All hail our great military leader Donald Trump. The man who said no one is better at “the military” than he is. The man who said he knew more about ISIS than the generals and he even had a plan right then and there on how to destroy them. The man who, because of attending a military school, said "I always felt like I was in the military." Feeling like it and actually being it are two very different things, except in Trump's mind. He is also the man who, as late as October 2016, demeaned our military as weak, crumbling, and failing. The man who, when he had the opportunity to serve in our military in the mid-1960s and early 1970s, couldn't because he had a bone spur in his foot. When asked in 2015 which foot, he stammered and then said “It’s in the records. You’ll look it up in the records.” Does that sound like a man who actually had a bone spur…in either foot? It was only later he changed it to spurs (plural). And there is plenty of photographic proof that the bone spur didn’t stop Trump from doing ANYTHING else - other than serving his country.
But now that he's the Commander-in-Chief, despite that painful bone spur, he has the opportunity to show us how his military prowess is second to none and makes astoundingly perceptive and strong moves that showcase our military. Suddenly U.S. armed forces are the best in the world and getting so much better under his leadership. Here are just a few examples…
He sent Navy SEAL Team 6 to Ghayil in Yemen on January 28th and 29th to grab Al Qaeda’s number two man hiding there. Later the Defense Department said they were also to snatch any laptop computers and cell phones they could locate. But it turned out the SEALS were sent without a proper strategy in place, the necessary support, or an extraction plan. They ended up in a fight for their lives. When the raid was launched, Trump couldn’t even be bothered to be in the situation room. Instead, he was in a White House bedroom tweeting that he would be on the Christian Broadcasting Network that night and urged people to watch. Then at precisely the time Chief Petty Officer William Ryan Owens was dying, was Trump checking out what measures could be taken or how quickly Owens could be rescued? No. The time-stamp on his tweets shows he was deleting his previous message and resending it to correct the time – that folks could see it the next night. At no time did he give a damn about the men he sent in harm’s way. The following day, Trump declared the mission a huge success that gathered important information in the fight against terrorism.
Ghayil, Yemen after Trump's poorly planned raid
But U.S. military officials told Reuters the operation was a disaster. It was approved “without sufficient intelligence, ground support, or adequate backup preparations.” They returned with no cellphones, no computers, and no al-Qaeda operatives. It was also revealed that Central Command had initially denied any civilian casualties until Yemeni authorities began releasing grisly photos of mangled, dead children killed in the raid. Over 20 Yemeni civilians died, six Americans (not the original 3 as claimed by a military spokesman) were injured, a $75 million dollar OV-22 Osprey was destroyed, and of course, Owens was killed…all for nothing.
The late CPO William Ryan Owens - Bill Owens holds a photo of his son.
On February 26th, the Miami Herald published an article that Bill Owens, the father of William Owens, refused to meet with Trump on Feb. 1st when his son’s body was flown back to Dover Air Force base and issued a statement from his home in Miami saying “Don’t hide behind my son’s death to prevent an investigation…I want an investigation…the government owes my son an investigation.” To date, Trump has not authorized any review or investigation into the botched mission, nor is there any investigation being conducted by anyone in the military. Of course, that’s what great military leaders always do.
A beautiful piece of chocolate cake kept Trump from concentrating on tomahawk missiles aimed at Iraq...or was it Syria?
On April 6th, Trump authorized the U.S. Navy to launch 59 tomahawk cruise missiles at airfields and infrastructure in Syria. Congress was not notified to approve military action, nor do we know by what legal authority the US launched the strike. Later, the White House admits that the Russians were forewarned, and they promptly warned the Syrians who cleared out of the base. Trump said the strike was in the “vital national security interests of the U.S.” but then conceded on Sunday that it was an “impulsive action” prompted by a video earlier in the week of gassed children. Post-operation reconnaissance photos show several partially destroyed buildings, four destroyed aircraft in their shelters and 16 older jets around the airfield damaged. The runways were left completely intact. Syrian jets even use them later that morning for another bombing run on rebel-held territories in northern Syria. So how effective was this attack?
