Category Archives: American Military

81 year old California Senator puts American lives in jeopardy around the world: interrogation report released

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CIA Political FootballDiane Feinstein Twit From BZProving that Diane Feinstein couldn’t care less about your sons or your daughters, serving in the military around the world.

Publicizing these details makes no sense.  No other country would even consider doing this: costing lives of your nationals.

Even John Kerry called up DiFi and said, “please don’t do this.”

This NOT a bi-partisan document or a bi-partisan release.  This is a last-gasp for attention by a doddering senator.  This will become nothing but propaganda fodder and will hurt our ability to acquire cooperation from other nations.  This will become a recruiting tool for terrorists.  These details do nothing but inflame Jihadists.  They harm national security interests.

Of what do I refer?  The report on enhanced interrogation by the US, released by the outgoing Chairman on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.  Are the Demorats out to smear the CIA and to dissuade/make a head-fake on other topics?  Like: Gruber’s testimony today?

The Demorats are doing nothing but attempting to smear where they can, because they have a Loser President and are trying to buttress “their” candidate for 2016, Hillary Rodham Clinton.  This is also their last chance slam on Bush before the transition to a GOP majority in the Senate.

This is nothing more than a deeply inflammatory report released whilst our young men and women, our troops, are physically in harm’s way around the globe.  This isn’t a matter of criminality, it’s a matter of US policy at the time.  There was Congressional blessing at the time and Congressional oversight.

From TheHill.com:

McCaskill: CIA report ‘would never happen in North Korea or China’

 by Martin Matishak

The release of a report on CIA enhanced interrogations techniques “would never happen” in less open and accountable nations, Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) said on Monday.
 
The assessment, which could be released as soon as Monday, “exposes what the world already knows, and that is that the United States engaged in torture,” McCaskill said during an interview with CBS.

“But my feeling about this is that this is a gut-check moment for our democracy. The world knows we tortured. But does the world know yet that we’ll hold up our values and hold our government accountable?” she said.
 
McCaskill added that the report “would never happen in North Korea or China or Russia. But in the United States, we hold our government accountable. And I think that process is so important, so fundamental to our democracy that it’s essential that this report comes out.”

The report is the result of a probe by the Senate Intelligence Committee into the CIA’s enhanced interrogations during the George W. Bush administration.

Futher, from USAToday.com:

Officials fear torture report could spark violence

by Erin Kelly

WASHINGTON — Federal officials braced for possible violence at U.S. facilities around the world as senators prepared to release a report Tuesday detailing the CIA’s torture of suspected terrorists in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.

“There are some indications that the release of the report could lead to a greater risk that is posed to U.S. facilities and individuals all around the world,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Monday. “So the administration has taken the prudent steps to ensure that the proper security precautions are in place at U.S. facilities around the globe.”

The Intelligence Committee is expected to release Tuesday a 500-page summary of a 6,200-page report on the the CIA’s use of waterboarding, sleep deprivation, humiliation and other “enhanced interrogation techniques” against al-Qaeda prisoners during the George W. Bush administration.

Diane Feinstein is Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.  She is in charge.  She determined if the report was released or not.  The report is here.

This is nothing but vengeance by an aging, doddering and outgoing 81-year-old US Senator.  Call her at (202) 224-3841, contact her on Twitter @SenFeinstein, or e-mail her.

Let her know that you are less than pleased with the release of the enhanced interrogations report.

She said: “Releasing this report is an important step to restoring our values and showing the world that we are a just society.”  It is also your final “getback” at Bush and the GOP.  What was the first thing your own Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel did in anticipation of the report’s release?  That’s correct, he put the US military on general alert, knowing the release would do nothing but stir the Middle East and terrorists.

Thanks so kindly, Feinstein.

BZ

P.S.

Overlooked in the “torture” report: how many terrorists were forced to burn alive, jump to their deaths, beheaded, received clitorectomies, or had hands severed from arms?  Right.  None.

 

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Oldest living US veteran: Rich Overton

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Oldest Living VeteranHe’s 108 years old.

And he smokes and drinks.

From YahooNews.com:

Richard Overton, America’s oldest living veteran, participated in the Veterans Day parade in Austin, Texas, on Tuesday, posing for selfies from the passenger seat of a slow-moving car along the parade route.

