Battle of the Bilge

“The Vulcan Neck Pinch is not half as powerful as the Vulcan Groin Kick, but it’s more politically correct” – Star Trek

Summary

Following the release of the Department of Defense’s report on the Ft. Hood tragedy, there has been ample criticism in the press regarding how DoD handled the situation and the resulting conclusions of the report. Below you will find an email alert that was sent out by Act! for America, an organization started by a Lebanese immigrant that fled her homeland during that nation’s long civil war and is dedicated to rooting out anti-Israeli and anti-American media bias. Both the introduction and the article that it references are opinion pieces and both make valid points about the report and the colossal disaster of management that led to the rampage.

The Email

Ft. Hood Jihadist Massacre Report – “Gutless and Shameful”
How bad is the cancer of political correctness in the Defense Department?

So bad that the 86 page report on the Ft. Hood jihadist massacre mentions “Islam” or any of its derivatives only once—in a footnote.

So bad that CNN commentator Jack Cafferty called it a “joke.”

Unfortunately, the only ones laughing are the Islamists.

They must be looking at our military and political leadership and thanking Allah for their good fortune. It’s easy to envision discussions among Islamists where they tell each other “surely Allah is with us; the infidel leaders are so blind and stupid they won’t even acknowledge who is fighting them!”

Ralph Peters’ column below is RIGHT ON POINT!

We believe American outrage at this suicidal level of political correctness is only going to grow. Let us resolve together to make 2010 the year that “main street America” shouted back at Washington that we’ve had enough!!

Hood Massacre Report Gutless and Shameful

By RALPH PETERS

January 16, 2010

There are two basic problems with the grotesque non-report on the Islamist- terror massacre at Fort Hood (released by the Defense Department yesterday):

* It’s not about what happened at Fort Hood.

* It avoids entirely the issue of why it happened.

Rarely in the course of human events has a report issued by any government agency been so cowardly and delusional. It’s so inept, it doesn’t even rise to cover-up level.

“Protecting the Force: Lessons From Fort Hood” never mentions Islamist terror. Its 86 mind-numbing pages treat “the alleged perpetrator,” Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, as just another workplace shooter (guess they’re still looking for the pickup truck with the gun rack).

The report is so politically correct that its authors don’t even realize the extent of their political correctness — they’re body-and-soul creatures of the PC culture that murdered 12 soldiers and one Army civilian.

Reading the report, you get the feeling that, jeepers, things actually went pretty darned well down at Fort Hood. Commanders, first responders and everybody but the latest “American Idol” contestants come in for high praise.

The teensy bit of specific criticism is reserved for the “military medical officer supervisors” in Maj. Hasan’s chain of command at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center. As if the problem started and ended there.

Unquestionably, the officers who let Hasan slide, despite his well-known wackiness and hatred of America, bear plenty of blame. But this disgraceful pretense of a report never asks why they didn’t stop Hasan’s career in its tracks.

The answer is straightforward: Hasan’s superiors feared — correctly — that any attempt to call attention to his radicalism or to prevent his promotion would backfire on them, destroying their careers, not his.

Hasan was a protected-species minority. Under the PC tyranny of today’s armed services, no non-minority officer was going to take him on.

This is a military that imposes rules of engagement that protect our enemies and kill our own troops and that court-martials heroic SEALs to appease a terrorist. Ain’t many colonels willing to hammer the Army’s sole Palestinian-American psychiatrist.

Of course, there’s no mention of political correctness by the panel. Instead, the report settles for blinding flashes of the obvious, such as “We believe a gap exists in providing information to the right people.” Gee, really? Well, that explains everything. Money well spent!

Or “Department of Defense force protection policies are not optimized for countering internal threats.” Of course not: You can’t stop an internal threat you refuse to recognize.

The panel’s recommendations? Wow. “Develop a risk-assessment tool for commanders.” Now that’s going to stop Islamist terrorists in their tracks.

