President Obama didn’t wait long after Tuesday’s devastating elections to give critics another reason to question his leadership, but this time the subject matter was more grim than a pair of governorships.
After news broke out of the shooting at the Fort Hood Army post in Texas, the nation watched in horror as the toll of dead and injured climbed. The White House was notified immediately and by late afternoon, word went out that the president would speak about the incident prior to a previously scheduled appearance. At about 5 p.m., cable stations went to the president. The situation called for not only his trademark eloquence, but also grace and perspective.
But instead of a somber chief executive offering reassuring words and expressions of sympathy and compassion, viewers saw a wildly disconnected and inappropriately light president making introductory remarks. At the event, a Tribal Nations Conference hosted by the Department of Interior’s Bureau of Indian affairs, the president thanked various staffers and offered a “shout-out” to “Dr. Joe Medicine Crow — that Congressional Medal of Honor winner.” Three minutes in, the president spoke about the shooting, in measured and appropriate terms….
Indeed, an argument could be made that Obama should have canceled the Indian event, out of respect for people having been murdered at an Army post a few hours before. That would have prevented any sort of jarring emotional switch at the event.
Did the president’s team not realize what sort of image they were presenting to the country at this moment? The disconnect between what Americans at home knew had been going on — and the initial words coming out of their president’s mouth was jolting, if not disturbing.
The president’s words may be calculated to say one thing, but his actions since day one regarding all things military, really leads me to believe he holds them in the lowest regards as one of America’s institutions.
Twelve people have been killed and 31 wounded in a shooting spree at a Texas military base by what officials believe was possibly carried out by an Army officer.
The suspected gunman was identified by ABC News as Major Malik Nadal Hasan.
The shooter was killed and two other suspects, who are also soldiers, have been apprehended, Lt. Gen. Robert W. Cone said.
The tragedy and the bloodshed impacted the President so deeply that he was only able to address the incident after he gave a few “shout outs”.
Since late this summer General Stanley McChrystal has been asking for more troops for Afghanistan lest we lose the war. Early last month those sentiments were expressed in a formal request for 40,000 additional troops. General Patraeus and Secretary of Defense Gates have publicly endorsed Gen. McChrystal’s request.
Since that time you have been considering whether or not to provide those troops and whether or not the use of those troops in a counter-insurgency strategy — similar to that employed in Iraq — is wise or not. If press reports are to be believed, then top members of your administration have serious doubts as to whether or not the strategy as outlined by Gen. McChrystal and endorsed by Gen. Patraeus and Sec. Gates will work.
Your inaction on this request speaks volumes and one can only draw one logical inference from it: you do not trust the judgment of Gen. Patraeus, Sec. Gates, or Gen. McChrystal.
If you trusted their expertise, then you would have immediately begun to implement their strategy.
Since it is glaringly obvious that you do not trust the judgment of your top commanders in the field or of your own Sec. of Defense, then why don’t you fire them?
If they are so wrong, then they should be fired.
Personally, I don’t think Obama has the stones in his shorts to fire anyone (his wife on the other hand…).
Obama has never had to do anything truly important that included personal responsibility and risk, that is why he is unable to make decisions.
It’s ‘Petraeus’ just in case your internal spellcheck rang.
On Friday, the Justice Department released reams of newly declassified documents on the CIA interrogation program. Among the documents is a revised, October 2009 version of the Justice Department Inspector General’s report on the FBI’s involvement in detainee interrogations.
This report proves, once and for all, that FBI interrogator Ali Soufan lied about his role in the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah.
Soufan has become the hero of the left for his public assault on the CIA interrogation program. Critics cite him as proof that we could have gotten the same information from al-Qaeda terrorists without resorting to the CIA’s enhanced interrogation techniques.
As a military brat, a Marine, and a civilian I have always distrusted the Democrat Party and their values.
Once again, they prove just how f’d up their priorities are:
Twice as many Democrats say health care reform should be President Obama’s top priority as say the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq should be his top concern, according to a new Gallup poll.
Gallup asked people this question: “Which of the following should be Barack Obama’s top priority as president — the economy, health care, the situations in Iraq and Afghanistan, energy, the federal budget deficit, or something else…?”
The numbers help explain Obama’s slowness in reaching a decision on what to do in Afghanistan. There simply aren’t very many people in the president’s party who believe the war should be his top priority — just half as many as those who say health care should be his top concern. When it comes to pressure for a decision coming from his own party, there just isn’t much.
When I see numbers like that I don’t see an explanation of Obama’s slowness. I see their attitude towards our military, their sacrifices and the what they really believe when it comes to helping others.
