The 248-year-old institution that this country depends upon to fight and win our wars has lost its focus, which is, “to win our nation’s wars.” Preparing to do that is one of the most complex tasks on earth. There is no profession more complex, more dangerous, or more crucial to the country’s survival than the United States Army. But its focus on “woke” social solutions has diluted the necessary focus on that duty.
The Army has thousands of magnificent and highly skilled officers and enlisted men and women who perform continuously at the highest levels. Yet, as German General Erwin Rommel said of the British after he captured Tobruk, they are “lions commanded by donkeys.” Today’s donkeys are officers and civilians in the highest levels of the current administration, up to and including the Commander in Chief, Joseph R. Biden and a Secretary of the Army who wants to reduce recruiting from families with a tradition of service because she fears a “warrior caste.” Donkeys indeed. And they set the tone for all their subordinates in the Army.
The latest display of the donkeys’ madness is an article on the Army’s official website, lauding another man who claims to be a woman.
U.S. Army photo by Sarah Patterson
The first sentence of the article accompanying the photo pronounces that “Coming out as a transgender female saved Maj. Rachel Jones’ life.” It goes on to describe how an in-the-closet Jones “lived every day deeply depressed and suicidal.” After President Joe Biden lifted the prior ban on transgenders in the military, “Jones was finally able to come out publicly as transgender.” The Army’s article does not state that Jones had any type of so-called “gender affirming surgery,” so presumably “coming out” merely means that he announced that he now prefers to be known as “she.” This allows “her” to “live her truth” and be “so much more comfortable with myself.”
The article claims that any thoughts of suicide are now a thing of the past. It does not explain how an obviously unstable Jones managed to remain in the Army and get promoted to major. Nor does it mention the suicide rate among transgenders who have “come out” or had the life-altering surgery, such as the 30+ year study that concluded that “Ten to 15 years after surgical reassignment, the suicide rate of those who had undergone sex-reassignment surgery rose to 20 times that of comparable peers.”
Now, this author’s quarrel is not with MAJ Jones, who obviously is a person in need of help. No responsible person wishes him or any other human being to suffer depression to the point of potential suicide. No, the proper quarrel is with the donkeys leading the Army who create the command climate that tells subordinates that, in the words of West Point’s Battalion Orders in 1820, Jones is a soldier to be “venerated and emulated.”
FALLS CHURCH, Va. — A federal judge on Tuesday vacated the military conviction of Bowe Bergdahl, a former U.S. Army soldier who pleaded guilty to desertion after he left his post and was captured in Afghanistan and tortured by the Taliban.
The ruling from U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton in Washington says that military judge Jeffrey Nance, who presided over the court-martial, failed to disclose that he had applied to the executive branch for a job as an immigration judge, creating a potential conflict of interest.
Walton noted that former President Donald Trump had strongly criticized Bergdahl during the 2016 presidential campaign. Bergdahl’s lawyers argued that Trump’s comments placed undue command influence on Nance.
Walton rejected the specific argument surrounding undue command influence, but he said a reasonable person could question the judge’s impartiality under the circumstances.
Bergdahl was charged with desertion and misbehavior before the enemy after the then-23-year-old from Hailey, Idaho, left his post in Afghanistan in 2009. He said he was trying to get outside his post so he could report what he saw as poor leadership within his unit, but he was abducted by the Taliban and held captive for nearly five years.
During that time, Bergdahl was repeatedly tortured and beaten with copper wires, rubber hoses and rifle butts. After several escape attempts, he was imprisoned in a small cage for four years, according to court documents.
Several U.S. service members were wounded searching for Bergdahl. In 2014, he was returned to the U.S. in a prisoner swap for five Taliban leaders who were being held at Guantanamo Bay.
The swap faced criticism from Trump, then-Sen. John McCain and others. Both Trump and McCain called for Bergdahl to face severe punishment.
In 2017, he pleaded guilty to both charges. Prosecutors at his court-martial sought 14 years in prison, but he was given no time after he submitted evidence of the torture he suffered while in Taliban custody. He was dishonorably discharged and ordered to forfeit $10,000 in pay.
His conviction and sentence had been narrowly upheld by military appeals courts before his lawyers took the case to U.S. District Court, resulting in Tuesday’s ruling.