The Fort Hood massacre didn’t reflect an intelligence failure. The intelligence was there, in gigabytes. This was a leadership failure and an ethical failure, at every level. Nobody wanted to know what Hasan was up to. But you won’t learn that from this play-pretend report.

The sole interesting finding flashes by quickly: Behind some timid wording on pages 13 and 14, a daring soul managed to insert the observation that we aren’t currently able to keep violence-oriented religious extremists from becoming chaplains. (Of course, they’re probably referring to those darned Baptists . . .)

To be fair, there’s a separate, classified report on Maj. Hasan himself. But it’s too sensitive for the American people to see. Does it even hint he was a self-appointed Islamist terrorist committing jihad? I’ll bet it focuses on his “personal problems.”

In the end, the report contents itself with pretending that the accountability problem was isolated within the military medical community at Walter Reed. It wasn’t, and it isn’t. Murderous political correctness is pervasive in our military. The medical staff at Walter Reed is just where the results began to manifest themselves in Hasan’s case.

Once again, the higher-ups blame the worker bees who were victims of the policy the higher-ups inflicted on them. This report’s spinelessness is itself an indictment of our military’s failed moral and ethical leadership.

We agonize over civilian casualties in a war zone but rush to whitewash the slaughter of our own troops on our own soil. Conduct unbecoming.

Origins

The article from Ralph Peters appeared January 16th, 2010 in the New York Post and can be found here. The DoD report on the massacre, entitled ‘Protecting the Force: Lessons from Ft. Hood’, which is a very large .pdf file and will be tough to download unless you use broadband service, is here.

Evaluation

While MOAA as an organization has not taken a stance on the DoD report, Battle of the Bilge found much to agree with in the New York Post article. Although the article under represents the recommendations of the panel, the general theme that political correctness and the failure of so many people that could have stopped this from ever happening is undeniable. The statement that there were gigabytes of intelligence data that were missed or ignored is spot on. Nidal Hasan was a radical Islamic extremist and his actions were motivated by his religious beliefs, but our nation and our military have been ingrained with the concept of tolerance that sometimes makes us blind to obvious warning signs.

It is true that the word Islam is only mentioned once and in a footnote, and it is also true that ‘Muslim’ does not appear anywhere in the report. But then again neither do ‘Christian’, ‘Buddhist’, ‘Hindu’ or ‘Atheist’. It is standard run of the mill PC from DoD reports and in most cases, it is prudent to exclude specific groups. But we are not at war with nations that are composed primarily of those religions. Like it or not, we are at war with Islam, or rather Islam is at war with us. It is not the entire population of Muslims, some are very much on our side in this civilization clash. But the extremists are the ones that cause the damage, and a religion, ethnic group or organization that can not control its extremist elements must be held accountable for their actions. Where is the public outrage on the Muslim street to the actions of Nidal Hasan and the failed perpetrator of the Christmas day airline plot? There is none, and the silence speaks much louder than words.

The US Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs had much of the same reaction to the report as Ralph Peters and I do:

“I am encouraged that the Department recognizes the need to update its policies to protect servicemembers and welcome the Department’s intention to hold accountable those who failed to take necessary protective action.

“I am disappointed, however, that the report does not adequately recognize the specific threat posed by violent Islamist extremism to our military, a threat directly addressed by Senator Collins and me in a January 13 letter to Secretary Gates. I believe firmly that if DoD educates its personnel about violent Islamist extremism – and how terrorists distort the Islamic faith to promote violence – we will increase trust between the thousands of Muslim-Americans serving honorably in the military and their colleagues.

“This omission underscores the need for our Committee’s independent investigation. Unfortunately, the Department of Defense has been less than forthcoming in providing us access to the documents and witnesses we require. Now that the DoD review is public, the Department must cooperate fully with our Committee so that we can fulfill our constitutional duty to determine our vulnerabilities and correct them.”

