The much awaited declassified report is here. Retired military officers testify about their UFO experiences. 6 of these officers claimed that they were each told not to tell anyone. The sightings took place over several decades. Now the information is no longer classified. All sightings in this report involved nuclear sites. These men are very serious about what they have seen. They feel that the Air Force has not been truthful with them.
From CNN:
DADT Repeal Blocked by GOP
The GOP Senators managed to block the repeal of DADT by 4 votes.
John McCain led the charge. John McCain, in the past, said that if the military leaders decided that DADT should be repealed, he would support that. Now he has changed again to deferring to the Senate and there he voted against it.
A Few BAD Men
Every war must produce a rogues gallery–rogue troops who dishonor and shame our country. Stories of these pitiful few, unfortunately, seem to take on a life of their own and almost define the war, like stories of My Lai and Lt. Calley during the Vietnam War. Abu Ghraib certainly got its fair share of publicity during the heat of the Iraq War. Now a few bad men seem to be tarnishing the work of all those brave men and women who have served in Afghanistan.
The front page of the Washington Post tells a horror story of rogue soldiers who killed Afghans for sport. The father of one of the men accused tried to alert the army after being told of atrocities by his son on the Internet. The father reported that he had been rebuffed and now his son stands accused along with others. The military has also been accused of ignoring warnings.
“The Logic Defies Description” according to Judge Virginia Phillips
Rachel Maddow interviews Major Micheal Almy who was dismissed from duty because of DADT laws and examines his role in the the ruling that was just handed down.
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
While Judge Virginia Phillips has remarked, The logic defies description” regarding currect DADT policy, an appeal is expected in many circles. This very well might be a case of ‘be careful what you wish for.’ Regardless, this is a huge decision that has the potential for huge impact on our military.
Do you think DADT is unconstitutional? What will the outcome be? Will we revert back to a nation that prohibits gays and lesbians from legally serving in the military? Will the military now actively begin a witch hunt to weed out all gays and lesbians or will there be new legislation that allows gays and lesbians to serve?
Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Ruled Unconstitutional
U.S. District Judge Virginia Phillips has ruled that the current military ban on openly gay service members unconstitutional. The judge has said she will issue an order to stop the practice nationwide.
According to msnbc.com:
U.S. District Judge Virginia Phillips said the ban violates the First Amendment rights of gays and lesbians. “Don’t ask, don’t tell” prohibits the military from asking about the sexual orientation of service members but requires discharge of those who acknowledge being gay or are discovered engaging in homosexual activity, even in the privacy of their own homes off base.
In her ruling, Phillips said the policy doesn’t help military readiness and instead has a “direct and deleterious effect” on the armed services.
The Log Cabin Republicans, a 19,000 member group of predominantly gay Republicans sought the lawsuit in 2004. Judge Phillips will issue an injunction later on in the week. More than 13,500 members of the military have been drummed out since it was first enacted in 1994. It is unknown what will happen to those people.
President Clinton had hoped to permit gays in the military. As soon as he became president Congress fought him tooth and nail and a compromise of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” was reached. Many gays felt Clinton had sold them out. The political reality was that had Clinton pushed his agenda through, he might have been faced with more restrictions like a bill that outlawed gays in the military.
Florida Minister Endangers the Troops
Several weeks ago we put up a thread about a minister in Florida who planned to burn copies of the Quran on 9/11. To date, there seems to be mo change in his misguided plans.
CNN reports:
CNN) — The U.S. commander in Afghanistan on Monday criticized a Florida church’s plan to burn copies of the Quran on September 11, warning the demonstration “could cause significant problems” for American troops overseas.
“It could endanger troops and it could endanger the overall effort in Afghanistan,” Gen. David Petraeus said in a statement issued Monday.
The Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, Florida, plans to mark the anniversary of al Qaeda’s September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington by burning copies of the Muslim holy book. The church insists the event is “neither an act of love nor of hate,” but a warning against what it calls the threats posed by Islam.
Good for General Petraeus. Its time someone called out this arrogant man. Who better than the commander of all US troops in Afghanistan.
More from CNN:
With about 120,000 U.S. and NATO-led troops still battling al Qaeda and its allies in the Islamic fundamentalist Taliban movement, Petraeus warned that burning Qurans “is precisely the kind of action the Taliban uses and could cause significant problems — not just here, but everywhere in the world we are engaged with the Islamic community.”
