Veterans Day 2014

MoonHowler

From VA.gov:

World War I – known at the time as “The Great War” – officially ended when the Treaty of Versailles was signed on June 28, 1919, in the Palace of Versailles outside the town of Versailles, France. However, fighting ceased seven months earlier when an armistice, or temporary cessation of hostilities, between the Allied nations and Germany went into effect on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month. For that reason, November 11, 1918, is generally regarded as the end of “the war to end all wars.”

veterans day 14

 

Blackwater Guards found Guilty

MoonHowler

Newyorktimes:

WASHINGTON — Four former Blackwater Worldwide security guards were convicted and immediately jailed Wednesday for their roles in a deadly 2007 shooting in Baghdad’s Nisour Square that marked a bloody nadir in America’s war in Iraq.

A jury in Federal District Court found that the deaths of 17 Iraqis in the shooting, which began when a convoy of the guards suddenly began firing in a crowded intersection, was not a battlefield tragedy, but the result of a criminal act.

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No, there is no war on women….

MoonHowler

Washingtonpost.com:

As the Islamic State marched through Iraq and Syria this summer, its refrain was “convert or die.” For many, refusal to swear fealty to the Islamic State and adopt its violent, repressive ideology meant a bullet to the head.

But some women and children imprisoned by the Islamic State who refuse to convert have been dealt a fate some might consider worse than death.

By the end of August, the Islamic State had abducted up to 2,500 Iraqi civilians, most of them women and children, according to a new United Nations report based on more than 450 interviews with witnesses.

Some have been awarded to fighters, others sold as slaves in markets in Mosul, Iraq, and Raqqa, Syria.

There were several reports of an office in Mosul where women and girls are tagged with a price and offered for sale to buyers.

Some women have reportedly been sold to young men to entice them into fighting for the Islamic State

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GOP backs President’s plan on ISIS?

MoonHowler


Washingtonpost:

 

House Republican leaders moved quickly Thursday to broadly support President Obama’s plan for an open-ended campaign to combat the Islamic State — but the mechanics of how they will do so remain open for debate and are expected to take several days.

The day after Obama’s national address, GOP leaders were mulling exactly how to handle the president’s request to explicitly authorize the training and arming of foreigners to combat the Islamic militants.

Congress is “at the beginning stages of building the kind of support that is needed across the nation to carry out this plan,” House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) told reporters Thursday. He said that many Republicans are skeptical of the policy laid out by Obama.

“If our goal is to eliminate ISIL, there is a lot of doubt of whether the plan that was outlined last night will accomplish that,” he said, but added later: “It’s important to give the president what he has asked for.”

Be still my heart!  Surely the GOP isn’t going to give President Obama what he has asked for.  I will believe it when I see it.

Should Congress back the Obama plan to defeat ISIS?  Lip service or money?  How much should Congress be involved?

Once Congress is involved, don’t they start getting security briefs?  How long before they start leaking information?

 

August 6: A-Bomb Day

MoonHowler

abomb

It’s here again, August 6, A-Bomb Day–the day we dropped the big one on Hiroshima.  Three days later the United States dropped a plutonium type A-Bomb on Nagasaki.  Ironically, the last survivor of the Enola Gay,  the B-29 that dropped the bomb on Hiroshima, died last week.  Theodore “Dutch” Van Kirk seemed to have few regrets about  the decision to drop the bomb and when asked, once eloquently responded  “It’s really hard to talk about morality and war in the same sentence.”

Yet 69 years later, the debate continues.  Only select Americans knew anything about an atomic bomb.  The Manhattan Project was top-secret and in those days, when things were top-secret,  people didn’t find out.  In fact, until he assumed the Presidency, Harry Truman knew nothing about an atomic weapon being built.  After the bombs were  dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, only then did the rank and file American begin to contemplate and discuss the moral responsibility of dropping such a deadly weapon of mass destruction.

