They Stepped Forward To Say “Send Me, I Will Go,” And Never Came Home

Pausing today to remember the sacrifices of our fallen warriors, it has been difficult to watch the gains of ISIS in Iraq’s Anbar Province and the subsequent fall of Ramadi where America’s first Navy SEAL, Marc Lee, was killed in a ferocious firefight.

Gold Star mother Debbie Lee, Marc’s mom, traveled to Ramadi in 2007 and returned home with some of its powdery soil in a plastic bag where her son’s blood was shed.  She sat watching her TV as the black flag of ISIS flew above the city.  Her outrage and grief can never be fully imagined.

So deep was her anguish she wrote a letter to Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin E. Dempsey following his controversial comment about the fall of that city.  Dempsey said, “The city itself is not symbolic in any way.  It’s not been declared part of the caliphate on one hand or central to the future of Iraq.”

In her letter Lee wrote, “I’ve traveled to Ramadi and visited Camp Marc Lee in 2007. I brought back soil from that city where Marc breathed his last. I interviewed Iraqi General Anwer in 2010 when I returned. I asked him if you could say one thing to the American people what would you tell them. He paused and with deep emotion said, ‘We will tell our children and our grandchildren for generations to come what Americans have done. There is American blood poured out on our soil.’” Lee added, “It seems the Iraqis understand the importance more than you do sir.”

Dempsey sent a short letter of apology stating he did not mean to add to her grief writing, “Marc and so many others died fighting to provide a better future for Iraq.  He and those with whom he served did all that their nation asked.  They won their fight and nothing will ever diminish their accomplishments nor the honor in which we hold their service.”

Dempsey has gained a reputation for being more interested in his post-military career and future benefits than the well-being of our troops.  He has become, as Sen. John McCain stated, “the most disappointing Chairman of the Joint Chiefs that I have seen, and I have seen many of them…he has basically been the echo chamber for the president.”

On D-Day seventy years ago, Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower said in his address to the troops who would storm the beaches of Normandy, “You are about to embark upon the great crusade toward which we have striven these months.  The eyes of the world are upon you…I have full confidence in your courage, devotion to duty and skill in battle.  We will accept nothing less than full victory.”  These inspiring words are inscribed on a wall at the World War II Memorial.

There are other inscriptions at the memorial referring to America’s “righteous might” and the “destruction of the enemy.”  At the northern end there is a monument that bears the words of Gen. George Marshall:  “Our flag will be recognized throughout the world as a symbol of freedom on the one hand and of overwhelming force on the other.”

There is no monument in Washington and there may never be one to the American soldiers who have fought and died in Iraq and Afghanistan thanks to the Commemorative Works Act of 1986.  The act prohibits new war memorials until at least ten years after the officially designated end of a conflict.  If military operations against the evil forces of terrorism mean a permanent state of war, there may never be any memorials in our nation’s capital.

The World’s Most Dangerous Community Organizer’s fixation on his legacy will prove most discomforting if his words were to be carved in stone.  After the Islamic State won major battles in Iraq and Syria last week he said, “I don’t think we’re losing.”

At Arlington National Cemetery, alabaster headstones are a sobering reminder that even in death our soldiers stand as sentinels of unquestionable courage and sacrifice and we must honor those virtues.

At sunrise this morning, I lowered the flag on the 20-foot flagpole in my yard to half-staff.  All morning it hung there motionless.  According to tradition, at noon I reverently hoisted it to full height.  As if on cue, it caught the wind and flapped proudly as if to signal hope beyond death.

Brian Williams: The Most Terrific Liar You Ever Saw

Suffering from delusions of grandeur, NBC news anchor Brian Williams has been caught in a lie.  Check that.  A couple of lies.

Fancying himself a kind of Col. Jessup from A Few Good Men, Williams willfully lied to portray his counterfeit bravery.  The claim that his helicopter was hit by RPG and AK-47 fire in Iraq has crumbled and now he is assiduously attempting to salvage his career.

For over 10 years Williams has repeated his half-truth of heroic survival and even told it again as recently as last Friday night, during a Rangers game when NBC did a special segment about one of the soldiers who protected him in Iraq.

