estimate, based on what I saw of the crowd: see pictures of march)

3.       There were approximately 150 armed police on hand (about 100 outside the fence of Ft Meade, and about 50 gathered (in three different groups) 100 ft or so behind the gates inside the fence line)…the cops included the FT Meade police (both military and civilian), NSA police, Anne Arundel Police Department, Anne Arundel Sheriff's Department, Columbia (MD) Police Department, Howard County Police Department, Prince George’s County Police Department, and some armed group wearing flight suites with no patches that were in unmarked federal gov tagged SUV’s (Homeland Security???)

4.       Fire Department: there were two different locations outside the fence (a half mile or so from the protest area) where the Fire Department had staged equipment and personnel….I can confirm one location (see pictures), but not the second one.

5.       MD 175 in the four lane road in front of the Ft Meade fence line on the north side of post: there are three gates in that fence line.  The westernmost gate is the main gate, with the visitor registration office, etc.  The easternmost gate (at Lewellan Road) is an exit only on most days (used to get people off post at the end of the work day)…the distance between the two gates is approximately one mile.

6.       The cops had the inner lane (nearest the Ft Meade fence line) blocked off with cones for the entire distance between the gates….it was set up as a “safe” protest march route…the mob would start at the main gate, march down to the Lewellan Gate, turn around, and head back. That is what happened.

All in all, it seemed like much ado about nothing. There seemed to be one cop for every two protestors, and other than the Code Pink folks (in their trademark pink tops/shorts, etc), there seemed to be left wing radicals of almost every stripe (based on the signs I saw). The protestors did cause the powers that be to spend a ton of money, though…

UJ: I think they look great on the other side of the fence. Too bad it is not in with Bradley. I'm kidding, I wholeheartedly support the right of the ass-clowns to conduct buffonery in support of traitors. It's the American way.

Warning shot?

Posted By Uncle Jimbo

A veteran in Oregon has some trouble to deal with after he ran a scumbag off his property. The problem is that he fired a warning shot in doing so. It sounds like the guy he ran off was certainly bad news, so why the problems?

On May 26th, 2013 at about 11:21 p.m., Medford Police officers were
dispatched to a report of a 911 hang-up at an apartment at the above
listed address. Officers arrived and determined there was no evidence of
criminal activity. However, while the officers were on scene, they heard a
gunshot and saw a male running. Officers chased down the male and
identified him as Jonathan Kinsella, a wanted felon.

Officers determined that another male, Cory Thompson, 36 years old,
fired an AR-15 Assault Rifle at Kinsella after he found him hiding in his
backyard.

The investigation revealed that Kinsella saw the officers on scene and ran
knowing he had a warrant. He ran into the backyard of Thompson’s
apartment and tried to climb a fence, but fell down causing a crash.

Thompson went to investigate with his AR-15 rifle. Thompson pointed the
rifle at Kinsella and told him he was armed. Kinsella began walking away
and Thompson fired one round in Kinsella’s direction. Kinsella ran and
was encountered by officers shortly thereafter. No one was struck by the
bullet.

The investigation revealed that Thompson was not justified in shooting at
Kinsella. Thompson was cited and released for various crimes. His gun
was seized as evidence.

This is actually pretty simple. Warning shots are not a good idea and often not legal. If the bad guy was coming at him and Thompson believed he was in danger, i.e. "feared for his life or the life of others", then he can shoot the intruder. Period. That is the standard for self defense. The standard for warning shots doesn't exist and hence the problems Thompson now faces. If he admitted the guy was walking away as the police report states, then he had no reason to shoot. If the guy was coming at him, then he may have. Essentially the standard for legally firing a warning shot defaults to the standard for self defense. Hopefully Thompson is and was smart enough to make that disctinction. If he was firing at a guy who was already leaving, then he probably deserves the trouble. If not, this is an overreach by law enforcement.

I drive your truck

Posted By Uncle Jimbo

Most of you know the name Jared Monti, he was awarded a posthumous Medal of Honor for his actions in Afghanistan. This weekend we remember him, and far too many others. And we share the pain of the families who have to bear the true meaning if this "holiday" in their hearts.

 Lee Habeeb talks about hearing Jared's Dad on the radio.

Then came the part of the interview that hit me hardest: It was the moment when Paul Monti talked about his son’s truck, and why he still has it, and still drives it.