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FAA: No Flights to or from Israel

MoonHowler


Washingtonpost.com:

The Federal Aviation Administration on Tuesday afternoon ordered U.S. carriers to stop flying to or from Ben Gurion International Airport in Tel Aviv, prohibiting them from traveling through Israel’s largest airport after a rocket landed nearby.

Airlines were banned from flying to Tel Aviv for a 24-hour period beginning on Tuesday at 12:15 p.m. The FAA said it will issue additional guidance by the end of that period.

This prohibition came after a rocket landed about a mile away from the airport, the FAA said.

“The FAA immediately notified U.S. carriers when the agency learned of the rocket strike and informed them that the agency was finalizing [the notice],” the agency said in a statement. “The FAA will continue to monitor and evaluate the situation.”

Even before the FAA’s notice was sent out, several U.S. airlines began canceling flights on Tuesday morning and afternoon.

Some experts think that Israel will continue to pound Hamas in Gaza  because of the revenue lost in tourism. Once the United States cancelled flights in and out of Tel Aviv, other countries followed suit.

Some feel that the cancellation of flights is giving in to Hamas. Others think safety is far more important.

What do you think? Will flights resume after 24 hours or will this cancellation last for several days or weeks?

Is Israel pounding too hard to should they continue to ferret out the source of the rocket attacks? What are ordinary Palestinians to do? Surely they would like for all of this assault to stop.

A grim world

MoonHowler

Things in the world look pretty grim.  Israel and Gaza, specifically Hamas, are at war.  Ground troops have entered Gaza.  Could it have been stopped before it got to this stage?  Ask Hamas.  They are who rejected the cease-fire agreement.  I feel badly for the women and children.  Women have no power and certainly children don’t.   Gaza is tiny.  There is no place to run and hide.  This is a difficult region to understand.  What I do understand is why Israel doesn’t want rockets fired in on its population.

Russian separatists have downed a Malaysian commercial airline.  The militants won’t allow the international community in to aid recovery efforts.  The scene sounds horrific.  There isn’t much doubt at this point that the plane was shot down.  This evil act of aggression on an innocent civilian population is totally inexcuseable.

Watch Russia scramble to make up excuses for itself, as usual.

Crash victims were mainly from the Netherlands but victims from 10 other countries were also killed.  The world mourns the loss of these innocent souls lives.

Are we on the brink of some sort of mass war?  I hesitate to say WWIII, but we all know from history how those things escalate.  Yet, the stock market was thriving on Friday, despite all the grim news.  Capitalism never ceases to amaze me.

 

 

No Darth, YOU are wrong!

MoonHowler


For starters, not everyone is named “Reagan,” Dick. For 6 years now, George W. Bush has kept quiet and has let President Obama run the country. I haven’t always agreed with former President Bush but I think he has shown an incredible amount of class during the transition up until the present. Dick Cheney, not so much.

According to Fox News:

Dick Cheney has been Darth Vader for the left since the days when he was seen as the driving force behind George Bush’s dead-or-alive approach to foreign policy.

And while W. has maintained a respectful silence since leaving office, the former vice president has spent the last six years denouncing President Obama time and again, in ways that have ticked off the libs even more.

But Cheney surfacing yet again to slam Obama for the crisis in Iraq—in the aftermath of a war that he aggressively promoted from the White House—has triggered a backlash. And the moment was crystallized when he appeared on Megyn Kelly’s show.
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Cut the crap about Iraq

MoonHowler

Huffingtonpost.com:

WASHINGTON — The argument for going to war in Iraq was clearly made. Over and over again, Saddam Hussein was said to be a turn-of-the-millennium Hitler, a madman bent on destroying America with his stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction.

Of course, that turned out to be false, but at the time, the justification was no mystery. The word “weapons” shows up 1,107 times in the Congressional Record during the period when the House and Senate were voting to grant President George W. Bush the authority to use force against Iraq. The more specific “weapons of mass [destruction or murder]” comes up 368 times.

 
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Colonel Morris Davis: The worst of the worst?

