Showing posts with label military. Show all posts
Showing posts with label military. Show all posts

Saturday, September 19, 2020

Further Proof of Donald Trump's Unorthodox Military Prowess

     
    It's absolute military genius! And only Donald Trump could discover it.

    President Trump has exposed a critical flaw in our military’s thinking. In discussing forest fire management, he revealed that soldiers don’t need hand-held explosives. 

Young, brittle trees prove to be more deadly than a mine or a grenade.

Every forest has downed trees. All a soldier needs to do is find a few that are about 18 months old and dry. They blow up...on contact, by handling, when dropped, the president wasn’t clear on that...but they do explode. So, we don’t need to spend millions on high-tech explosives any further. Just make sure our military fights in forests. They can blast the enemy at will. Of course, the enemy will have access to the same tree source so it may set off a forest arms race. But now we have a jump on stockpiling dry trees for future battles.  

Trump considers ordering conversion of the U.S. Navy to the U.S. Tree Force

Granted, this doesn’t benefit the Navy, the Air Force, the Coast Guard, or even Space Force. But when we have to confront ISIS or other Islamic terrorist groups not known for fighting in forests, we can’t let our guard down. It’s best to stay near forests with lots of young, dry, fallen trees as weapons.  

This is why Donald Trump is the Commander-in-Chief of the United States Armed Forces! Who can deny it now? 


Saturday, September 14, 2019

Lest We Forget - Donald Trump Memories

         This is a small example of how much 'respect' for our military Trump has. Does our military matter to him at all? Well, when he takes $3.6 billion out of the Defense Department budget that was meant to help our military and their families in order to stroke his ego with his vanity wall project, what do you think? Trump doesn't care. To him, our military budget = Mexico. Trump's comment at the top, from a Howard Stern radio show, gives you all the insight you need to determine Trump's regard for our military. What happened in Vietnam is the same as avoiding STDs from all the unprotected vaginas Trump managed to assault in the 70s and 80s.  And when you're a star, they let you do it... Just in case anyone in the GOP forgot.

Friday, January 25, 2019

Trump Sucks at Being President

TRUMP CAVES IN

The longest government shutdown in history has ended.

It lasted this long because...

Trump sucks at negotiating.

Trump announced his 'short-term' end to the shutdown - but gets no wall-funding. He gets NOTHING! So 800,000 federal workers had to be financially harmed and our nation's safety jeopardized...for Trump's NOTHING!
Remember how well he negotiated with Russia? Neither do I. But Russia has notes on every meeting Putin has had with Trump. Putin can say whatever he wants about what is in them and what Trump agreed to.
Remember what a detailed and thorough deal Trump signed with Kim Jong Un? Me either. Trump claimed he had ended the North Korean nuclear threat, then last week the Defense Dept. released new information that the Kim regime has opened at least 20 new nuclear missile launch sites since June 2018. Satellite photos confirm their existence.

Trump sucks at press briefings.

That’s why he now does them within a few yards of running helicopter engines, shouts answers to questions he hasn’t been asked, repeats himself, and walks away every time he’s asked for his source material or details about something.

Trump sucks at military matters, too.

The loss of General Jim Mattis and Gen. H. R. McMaster. The disgust of reputable retired military people like General McChrystal and Admiral McRaven.
Six days into his presidency, with little thought about the mission and what was to be accomplished, Trump ordered the SEAL team attack on Yemen in Jan. 2017 that killed CPO Owens, wounded at least three others, a $75 million dollar aircraft was destroyed and the mission yielded absolutely nothing according to the Defense Dept.
Four Green Berets are killed in Niger Oct. 4, 2017. Chadian troops fighting ISIS sympathizers pulled out of Niger after Trump arbitrarily included Chad in his Muslim travel ban. ISIS floods back into Niger, where lightly armed US troops are sent along with Niger soldiers into an ambush. No directive is issued on what the mission is to accomplish, there is no backup, no air support, and no extraction plan. And Trump couldn't bother telling the public for 12 days then he lied about contacting the families of those KIA when he hadn’t done any such thing.
Trump ordering the pull-out of US troops in Syria without consulting the Pentagon, the Dept. of Defense, or any of the generals. 
And remember, on Veterans Day, Trump sat in the White House and did absolutely nothing, no visit to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, no laying a wreath, no visit to Arlington, no visit to Veterans hospitals or even a VFW hall. But to be fair, I guess those bone spurs can act up and prevented him from doing stuff at the most inopportune times.