He was busted when Stars & Stripes, a military newspaper, asked the helicopter crew members about that fateful day and they had a different story to tell: the truth.

He lies as easily as his hero Law Professor/Community Organizer president and rivals his smugness.

Someone should remind Williams his lies are tantamount to stolen valor.

Fabulists of a feather... MT @Hadas_Gold Dan Rather backs Brian Williams, says he's "an honest decent man" http://t.co/U64B8qz9rQ
— Michelle Malkin (@michellemalkin) February 5, 2015

"Brian Williams" is Danger's middle name
— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) February 5, 2015

Maybe Al Sharpton can fill in for Brian for a few weeks. You know, try to gain back some credibility.
— FredZeppelin (@FredZeppelin12) February 5, 2015

UPDATE 6:54PM: Brian Williams lied about seeing “entire war plan” for Iraq invasion on Facebook.

That Such Men Lived: Chris Kyle Day

Last Friday, while speaking at the Texans Veterans of Foreign Affairs Convention, Governor Greg Abbott declared February 2, 2015 Chris Kyle Day in honor of one of the most decorated snipers in American history.

“In honor of a Texas son, a Navy SEAL and an American hero—a man who defended his brothers and sisters in arms on and off the battlefield—I am declaring February 2nd Chris Kyle Day in Texas. We will commemorate his passing, but more importantly, remember his answering of the call of duty,” Abbott said.

Today marks the second anniversary of Kyle’s death at the Rough Creek Lodge in Glen Rose, TX where he and friend Chad Littlefield were gunned down while trying to help a fellow soldier coping with PTSD.

Friend and co-blogger, Proof, posted a great article here at PCP after he had gone to see the now indisputable box office smash American Sniper.  According to Screen Crush, the movie has grossed over $248.9M since its opening on January 16, 2015.

Last Friday, I took the opportunity to see the movie.  It was explosive and sorrowful.  I sat still throughout the film reacting only at the end when director Clint Eastwood included video clips of the 10-mile long funeral procession that traveled the 200 miles from Midlothian to Austin where Chief Petty Officer Chris Kyle would be laid to rest.  Thousands lined the route on a cold, rainy day to pay their respects as the white hearse carrying his remains drove past.

Eastwood made certain that moviegoers knew unequivocally that Chris Kyle was a man of faith by showing the importance of the little Bible he tucked into his flak jacket for each of his four tours of duty. 

The Bible makes several appearances in the film.  In the book, Kyle wrote, “I’d carried a Bible with me.  I hadn’t read it all that much, but it had always been with me.”  At one point in the film, Kyle tells his C.O. that he doesn’t know what a Qur’an looks like. But he can spot a Bible, and he knows what’s important about it without bothering to find out what it says.

Eastwood’s use of the image of the little Bible was a powerful testament to who Chris Kyle was.  When he was learning to hunt, his dad scolded him to never leave his gun in the dirt.  The last image we see of his final tour in Iraq shows both his gun and the little Bible left behind in the dirt as a choking sandstorm overtakes the landscape.

At the end of the film, everyone sat motionless, gathering themselves after seeing the horror of war and the mental torment it inflicts on our brave warriors.  Everyone filed out of the auditorium in perfect silence.  They were thinking what I was thinking:  That such men lived.

“I consider it an indispensible duty to close this last solemn act of my official life by commending the interests of our dearest country to the protection of Almighty God and those who have the superintendence of them into his Holy keeping.” — General George Washington at Valley Forge

Chuck, Your Bus Is Here

This morning The World’s Most Dangerous Community Organizer stood at the podium in the White House State Dining Room to announce the departure resignation firing of his scapegoat third Secretary of Defense.

The president oozed phony platitudes:

“Last month, Chuck came to me to discuss the final quarter of my presidency and determined that having guided the department through this transition, it was an appropriate time for him to complete his service.” 

“Let me just say that Chuck is and has been a great friend of mine. I’ve known him, admired him and trusted him for nearly a decade since I was a green-behind-the-ears freshman senator and we were both on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.” 

“If there’s one thing I know about Chuck, it’s that he does not make this or any decision lightly. This decision does not come easily to him, but I consider myself extraordinarily lucky to have had him by my side for two years.” 