And one of his deputies, Lt. Gen. William Caldwell, told CNN’s “The Situation Room” that event “has already stirred up a lot of discussion and concern” among Afghans.
“We very much feel that this can jeopardize the safety of our men and women that are serving over here in the country,” said Caldwell, the head of NATO efforts to train Afghan security forces.
Caldwell said American troops “are over here to defend the rights of American citizens, and we’re not debating the First Amendment rights that people have.” But he added, “What I will tell you is that their very actions will in fact jeopardize the safety of the young men and women who are serving in uniform over here and also undermine the very mission that we’re trying to accomplish.”
“I would hope they would understand that there are second- and third-order effects that will occur that will affect that young man and woman who’s out there on point for America, serving their nation today, because of their actions back in the United States,” he said
The stupidity and arrogance of this minister is almost unspeakable. When the U.S. Commander tells you that you are endangering the troops, you should listen. If even one of our men or women is killed because of this ignoramous, his entire ministry should be held responsible. How sad that Americans would involve themselves with book burning. Sounds Third Reich to me. I would have no problem with the press being ordered to stay away and the minister barred from his bonfire on 9/11, as a matter of national security. The first amendment is not without some limitations.
Meanwhile, we can only hope that our troops will be safe.
Troops: Skipping Christian Concert Got Us Punished
Right here in our own back yard, it appears that someone in the military is practicing religious oppression. According to the Huffington Post:
RICHMOND, Va. — The Army said Friday it was investigating a claim that dozens of soldiers who refused to attend a Christian band’s concert at a Virginia military base were banished to their barracks and told to clean them up.
Fort Eustis spokesman Rick Haverinen told The Associated Press he couldn’t comment on the specifics of the investigation. At the Pentagon, Army spokesman Col. Thomas Collins said the military shouldn’t impose religious views on soldiers.
“If something like that were to have happened, it would be contrary to Army policy,” Collins said.
Pvt. Anthony Smith said he and other soldiers felt pressured to attend the May concert while stationed at the Newport News base, home of the Army’s Transportation Corps.
“My whole issue was I don’t need to be preached at,” Smith said in a phone interview from Phoenix, where he is stationed with the National Guard. “That’s not what I signed up for.”
Pentagon wants to present Medal of Honor to living recipient
From the Washington Post:
The Pentagon has recommended that the White House consider awarding the the Medal of Honor to a living soldier for the first time since the Vietnam War, according to U.S. officials.
The soldier, whose nomination must be reviewed by the White House, ran through a wall of enemy fire in Afghanistan’s Korengal Valley in fall 2007 in an attempt to push back Taliban fighters who were close to overrunning his squad. U.S. military officials said his actions saved the lives of about half a dozen men.
It is possible that the White House could honor the soldier’s heroism with a decoration other than the Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest award for valor. Nominations for the Medal of Honor typically include detailed accounts from witnesses and can run hundreds, if not thousands, of pages. The review has been conducted so discreetly that the soldier’s family does not know that it has reached the White House, according to U.S. officials who discussed the nomination on condition of anonymity because a final decision is pending.
Pentagon officials requested that The Washington Post not name the soldier to avoid influencing the White House review. Administration officials declined to comment on the nomination.
This is a great mystery. There is something about having to die to be given the Medal of Honor that just isn’t right. If the White House agrees to the Pentagon request, would that make the tradition permanent? Who sets up the guidelines?
More from the Washington Post
Virginia’s love-hate relationship with federal spending
.
Northrop Grumman is headed to Virginia. It is the 61st largest company in the United States and it is a huge defense contractor.
According to the Washington Post:
RICHMOND — At a news conference last week at Northrop Grumman’s Rosslyn offices, where a panoramic view of Washington loomed outside a floor-to-ceiling wall of glass, Virginia Gov. Robert F. McDonnell ticked off the reasons he thinks the giant defense contractor chose to locate its new corporate headquarters in the commonwealth.
He cited the state’s low corporate tax rate, its business-friendly regulations and right-to-work laws that prohibit requiring employees to join unions.
One factor the Republican didn’t mention: The massive flow of federal spending that provides the core of Northrop’s business and has made it the nation’s 61st-largest company.
McDonnell has been a leading voice in railing against rising federal spending. But lost amid the calls for Washington to freeze or reduce spending is this twist: Although most economists agree that mounting federal debt could be dangerous to the national economy, Virginia has thrived on Washington’s decade-long spending spree, according to analyses done by professors at Virginia colleges.