The Justice Department declined comment on the ruling Tuesday.
Eugene Fidell, one of Bergdahl’s lawyers, said he was gratified by the ruling and said Walton’s 63-page opinion shows how meticulous he was in rendering the ruling.
Calls and emails to the immigration court in Charlotte, North Carolina, where Nance now serves as an immigration judge, were not returned Tuesday evening.
Thank God that the Joint Chiefs are not in the Chain of Command and are simply ‘advisers’ to the President.
Biden overruled his Sec Defense, who wanted to promote a male admiral with decades of experience in Pacific Ocean strategy, and instead picked a woman with a journalism major…almost certainly so he can say he put the first woman on the Joint Chiefs. https://t.co/2RA41er7rs
— ⓘ Dogs don't have thumbs (@MorlockP) July 22, 2023
It takes a certain amount of brazenness to put the responsibility of defending the nation on a young American and then, in the next breath, demand they forfeit those freedoms they are literally willing to die to protect.
U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) is never one to disappoint, though. His latest legislative move is to put a target on the back of every service member as someone who cannot be entrusted to exercise their Second Amendment rights. Military members already sacrifice many of their freedoms to protect the United States. Sen. Murphy, who has never served a day in uniform, doesn’t think that’s enough.
Sen. Murphy thinks Second Amendment freedoms for those in uniform is, well, too much freedom.
Gun control isn’t anything new to Sen. Murphy. He’s made a career of attacking the Second Amendment and the firearm industry. That’s made him the darling of gun control groups but now he’s putting the Second Amendment rights of military gun owners in his crosshairs.
Think about that for a minute. These are the men and women our nation trusts to put a firearm in their hand and stand between our nation and those who wish to do us harm. Sen. Murphy has no problem with that but is proposing these same individuals can’t be trusted with firearms in their personal possession.
Sen. Murphy introduced an amendment to the annual National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which empowers our government to fund and support our nation’s military. As a “must-pass” bill, it naturally attracts thousands of amendments for pet projects every year. Most of those are ruled out of order, or not defense related, so they can’t be attached to the bill.
The entire world knows that the United States is low on firepower because President Joe Biden acted on his inexplicable desire to blurt out such information on CNN, telling Fareed Zakaria, “This is a war relating to munitions. And [Ukraine]… is running out of that ammunition, and we’re low on it.”
He also maintained that the shortage was one reason behind the controversial decision to send cluster munitions to Ukraine.
Now the U.S. is scrambling to strengthen stockpiles, according to John Kirby, coordinator for strategic communications at the National Security Council. (By the way, what does that title even mean?)
Appearing with Shannon Bream on “Fox News Sunday,” Kirby described the effort:
We’re working very closely with the defense industry to try to ramp up production, particularly for artillery shells…
You saw that we gave some cluster munitions to Ukraine as a bridging solution here while we ramp up production. We’re having very, very strong conversations with the defense industry and we believe that we’ll be able to get there.
Watch:
WATCH: Part one of our exclusive interview with NSC Communications Coordinator John Kirby on President Biden’s NATO summit and concerns about ammunition shortages. Tune in! pic.twitter.com/lRRHFVpQGM
Bream had brought up a think tank report that estimated it could take years to get back to where we were:
Kirby was responding to a segment reporting that a Center for Strategic and International Studies report found replacing inventories for ammunitions such as 155 mm shells could take between four and seven years. Replacing Javelins could take up to eight years and Stingers up to as many as 18 years, according to the report.
Meanwhile, he has to convince the manufacturers that the administration is in it for the long haul, saying:
The defense industry obviously wants to make sure that if they’re going to increase production, that production rate is going to stay elevated for a period of time. Because that means hiring more workers, it means retooling and adding capacity in their factories and manufacturing capabilities.
So we understand that and that’s sort of the central thesis here of the discussions that we’re having with them, is to get them to increase production and let them know that we’re serious about doing that for some period of time.
RICHMOND, Ky (WTVQ)- A piece of national and world history was made Friday afternoon right here in Central Kentucky when workers at the Blue Grass Army Depot in Madison County destroyed the last of more than 500 tons of chemical agent stored there since the 1940s.
