#3
GEN. MATTIS also said that Air/MilStrikes alone won't be enough to stop Iran's NucProgs, i.e. stop Iran from becom a de facto NucWeaps Islamist State. Mattis strongly inferred that a ground invasion + occupation of Iran may be needed as a "final option".
* IIRC DEMOCRATIC UNDERGOUND > [Global Post]LINDSEY GRAHAM SAYS HE WILL INTRODUCE AN AUTHORIZATION CALLING FOR [US/US-led] USE OF MILITARY FORCE [War] ON IRAN BY SUMMER'S END, i.e. Sept-Oct 2013 iff no progress on Nuc Summit.
* FYI 1ST HEADLINES > [Bloomberg] IRAN MAY ACHIEVE NUCLEAR [NucBomb = NucWeapons] BREAKOUT CAPABILITY IN MID-2014.
#4
I disagree. If you remove their entire infrastructure, the nuke project will die on the vine. When there's no bridges, power plants, water plants, sewer plants, food production, roads, buildings that aren't rubble and anything trying to enter the country gets pegged before making more than a mile across the border, it's certainly possible.
And on the plus side, Iran will never be a problem again.
#5
Gen. Mattis: We Pay A Price For Supporting Israel
Mattis got dinged in the media for this, but I read the quote as saying the moderate Arabs don't have the balls to step up and do what's right.
We do pay a price for supporting Israel. It is a necessary cost sometimes. To quote a certain Democrat Prez: Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.
#2
Ah, the Duffle Blog. Gotta give 'em credit. It is hard to do satire in a world where you wake up every day asking "WTF is the matter with you people?".
#3
Sadly, you are right Glen, but that is a entirely separate discussion. Unfortunately, we've been going overboard for years with awards and decorations.....unless of course, you were a shooting victim of MAJ Nadal Hasan at Fort Hood. Then there is possibly one of the worst examples of all.
#5
They are also a walking billboard of the individual service record. Those who know the code can tell the tale. That's because too many of them became just a tour completion and time in service ribbon rather than an impact, particular event, award.
#8
Now that he has been found guilty of official charges, the sentencing phase should strip him of all rank, awards, decorations, etc. Reduction to E-nothing. Emphasis on should.
However, failure to follow orders [get a shave and a haircut] didn't produce the desired results on MAJ Nadal Hasan's personal appearance. So who knows what will happen.
#9
Tip over, manning was busted back to E3 prior to his getting busted for spying, allegedly for being a shirt bird (aka insubordination, failure to repair, and conduct ... )
#11
I got a Medal for "Enlisting in a time of Crisis", we called it "The Geedunk Medal" (Geedunk was the mess line) Worth nothing.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
07/31/2013 14:11 Comments ||
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#12
Weren't they also handing out metals left and right during the Vietnam war? How about we ask ole 'silver star' Jawn 'I was in Vietnam you know!' Kerry.
#13
In short.... everyone gets a trophy and they are all the same!
Au contraire CF. The tour and time awards are de facto divided by enlisted, company grade and field grade(+) for officers. Sore spot for me because one of my enlisted was fully deserving of an impact award for his work, but some ahole in the upper chain shot it down because 'we don't do that'. Then WTF have them on the books?
#14
So called Enlisted Awards boards and lower enlisted promotion boards have, in many cases, become the domain of Battalion and Union Stewards Brigade Sergeants Majors. It is what it is.
Save the Regimental structure, there is little to admire about British military systems. Their awards scheme however, makes infinitely more sense and holds vastly greater meaning than our own.
#16
I agree that there are a lot of awards being given out. But there is a lot of meritorious work being done.
All I can offer is that -- in my humble opinion -- any award received by an enlisted solder is likely genuinely deserved, and most received by field grade officers (Major and above) are bogus.
#18
We had a HAC crash one of our H-60's 1/4 mile from the USS Boat ( wearing NVGs), he and the H2P got out, the 2 AWs didn't and are still in the deep. Pilot error was the finding of the Safety Board. Seems LT HAC's daddy was a flag officer and Junior demanded to know why he didn't get a Navy Commendation Medal at the end of his tour. CO said not a word, but pointed to the pictures of the dead AWs he had in his office. (CO was very shaken by this accident, never saw a CO so visibly moved)
LT still didn't understand...... ( H2P was so shook up he turned in his wings)
Tunisia is mellow, even pacifist, compared with Algeria. The army is smaller than Egypt's, and it is not--or at least it has not been--a political player. So I don't expect a full-blown Algerian-style insurgency or an Egyptian-style military coup. Nor is a Tiananmen Square-style massacre in the cards. Tunisia is not a police state, and Ennahda admits it's afraid of the army.
But tensions are rising, the situation is volatile, the country is more dangerous now than even a week ago, and the region is always surprising. Keep an eye out because even the "moderate" Islamists empowered by the Arab Spring are back on their heels. They thought they owned the future, but they do not.