“And I am grateful that Chuck has agreed to stay on until I nominate a successor and that successor is confirmed by the Senate, which means that he’ll continue to guide our troops at this challenging time.”

I never agreed with Hagel’s appointment to that post. During his confirmation hearing he was ripped for his inflammatory remarks about Israel and the “Jewish lobby”, his support for unilateral reductions of U.S. nuclear weapons and his opposition to the surge in Iraq.

Secretary Hagel’s undoing was when he contradicted the regime’s talking points on Islamist militants in Iraq and Syria and the leaked letter he sent to National Security Advisor Susan Rice in which he asserted that Syria’s dictator, Bashar al-Assad, was “indirectly benefitting” from an impotent U.S. policy against ISIS.

Only difference between what WH aides are now saying about Hagel and what GOP said at his hearing is WH aides are talking anonymously.
— Ari Fleischer (@AriFleischer) November 24, 2014

FROM: Every Republican TO: Every Democrat RE: Chuck Hagel We told you so. We told you so. We told you so. We told you so.
— Dan McLaughlin (@baseballcrank) November 24, 2014

As with OCare, the IRS, Benghazi, and Obama in general -- Hagel vindicates conservatives and proves the media subservient lapdogs.
— John Nolte (@NolteNC) November 24, 2014

The World’s Most Dangerous Community Organizer And The JV Headchoppers Team

Last January, The World’s Most Dangerous Community Organizer dismissed the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) as a junior varsity terrorist outfit compared to al-Qaida. “The analogy we use around here sometimes, and I think is accurate,” he told The New Yorker, “is if a JV team puts on a Lakers uniform that doesn’t make them Kobe Bryant.”  Now the savage beasts are threatening to raise the black flag of Allah over the White House.

On Friday, CNN’s Jake Tapper asked Deputy National Security Advisor Tony Blinken about TWMDCO’s strategic shallowness.  Tapper seemed incredulous as he posed the question.  In a twofer Jim Acosta, CNN’s Senior White House correspondent, asked WH press secretary Josh Earnest, “Is it safe to say that ISIS are no longer the ‘JVs’?”

Here is Earnest’s angst-ridden response:

“I think what is appropriate to say is there is no question that the Lakers uniforms that were worn, to use that analogy a little bit, that were worn by the al-Qaeda leadership in Afghanistan has been decimated and defeated in Afghanistan. There is no question that is the result of the many decisions made by the president and the courageous service of our men and women in uniform and in the intelligence agencies. What is also true is that there are other organizations that subscribe to the violent extremist ideology that is espoused and promulgated by al-Qaeda.” 

“Many of those groups in the nations across the globe are not particularly sophisticated and are focused on local sectarian conflicts that don't pose a significant or immediate threat to U.S. interests or the U.S. homeland. There are, of course, a couple other organizations that do pose a more substantial threat to the United States and our interests. Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula is one of them, and you've seen the United States in concert with our allies and partners take significant, important steps to mitigate the threat that is posed by those organizations that do have designs and capabilities to try to strike the United States, and in some cases try to strike the homeland.” 

“We do remain concerned about the military proficiency that has been demonstrated by ISIL and that's why you've seen the president take steps, including the authorization of military force that would protect American citizens who might be harmed by them.”

Let me see if I have this straight.  The administration remains “concerned about the military proficiency that has been demonstrated”.  How reassuring.  I suppose the thousands of Christians stranded atop Mount Sinjar who are thirsting and starving to death are not evidence of a metastasizing force of pure, unadulterated evil and neither is the beheading of a toddler.  (WARNING:  Do not visit this link unless you are prepared to see extremely disturbing images.)

The errand boy sent by grocery clerks may not want a war with the brutal, hateful, oppressive, murderous, genocidal face of Islam, but it is at war with us.

He has known for months, as the rest of the world has, that ISIS has a stranglehold on vast swaths of Syria and Iraq.  It took the gut-wrenching pleading of Yazidi Prime Minister Vian Dakil to Iraq’s Presidential Council to stir the world’s awareness of the systematic genocide occurring in the region.