President Barack Obama has only been in office for just over nine months, but he’s already hit the links as much as President Bush did in over two years.
CBS’ Mark Knoller — an unofficial documentarian and statistician of all things White House-related — wrote on his Twitter feed that, “Today – Obama ties Pres. Bush in the number of rounds of golf played in office: 24.
Took Bush 2 yrs & 10 months.”
This news comes on the heels of today’s news that Obama played golf with a woman — chief domestic policy adviser Melody Barnes — for the first time since taking office.
NAWA, Afghanistan — Before a battalion of U.S. Marines swooped into this dusty farming community along the Helmand River in early July, almost every stall in the bazaar had been padlocked, as had the school and the health clinic. Thousands of residents had fled. Government officials and municipal services were nonexistent. Taliban fighters swaggered about with impunity, setting up checkpoints and seeding the roads with bombs.
In the three months since the Marines arrived, the school has reopened, the district governor is on the job and the market is bustling. The insurgents have demonstrated far less resistance than U.S. commanders expected. Many of the residents who left are returning home, their possessions piled onto rickety trailers, and the Marines deem the central part of the town so secure that they routinely walk around without body armor and helmets.
2. Freedom isn’t free, someone has to pay the price, and it might as well be you.
3. Things often get worse before they get worse.
4. No whining.
5. Take care of your own business.
6. Sometimes you just need to find your backbone to do the right thing.
7. People who do the right thing aren’t heroes, they are just doing the right thing.
8. You are probably not entitled to any thing you didn’t work for.
Major David G. Taylor
David was a soldier’s soldier who would not like this part of the service. He was mostly modest– he really was– and he believed that the best soldier was the soldier who fought quietly for his country–not out of any Hollywood styled sense of patriotism but rather because it was an inherent duty and part of his obligation as a citizen living in this country…
David once mentioned to me that there are those people who merely talk about America and our wonderful freedom, rights and privileges and then there are those who step up and put their money where their mouth is…;he simply believed that evil had to be challenged and somebody had to take the lead.
I wished more people lived a life based upon the same values as David’s.
While our Narcissus-in-Chief is frozen gazing at his perfect image in his private pool, choices have to be made in Afghanistan. Consider the following…
Senators diverted $2.6 billion in funds in a defense spending bill to pet projects largely at the expense of accounts that pay for fuel, ammunition and training for U.S. troops, including those fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to an analysis.
Among the 778 such projects, known as earmarks, packed into the bill: $25 million for a new World War II museum at the University of New Orleans and $20 million to launch an educational institute named after the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, Massachusetts Democrat.
While earmarks are hardly new in Washington, “in 30 years on Capitol Hill, I never saw Congress mangle the defense budget as badly as this year,” said Winslow Wheeler, a former Senate staffer who worked on defense funding and oversight for both Republicans and Democrats. He is now a senior fellow at the Center for Defense Information, an independent research organization.
I think the big story here is how little the Patriot Act has changed given the fact that we have a large majority of Democrats in the House and the Senate and how liberal the leadership is.
We’re retaining the roving wiretaps. We’re retaining the telecom immunity — the fact that the telecom industry is not going to be subject to prosecution for helping the Bush administration. We are retaining the lone wolf provision, which means you don’t have to show that a guy is a member of a group, a terror group, in order to wiretap him.
All the major provisions are retained. And as you said, the Obama administration behind the scenes is supporting the minimal — it’s supporting the idea of no changes.
And that’s a tribute to the Bush administration. Remember, this was passed a month-and-a-half after 9/11 in the heat and the fury of that time. It totally restructured the way we go after terrorism domestically, and it got it right.
Eight years afterwards, in retrospect, with liberals in the House and Senate, it is remaining almost intact. We have not had a second attack in the eight years and we have not had any significant scandals or abuse of these powers in violating the liberties of Americans. It is really quite a remarkable achievement.
Why does the White House want the military to keep quiet about Iranian connections to the Taliban? They want to keep enough political support in the US for direct talks with the mullahs. That support will evaporate if the military starts drawing clear connections between Tehran and the Taliban, especially with al-Qaeda as its ally in Pakistan.
Iran was at war with the US in Iraq. They are at war with us in Afghanistan. Iran does nothing but preach our demise and continues to flaunt their “peaceful” nuclear program in the face of the world.
American soldiers serving in Afghanistan are depressed and deeply disillusioned, according to the chaplains of two US battalions that have spent nine months on the front line in the war against the Taleban.