The rockets containing the deadly nerve agent sarin also were the last declared chemical weapons in the United States and the world.
Closure and cleaning up the site will take three or four more years and keep many of the 1500 workers employed. But local leaders already are looking at the opportunities the multi-billion dollar effort offers the army depot and community for the future.
“The workforce here is highly skilled, highly trained, highly security-cleared. They will be looking for work in the next year and a half to two years. We would like to have that work force as an entre’ for corporations that could use those talents to come here. We’re also looking at a number of projects be erected inside the depot fence line that will add to the depots military value and keep it viable,” says Craig Williams, co-chair of the Citizen’s Advisory Board.
The Blue Grass facility is the last of nine across the country and the Pacific Ocean where thousands of tons of obsolete chemical weapons were destroyed since 1990.
Construction of the pilot plant began in 2006. Destruction of chemical weapons began in 2019.
Once the plant is completely closed in 2026, the army depot will continue its mission serving the country.
The U.S. Marine Corps is undergoing its biggest reorganization in decades, slimming down and chopping weapon systems, such as tanks and howitzers, in an effort to become quicker, more agile, and more lethal, while specializing in operating in island chains and coastal areas. It’s all built on the service’s belief that the next war will resemble World War II far more than Iraq or Afghanistan.
In Iraq, the U.S. Marine Corps was virtually indistinguishable from the U.S. Army, operating tanks hundreds of miles inland. This Marines are working to ensure they won’t be used like this again.
After the Cold War, the Marine Corps began to resemble a second American land army; the Marines invaded Iraq over land in 1991 and again in 2003, and were functionally a land army in Afghanistan from 2001 to 2021. While the Marines were successful in this role, it was clear that with an aging U.S. population and rising entitlement spending, defense budgets would soon come under increasing scrutiny. Those inside the Marine Corps believed its role as a second land army would make the service seem redundant, bracing for future cuts.
If the Marines were to survive the coming budget wars, the Marine Corps’ leadership argued, the service would need to be seen as necessary within a well-defined and relevant niche. The result was Force Design 2030, a radical plan to sculpt the Marines to operate against Russia and China in coastal areas, the so-called littorals, and island chains and archipelagos. This included areas such as the Baltic Sea against Russia and the South China Sea against China—both areas where fighting would likely take place if the U.S. and its allies traded blows with Moscow and Beijing. Perhaps most importantly, it is the sort of warfare the U.S. Army has shifted its attention away from, giving the Marines the opportunity to seize it for themselves.
Earlier today, an acquaintance who has a ‘source’ at NOAA had related this: I have a source who shared that NOAA picked up the possible implosion right around the time it disappeared. I was embargoed from sharing that information, but I feel it’s OK to share with you guys at this point and wonder if that will come out in the news conference.
WASHINGTON—A top secret U.S. Navy acoustic detection system designed to spot enemy submarines first heard the Titan sub implosion hours after the submersible began its mission, officials involved in the search said.
The Navy began listening for the Titan almost as soon as the sub lost communications, according to a U.S. defense official.
Shortly after its disappearance, the U.S. system detected what it suspected was the sound of an implosion near the debris site discovered Thursday and reported its findings to the commander on site, U.S. defense officials said.
“The U.S. Navy conducted an analysis of acoustic data and detected an anomaly consistent with an implosion or explosion in the general vicinity of where the Titan submersible was operating when communications were lost,” a senior U.S. Navy official told The Wall Street Journal in a statement.
“While not definitive, this information was immediately shared with the Incident Commander to assist with the ongoing search and rescue mission.”
The Navy asked that the specific system used not be named, citing national security concerns.
Today your job is straightforward. First, you must load 40 to 50 pounds on your back. Then you need to climb down a net rope that is banging on the steel side of a ship and jump into a steel rectangle of a boat bobbing on the surface of the ocean below you. Others are already inside the boat shouting at you to hurry up.
Once in the boat, you stand with dozens of others as the boat is driven towards distant beaches and cliffs through a hot hailstorm of bullets and explosions. Boats moving nearby are from time to time hit with a high explosive shell and disintegrate in a red rain of bullets and body parts. Then there’s the smell of men near you fouling themselves as the fear bites into their necks and they hunch lower into the boat. That smell mingles with the smell of burnt gunpowder and seaweed.
