Military

Tonight in his post speech analysis, Chris Matthews declared Obama "went to maybe the enemy camp tonight" at West Point. The reactions to this senseless comment have been very strong. The left and right have been tweeting up a storm about it and Matthews better retract that statement or face certain outrage from not only the political junkies, but also the military.

There is still a lot of speculating going on, but the most reasonable sounding thing I have heard so far is this:

His cousin said Maj Hasan had been resisting such a deployment.

"He hired a military attorney to try to have the issue resolved, pay back the government, to get out of the military. He was at the end of trying everything," Nader Hasan told Fox News.

He also said that Nidal Malik Hasan had been battling racial harassment because of his "Middle Eastern ethnicity".

(emphasis added)

Even on The Today Show they were interviewing people who know Maj. Hasan and talked about how much he heard things like “sand nigger” or “terrorist” yelled at him.

While the right is trying to paint Hasan as some Islamic terrorist, just look at the guy. He was American born and just spent countless years going through school to become a Psychiatrist, MD. This wasn’t a man planning on doing something like this, this was a man who snapped.

So our question now is how to fix our relationship with Muslims. The military really needs to take a long, hard inner look at itself and come up with a way to limit incidents like this.

And the fix isn’t limited to the military alone – it also must include society. For example, look at this:

Here we have a guy who went on a rampage, and so far the one of the leading reasons is that he was constantly harassed about his ethnicity and religious beliefs, and then you add in a big voice of the right making wild claims like this. This isn’t a solution – it’s asking for more of the same.

Luckily Maj. Hasan is still alive. Now maybe we can get a better idea of what was going through his mind when he decided this was the route to take. Hopefully we can use that as a teaching moment also and try to instill a better sense of tolerance in both our military and society as a whole.

This could be a make or break moment for President Obama. How he takes the lead on this will really define him not only as our President, but also as a man. We can’t afford any cover-up of what really happened. We need full transparency here and for our Commander in Chief to insure the changes needed to help prevent future events like this from happening. The coming weeks and months should prove to be rather interesting as this story continues to unravel.

That was President Obama sneaking out last night to witness the return of our fallen troops. How many times did Bush did this in either of the wars that he started?

The dramatic image of a president on the tarmac was a portrait not witnessed in years. Former President George W. Bush spent lots of time with grieving military families but never went to Dover to meet the remains coming off the cargo plane. Obama did so with the weight of knowing he may soon send more troops off to war.

NONE! This is the difference between a Commander in Chief and a war mongering idiot.

Talk about being beat to the punch:

Uruguay is moving to lift a ban on homosexuals joining the armed forces.

The defense ministry confirms that Minister Jose Bayardi has signed a decree lifting the ban imposed by the 1973-85 military dictatorship.

The army said Wednesday it has received the decree, which has yet to be signed by President Tabare Vazquez.

The law had barred people with what it called "open sexual deviations" from entering the military academies.

It includes homosexuality among the "mental illnesses and disorders" that make a person unsuitable to join the armed forces.

The new decree states that sexual orientation will no longer be considered a reason to prevent people entering the military.

So when will the U.S. be making the same kind of news?

When we were talking about the stimulus bill the GOP’s biggest talking point was that “the government doesn’t create jobs”. As a little refresher, here’s Michael Steele saying just that in February:

My how time changes things, even if its only two months. Now that there is a new military budget out there, one that’s cutting costly boat anchors like the F-22 Raptor program, now the right is out there going crazy asking about all the jobs that will be lost.

Yesterday Paul Krugman called out the GOP on these failed talking points.

(h/t Think Progress)

(photo credit: Reuters)

Finally Americans get to bear witness to some of the costs of war:

The arrival of remains of Staff Sgt. Phillip A. Myers, a 30-year-old supporting Operation Enduring Freedom, at Dover Air Force Base at 11 p.m. today marked the first time that the transfer of any of the nearly 5,000 U.S. troops who have died in Iraq and Afghanistan was open to the media.

Last night I heard some right winger on CNN saying how this was so disrespectful to the family, and that will be their talking point. They forget that the family has to approve this. For some families its a mechanism to cope, while others feel it helps show the country what war really is. It doesn’t matter the reason, it only matters that the family gets to decide, and some right winger who champions for war but never fights has no right to tell them otherwise.

Hopefully Obama will take a look at this once he takes office:

The U.S. military expects to have 20,000 uniformed troops inside the United States by 2011 trained to help state and local officials respond to a nuclear terrorist attack or other domestic catastrophe, according to Pentagon officials.

The long-planned shift in the Defense Department's role in homeland security was recently backed with funding and troop commitments after years of prodding by Congress and outside experts, defense analysts said.

There are critics of the change, in the military and among civil liberties groups and libertarians who express concern that the new homeland emphasis threatens to strain the military and possibly undermine the Posse Comitatus Act, a 130-year-old federal law restricting the military's role in domestic law enforcement.