Trump sucks at choosing “the best people”.

Roger Stone, Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort, Michael Cohen, Scott Pruitt, Tom Price, Ryan Zinke, Jeff Sessions, David Shulkin, Rob Porter, John Kelly, Roy Moore, Scaramucci, and all the “fine people” on the side of the Nazis and the KKK in Charlottesville, Va. Can Trump pick them or what?

Trump sucks at running the government

To date, over 3,000 positions within the government have still not been filled because Trump has not submitted or approved any names.
He ‘works’ barely 3 hours a day…if that. His own time schedule shows he arrives in the Oval Office at the earliest around 11:00, and is out of there by 4…with an hour for lunch and another hour or two of ‘executive' (meaning TV) time included.
He's never read the Constitution all the way through, so it's no wonder he doesn't understand the office of the presidency.
When he couldn’t get Mexico to honor his campaign pledge to pay for the wall, he decided American taxpayers should cough up the money. When the answer was no, he threw a fit and shut down the government. Let's face it...

Trump sucks at being president.

Saturday, May 28, 2016

JFK Assassination fallout - Liars-in-Chief

What if...?

          May 29, 2016 marked the 99th birthday of John F. Kennedy. He probably wouldn't have lived that long but the history of the past 53 years would be vastly different if he had not been murdered. Thanks to his assassination we have been cursed with a parade of Liars-in-Chief holding the highest office in the land.
          When the American people allowed whoever it was that killed JFK to get away with his murder, the killers and those who supported them realized they could lie to us and we wouldn’t do anything about it.  
          I prefer to say things up front. John F. Kennedy WAS killed by a conspiracy, and the people who carried it out are still being protected by elements within our government…the FBI, the CIA, and the military. Lee Oswald didn’t kill anyone on November 22, 1963…not Tippit and not Kennedy. However, he has been vilified since then as the lone nut assassin. He was silenced by Jack Ruby so that the blame could be pinned on him without any recourse or anyone challenging it. He was exactly what he shouted in the halls of the Dallas Police Department, “I’m just a patsy”.  

The liars saw it and said that it was good.

          Are you satisfied with the course our country has taken since November 22, 1963? Kennedy’s death led to one liar after another holding the office of presidency. If any of these men had been Pinocchio, there wouldn’t have been enough wood available to keep extending their nose. Look at just a few examples of each:
None of these men would have become president if JFK had not been assassinated

          Lyndon Johnson will forever be remembered as the liar who pushed the Gulf of Tonkin resolution which was used to justify the American military buildup in South Vietnam and a war that killed over 58,000 U.S. soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines, nurses...and over a million Vietnamese.
          Richard Nixon lied about a secret plan to end the war in Vietnam to get elected, then illegally invaded Laos and Cambodia while lying to cover it up…and lied about virtually everything else until he resigned.
          Gerald Ford lied about what was in the Warren Commission testimonials. He knew the truth because he was ON the commission but still lied to protect the predetermined solution to the murder...that Oswald was the sole assassin.
          Jimmy Carter lied about being a “nuclear physicist and a peanut farmer.” He was neither: he held only a bachelor’s degree, and he owned a peanut warehouse.
          Ronald Reagan's lies started before he even got into office. Remember his famous “There you go again” line to Carter at the debate on October 28, 1980? Carter had just accused Reagan of being against Medicare and Social Security. Carter was right and Reagan was wrong, Reagan had recorded a record album in the 1960s opposing Medicare and Social Security because he claimed it was leading us down a socialist path. But Reagan got away with it because he got a laugh from the line. He also lied about the illegal war in Nicaragua that he initiated, the Iran-Contra deal, his environmental policies…the list goes on.
          George H.W. Bush – remember “read my lips, no new taxes”? He then passed the biggest tax increase in our nation’s history to that date. Also, unlike 99% of Americans alive then, Bush says he can't recall where he was the day Kennedy was shot, (even though there’s a picture of him standing outside the Texas School Book Depository that afternoon). I guess CIA agents don’t need to have reliable memories.
George H.W. Bush chats with other CIA and FBI agents while police sweep the TSBD.