I don’t believe that the report was a ‘whitewash’ but I do believe that it was watered down to the point of being ineffective. The Executive Summary list of recommendations (found on page 7), however, are important going forward:



Yet, at the same time, three findings in the report come close to violating the ‘no religious test for employees of the government’ clause in the Constitution:

Finding 2.3: DoD standards for denying requests for recognition as an ecclesiastical endorser of chaplains may be inadequate…. This limited authority to deny requests for designation as ecclesiastical endorsers could allow undue improper influence by individuals with a propensity toward violence…..

Finding 2.7: DoD policy regarding religious accommodation lacks the clarity necessary to help commanders distinguish appropriate religious practices from those that might indicate a potential for self-radicalization….

Finding 4.9: The lack of published guidance for religious support in mass casualty incidents hampers integration of religious support to installation emergency management plans.

While it seems on the surface perfectly practical given the state of the world and the reality of Islamic terrorism, ignoring our Constitution can’t be the reaction to a tragedy like this. Because the next group they put limitations on may be one more broadly followed by Americans. First they came for…

Additional Sources

New York Post Op-Ed
Act! for America
Religious Clause Blog
Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Reaction

Discussion

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“Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” -Sun Tzu

Another TFL & Medicare Email

An article that appeared on January 9th on GOPUSA has been picked up by Tea Party sites and forwarded as a viral email raises once again the issue of TFL and retiree health care. Unfortunately, the piece contains scare tactics and assumptions, and paints military organizations in a bad light. The MOAA response is listed below in full from our Director of Government Relations.

The Email

Subject: TriCare For Life & Medicare
Military Retirees, Victims of a Congressional Shell Game

Military piece by Thomas D. Segel Harlingen, Texas, January 9, 2010

Military retirees are very close to losing their hard won Tricare for Life health insurance…and it is their own fault. The sad truth about military retirees is they usually fail to respond when their rights are violated or their futures placed in jeopardy. When viewing voting constituencies, the most dossal and inactive people are found among the retired military members and their dependents.

Any politician engaged in the deceitful practices of Washington D. C. knows one of the easiest targets to attack is the retired military community. Politicians view this group as the least harmful of any who make up the ranks of the voting public. They place those who served in uniform at the top of their least harmful list, thus making them political targets whenever there is a search being conducted to show the public what the political elite call meaningful dollar savings.

There are some strong military retiree advocates who are speaking out on the dangerous situation facing their former comrades-in-arms. One of these is Colonel Wayne Morris, USMC (Ret), who says, “We know that nothing is safe right now when considering the ongoing efforts of the current administration especially in any and all areas aligned with health care! Military retirees will quickly become a ‘soft target’ for those who would take away from one group and give to another.

I personally see a marked effort on the part of the current administration to divide us on this issue – to cause those who are NOT military retirees, (even those now on active duty) to eventually play against us and the benefits we have thus far been able to retain.”In support of this idea, the colonel points out there are some ‘so-called’ veteran support organizations already advising retirees to calm down and not worry about our health benefits.

These groups are telling the veterans that Tricare for Life benefits are safe and that retirees have nothing to worry about. The falseness of such statements can be understood when it is realized that under current legislative plans Medicare will be cut by $500 billion and Tricare for Life is linked solidly to Medicare.

Doing the math anyone can see that such a devastating cut in services and benefits to Medicare would mean similar cuts in Tricare for Life.Additional searching into this healthcare legislation will reveal that, as now drafted, new healthcare rules would require our advanced aged military retirees on Medicare and Tricare for Life to pay the fist $525 of medical costs for the beneficiary and identical costs for any dependent.

The retiree would then pay 50% of the next $4,725 of medical charges up to a total of $6,301 per year. This is the additional financial load our Congress will place on those who have already given twenty and more years of service to their country. Many of who left their blood and body parts on the fields of battle.The Washington version of the old Shell Game has already started. This is a confidence trick where three shells and a pea are used in what is claimed to be a gambling game.

Actually, as the shells are shifted from position to position, the pea is removed from the table…and the player ends up picking NOTHING. In the 2,000 plus page Obamacare health insurance bill, congressional lackeys tell us time and again that Tricare for Life is protected. But hey keep shifting those shells. The service organizations have already swallowed the snake oil and are echoing administration claims that TFL is safe. They have already bought into the Shell Game.