On Sunday, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew ostensibly ruled out a federal government bailout of Detroit following its recent declaration of bankruptcy.
You know George, Detroits economic problems have been a long time in developing I think when it comes to the questions between Detroit and its creditors, thats what Detroit is going to have to work out with the creditors, he told ABCs George Stephanopoulos. Not quite. Detroit is proposing an effort to offload much of its bloated healthcare costs onto the American taxpayer, using ObamaCare as the vehicle for doing so. Public employees are the new nobility---private sector are serfs who exist solely to provide for their betters.
#1
I agree wid FOX NEWS' "THE FIVE"s Greg Gutfield, i.e. give Detroit to the [illegal? = Hispanic] immigrants whom the DemoLeft + aligned RINOS, Globalists, Special Interests, etal. in Washington DC are treating like quasi-US or de facto US Citizens anyway.
[GREAT "OKLAHOMA LAND RUSH" here].
Despite its woes, the Hispanic + Asian communities in mostly African-Amer Detroit are the only segments that are experiencing growth, while the Black community is stuck in quagmire + getting worse.
#2
We should set up a program to allow the immigration of a million Taiwanese to homestead in Detroit. The only restriction would be that at least a million must sign up before anyone was let in, and they had to live in Detroit for five years to be eligible to become citizens.
They will take the deal just to get away from the risks of nearby mainland China. Once the million arrive, Detroit will be squared away in no time.
"A few years ago, the nonpartisan Bay Area Center for Voting Research rated Detroit as the most liberal city in America." -- Michael Tanner
Detroit was once one of the world's great cities. It was the 4th largest metropolis in America, jobs were plentiful because of the auto industry, and Motown even kept it on the cutting edge musically.
Unfortunately, from 1962 until the present day, the mayor of Detroit has been a Democrat.
The result?
Detroit's population has dropped from 1.8 million to just over 700,000, the unemployment rate is over 50% if you count the people who've given up on finding jobs, property values have dropped so much you can buy homes in the crime-ridden city for $500, and Detroit has gone bankrupt. How to "Flip" a house in Detroit:
1. Buy it
2. Insure it
3. Burn it
How did Democrats kill one of the most prosperous cities in America? With the same sort of unfettered liberalism that Democrats like Barack Obama, Harry Reid, and Nancy Pelosi want to foist on the rest of the nation.
#4
Article doesn't even mention pensions and other goodies for government employees -- isn't that like 1/6 of Detroit's total debt? Staggering when you think about it.
#8
I remember reading the Detroit papers in 1984 and they had a special section with government owned houses for sales, thousands of them and the average price was $20.00...Then I flew over the area for a look...seemed lovely at first, heavily treed...but a closer look showed a third of the houses burned out with another third with part of the roof collapsed. So that crap has been a long time coming....nobody can insure anything not only in Detroit but in all these neighborhoods peopled by that nation of blood sucking parasites!
Posted by: Bob Snore6814 ||
07/31/2013 19:14 Comments ||
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#9
I believe they call these houses 'contractor's specials'...
At last, we have an explanation for what has been going on with Israel-Palestinian talks. It is credible, yet ridiculous. And it is very important.
Here is today's New York Times:
In recent weeks, Mr. Kerry and his aides have outlined several basic arguments for why his efforts might bear fruit. Perhaps the most important one, which Mr. Kerry advanced almost the moment he was picked for the State Department post, is that the United States does not have the luxury of staying on the sidelines.
With the Palestinians poised to take their claim for statehood to the International Criminal Court and United Nations bodies, American officials say the two sides were facing a downward spiral in which the Israelis would respond by cutting off financing to the Palestinian territories and European nations might curtail their investment in Israel, further isolating the Israelis.
Now, what is this saying?
...I presume that talks would fail, and after this explanation of what Kerry is doing, I feel even more strongly that this will happen. That's why the Israeli government has accepted this bad deal, believing, I think accurately, that the PA will make the talks fail. I understand why this option was taken -- also, because there might be American or European threats and promises; nobody can be as bad as Obama in the future -- but this tactic is getting tired.
#1
The strategy behind the Peace Process, TW is that whenever a new banned Russian term appointed US Sec State, the banned Russian term tries his/hers luck---a kind of DC Rodeo.
We release a few terrorists, Arabs celebrate by committing some new terror acts. Eventually there is some real crisis, and the jerk goes away.
#2
The jerk WILL go away. John Kerry is essentially a staring non entity with no real pretensions of being anything actively relevant. He fills a chair for his Boss who actually IS a chair.
When John Kerry disappears and the first crisis that rattles the windows will dispose of him because he actually is useless...no one will miss his existence. He never was there in the first place.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
"A few years ago, the nonpartisan Bay Area Center for Voting Research rated Detroit as the most liberal city in America." -- Michael Tanner
by Barry Rubin