In front of you, over the steel helmets of other men, you can see the flat surface of the bow’s landing ramp still held in place against the sea. Soon you are within range of the machineguns that line the cliffs above the beach ahead. The metallic sound of their bullets clangs and whines off the front of the ramp.
Then the coxswain shouts and the klaxon sounds. You feel the keel of the LVCP grind against the rocks and sand of Normandy as the large shells from the boats in the armada behind you whuffle and moan overhead. Then the explosions all around and above you increase in intensity and the bullets from the machineguns in the cliffs ahead and above rattle and hum along the steel plates of the boat and the men crouch lower. Then somehow you all strain forward as, at last, the ramp drops down and you see the beach. The men surge forward and you step with them. Then you are out in the chill waters of the channel wading in towards sand already doused with death, past bodies bobbing in the surf staining the waters crimson.
You are finally on the beach. It’s worse on the beach.
The bullets keep probing along the sand, digging holes, looking for your body, finding others that drop down like sacks of meat with their lines cut. You run forward because there’s nothing but ocean at your back and more men dying and… somehow… you reach a small sliver of shelter at the base of the cliffs. There are others there, confused and cowering and not at all ready to go back out into the storm of steel that keeps pouring down. And then someone, somewhere nearby, tells you all to press forward, to go on, to somehow get off that beach and onto the high ground behind it, and because you don’t know what else to do, you rise up and you move forward, beginning, one foot after another, to take back the continent of Europe.
If you are lucky, very lucky, on that day and the days after, you will walk all the way to Germany and the war will be over and you will go home to a town somewhere on the great land sea of the Midwest and you won’t talk much about this day or any that came after it, ever.
They’ll ask you, throughout long decades after, “What did you do in the war?” You’ll think of this day and you’ll never think of a good answer. That’s because you know just how lucky you were.
If you were not lucky on that day you lie under a white cross on a large well kept lawn not far from the beach you landed on.
Somewhere above you, among the living, weak princes and fat bureaucrats and rank traitors mumble platitudes and empty praises about actions they never knew and men they cannot hope to emulate.
You hear their prattle, dim and far away outside the brass doors that seal the caverns of your long sleep. You want them to go, to leave you and your brothers in arms to your brown study of eternity.
“Fifty years? Seventy-five? A century? Seems long to the living but it’s only an inch of time. Leave us and go back to your petty lives. We march on and you, you weaklings primping and parading above us, will never know how we died or how we lived.
“If we hear you at all now, your mewling only makes us ask among ourselves, ‘Died for what?’
“Princes and bureaucrats, parasites and traitors, be silent. Be gone. We are now and forever one with the sea and the sky and the wind. We marched through the steel rain. We march on.”
6 June 1944, United Kingdom
Soldiers, Sailors and Airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Forces:
You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. The hopes and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you. In company with our brave Allies and brothers-in-arms on other Fronts you will bring about the destruction of the German war machine, the elimination of Nazi tyranny over oppressed peoples of Europe, and security for ourselves in a free world.
Your task will not be an easy one. Your enemy is well trained, well equipped and battle-hardened. He will fight savagely.
But this is the year 1944. Much has happened since the Nazi triumphs of 1940-41. The United Nations have inflicted upon the Germans great defeats, in open battle, man-to-man. Our air offensive has seriously reduced their strength in the air and their capacity to wage war on the ground. Our Home Fronts have given us an overwhelming superiority in weapons and munitions of war, and placed at our disposal great reserves of trained fighting men. The tide has turned. The free men of the world are marching together to victory.
I have full confidence in your courage, devotion to duty, and skill in battle. We will accept nothing less than full victory.
Good Luck! And let us all beseech the blessing of Almighty God upon this great and noble undertaking.
SAVANNAH, Ga. — Soldiers of the 9th Infantry Regiment made a desperate retreat as North Korean troops closed in around them. A wounded, 18-year-old Army Pfc. Luther Herschel Story feared his injuries would slow down his company, so he stayed behind to cover their withdrawal.