We also know everyone in the Democrat Congress is keeping those shells moving and not letting us see that pea. The end result will be another case of “nothing is too good for those who served in uniform”…and that is what they will get. NOTHING!

Response from MOAA’s Legislative team

Much of the specific information in his message is patently untrue. The TFL changes he mentions are not, repeat NOT, in the current health care reform bill.

What he describes was one option in a list of options prepared by the Congressional Budget Office more than a year ago…well before the current administration took office.

That idea didn’t go anywhere – as we predicted it wouldn’t. It never appeared in any legislation anywhere on the Hill, and was never supported by anyone in the Administration or Congress.

Further, we would never say there’s nothing to worry about on military health care. Of course there is. The ongoing budget pressures (which will only get bigger with mounting deficits) will create tremendous pressures in 2010 and beyond to cut all kinds of federal spending. There’s a lot of talk about setting up an entitlements commission to review changes needed to preserve the financial viability of Medicare and Social Security when millions of baby boomers become eligible for those programs in the coming decade.

I believe there will be such a commission, and once it starts reviewing possible Social Security and Medicare changes, it will inevitably lead to review of possible changes for military and federal retirement, military and federal health care, military and federal survivor benefits, VA benefits, etc., etc., just as we saw during the last budget/deficit crunch in the early and mid-90s. We had a huge fight to dodge most of those proposals back then, and it will be a much bigger challenge in light of the much bigger deficits we face now.

But there’s a vast difference between being (a) alert to potential coming threats and (b) claiming that those threats are embodied in current legislation – which they’re not. There are some smoke and mirrors issues in the current legislation – as there is in almost any big bill Congress passes, and there are some things to keep an eye on in the future (such as assumptions that Medicare and its providers will achieve some pretty optimistic “efficiency” goals in the coming years). But most of the changes to Medicare in the current health reform legislation are actually relatively modest and pretty doable ones. The real problem is that those savings will be used to fund health care for the current uninsured rather than to build the Medicare bank to meet the coming expenses of the baby boomers. So when the boomer tide hits, Congress will have to come up with far more significant cuts or tax increases to meet that need, because the relatively easier savings options will have been used up.

So there’s a reason to be worried, but it’s difficult to put much stock in most opinions being passed around the internet about the health care bills, because most start from a highly partisan standpoint, and many just pass on pieces of misinformation that have long since been proven untrue – as in this case.

Unfortunately, once such things get out on the internet, they acquire a life of their own, and well-intentioned people pass them on and help perpetuate the misinformation.

Steve Strobridge
Colonel, USAF (Ret)
Director, Government Relations

Discussion

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“Let the great world spin for ever down the ringing grooves of change.” – – Alfred Lord Tennyson

Truth Sandwich

It is a commonly used managerial technique – if you have a piece of bad news to tell someone, you first fit the bad part in between two notes of praise. Truth on the internet can sometimes be like this technique. Give some misinformation, ground it in an actual event that you can link someone to, then hammer home the intended message. This new email is about a true event – an update to an Executive Order which granted full diplomatic immunity status to members of INTERPOL – turned in to a propaganda platform that plays loose with reality.

The Email

Read and Weep For Your Country . .

The White House
Office of the Press Secretary
For Immediate Release
December 17, 2009

Executive Order — Amending Executive Order 12425
EXECUTIVE ORDER
- – - – - – -
AMENDING EXECUTIVE ORDER 12425 DESIGNATING INTERPOL AS A PUBLIC INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION ENTITLED TO ENJOY CERTAIN PRIVILEGES, EXEMPTIONS, AND IMMUNITIES

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including section 1 of the International Organizations Immunities Act (22 U.S.C. 288), and in order to extend the appropriate privileges, exemptions, and immunities to the International Criminal Police Organization (INTERPOL), it is hereby ordered that Executive Order 12425 of June 16, 1983, as amended, is further amended by deleting from the first sentence the words “except those provided by Section 2(c), Section 3, Section 4, Section 5, and Section 6 of that Act” and the semicolon that immediately precedes them.