Ten cents of every federal procurement dollar spent anywhere on Earth is spent in Virginia. More than 15,000 Virginia companies hold federal contracts, a number that has almost tripled since 2001. Total federal spending — from salaries to outsourced contracts — has more than doubled, to $118 billion, since 2000, as homeland security and defense spending skyrocketed in response to the 2001 terrorist attacks and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. By 2008, it accounted for about 30 percent of Virginia’s entire economy.
Federal dollars have filtered through the rest of the economy, too, helping to build the high-tech Dulles corridor and funding new homes and cars for federal workers and contractors and meals at local restaurants. The billions have helped fuel the economic boom cycles of the past decade and have cushioned the blow of the recent recession, particularly in Northern Virginia, where the unemployment rate has stayed stubbornly below 6 percent, less than the state and national rates.
“We have a rich uncle, I like to remind people — Uncle Sam,” said Stephen Fuller, director of the Center for Regional Analysis at George Mason University.
Maybe Cuccinelli shouldn’t be trying so hard to piss off the feds. It sounds like Virginia is riding the old gravy train. To have less than 6% unemployment in this economy is enviable. To be getting 10 cents of every federal procurement dollar spent anywhere on earth is quite an accomplishment.
Much as McDonnell probably won’t like sharing the limelight, much of Virginia’s pro-business reputation was developed and nurtured by people like Mark Warner. Under the Kaine administration, Virginia was voted the number one state to do business in. McDonnell is savvy and should continue the tradition of attracting and maintaining businesses and a robust economy. He just needs to rein in his attorney general since much of that business originates with federal contracting.
Don’t Let a D-Bag Teabag Sen. Lindsey Graham
Guest Post by Colonel Morris Davis, Attorney and Former Chief Prosecutor for Guantanamo Military Commissions. Colonel Davis is a Prince William County resident.
South Carolina has a reputation for setting the political bar as low as it can go and seeing who can slither under it. It’s the place where in the 2000 presidential primaries Karl Rove put the shiv to John McCain’s bid with a whisper campaign asking people if they’d be less likely to vote for McCain if they knew he’d fathered an illegitimate black child. While McCain hadn’t, oddly enough, the long-time South Carolina senator and leading segregationist Strom Thurmond had and hid the fact for decades until his death. It’s the state currently under the stewardship of Governor Mark Sanford who last year gave the phrase “hiking the Appalachian Trail” a whole new meaning when he lied to his wife and his constituents about his whereabouts while he was bumping bellies with his “soul mate” down in South America.
The bar was recalibrated downward again last week at a Tea Party Patriots rally in Greenville, S.C., by William Gheen, head of Americans for Legal Immigration PAC (ALIPAC). Interestingly — at least to me — Gheen and I are from the same small town, Shelby, N.C., and we’re both graduates of Shelby High School, although I’m several years older and don’t recall ever meeting him. Gheen fired up the Tea Party base and had all of the Patriots in the crowd cheering when he said:
“Barney Frank has been more honest and brave than you (referring to South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham). At least we know about Barney Frank, nobody’s going to hold it over his head. Look, I’m a tolerant person. I don’t care about your private life, Lindsey, but as our U.S. senator, I need to figure out why you’re trying to sell out your own countrymen, I need to make sure you being gay isn’t it.”
ALIPAC issued an email press release saying:
The national border security organization known as Americans for Legal Immigration PAC (ALIPAC) is officially calling for U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) to make his homosexual lifestyle public knowledge in the interest of political integrity and national security.
“U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham is gay and while many people in South Carolina and Washington, D.C., know that, the general public and Graham’s constituents do not,” said William Gheen, President of ALIPAC.” I personally do not care about Graham’s private life, but in this situation his desire to keep this a secret may explain why he is doing a lot of political dirty work for others who have the power to reveal his secrets. Senator Graham needs to come out of the closet inside that log cabin so the public can rest assured he is not being manipulated with his secret.”
On the ALIPAC website, it says Gheen is a “veteran campaign consultant” known for “creating new voter outreach methods.” There’s nothing new about the slash and burn tactic of ambushing opponents with sleazy innuendo. Rove and others of his ilk in the radical right mastered the tradecraft long ago. The citizens of South Carolina have swallowed the bait before — ask John McCain — but I hope by now they have wised up and won’t let Gheen set the hook and drag them over the transom.