MoonHowler

Maybe the men traded for Bergdahl weren’t the worst of the worst.  Moe had never dealt with them which meant that they weren’t the worst of the worst or even on the list of 75 to be prosecuted for war crimes.   These men had been at Guantanamo for over 12 years.  They had never been charged.

No one is saying they are no longer a threat to the USA.  There are no guarantees.  However,   the risk will never be zero.

Moe did an excellent job of explaining the situation.  Thank goodness  Chris Matthews wasn’t around to interrupt and answer his own questions.  Alex Witt has far better manners and a more professional journalist.

Full Victory–Nothing Else

MoonHowler

70 years since D-Day.  Amazing.  To many of those few still alive, it is probably like it was yesterday.

From www.army.mil:

June 6, 1944, 160,000 Allied troops landed along a 50-mile stretch of heavily-fortified French coastline to fight Nazi Germany on the beaches of Normandy, France. General Dwight D. Eisenhower called the operation a crusade in which “we will accept nothing less than full victory.” More than 5,000 Ships and 13,000 aircraft supported the D-Day invasion, and by day’s end on June 6, the Allies gained a foot- hold in Normandy. The D-Day cost was high -more than 9,000 Allied Soldiers were killed or wounded — but more than 100,000 Soldiers began the march across Europe to defeat Hitler.

I have a friend whose father was killed during the invasion of Normandy.  She was fortunate enough to go to France for the 60th anniversary to see his grave.  She and her daughter both stood there bawling.  She had never known her father.  How many children grew up without fathers because of WWII?

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American POW Sgt. Bergdahl freed!

MoonHowler

Washingtonpost.com:

Taliban fighters released the sole remaining American military hostage Saturday morning to a team of U.S. troops in eastern Afghanistan, who quickly hustled him onto a helicopter. Once airborne, Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl scribbled the letters “SF?” on a paper plate, seeking confirmation that he was with Special Operations forces.

“Yes!” one of the troops hollered back above the din of the aircraft’s blades, according to a defense official who described Bergdahl’s first moments of freedom. “We’ve been looking for you for a long time.”

Bergdahl, 28, who had been held captive nearly five years, broke down in tears.
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Fairfax County Comfort Women Memorial sparks Japanese protest

MoonHowler

comfort women

The new Comfort Memorial located in Fairfax near the Fairfax County Government Center has sparked a spate of protest from the Japanese Embassy.  the Embassy accuses Fairfax of trying to ignite bad feelings between Koreans and Japanese residents.  According to the Washington Post:

Anchored by butterfly-shaped benches, the new Comfort Women Memorial Peace Garden in Fairfax County honors women forced into prostitution by Japan during World War II — a chapter of the global conflict that has long fueled tensions between South Korea and Japan.
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Capt. George Harris: Memorial Day 2014 Reflections

MoonHowler

flags in3

Each year, our Moonhowlings poet laureate, George Harris very kindly prepares his reflections for Memorial Day.  George entered the Navy during the Korean War at the tender age of 18.  He served in Vietnam as well.  Thank you for your service, Captain Harris, and for your reflections on this Memorial Day weekend, 2014.

MEMORIAL DAY 2014

Capt. George Harris

A few days after this Memorial Day, I will celebrate my 81st birthday.  And as I reflect back on the past eight decades, I find that our nation has been engaged in war for half of my lifetime.  In my lifetime I have seen or been involved in four wars:  World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War and the on-going war in Iraq and Afghanistan—a total of 40 years.

Since our beginning as a nation, our Armed Forces have been in something like 319 “Military Engagements”, including one war among ourselves.  Our Civil War resulted in the death of 625,000 Americans in a war that pitted fathers against sons and brothers against brothers.  Our second most costly war was World War II, which cost us 405,399 dead.  All these “engagements” have cost us something on the order of 275,000,000 lives lost and uncountable wounded whose lives were changed forever.  And this does not count those events where we only gave material or fiscal aid nor does it count operations by the CIA.

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