BARACK OBAMA
THE WHITE HOUSE,
December 16, 2009.

In the dead of night on December 17, 2009, President Barack Hussein Obama placed the United States of America under the authority of the international police organization known as INTERPOL, granting the organization full immunity to operate within the United States.
Last Thursday, December 17, 2009, The White House released an Executive Order “Amending Executive Order 12425.” It grants INTERPOL (International Criminal Police Organization) a new level of full diplomatic immunity afforded to foreign embassies and select other “International Organizations” as set forth in the United States International Organizations Immunities Act of 1945.
By removing language from President Reagan’s 1983 Executive Order 12425, this international law enforcement body now operates – now operates – on American soil beyond the reach of our own top law enforcement arm, the FBI, and is immune from Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) requests.
What, exactly does this mean? It means that INTERPOL now has the full authority to conduct investigations and other law enforcement activities on U.S. soil, with full immunity from U.S. laws such as the Freedom of Information Act and with complete independence from oversight from the FBI.
In short, a global law enforcement entity now has full law-enforcement authority in the U.S. without any check on its power afforded by U.S. law and U.S. law enforcement agencies.

A bit of background is in order here, and Hot Air provides it:
During his presidency, Ronald Reagan granted the global police agency Interpol the status of diplomatic personnel in order to engage more constructively on international law enforcement. In Executive Order 12425, Reagan made two exceptions to that status. The first had to do with taxation, but the second was to make sure that Interpol had the same accountability for its actions as American law enforcement — namely, they had to produce records when demanded by courts and could not have immunity for their actions.
Barack Obama unexpectedly revoked those exceptions in a change to EO 12425 last (week)…
Thus, Interpol now can conduct its operations on U.S. soil with ZERO accountability to anyone in this country.
And you beginning to understand now just what the ‘end game’ is on the part of those who are currently running the U.S. Government?
Let’s go a step further in fleshing out exactly what this means in practical terms. It gets ugly…and scary. Again, from ThreatsWatch:
Section 2c of the United States International Organizations Immunities Act is the crucial piece.
Property and assets of international organizations, wherever located and by whomsoever held, shall be immune from search, unless such immunity be expressly waived, and from confiscation. The archives of international organizations shall be inviolable.
Inviolable archives means INTERPOL records are beyond US citizens’ Freedom of Information Act requests and from American legal or investigative discovery (”unless such immunity be expressly waived.”)
Property and assets being immune from search and confiscation means precisely that. Wherever they may be in the United States. This could conceivably include human assets – Americans arrested on our soil by INTERPOL officers.
Why would INTERPOL be arresting American citizens on our own soil, without oversight from our own law enforcement agencies? And remember, citizens who are thusly arrested would have no legal authority to demand full documentation from the International Police concerning the charges brought against them.
Andy McCarthy at National Review asks these crucial, sobering questions of the secretive Obama order:
Why would we elevate an international police force above American law? Why would we immunize an international police force from the limitations that constrain the FBI and other American law-enforcement agencies? Why is it suddenly necessary to have, within the Justice Department, a repository for stashing government files which, therefore, will be beyond the ability of Congress, American law-enforcement, the media, and the American people to scrutinize?
At least one answer to these questions is very clear. A coup is underway in the United States of America, the goal of which is to establish complete, unquestioned authority over the citizens–a ‘fundamental change’ to the United States where citizens have no legal recourse against an authoritarian central government.
Don’t believe me ? From the White House website http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/executive-order-amending-executive-order-12425

Continue Reading »

“The lowest form of popular culture – lack of information, misinformation, disinformation, and a contempt for the truth or the reality of most people’s lives – has overrun real journalism. Today, ordinary Americans are being stuffed with garbage.” – Carl Bernstein, “Guardian” (London)”, June 3, 1992

MediaMatters.org has named Fox News host their ‘Misinformer of the Year‘. Putting aside the fact that ‘Misinformer’ isn’t a real word, the article is worth a look, but also keep in mind that Media Matters is a left wing publication and very focused on Fox News. I only bring it to your attention because the article lists a good number of topics and issues that we’ve tackled on this blog this year, with an extensive list of supporting documents to support their ‘award’.