On April 6th, Trump authorized the U.S. Navy to launch 59 tomahawk cruise missiles at airfields and infrastructure in Syria. Congress was not notified to approve military action, nor do we know by what legal authority the US launched the strike. Later, the White House admits that the Russians were forewarned, and they promptly warned the Syrians who cleared out of the base. Trump said the strike was in the “vital national security interests of the U.S.” but then conceded on Sunday that it was an “impulsive action” prompted by a video earlier in the week of gassed children. Post-operation reconnaissance photos show several partially destroyed buildings, four destroyed aircraft in their shelters and 16 older jets around the airfield damaged. The runways were left completely intact. Syrian jets even use them later that morning for another bombing run on rebel-held territories in northern Syria. So how effective was this attack?
On April 13th, a MOAB (Massive ordinance air blast) is used for the first time in combat. It is a 21,600-pound air-dropped non-nuclear bomb with a blast radius of one mile. No Pentagon explanation is offered as to why this type of bomb was used, supposedly against an ISIS underground cave system in eastern Afghanistan (strangely, not Taliban or Al Qaeda positions.) Asked about it at a WH meeting Trump didn’t seem to know what it was but claimed he “authorized” it by allowing ‘his military’ to do what it needs to. The bomb had actually been authorized for use by the Obama administration. But Trump - being a military genius - took credit for its use and for U.S. military proficiency in dropping it. Without explaining how the numbers were arrived at, Defense Department officials said only ISIS fighters, first 36 and then upping it to 96, were killed, no civilians were harmed. It is later revealed that the information is wrong. At least two Afghani civilians, one a child, were also were killed in the blast. But Afghani children slain by a U.S. bomb won't generate Trump's outrage like gassed Syrian kids do. (Update April 21, due to a US military request, Afghan government officials have retracted their earlier statement that two civilians were killed by the MOAB blast.)
Trump is ignorant about where the USS Carl Vinson is while threatening Kim Jong-Un
And then we have the icing on that beautiful piece of chocolate cake. On April 11th as tensions with North Korea rose, Trump said on Fox News that he was “sending an armada, very powerful” to the Western Pacific. It was going to be saber-rattling at Kim Jong-Un and warning him that the U.S. was prepared to launch a pre-emptive strike on North Korean nuclear and military facilities. But photographs released by the Navy showed the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson and its escort ships sailing through the Sunda Strait between Sumatra and Java on Saturday, April 15, and later they are in the Indian Ocean conducting an exercise with the Australian navy. White House officials blamed the mix-up on the Defense Department, describing a glitch-ridden sequence of events, from a premature announcement of the deployment by the military’s Pacific Command to erroneous explanations by Defense Secretary Mattis and NSA Director H. R. McMaster, both of whom fed the false narrative that an American armada was racing toward the waters off North Korea. US Navy officials state “We made no such statement.” Mattis and McMaster are supposedly some of our best military minds.
Nothing will confound our enemies and reassure our allies more than bullshitting them at every opportunity. Make no mistake, our enemies are watching...gleefully. They are taking the measure of just how this administration operates.To the world, it appears this administration is either completely incompetent or the biggest pack of liars to ever be assembled in one location. And the Liar-in-Chief is Donald Trump. We are forced to trust this bumbling, amateurish, short-attention-span braggart with the nuclear codes. Until he is removed from office, I can’t sleep well at night. Neither should you.
Update April 20th: U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis addressed confusion over the aircraft carrier group on Wednesday, saying "The bottom line is, in our effort to always be open about what we are doing we said that we were GOING to change the Vinson's upcoming schedule. [No he didn't.] We don't generally give out ships schedules in advance but I didn't want to play a game either and say we were not changing a schedule when in fact we had.” The U.S. military's Pacific Command explained on Tuesday that the Carl Vinson strike group first had to complete a planned period of training with Australia, but it was now [April 19th]"proceeding to the Western Pacific as ordered.” This was an after-the-fact explanation; the subterfuge was just the Trump administration being 'transparent' according to Mattis.
Update April 20th: U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis addressed confusion over the aircraft carrier group on Wednesday, saying "The bottom line is, in our effort to always be open about what we are doing we said that we were GOING to change the Vinson's upcoming schedule. [No he didn't.] We don't generally give out ships schedules in advance but I didn't want to play a game either and say we were not changing a schedule when in fact we had.” The U.S. military's Pacific Command explained on Tuesday that the Carl Vinson strike group first had to complete a planned period of training with Australia, but it was now [April 19th]"proceeding to the Western Pacific as ordered.” This was an after-the-fact explanation; the subterfuge was just the Trump administration being 'transparent' according to Mattis.