Story’s actions in the Korean War on Sept. 1, 1950, would ensure he was remembered. He was awarded the Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest military honor, which is now displayed alongside his portrait at the National Infantry Museum, an hour’s drive from his hometown of Americus, Georgia.
But Story was never seen alive again, and his resting place long remained a mystery.
This undated photo shows the late Army Cpl. Luther H. Story. The Army said Friday, May 19, 2023, that the remains of Cpl. Luther H. Story will be buried May 29 at Andersonville National Cemetery near the soldier’s hometown of Americus, Georgia. President Joe Biden announced last month that scientists had positively identified Story’s remains. (U.S. Army via AP)
“In my family, we always believed that he would never be found,” said Judy Wade, Story’s niece and closest surviving relative.
That changed in April when the U.S. military revealed lab tests had matched DNA from Wade and her late mother to bones of an unidentified American soldier recovered from Korea in October 1950. The remains belonged to Story, a case agent told Wade over the phone. After nearly 73 years, he was coming home.
A Memorial Day burial with military honors was scheduled Monday at the Andersonville National Cemetery. A police escort with flashing lights escorted Story’s casket through the streets of nearby Americus on Wednesday after it arrived in Georgia.
Picture shows headstone of Luther Story at Andersonville National Cemetery, Wednesday, May 17, 2023, in Andersonville, Georgia. Army Pfc. Luther Herschel Story was awarded the Medal of Honor after he went missing in battle during the Korean War is being buried on Memorial Day near his hometown in Georgia. Wounded Story was last seen on Sept. 1, 1950, when he stayed behind to cover his infantry unit’s retreat. (Hyosub Shin/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP)
“I don’t have to worry about him anymore,” said Wade, who was born four years after her uncle went missing overseas. “I’m just glad he’s home.”
Among those celebrating Story’s return was former President Jimmy Carter. When Story was a young boy, according to Wade, his family lived and worked in Plains on land owned by Carter’s father, James Earl Carter Sr.
Jimmy Carter, 98, has been under hospice care at his home in Plains since February. Jill Stuckey, superintendent of the Jimmy Carter National Historical Park, said she shared the news about Story with Carter as soon as she heard it.
“Oh, there was a big smile on his face,” Stuckey said. “He was very excited to know that a hero was coming home.”
Story grew up about 150 miles (241 kilometers) south of Atlanta in Sumter County, where his father was a sharecropper. As a young boy, Story, who had a keen sense of humor and liked baseball, joined his parents and older siblings in the fields to help harvest cotton. The work was hard, and it didn’t pay much.
“Momma talked about eating sweet potatoes three times a day,” said Wade, whose mother, Gwendolyn Story Chambliss, was Luther Story’s older sister. “She used to talk about how at night her fingers would be bleeding from picking cotton out of the bolls. Everybody in the family had to do it for them to exist.”
Judy Wade, niece of Luther Story, shows memory scrapbook of Luther Story, that her mother put together, Thursday, May 18, 2023, in Americus, Georgia. Army Pfc. Luther Herschel Story was awarded the Medal of Honor after he went missing in battle during the Korean War is being buried on Memorial Day near his hometown in Georgia. Wounded Story was last seen on Sept. 1, 1950, when he stayed behind to cover his infantry unit’s retreat. (Hyosub Shin/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP)The family eventually moved to Americus, the county’s largest city, where Story’s parents found better work. He enrolled in high school, but soon set his sights on joining the military in the years following World War II.
In 1948, his mother agreed to sign papers allowing Story to enlist in the Army. She listed his birthdate as July 20, 1931. But Wade said she later obtained a copy of her uncle’s birth certificate that showed he was born in 1932 — which would have made him just 16 when he joined.
Story left school during his sophomore year. In the summer of 1950 he deployed with Company A of the 1st Battalion, 9th Infantry Regiment to Korea around the time the war began.
Judy Wade, niece of Luther Story, points out a Luther Story from a school year book, Thursday, May 18, 2023, in Americus, Georgia. Army Pfc. Luther Herschel Story was awarded the Medal of Honor after he went missing in battle during the Korean War is being buried on Memorial Day near his hometown in Georgia. Wounded Story was last seen on Sept. 1, 1950, when he stayed behind to cover his infantry unit’s retreat. (Hyosub Shin/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP)
On Sept. 1, 1950, near the village of Agok on the Naktong River, Story’s unit came under attack by three divisions of North Korean troops that moved to surround the Americans and cut off their escape.