          Bill Clinton lied about his numerous extra-marital affairs; even going so far as to try to redefine what “is” is during the run up to possible impeachment proceedings. Of course, when smoking pot, he didn't inhale, either.
          George W. Bush – lied about the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and dragged the U.S. into two wars.
          During a Joint session of congress in 2009 discussing health care reform, Barak Obama said: "There are also those who claim that our reform effort will insure illegal immigrants. This, too, is false – the reforms I'm proposing would not apply to those who are here illegally." In a breach of decorum South Carolina congressman Joe Wilson pointed at Obama and shouted, "You lie!" twice. But Wilson was right. Numerous cases have turned up where illegal immigrants had no problem getting on the Affordable Care Act. Obama even got MIT Professor Jonathan Gruber to identify the American voters as stupid people for passing the act. Not a lie per se, but a serious misjudgment.
          This is what our chief executives regularly pull off because it has become "part of the job"..  
          In November 2013 CNN even did a story about how and why presidents lie: http://www.cnn.com/2013/11/24/politics/presidents-lie/
          As if that makes it okay.

If the president's lips are moving, he's lying.

          Lying now defines American politics and presidents. They consistently lie because the U.S. government, to this day, continues to lie about the Kennedy assassination. Lying did not start there; it just became accepted and expected from that point on. It set a precedent that the liars in our government continue to build on.
          As long as we let the assassination lies and the liars who maintain it continue to rot American history and politics, our image around the world will sink lower and lower. We used to be considered “a shining beacon on a hill”. Now, thanks to lies that justify numerous wars we initiated or expanded since the JFK assassination, allow or encourage rampant CIA intrusions into foreign affairs, kill countless people the government gets to define as “bad”, and show callous disregard for the rights of other people or nations, we are the bully on the block...the rich, drunken, quarrelsome doofus that no one trusts.

      Are you pleased with what the U.S.A. has become?

          Then do something about it, because we are about to hold an election where we’ll have to choose from two more proven liars for the presidency.
They move in the same circles when they're not running against each other.

Thursday, February 12, 2015

American Sniper


I was at a salon recently having my hair trimmed when the stylist, in the midst of discussing how the cut would look, asked if I had seen the movie “American Sniper”. She was a white, middle-class, middle aged woman who didn’t appear to be the type who would like ‘war’ movies. Before I had a chance to answer, she said she had just seen it and thoroughly enjoyed it. The movie made her so proud to be an American, that the main character (Chris Kyle) was a real hero, and that we needed more like him. She added that she thought those who spoke out against the movie were un-American and were people who hated the U.S. in general and the American military in particular. I was waiting for her to call them communists or Muslim sympathizers, but she changed the subject when I responded that I hadn't seen it.
Nor do I intend to.