I have to agree with Turkish poet Serkan Engin:  “…the world will meet with a big tragedy when the Islamists get more power, as the world suffered because of Nazism.”

Teetering On The Edge (Warning: Graphic Image)

The World’s Most Dangerous Community Organizer was handed a mostly peaceful Iraq.

A few days ago two reporters with the Associated Press, Hamza Hendawi and Bassen Mroue, filed a report about the fear and sectarianism behind the utter collapse of the Iraqi army.

The Western press is far too squeamish to publish reports about the savagery of the animals that inhabit the Middle and Near East.  We are a merciful and peace-loving people and as such find it difficult to understand the barbarous dogma of Islam. 

Hendawi and Mroue’s accounting describes a chilling video set to what they described as “lilting religious hymns” in which Islamic barbarians knock on the door of a Sunni police major in the dead of night.  The moment he opens the door he is blindfolded and cuffed.  Then they carve off his head with a knife in his own bedroom.

In an effort to show the world they will stop at nothing to achieve their end game, the blood-thirsty Neanderthals tweeted an image of the officer’s decapitated head with the revolting message, “This is our ball.  It is made of skin #World Cup.”

The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) propaganda video includes footage of “drive-by shootings of off-duty security personnel and the killings of captured army soldiers.  In one scene, fighters masquerading as soldiers set up a checkpoint on a main highway, stopped cars and killed Shiites and security personnel by the side of the road.”

Fighters abducted a Sahwa commander and his two sons and forced them to dig their own graves in the desert before they slit their throats.

The rest of the world is not as naïve as Westerners are.  Our press mollifies the masses by pixelating the videos and photographs of beheadings and the lopping off of hands and feet or hangings and stonings so that there is merely a gulp in reaction to them.  We should be exposed to the raw images so that outrage in its fullest form can be felt, not fear.  These filthy animals should fear the prospect of being vaporized and rotting in Jahannam.

Instead, we are subjected to a presidency that has consistently and deliberately weakened our nation and cleared the way for the American homeland to be threatened again.

Don’t agree with me?  Then consider carefully this fact:   The Wall Street Journal and the Times of London reported on June 12th that the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) has deployed units of its elite Quds Force to help Iraqi troops halt the advances of ISIL and ISIS forces.  Iranian security forces have said that two battalions of the Quds Force have come to the aid of Maliki’s government.  The ISIS assault may be just what Iran needs to turn Iraq into a puppet.

I did not get an arm blown off in Baghdad so you could sit on your ass and watch Iraq fall, @BarackObama. I did my job. DO YOUR JOB.

— J.R. Salzman (@jrsalzman) June 13, 2014

Obama Now Clutches His Pearls And Swoons—Gates Brings The Wrecking Ball

Over the past 26 years, Robert Gates has served each administration in key defense-related positions.  His deep familiarity with the highest level of strategic decision-making demands significant attention with his new book.

Gates left Washington in 2011 with a reputation as a steady, sober-minded member of the foreign policy establishment who had served eight presidents and was admired equally by Republicans and Democrats.

Because of the harshly critical new book, Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War, a maelstrom has erupted in the nation’s capital and amongst the mainscream media.

I have to hand it to Mr. Gates for giving Bob Woodward an advanced copy of his strikingly candid, vividly written account of his experiences while serving our last two presidents.

The man who partnered with Carl Bernstein to bring down the presidency of Richard Nixon has been quite vocal in his opposition of the current regime.  His assessment of Gates’ book in The Washington Post lends a voice to what flyover America has known for many years.

The god-man worshipped far and wide by the Left is being depicted as having been double-crossed by Gates.  The reality is The World’s Most Dangerous Community Organizer has double-crossed all of us.  More importantly, he has double-crossed all of our service men and women and their families who have sacrificed so much.

Gates has accused TWMDCO of ordering a troop buildup in Afghanistan while not really believing in his own policy. And he recounted Hillary Clinton confiding that she had opposed Bush’s 2007 surge in Iraq for purely political reasons because of the presidential campaign, and Obama “vaguely” agreed.

TWMDCO evidently has been asking men to die for what he considered a mistake for years.