Granted this is a common feeling about being deployed in combat, however, we have the most pathetic excuse for a leader as our C-in-C we’ve ever had (yes, even Jimmah. Carter at least served his country and not just his community before taking the reigns).
Let’s take a short step back in time, when Obama tried to convince people he had a pair when it came to being a military leader.
His plan comes up short. There’s not enough troops, not enough resources and not enough urgency. What President Bush and Senator McCain don’t understand is that the central front in the War on Terror is not in Iraq and never was. The central front is in Afghanistan and Pakistan where the terrorists who hit us on 9-11 are still plotting attacks seven years later.
U.S. Marine Lance Corporal Brenton Rutter of Granite Road had one heck of a 20th birthday.
First, his family arranged a surprise party, but it was no ordinary gathering.
Rutter, who has been battling leukemia since 2007, just two years after graduating from Kingswood High School and enlisting in the U.S. Marines, was officially promoted to the rank of Corporal in a small ceremony on Oct. 1 at the family’s Granite Road home. It was a promotion that this highly regarded soldier earned back in 2007, but the ceremony was delayed after Rutter was diagnosed with then embarked on rigorous treatment for leukemia. A special surprise was a visit from the stem cell donor who helped save his life during treatment, Casey Caruso from Upton, Mass.
I love it when Nancy Pelosi and the other nancys in the Democrat party make themselves look a bunch of uninformed tools:
Democrats have found someone worth fighting in Afghanistan. His name is Stan McChrystal.The other night, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi went after the commander of U.S. and allied forces in Afghanistan, “with all due respect,” for supposedly disrespecting the chain of command. Around the Congressional Democratic Caucus, we’re told Members refer to General McChrystal as “General MacArthur,” after the commander in Korea sacked by Harry Truman.
White House aides have fanned these flames with recent leaks to the media that “officials are challenging” his assessment asking for more troops. In the last two days, the White House National Security Adviser and the Secretary of Defense have both suggested that the general should keep his mouth shut. President Obama called him in Friday for a talking-to on the tarmac at Copenhagen airport.
Though a decorated Army four-star officer, the General’s introduction to Beltway warfare is proving to be brutal. To be fair, Gen. McChrystal couldn’t know that his Commander in Chief would go wobbly so soon on his commitment to him as well as to his own Afghan strategy when he was tapped for the job in AprilWe’re told by people who know him that Gen. McChrystal “feels terrible” and “had no intention whatsoever of trying to lobby and influence” the Administration. His sense of bewilderment makes perfect sense anywhere but in the political battlefield of Washington. He was, after all, following orders…
The White House told the Pentagon to hold off asking for troops and Gen. McChrystal not to testify to Congress. Remarkably, President Obama mused on the Sunday talks shows, “Are we doing the right thing?”
Then Gen. McChrystal gave a speech last Thursday before the International Institute of Strategic Studies in London. It was scheduled and approved by the Pentagon weeks before the Afghan political jitters seized official Washington. The General was hardly incendiary.
The President’s very public waver is already doing strategic harm. The Taliban are getting a morale boost and claiming victory, while our allies in Europe have one more reason to rethink their own deployments. Such a victory, as the head of the British army Sir David Richards warned on Sunday, would have an “intoxicating effect” on extremist Islam around the world.
Commanders in Chief can change their minds. George W. Bush waited too long to embrace the “surge.” He had private doubts when the casualties also surged in 2007, but he gave the new approach a chance to succeed. Mr. Obama is blinking even before all the additional troops he ordered to Afghanistan have had time to deploy to the theater…
Gen. McChrystal’s liberal critics also have very short memories. In 2003, Army Chief of Staff General Eric Shinseki clashed with his superiors by saying many more troops were needed to pacify Iraq. He became a Democratic hero and is now Mr. Obama’s Veterans Secretary. In this case, Gen. McChrystal has become a political target merely for taking at face value Mr. Obama’s order to fight the war properly. His superiors, the Central Commander David Petraeus and Adm. Fallon, back him, but can hardly be said to question civil control of the military.
Greg Craig, the top in-house lawyer for President Barack Obama, is getting the blame for botching the strategy to shut down Guantanamo Bay prison by January — so much so that he’s expected to leave the White House in short order.
But sources familiar with the process believe Craig is being set-up as the fall guy and say the blame for missing the deadline extends well beyond him.
Instead, it was a widespread breakdown on the political, legislative, policy and planning fronts that contributed to what is shaping up as one of Obama’s most high-profile setbacks, these people say.