But the Bush administration and some in Congress have pushed for a heightened homeland military role since the middle of this decade, saying the greatest domestic threat is terrorists exploiting the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

Before the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, dedicating 20,000 troops to domestic response -- a nearly sevenfold increase in five years -- "would have been extraordinary to the point of unbelievable," Paul McHale, assistant defense secretary for homeland defense, said in remarks last month at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. But the realization that civilian authorities may be overwhelmed in a catastrophe prompted "a fundamental change in military culture," he said.

The Pentagon's plan calls for three rapid-reaction forces to be ready for emergency response by September 2011. The first 4,700-person unit, built around an active-duty combat brigade based at Fort Stewart, Ga., was available as of Oct. 1, said Gen. Victor E. Renuart Jr., commander of the U.S. Northern Command.

It sounds like a good idea, but it is something that can be easily abused by the wrong leader. Good thing that wrong leader is leaving office next month, but hopefully Obama will look close at it and impose some safeguards so future leaders don’t abuse it.

While our economy continues to go down the tubes, the Pentagon wants to keep increasing their funds:

Before the presidential election, reports began to circulate that the Pentagon was planning to propose a defense spending increase of roughly $450 billion over five years. That's in addition to the increases in the base budget already laid out in the 2009 Future Years Defense Plan.

The services have been laying the groundwork for the request for several months. Earlier this year, briefing slides showing $60 billion to $80 billion per year in new expenditures started making the rounds inside the Beltway, supported by a public campaign by conservative think tanks and politicians to establish a floor on defense spending at 4 percent of GDP.

As if that’s not bad enough, they are also looking at ways to trap Obama into increasing spending in the military:

The uniformed services are trying to lock in the next administration by creating a political cost for holding the line on defense spending. Conservative groups are hoping to ramp up defense spending as a tool to limit options for a Democratic Congress and president to pass new, and potentially costly, social programs, including health care reform.

They also like the idea of creating an unrealistically high baseline of expectations for defense spending that will allow them to claim President Obama has cut defense spending.

I thought the President was the commander in chief and that this government was by the people, of which the military is part of? It’s time to get our military spending under control. We spend about ten times more than any other military in the world and our economy is in serious trouble. We need to really rethink how we do things instead of throwing away money that can go to much better use.

(h/t TPM)

The NSA wouldn't spy on phone calls unless they were a threat to national security - right? Guess again:

Despite pledges by President George W. Bush and American intelligence officials to the contrary, hundreds of US citizens overseas have been eavesdropped on as they called friends and family back home, according to two former military intercept operators who worked at the giant National Security Agency (NSA) center in Fort Gordon, Georgia.

"These were just really everyday, average, ordinary Americans who happened to be in the Middle East, in our area of intercept and happened to be making these phone calls on satellite phones," said Adrienne Kinne, a 31-year old US Army Reserves Arab linguist assigned to a special military program at the NSA's Back Hall at Fort Gordon from November 2001 to 2003.

Kinne described the contents of the calls as "personal, private things with Americans who are not in any way, shape or form associated with anything to do with terrorism."

She said US military officers, American journalists and American aid workers were routinely intercepted and "collected on" as they called their offices or homes in the United States.

So they do this for enjoyment and some comic relief? I don't take our constitution as being some kind of joke, yet people charged with protecting this country from another 9/11 do. If they "hate us for our freedoms", then these people just gave Osama another victory in the war on terror.

The Army and Air Force are at odds, so the Army goes out and starts up it's own air unit. What next - will we see one branch of our military go to war with the other? I guess this can be chalked up as more of that financial conservatism by the GOP.

Truly disturbing statistics out by the Army today:

Pentagon officials say there were fewer Army suicides last year than they had feared. But it was still the highest number in almost two decades.

Two defense officials said Thursday that 108 troops committed suicide in 2007, the most since 1990. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the full report on the deaths wasn't being released until later Thursday.

I like how they try to downplay the numbers by saying "fewer than they had feared". Iraq is causing so much stress on our soldiers, and for what? So George Bush could achieve some "greatness" in his mind? Every solider killed either in action, or by their own hand, as well as every Iraqi life lost is the fault of this incompetent, arrogant, idiotic thing we call a President. Yes - he is a murderer and should be held accountable for his actions.

They are now considering changing the cremation procedure for our soldiers. It turns out our soldiers have been cremated at a company that also cremates animals. I wonder which Bush administration official was buddies with this company and got them the contract?

He won't support the Webb GI bill, and is instead offering his own that will give the greatest benefits to those that have served 12 years or more.

Hey - sorry if you got your legs blown off in Iraq, but we don't want to do anything for you!

That is exactly what will happen with the number crunchers in the Pentagon. Perhaps the better question would be; Why does John McCain hate the troops?

And yet he still won't sign onto Jim Webb's (one year old) G.I. Bill that does just that. Just another sign that John McCain is is really John McDementia.

Is this how the right wing supports the troops, by insulting their service?

(h.t Think Progress)

Pretty big words coming from some low life chicken hawk. Between that and Darryl Issa saying 9/11 was "just airplanes flying into buildings", we have the making of some great political ads this season.