“As I sat there,” Gates writes, “I thought: The president doesn’t trust his commander, can’t stand Karzai, doesn’t believe in his own strategy and doesn’t consider the war to be his. For him, it’s all about getting out.”

He didn’t believe in the war and despite all the blood and treasure expended in freeing the Iraqis of the cruel and sinister Sadam Hussein and the war that was launched to fight terrorism in response to 9/11.  Now, after pulling out lock, stock and barrel from that country we are witnessing a resurgence of al-Qaeda.

As surely as I am sitting here typing this, when we pull out of “the right war” in Afghanistan, the Taliban will once again have a stranglehold on the country that unleashed Osama bin Laden.

“Duty:  Memoirs of a Secretary at War” is devastating.  It is revealing and long overdue.  I see no way out of this scathing tell-all for this president and the woman who aspires to succeed him in the Oval Office.

Linked, and we thank you, by Cardigan at iOwnTheWorld. 

American Hero General H. Norman Schwarzkopf, Jr. Has Died

In this July 4, 1991 file photo, President George H. W. Bush congratulates Desert Storm commander Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf after presenting him with the medal of freedom at the White House in Washington. Schwarzkopf died Thursday, Dec. 27, 2012 in Tampa, Fla. He was 78. (AP Photo/Doug Mills)

Biography of General Schwarzkopf from Military.com:

For H. Norman Schwarzkopf, West Point took phrases learnt at the knee of his father, an Army general, and turned them into principles. "When I began as a plebe, 'Duty, Honor, Country' was just a motto I'd heard from Pop," the two-tour Vietnam vet and Desert Storm commander later wrote. "By the time I left, those values had become my fixed stars.”

Born in Trenton, N.J. on Aug. 22, 1934, Schwarzkopf spent much of his high school years following his father's career around the world. After graduating from West Point in 1956, he embarked on the career that would earn him four-star rank and high distinction, including three Silver Stars, three Bronze Stars, two Purple hearts, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. He moved up from platoon leader to corps commander, maintaining the common-sense attitude that earned his troop's plaudits as a "muddy-boots soldier.”

Vietnam forged his philosophy of war. In-country from 1965 to 1966 and again from 1969 to 1970, he was angered by the lack of support at home and "distressed by the war's toll on morale and morality," one journalist wrote. "Schwarzkopf felt shame when, under protest, he tallied “body counts’ he knew to be inflated.”

But the experience reinforced his determination to stay with the Army. Schwarzkopf wrote, "There were some times [in Vietnam] when I would think to myself…"how did I get involved in this?...And I came to understand that that's the thing I've been trained for all of my life.  And if I didn’t do it, who was going to do it?”

By 1988, he was a four-star general, appointed commander-in-chief of the U.S. Central Command responsible for military operations in the Middle East. When Iraq occupied the neighboring state of Kuwait in August 1990, Schwarzkopf directed a troop buildup of 700,000 U.S., European, and Arab troops. On Jan. 16, 1991, allied forces began a six-week air bombardment of Iraq, followed by a 100-hour ground campaign that retook Kuwait with low allied casualties.

By war's end, the familiar 6'3" bearlike figure in desert fatigues had become a national hero. But a second, very real victory was at home. Of the Washington victory parade, Schwarzkopf wrote, "I couldn't help but think to myself this is the right way to come home to your country. . .the country was paying us this wonderful tribute... and it tended to exorcise a lot of ghosts and a lot of wounds that all of us who were in Vietnam carried with us."

Today, we learn that “Stormin’ Norman” Schwarzkopf has died in Tampa where he was living in retirement.  The cause of his death has not yet been released.

Following is a statement approved by President George H. W. Bush, who remains in intensive care at Methodist Hospital, on the passing of General Schwarzkopf:

“Barbara and I mourn the loss of a true American patriot and one of the great military leaders of his generation. A distinguished member of that Long Gray Line hailing from West Point, General Norm Schwarzkopf, to me, epitomized the ‘duty, service, country’ creed that has defended our freedom and seen this great Nation through our most trying international crises. More than that, he was a good and decent man—and a dear friend. Barbara and I send our condolences to his wife Brenda and his wonderful family.” 

Thank you for standing guard over our liberties, sir.  Godspeed.