“What can I tell you? It’s him,” Jared’s father explained, nearly choking on his words. “It’s got his DNA all over it. I love driving it because it reminds me of him, though I don’t need the truck to remind me of him. I think about him every hour of every day.”

I was already tearing up before that story about Jared’s truck. But as the details piled up — the truck was a Dodge 4X4 Ram 1500 with decals on it that included the 10th Mountain Division, the 82nd Airborne Division, an American flag, and a Go Army sticker — I lost it.

And there I was sitting in my car in a Walmart parking lot on a sunny Memorial Day in my hometown crying hard. Crying like a child. Crying as if I’d lost my child.

A talented songwriter give a small taste of the bitter sorrow the loss of a loved one brings. Not surprisingly, it ends up as a country song that will stop you and have you crying along with those folks. So grieve with them for a few minutes and then remember Paul Monti and all the rest who gave their lives for this great land. Enjoy the freedom they bought so dearly.

Britain's rabid dogs

Posted By Uncle Jimbo

If you feed, house and submit to rabid dogs, you will be bitten. Homegrown Islamists blew up their subways before, and now they have beheaded a British soldier in broad daylight on a city street. We allowed the same thing to happen with the two vermin in Boston.Tolerance is a crime if it allows those sworn to our destruction the freedom to live amongst us, take our largess and then act as they said all along they would. These British scum were on watch lists, but just like the Tsarnaevs. Political correctness kept the Brits and us from doing what should be done to rabid animals.

I get sick of stating that all Muslims are not responsible for the actions of these scum, and there is some truth there. But look at the Pew report and do the math.

Few U.S. Muslims voice support for suicide bombing or other forms of violence against civilians in the name of Islam; 81% say such acts are never justified, while fewer than one-in-ten say violence against civilians either is often justified (1%) or is sometimes justified (7%) to defend Islam. Around the world, most Muslims also reject suicide bombing and other attacks against civilians. However, substantial minorities in several countries say such acts of violence are at least sometimes justified, including 26% of Muslims in Bangladesh, 29% in Egypt, 39% in Afghanistan and 40% in the Palestinian territories.

They try to minimize a hellish statistic by noting 81% say violence against civilians is never justified. But that means that 19% believe it is. And that is among US Muslims, the least radicalized in the world. That stat alone ought to chill your bones. The Pew report is hardly a right wing exercise in Islamophobia, if anything it is neutral orleans to the other side. They were unable to even conduct their research in the most virulent hotbeds of Islamist insanity like Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and other dens of jihad as the mere act of talking to a researcher could get even Muslims beheaded. If you apply the 19% support  for jihadist slaughter among relatively moderate Muslims to the rest of the 1 billion plus around the world, you get several hundred million folks who are just fine with beheading infidels, honor killings and imposing religious totalitarianism on all of us.

I don't know about you, but that is something worth paying attention to, and doing so is not Islamophobia. It is common freakin' sense. If someone holding a meat cleaver says he and his friends are going to cut your head off, the smart move is to give him the bin Laden treatment. Shoot him in the eye and feed his carcass to the fishes.

Benghazi suspects free, FOX News hearing drones

Posted By Uncle Jimbo

Talk about screwed up priorities. The Obama team is so busy targeting journalists, they can't be bothered to scarf up the guys who killed a US Ambassador and three other citizens on their watch.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. has identified five men who might be responsible for the attack on the diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, last year, and has enough evidence to justify seizing them by military force as suspected terrorists, officials say. But there isn't enough proof to try them in a U.S. civilian court as the Obama administration prefers.

Seriously, we have them under surveillance and O doesn't want to capture them because then he would have to either bring then to the US, or horror of horrors, send them to Gitmo.

U.S. officials say the FBI has proof that the five men were either at the scene of the first attack or somehow involved because of intercepts of at least one of them bragging about taking part. Some of the men have also been in contact with a network of well-known regional Jihadists, including al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb.

The bastards are bragging about it, but heaven forbid Barry actually do his damn job and capture them. Maybe he can have the IRS audit al Qaeda's status as an Islamic charity.

 The U.S. has kept them under surveillance, mostly by electronic means. There was a worry that the men could get spooked and hide, but so far, not even the FBI's release of surveillance video stills has done that.

Why should they worry, there was no security when they showed up to the show, none while they were slaughtering and they have no reason to believe they are going anywhere. Plus if Barry does act, it will be a drone strike, so why run? They would just die tired. This administration will go down as one of the least competent and most political ever.