Continue Reading »

BotB Verdict

Summary

Although the words attributed to President Obama in the chain email below are completely false and have already been debunked here, there has been a new iteration with additional packaging that has gained some traction. While the commentary is new, the quotes are still just a fabrication, originally written in a satirical column.

The Current Iteration

THIS HAS GOT TO BE THE MOST OUTRAGEOUS STATEMENT EVER MADE BY A PUBLIC OFFICIAL LET ALONE BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES. AND THIS GUY IS OUR “COMMANDER IN CHIEF”. HE IS A DISGRACE.

UNBELIEVABLE PRESIDENT??? HERE IS HIS RESPONSE WHEN HE BACKED OFF FROM HIS DECISION TO REQUIRE THE MILITARY PAY FOR THEIR WAR INJURIES.

WHAT AN EMPTY HEADED PERSON HE MUST BE….

Bad press, including major mockery of the plan by comedian Jon Stewart, led to President Obama abandoning his proposal to require veterans carry private health insurance to cover the estimated $540 million annual cost to the federal government of treatment for injuries to military personnel received during their tours on active duty. The President admitted that he was puzzled by the magnitude of the opposition to his proposal.



“Look, it’s an all volunteer force,” Obama complained. “Nobody made these guys go to war. They had to have known and accepted the risks. Now they whine about bearing the costs of their choice? It doesn’t compute..” “I thought these were people who were proud to sacrifice for their country, “Obama continued “I wasn’t asking for blood, just money. With the country facing the worst financial crisis in its history, I’d have thought that the patriotic thing to do would be to try to help reduce the nation’s deficit. I guess I underestimated the selfishness of some of my fellow Americans.”

Please pass this on to every one including every vet and their families whom you know. How in the world did a person with this mindset become our leader? I didn’t vote for him!!!

REMEMBER THIS STATEMENT… “Nobody made these guys go to war. They had to have known and accepted the risks. Now they whine about bearing the costs of their choice?”



If he thinks he will ever get another vote from an Active Duty,Reserve, National Guard service member or veteran of a military service he ought to think it over.. If you or a family member is or has served
their country please pass this to them.

Please pass this to everyone. I’m guessing that other than the 20-25 percent hardcore liberals in the US will agree that this is just another example why this is the worst president in American history. remind everyone over and over how this man thinks, while he bows to the Saudi Arabian king.

Origins

As previously reported, the quotes attributed to President Obama are directly from a 28 March blog post from John Semmons, whose column Semi-News — A Satirical Look at Recent News appears in the Arizona Conservative, a web community of bloggers. The quotes in question were made up, of course, and the writing is nothing but satire. Here is the direct link

Alterations from Original Email

Besides the fake quotes, the only thing piece that remains from the original email is the paragraph that starts with ‘Bad press, including major…’. Everything else, from the ‘Outrageous statement’ to calling the president ‘an empty headed person’, to the call for action of sending the email to everyone you know is new. Also new are the two pictures, obviously intended to accentuate the snobbish persona that he has been saddled with since he was a nominee for president.

One iteration also added the following to the article as an intro:

Most people will say this article is BS, so do me a favor and let your fingers do the walking over the key-board and research this, don’t be surprised at what you find.

Please do. In addition to our article, and the link to the obviously satirical piece, here are some additional resources that will help you find the truth of the matter:

Snopes Page
TruthorFiction Page
Fact Check Page
Media Matters Page

If you search Google using only the quotes only, you’ll find the above pages plus a ton of message board and blog postings that repeat the lies, most without any dissent or corrections. Unfortunate, but that’s the way the internet works…

No matter what your personal views of President Obama are, he is no doubt a clever politician. And the golden rule of politics is never insult the troops. Common sense should come in to play here.

Discussion

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