Mere days after an F-22 fighter jet downed a Chinese spy balloon over the Atlantic Ocean, three unidentified flying objects were shot down over Alaska, Canada, and Michigan in just three days. The Biden administration pledged from day one to “bring transparency and truth back to government” but is eerily silent about what the objects were and why they were shot down.
Not only has President Joe Biden gone days without saying anything about the downed objects, but the Pentagon also refused to give clear answers to reporters or the public about the unusual activity in the sky. U.S. officials say they don’t know what the objects, which clock in at the size of a small car, are. They claim they don’t know what the objects are capable of nor do they know who sent them. They don’t even know how to hit some of them with a $400,000 missile on the first try.
Gen. Glen VanHerck, commander of both U.S. Northern Command and the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), went so far as to say the U.S. hasn’t “ruled out anything” including an extraterrestrial threat, a claim the White House rejected on Monday.
That’s a bizarre statement that certainly does not instill confidence in Americans that our financially bloated Department of Defense can properly assess and neutralize threats to U.S. national security. That also means any reassurance from the Pentagon that “these objects don’t present a military threat to anyone on the ground,” as Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said on Tuesday, is pure speculation. As is the White House’s claim that these “could just be balloons tied to some commercial or benign purpose.” If the Pentagon does actually know what’s going on, then the DOD is clearly stonewalling any attempts to inform the public.
Democrats, Republicans, and corporate media alike are frustrated with the Biden administration’s lack of communication. Even after a classified briefing about the objects Tuesday, some senators say the Pentagon is deliberately keeping information from Americans.
“99% of what was discussed in that room today can be made public without compromising security in this country,” Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., told Fox News.
If that’s the case, why aren’t Americans getting answers?
Rewind One Week
If the way the Biden administration handled the Chinese spy balloon at the beginning of the month means anything, we won’t get clear answers about these mysterious aircraft for a while — if at all.
It was a day after a big white object was spotted in Montana that reports indicated the Pentagon had “been monitoring a suspected Chinese surveillance balloon that has been hovering over the northern U.S. for the past few days.” If the balloon hadn’t been spotted by the public, there’s a good chance the DOD would not have told Americans about it.
Through The New York Times, an anonymous “official” at the Pentagon once again claimed without evidence that “the balloon did not pose a military or physical threat” to Americans.
When the Defense Department finally announced it downed the balloon over the Atlantic Ocean, an unnamed official at the DOD allegedly told reporters at an off-camera press briefing on Feb. 4 that Chinese balloons like this one “transited the continental United States briefly at least three times during the prior administration.”This unsourced claim spread like wildfire through the corporate media even though multiple Trump-era officials went on the record to deny it. It wasn’t until two days after the Pentagon’s initial accusation that VanHerck “clarified” that “we did not detect those threats” at the time Trump was in office. So, the DOD knew Trump couldn’t be blamed for failing to shoot balloons he was never informed about but let lies about the former administration spread among the public without consequence or pushback.
A Pentagon that prioritizes its political agenda ahead of the security of the American people it is sworn to protect clearly doesn’t have its priorities straight. Why should we believe anything they say about the series of UFOs?
Even if the Pentagon finally decides to release information about these last three objects, who sent them, and why they were hovering over North America, will Americans even believe it? Trust in the U.S. military is falling and currently sits under 50 percent. It has broken the trust of Americans, and that won’t be helped by further obscuring information.
I’m not going to pretend to know what’s going on with the downed UFOs. What I do know is the Pentagon and the Biden administration both have long histories of lying to Americans to protect their political agendas.
Jordan Boyd is a staff writer at The Federalist and co-producer of The Federalist Radio Hour. Her work has also been featured in The Daily Wire, Fox News, and RealClearPolitics. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @jordanboydtx.
Anonymous sources were once rarely used in journalism. They would only be cited when trying to preserve someone’s physical safety or report on the most sensitive national security matters, and there was an expectation that such unusual sourcing be reviewed by editors and carefully corroborated whenever possible.
Now anonymous sourcing has become the norm in reporting and is frequently used as a political weapon to disseminate Democrats’ talking points and smear their enemies. The illicit use of anonymous sources to launch libel against Democrats’ enemies ballooned after Donald Trump won the presidency in 2016, and the tactic was used to develop the Russia-collusion hoax and multiple other smears.