Yeah, let’s ignore the SpecOp general and listen to Joe Biden and some armchair generals. Way to go, Mr. President, your leadership is un-impressive, really, really terribly un-impressive:
‘This is not a war of choice,” Barack Obama told the Veterans of Foreign Wars on Aug. 17. “This is a war of necessity.
“Those who attacked America on 9/11 are plotting to do so again. If left unchecked, the Taliban insurgency will mean an even larger safe haven from which al-Qaida would plot to kill more Americans. So this is not only a war worth fighting. This is fundamental to the defense of our people.”
But that was nearly seven weeks ago. Now, it appears that Obama is about to ignore the advice of Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, whom he installed as commander in Afghanistan in May, after relieving his predecessor ahead of schedule.
The military general credited with capturing Saddam Hussein and killing the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, says he has spoken with President Obama only once since taking command in Afghanistan.
“I’ve talked to the president, since I’ve been here, once on a VTC [video teleconferece],” Gen. Stanley McChrystal told CBS reporter David Martin in a television interview that aired Sunday.
“You’ve talked to him once in 70 days?” Mr. Martin followed up.
“That is correct,” the general replied.
This revelation comes amid the explosive publication of an classified report written by the general that said the war in Afghanistan “will likely result in failure” if more troops are not added next year. Yet, the debate over health care reform continues to dominate Washington’s political discussions.
Former U.S. Ambassador for the United Nations John R. Bolton said this was indicative of Mr. Obama’s misplaced priorities.
On-The-Job training continues....
I think it’s very clear, and has been during last year’s campaign and in the eight months the president has been in office, that he just doesn’t regard foreign policy and national security as important as domestic issues, like reforming the health care system,” Mr. Bolton told the hosts of The Washington Times’ “America’s Morning News” on Monday.
He went on: “If you think there are no threats, then it’s not illogical to pay no attention to the rest of the world. The problem is in his [Obama’s] basic reading of the international environment where we do continue to face massive threats for international terrorists and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, among others.”
Clearly Obama is not a serious man and not CinC material, just like we told you he was.
The U.S. government failed to send promised college tuition checks to tens of thousands of veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars before they returned to school this fall, even after being warned that it was inadequately staffed for the job.
The Veterans Affairs Department blamed a backlog of claims filed for GI Bill education benefits that has left veterans who counted on the money for tuition and books scrambling to make ends meet.
They want to run health care, the car industry, banking, and just about everything else. I assure you, things will only get worse if Obama and the Democrats are allowed to do so.
A grand jury took just thirty minutes Wednesday to upgrade the charges against Troy West, the man accused of beating a woman in front of her 7-year-old daughter outside a Cracker Barrel restaurant, from three misdemeanors to a list of felonies.
At a hearing where the new charges were announced, a judge ordered West taken into custody and held without bond. He had been free on $5,000 on the misdemeanor charges.
The grand jury indicted West on new, felony charges of aggravated assault, false imprisonment, battery and disorderly conduct…
West, 47, is accused of kicking and punching Tashawnea Hill Sept. 9 as he screamed racial slurs outside a Cracker Barrel on Southlake Plaza Drive in Morrow, police said. West became enraged when Hill told him to be careful after he nearly hit her 7-year-old daughter while opening the restaurant’s door, police said.
“The man slung open the door pretty hard and fast and I had to push my daughter out of the way. I turned to the man and I just said, ‘Excuse me sir, you need to watch yourself you almost hit my daughter in the face.’ And from there it just went downhill,” said Hill.
West threw her to the ground and hit her in the head with his fists and feet, police said. During the exchange, witnesses said West could be heard screaming racial slurs at the victim.
“Then he punched me in my face,” said Hill. “And I fell to the ground and he proceeded to punch in my head and face.”
Many witnesses stepped up to assist police in the investigation by providing written statements as to the events that transpired. Cracker Barrel was also helpful to police in this investigation, Morrow police said.
Cracker Barrel officials gave investigators security camera video that shows the alleged attack, according to a statement released by Cracker Barrel officials Wednesday.
“The video shows how Cracker Barrel came to the victim’s aid, and that a Cracker Barrel manager put himself in harm’s way to provide aid to the victim,” the statement said.
Uncharacteristically, Obama showed some backbone and moral clarity against an enemy of America by ordering the attack that killed a wanted terrorist:
Ten days ago President Obama signed the Execute Order for Nabhan, who since 2006 was on the FBI’s list of most wanted terrorists. He was also wanted for the attacks on the U.S. Embassy in Kenya in 1998.
"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." - The 10th Amendment of the United States Constitution
In Helmand, a model for success?