Chances are, the 108-year-old World War II veteran began the day like any other: on the porch, smoking a cigar, sipping a cup of coffee stiffened with whiskey.

“I drink whiskey in my coffee. Sometimes I drink it straight,” Overton told CNN last fall. “I smoke my cigars, blow the smoke out — I don’t swallow it.”

Overton, who was born on May 11, 1906, in Bastrop County, Texas, served three years in the U.S. Army, with stops in Hawaii, Guam, Palau and Iwo Jima.

Yeah.  Just a few insignificant stops along the way.

BZ

 

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Last crewman of the Enola Gay passes:

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Theodore VanKirk, Navigator On Enola GayFrom CBSNews.com:

Theodore VanKirk, last survivor of Enola Gay crew, dies

ATLANTA – The last surviving member of the crew that dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima has died in Georgia.

Theodore VanKirk, also known as “Dutch,” died Monday of natural causes at the retirement home where he lived in Stone Mountain, Georgia, his son Tom VanKirk said. He was 93.

VanKirk was the navigator of the Enola Gay, a B-29 Superfortress aircraft that dropped “Little Boy” – the world’s first atomic bomb – over the Japanese city of Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945. The bomb killed 140,000 in Hiroshima and 80,000 in Nagasaki three days later. VanKirk was 24 years old at the time.

A funeral service was scheduled for VanKirk on Aug. 5 in his hometown of Northumberland, Pennsylvania. He will be buried in Northumberland next to his wife, who died in 1975. The burial will be private.

Crew of the B-29 "Enola Gay"Like the bulk of The Greatest Generation, these men wanted no spotlights on themselves and rarely spoke of their exploits and conditions in WWII.  That is simply how they acted and existed, as issued from the factory.  Humble and quiet and efficient and patriotic.

The Enola Gay was recognized as the Silverplate Boeing B-29 Superfortress that dropped the first atomic bomb, “Little Boy,” on Hiroshima — August 6th of 1945.

Theodore VanKirk was a member of that crew.  In his dotage, he spoke to UK media here in 2010.

But what he said deserves to be reproduced here for the sake of historical posterity:

He is now a frail old man who spends his days tending his roses. Yet 65 years ago this Friday Theodore “Dutch” Van Kirk took part in a mission which changed the world forever.

Dutch was the navigator on Enola Gay, guiding the B-29 Superfortress bomber to a point 31,000ft above Hiroshima to deliver the deadliest weapon man had ever built.

More than 200,00 people were killed when the world’s first atomic bomb exploded. Yet 89-year-old Dutch, the last remaining survivor of Enola Gay’s flight crew, has never had any doubts that it was the right thing to do.

“Do I regret what we did that day? No, sir, I do not,” he says. “I have never apologised for what we did to Hiroshima and I never will. Our mission was to end the Second World War, simple as that.

“If we had not dropped that bomb, there is no way the Japanese would have surrendered. We would have had to invade the country and the death toll would have been truly unimaginable.

“They had been taught to fight to the last man and they would have fought us with sticks and stones. We did what we had to do. Not only to save American lives, but Japanese lives as well.”

Boeing B-29 "Enola Gay"We did what we needed to do when we needed to do it.  He said: I would do it again.

VanKirk confirms it.

The Bockscar and its crew applied the second atomic weapon to Nagasaki on August 9th, via “Fat Man.”

BocksCar B-29Truth and in full.

God bless you for your service, sir.

BZ

 

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The last manned jet fighter program for the United States of America?

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This is a great video.

Beware: this video is 1 hour and 53 minutes long.  But worth it.

An excellent insight.

But a false one.  There is no one aircraft that can be all things to all  and for all missions.  It is a Fool’s Game to think this, as John Boyd said so many years ago.  He called it “gold plating.”  John Boyd was a genius, and he was correct.  I would refer all of my readers to Robert Coram’s book “Boyd” for an amazing insight into an eccentric aeronautical genius who existed and fought before his time.

There is no one airframe that can please or fulfill all of the services: the USAF, the US Navy, the US Marines.  It hasn’t existed in the past and it doesn’t exist now.

With a nod to the future of unmanned and highly technological aircraft, these extreme airframes may become, in and of themselves, a form of Artificial Intelligence.

BZ

 

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