The most recent example may be the Chinese spy balloon news cycle. When word reached the public that Red China spent days hovering over the United States collecting sensitive information, public outrage ensued. Dozens of legislators and governors and Trump demanded President Joe Biden shoot down the balloon as soon as possible.
The Biden administration refused, claiming that neutralizing the airborne threat could cause harm to civilians. This initial claim aired in corporate media, sourced to an anonymous “official” who offered no evidence, that “the balloon did not pose a military or physical threat” to the United States. This decision, once again, drew ire from Americans.
Once the administration finally did shoot down the balloon over the Atlantic, the Biden administration pointed fingers. An unnamed official at the Department of Defense allegedly told reporters at an off-camera press briefing on Feb. 4 that Chinese balloons like this one “transited the continental United States briefly at least three times during the prior administration.”
That admission kicked off a corporate media frenzy. The press took the Pentagon’s word for it and accused Republicans of a “double standard.” Those who called for the end of the balloon, the press claimed, were hypocrites and Trump even more so because he “failed” to shoot down the spy equipment while in office.
Less than one day later, Trump and several high-level Trump national security officials who would have been briefed about a security breach during their tenure went on the record, with their names behind their statements, to deny any knowledge of Chinese spy balloons surveilling the United States under their watch. https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/109812699029727017/embed
“I don’t ever recall somebody coming into my office or reading anything that the Chinese had a surveillance balloon above the United States,” Mark Esper, who was defense secretary from 2019 to 2020, told CNN.
Christopher Miller, who was acting defense secretary from 2020 to 2021, admitted “the first time I ever heard of anything like this was this weekend.”
“Had not a clue,” Miller said. “If something like that had happened, that’s like a national security threat.”
“I certainly never became aware that there was a three-bus-sized floating device coming across our country for five days, either as CIA director or secretary of state. [And] I’ve talked to others who are on my teams — they don’t know anything about it either,” said Mike Pompeo, who served as director of the Central Intelligence Agency and secretary of state under Trump.
Robert O’Brien, another former Trump national security advisor, said, “Unequivocally, I have never been briefed on the issue.” Former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe outright stated the Biden administration’s anonymously sourced claim was “not true.”
Former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe reiterates his statement that there were not 3 Chinese spy balloon incidents under Trump:
Even former National Security Advisor John Bolton, who has a history of fabricating intel and smears about Trump, said the Biden administration’s conveniently timed revelation was news to him.
“I don’t know of any balloon flights by any power over the United States during my tenure, and I’d never heard of any of that occurring before I joined in 2018,” Bolton told Fox News. “I haven’t heard of anything that occurred after I left either.”
Gen. Glen VanHerck, commander of North American Aerospace Defense Command and U.S. Northern Command, “clarified” two days after the Pentagon’s initial accusation that “we did not detect those threats” at the time Trump was in office. The Narrative™ that Trump failed to shoot down Chinese spy balloons had already made its way onto the pages and TV screens of millions by the time the Biden administration decided to walk back its smears against the previous administration filtered through an anonymous source to compliant media outlets.
On Feb. 7, days after Trump staff denied on the record and one day after the Pentagon claimed Red China’s repeat airborne espionage was only discovered retrospectively, corporate media still insisted spy balloons were “spotted on several occasions during President Donald Trump’s administration, including three instances where they traveled near sensitive US military facilities and training areas.”
The source? “People familiar with the matter” who worked under Trump. The people making these claims were conveniently not named, giving them cover to make any accusations they liked and media to air them with no accountability for either entity.
The Smear Operation Playbook
Classic journalism ethics state anonymous sourcing should be rare because the “public is entitled to as much information as possible on sources’ reliability.” Yet the practice of relying on unnamed information suppliers to communicate breaking news has become commonplace, especially when fronting smears against Democrats’ opponents. As a matter of fact, anonymously sourcing what later prove to be complete lies is often rewarded by the journalism industry today.