What brought the wrath of the radical right down on Senator Graham is that on occasion he breaks ranks with right wing orthodoxy and, heaven forbid, works with colleagues on both sides of the aisle on legislation. Isn’t that what our elected representatives in the legislative branch are supposed to do? If, as Gheen, ALIPAC, and the teabaggers seem to expect, all elected representatives stay in strict lockstep with the party then every vote in the Senate is a preordained 59-41 tally. What’s the point in convening Congress if there’s guaranteed gridlock and an immovable impasse? We don’t need fewer members like Senator Graham, we need more; members who don’t have their heads so far up the rear ends of the Svengalis that pull the strings of their parties that they’ve lost sight of why the voters sent them to Capitol Hill.
It’s disappointing to see groups like ALIPAC and the Tea Party Patriots try to stake a false claim to patriotism. The motto of Gheen’s organization is “fight back with ALIPAC,” but it appears the only fighting Gheen’s a veteran of is a verbal ambush of his own making on a career military officer. Gheen never served a day defending the country as a member of the armed forces (another PINO – Patriot In Name Only) while Senator Graham has been a member of the U.S. Air Force for 28 years. It’s one thing to talk the talk like Gheen, but Senator (Colonel) Graham has walked the walk in defense of America.
I was the chief prosecutor for the military commissions at Guantanamo Bay when the Supreme Court struck down the judicial system created by President Bush’s executive order and put the ball in Congress’ lap to craft a solution. Senator Graham invited me to his office and asked one thing: “What do you need from me to get the job done right?” That’s the attitude I’ve seen from Senator Graham; what’s the right thing to do, not what’s most politically expedient or what’s tracking best in the polls. In my view, that’s called integrity and there’s not enough of it on Capitol Hill.
The people of South Carolina elected Senator Graham to represent them in the legislative branch of government, not to be head deacon at their church. William Gheen and his type want to derail a good man — an actual patriot, and a dedicated public servant — by pandering to prejudice. I don’t care about Senator Graham’s sexual preference or if he even has one, but I do care about the direction our country is headed. We need leaders with integrity and principles who put the needs of the citizens ahead of their political fortunes. We need more Lindsey Graham’s and the citizens of South Carolina should be proud he’s their senator. I hope they don’t get teabagged by a d-bag like Gheen.
“Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” Policy Relaxed
Thursday, March 25, the military policy known as ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’ which was enacted in 1993 under president Bill Clinton to ‘integrate’ gays into the military, was altered. Only Congress can appeal ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell.’ If you think the new Health Care Legislation was contentious, just revisit gays in the military as a political hot bed of contempt.
“Don’t ask, don’t tell” is still the policy for gays in the military in the United States. However, yesterday Secretary of Defense Robert Gates announced the new rules that relax how a gay person serviing in the military would be eased out if their ‘openess’ became ‘open.’ Sounds like weasel words, doesn’t it? I have never totally understood ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell.’ I think it says, its ok to be gay in the military but don’t let anyone find out or they will throw your ass out. Yea, any way you cut it, that’s what the policy says. Let’s take a look at what happened via Time Magazine:
Pentagon took a giant step toward integrating openly gay men and women into the U.S. military on Thursday. No, it didn’t repeal 1993’s “Don’t ask, don’t tell” law — only Congress can do that. But it did something that could be almost as important: it eased the enforcement of that law by loosening the regulations that have been used to snare 13,500 gays — and boot them out of uniform — since 1994. “These changes will allow us to execute the law in a fair and more appropriate manner,” Defense Secretary Robert Gates said. The revised regs “provide a greater measure of common sense and common decency to a process for handling what are difficult and complex issues for all involved.”
Read More
Virginia Election Statistics: The New Battleground
Just released on Fox News:
Obama has visited Virginia 28 times since January 2007.
Between October 7 and October 13, Obama spent $3.9 MILLION on Virginia ads.
Hampton Roads is home to 50,000 vets.
Meanwhile, the Washington Post has examined the influence of the military on Hampton Roads and thus, on Virginia. There are some very different views out there, as you will see viewing “God, Guns, and Guts, Pts. 1 & 2.”
God, Guns, and Guts Part 1 looks at the military’s devotion to the Republican Party and to one of their own– navy flier and former POW John McCain.
God, Guns and Guts Part 2 shows that not all military personnel falls in to the traditional stereotype of voting Republican. Many of these military folks and vets want NO parts of the ‘Maverick.’ They unequivocally support Barack Obama.