Story seized a machine gun and fired on enemy soldiers crossing the river, killing or wounding about 100, according to his Medal of Honor citation. As his company commander ordered a retreat, Story rushed into a road and threw grenades into an approaching truck carrying North Korean troops and ammunition. Despite being wounded, he continued fighting.
“Realizing that his wounds would hamper his comrades, he refused to retire to the next position but remained to cover the company’s withdrawal,” Story’s award citation said. “When last seen he was firing every weapon available and fighting off another hostile assault.”
Portrait of Judy Wade, niece of Luther Story, with memory scrapbook of Luther Story, that her mother put together, Thursday, May 18, 2023, in Americus, Georgia. Army Pfc. Luther Herschel Story was awarded the Medal of Honor after he went missing in battle during the Korean War is being buried on Memorial Day near his hometown in Georgia. Wounded Story was last seen on Sept. 1, 1950, when he stayed behind to cover his infantry unit’s retreat. (Hyosub Shin/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP)
Story was presumed dead. He would have been 18 years old, according to the birth certificate Wade obtained.
In 1951, his father received Story’s Medal of Honor at a Pentagon ceremony. Story was also posthumously promoted to corporal.
About a month after Story went missing in Korea, the U.S. military recovered a body in the area where he was last seen fighting. The unidentified remains were buried with other unknown service members at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Hawaii.
Judy Wade, niece of Luther Story, shows memory scrapbook of Luther Story, that her mother put together, Thursday, May 18, 2023, in Americus, Georgia. Army Pfc. Luther Herschel Story was awarded the Medal of Honor after he went missing in battle during the Korean War is being buried on Memorial Day near his hometown in Georgia. Wounded Story was last seen on Sept. 1, 1950, when he stayed behind to cover his infantry unit’s retreat. (Hyosub Shin/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP)
According to the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, more than 7,500 Americans who served in the Korean War remain missing or their remains have not been identified. That’s roughly 20% of the nearly 37,000 U.S. service members who died in the war.
Remains of the unknown soldier recovered near Agok were disinterred in 2021 as part of a broader military effort to determine the identities of several hundred Americans who died in the war. Eventually scientists compared DNA from the bones with samples submitted by Wade and her mother before she died in 2017. They made a successful match.
President Joe Biden announced the breakthrough April 26 in Washington, joined by South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol.
“Today, we can return him to his family,” Biden said of Story, “and to his rest.”
To absent friends
Master Sergeant Benjamin Stevenson ⭐
Master Sergeant Jared Van Aalst ⭐
Sergeant First Class Ryan Savard ⭐
Sergeant First Class Ron Grider ⭐
Sergeant Paul Dumont jr. ⭐
Sergeant Jose Regalado ⭐
If you are able, save them a place inside of you and save one backward glance when you are leaving for the places they can no longer go.
Be not ashamed to say you loved them, though you may or may not have always.
Take what they have left and what they have taught you with their dying and keep it with your own.
And in that time when men decide and feel safe to call the war insane, take one moment to embrace those gentle heroes you left behind.
You soldiers, who are the soldiers that graduate today, will be soldiers who carry on the soldiering tradition of soldiers in the past, as we soldier on for the future so that new soldiers can also soldier, and therefore soldiering will always provide soldiers with soldiering.
— Periodic Audio: Mobile First Hi-Fi (@periodicaudio) May 23, 2023
Well, everyone knows SloJoe has never really been in charge. This just confirms it.
The United States will no longer stand in the way of NATO allies transferring F-16 fighters to the Ukraine Air Force, and it will participate in training Ukrainian pilots in flight proficiency and tactical training but not in the US. On Friday, Joe Biden informed other G-7 leaders of the sudden volte-face in US policy at the G-7 summit in Japan. Other “senior administration officials,” by this I mean Antony, with no “h,” Blinken, confirmed the policy change just to let everyone know that the decision was real and it wasn’t a case of Joe slipping off into another of his bouts of delirium dementium. So the F-16s could be in action by late autumn.