The most notable example of anonymous sourcing as a weapon was the Russia hoax. That is a years-long coup led by Democrats and intelligence agencies with the eager help of the corporate media to disqualify Trump from the White House and prevent his presidency from being effective. The Russia hoax also resulted in failed impeachments. It’s fair to say it never could have been pulled off without outlets such as CNN, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and more using unnamed sources to discredit their political enemies.
The Trump years were rife with media manipulation involving anonymous sources. In one dramatic episode, the media claimed to prove that Donald Trump Jr. was sent an email by Wikileaks giving him early access to leaked emails from top Democrats. Not only was the report untrue — CNN never saw the source email to Donald Trump Jr. and instead relied on the word of two anonymous sources who got the date on the email wrong — but the botched CNN report dramatically exposed how anonymous sources can lead to misinformation.
CNN’s faulty reporting was immediately “confirmed” by MSNBC and CBS. Of course, confirming erroneous reporting is an impossibility unless all three news outlets were relying on the same sources, confident that their anonymity would create the false impression that multiple sources could verify the story. In this case, the sources appear to have come from the office of Rep. Adam Schiff, a known liar and key perpetrator of the Russiagate hoax. This issue of multiple news outlets citing the same anonymous source has happened more than once, and it continues to be a problem.
But that failure was just the tip of the iceberg. During the Trump years, the media also claimed Trump’s national security adviser illicitly reached out to Russia’s government before Trump took office; that Trump aide Anthony Scaramucci was linked to the Russian Direct Investment Fund; that Trump attorney Michael Cohen confessed that Trump “directed” him to lie about contacting a Russian official; that Russia offered members of the Taliban bounties in exchange for killing American soldiers and Trump knew about it; that Trump pressured the Georgia secretary of state’s office to “find the fraud”; and many, many more complete fabrications relying on sources who hid their smears behind anonymity.
All of these claims were unvetted, untrue, and should have never been published. Instead, some were showered with praise and status. Others were barely corrected long after the coverage served its political purpose.
Real reporting requires due diligence. Corporate media, desperate to aid Democrats in their conquest of any Americans who disagree with them, have become pipelines of government information manipulation, especially from intelligence agencies. As a result, anonymous sources are easily duplicated and repackaged as “independent confirmation,” and so-called “news” sites are plagued with unverified intelligence and information — or, worse, allegations they verifiably know are untrue.
And they are happy about it. In 2019, then-New York Times Public Editor Liz Spayd denounced her employer for being “too timid in its decisions not to publish the material it had” quickly about Trump’s nonexistent connection with Russia.
“The idea that you only publish once every piece of information is in and fully vetted is a false construct,” she wrote. “If you know the FBI is investigating, say, a presidential candidate, using significant resources and with explosive consequences, that should be enough to write.”
Her call to normalize the unprofessionalism of partisan actors in newsrooms received amplification from fellow journos. The ubiquitous use and elevation of this unethical practice may have been popularized during the rise of Trump, but it has far outlived his presidency, something that independent media have routinely observed for years.
Today’s media complex relies on readers to keep trusting what it says, regardless of its extremely tainted records. The press doesn’t deserve that kind of benefit of the doubt.
Americans are still unclear on how many Chinese aircraft have compromised U.S. airspace and who let them. What they shouldn’t be unclear about is that the corrupt, untrustworthy, and democracy-threatening corporate media use anonymous sources to advance disinformation operations and push political narratives that often have no relationship to the truth.
Jordan Boyd is a staff writer at The Federalist and co-producer of The Federalist Radio Hour. Her work has also been featured in The Daily Wire, Fox News, and RealClearPolitics. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @jordanboydtx.
The Pentagon’s investigation into the U.S. military in 2021 found about 100 individuals engaged in extremist activities out of a force of 2 million. It appears investigators were looking in the wrong place. The search for extremists might have yielded better results had they examined the Department of Defense Education Activity (DODEA), the government agency that administers K-12 education to the children of military personnel.
The Claremont Institute’s recently released report“Grooming Future Revolutionaries” describes shocking indoctrination taking place at overseas schools. It is a must-read, especially for military parents of the nearly 70,000 children in these schools.
I am a military spouse and the mother of a former DODEA student. The particular teacher training that was the focus of Claremont’s report is the reason, in part, why I lost all trust in the system.