I had read Chris Kyle’s book and knew, based on what he said in his autobiography, that he was anything but heroic. He thought shooting people was fun and it was why he served four tours of duty in Iraq. The hair stylist talked about how brave Kyle was, how it showed what a family man he was because he missed his wife and children while serving overseas, and how the movie was an honest portrayal of a real American. Hogwash! That may have been in the movie, but that isn't what he wrote in his book.
Maybe he just ‘misremembered’ things, like NBC’s Brian Williams, but there were a lot of things Kyle lied about, not just in his book but also when he was interviewed on TV; his claim that he shot looters in New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, his gunning down two men who attempted to car-jack him at a gas station outside Dallas, his made-up story about punching out former Governor Jesse Ventura in a San Diego bar, his phony dedication to his family as he related to why he wanted to go back to Iraq…(it wasn't because he wanted to serve his country. It was because killing savages was fun!) All were investigated, some even went to court, and found to be untrue. Based on what was in his book, I wondered what this woman found heroic about him. I didn't ask her though because it was clear any response that questioned the authenticity of the movie would upset her…and she had scissors in her hands.

But I was curious; would she consider the people who executed death row inmates heroic? They were killing people who seemingly deserved it, just like Kyle claimed he did, and they at least had the bravery to face those they killed. How about the Japanese soldiers who hid in caves or trees and shot American soldiers and marines wading ashore during the invasions of Japanese islands such as Okinawa or Iwo Jima, or Japanese-controlled islands like Peleliu or Tarawa, knowing they would be blasted out of their sniper’s hideout? What about the 19 men aboard the airliners hijacked on 9/11? Were their actions heroic, especially in light of the fact that they knew ahead of time they would die? What constitutes a hero? It certainly isn’t shooting people from a rooftop a half a mile away.

I went online and found several websites that reviewed movies. I chose eight of them that had watched American Sniper and had video reviews longer than five minutes. I also read six reviews of the movie. Those fourteen covered the spectrum; from a one star rating, or didn't like it, to five stars and loved it. Every one of them said the movie only follows the book in the broadest sense of the term; it leaves out key elements that were essential to the story line, and that the movie made Kyle look far more sympathetic and conflicted than he actually wrote in the book.

Warfare has been a lifelong interest of mine, because it is a human-caused disaster. Human beings make a choice to go to war and kill other human beings. Unlike a hurricane, earthquake or volcanic eruption, it’s something that could have been avoided. I study the reasons it was not, the methods used to kill the enemy, the campaigns, and the people who are drawn in and changed by it. Heroic things can happen in wartime, but killing people is not heroic. It is barbaric and, frankly, little more than government-sanctioned murder. One of my main areas of study is aerial combat and the pilots who served, especially in World War One. I am deeply interested in why they chose such an unusual, novel, and in many ways terrifying way to fight. But none of them are my heroes. Nothing they did was heroic. It was their job. The concept of the ace simply meant they were very, very good at their job of killing. Some men did show noble characteristics, such as French ace Georges Guynemer, who refused to shoot down German ace Ernst Udet when he saw his guns were jammed. Or Captain James McCudden of the RFC, who would not ambush an opponent. In hindsight, those traits were probably court-martialable because the point was to prevent the enemy from achieving any future success. But these men decided they would not let war turn them into cold-blooded killers just because it could.
Some of the savages Chris Kyle wanted to kill

Chris Kyle showed no such inclination. He reveled in killing, calling any Iraqi a ‘savage’, whether they were ones he was about to shoot or not. He relished the competition with other snipers and found it motivated him to kill even more. Not because the enemy was a threat, but because someone was getting close to his number of kills. It’s eerily similar to the two Japanese officers whose competition during the Rape of Nanking China in 1937-38 was covered by Japanese newspapers like it was a sports match. The two officers had a ‘friendly’ rivalry to be the first to behead 100 captured Chinese.


Is this the kind of soldier we are turning out anymore? This is the legacy that the hair stylist found so fantastically American and worthy of her adulation. But the ‘American Sniper’ is how we are now viewed around the world. Some may think that it’s good, for others to fear us because we might show up in their country and shoot their citizens from distant rooftops. I think what it is doing is making the old notion of the ‘ugly’ American even uglier, more dangerous, and an evil influence in the world. That’s not a nation or a legacy to be proud of.