In May 2021, I saw that DODEA would be holding an “Equity and Access Summit” for teachers and administrators. Knowing that “equity” means different things to different people, I wanted to get a sense of what it meant at DODEA. When I managed to gain access to the recordings, I was absolutely floored by what I saw and heard.
As the Claremont report shows, the summit featured hours of teacher training steeped in critical race and gender identity theories.
Claremont released a video of summit clips in which a principal talks about a student who felt like he’d done something wrong because he’s a “young, white male.” The teacher said she didn’t know what to tell him — but she seemed pleased with the breakthrough. Perhaps she was just following the lead of DODEA’s diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) chief Kelisa Wing, who is currently under investigation by DOD for a history of disparaging comments toward white people.
Video Evidence of Teachers Pushing CRT
The report also highlights literature teacher Gregory DeJardin’s presentation called “Combating 1- Sided Narratives (Decolonize the Curriculum).” DeJardin insists teachers become social activists and interviewed several students in his class at Vicenza High School in Italy about their difficulties with “majority culture.” It was painfully apparent in their answers that they were parroting his dogma, as one student said: “[School] is getting better about being more diverse and not taking a very normative perspective but there are definitely issues and I feel like it is still incredibly skewed to the white, male, heterosexual and Protestant gaze.”
Betty Roberts, an educator at Robinson Barracks Elementary School in Germany, talked about critical literacy. She wants her students to look deeply into textbook versions of events to find hidden biases. She asks her students questions like: “Is the American Revolution still being fought today?” She presses further and asks if the American Revolution was just a “transition from one group of rich white men to another group of rich white men.” Roberts goes on to express her gratefulness to the teachers’ union for its training on white fragility because she recognized her need for cultural humility.
Normalizing Transgenderism
Aside from the relentless instruction on anti-racism and white privilege, a clear effort was underway to normalize transgender identities and the notion of a gender spectrum. Genevieve Chavez and Lindsey Bagnaschi, presenters of “Ally 101 — Creating an Inclusive Classroom for LGBTQ+ Students,” talked about gender transitions they have facilitated for students at their schools in Spain and Germany, respectively — sometimes without parental knowledge or consent.
And many LGBT educators apparently belong to a system-wide resource-sharing group on Schoology curated by a DODEA educator. Chavez recommends resources from the group such as “Teaching with Mx. T” and “Teaching Outside the Binary.” But there is another similar group that’s passcode protected — and it’s for students. Teachers can add students to their own LGBT chat rooms in Schoology, and parents are not invited.
If teachers run out of content from people like “Mx. T,” they can use Discovery Education, which many recommended during the summit. One of the programs is “Speak Truth to Power.” This program offers lesson plans that are “flexible, standards-aligned digital resources, designed to educate, engage and inspire the next generation of human rights defenders.” Sounds good, doesn’t it — until you see that transgender activist Jazz Jennings is one of those human rights defenders. But Discovery Education is password-protected, with one portal for students and another for teachers, so we really have no idea what’s being promoted to our children via third-party content creators who can update information in real-time.
Congress Needs to Do More
Our children deserve to learn in an environment free from divisive ideologies, and thankfully, DODEA’s activism has not gone unnoticed by Congress. Rep. Vicky Hartzler, R-Mo., wrote a letter to DOD asking why teachers are being trained to secretly “transition” children at overseas schools. After a year, she still had not received an answer. She also introduced H.R. 4764, the No CRT for our Military Kids Act.
In the Senate, Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., offered an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) of 2023 to prevent DODEA schools from hiding important medical information from parents — but it was voted down.
Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., introduced a Servicemember Parents Bill of Rights amendment to the NDAA to provide for more transparency and accountability in DODEA schools. It was adopted in committee with bipartisan support by a vote of 39-19 and is in the House-passed NDAA.
But Congress needs to do much more to ensure the safety of our military children and also that of any DODEA educator who is being intimidated into conformity. It will likely take years to sort out the mess at DODEA, so in the meantime, Congress could consider extending the military’s Non-DOD Schools Program to all students instead of only to those who are not in close proximity to a DODEA school.
Whatever the case, it looks like an extremist stand down is in order for DODEA, and it just might net more than the .005 percent found among our uniformed force.
Amy Haywood is a former senior legislative assistant for a U.S. House representative and an educator with years of experience working in a research-based program to help third culture kids adjust to life overseas. She holds a master’s degree in national security and strategic studies from the U.S. Naval War College.
Days before the Capitol riot provoked a years-long effort to impeach, prosecute, and politically malign former President Donald Trump, Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney coordinated efforts to deter the very actions she now claims haunt the former president.
Cheney has blamed Trump for not ordering the National Guard to defend the Capitol complex, even though multiple sources confirm that he authorized their deployment days prior to the Jan. 6 rally at the White House and riot at the Capitol. Security officials in charge of the Capitol declined to call up troops to protect it, government records show. Yet Cheney herself seems to have orchestrated opposition to use of the military to quell election-related unrest, allegedly organizing a Washington Post op-ed on Jan. 3, 2021, signed by every living former defense secretary.
“All 10 living former defense secretaries: Involving the military in election disputes would cross into dangerous territory,” the headline read. It went on to threaten any military official who thought any use of the military might be a good idea. “Civilian and military officials who direct or carry out such measures would be accountable, including potentially facing criminal penalties, for the grave consequences of their actions on our republic,” the op-ed warned.
The op-ed was allegedly organized by Cheney, whose father was secretary of defense under President George H.W. Bush before serving as President George W. Bush’s vice president. Eric Edelman, a national security adviser to Dick Cheney, told the New Yorker the Wyoming lawmaker “was the one who generated” the piece for the Post.
Now Rep. Cheney has adopted Trump’s supposed inaction on the National Guard as a primary line of attack. On “Fox News Sunday,” Cheney again depicted Trump as an apathetic leader who dismissed pleas to deploy the National Guard while the Capitol was under siege.
“There are several witnesses who say they met with President Trump on January 4th,” said Bret Baier, “and he offered some 20,000 National Guardsmen to protect the Capitol building on January 6th but the offer was rejected. Is that true?”
“His own acting secretary of defense says that’s not true,” Cheney said, highlighting committee testimony from former Acting Secretary Christopher Miller who told the panel Trump made no order to deploy the National Guard. “So, the notion that somehow he issued an order is not consistent with the facts.”
Except the president did issue authorization for D.C. leaders to call up the National Guard for pre-emptive reinforcements days before the Capitol riot. While Mayor Muriel Bowser took limited advantage of the extra troops, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s sergeant at arms rejected or stonewalled the offer six times, according to former Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund. Pelosi’s office was reportedly concerned the guard’s deployment was bad “optics” after having spent the prior summer decrying the use of federal law enforcement to put down left-wing insurrections.
When Trump sent reinforcements to secure federal buildings under attack in Portland, Pelosi condemned the extra law enforcement as “stormtroopers.” After days of sustained riots wreaked havoc across Washington D.C., Pelosi called the sight of uniformed troops protecting the Lincoln Memorial “stunning” and “scary.”
The campaign to fight any use of troops to restore order during the left’s widespread and coordinated summer of rage was so effective that Gen. Mark Milley issued an abject apology for merely appearing in uniform at a site that had been ravaged by leftist arsonists.
“My presence in that moment, and in that environment, created a perception of the military involved in domestic politics,” Milley said about appearing in front of a historic church across the street from the White House. The night before, left-wing arsonists had targeted the church as part of a riot that besieged the White House and led to the injuring of dozens of Park Police and Secret Service officers.
Bowser’s use of guard troops on Jan. 6 extended to unarmed troops restricted to traffic control and removed from protests.
“[N]o DCNG personnel shall be armed during this mission, and at no time, will DCNG personnel or assets be engaged in domestic surveillance, searches, or seizures of [U.S.] persons,” she directed to law enforcement.
Although Cheney and her colleagues with the Select Committee have sought to indict Trump as responsible for a slow response from the National Guard on Jan. 6, the panel’s own findings have undermined the probe’s point. In December, the committee released a trove of private communications from former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, who pledged the National Guard would be ready to maintain order.
“Mr. Meadows sent an email to an individual about the events on January 6 and said that the National Guard would be present to ‘protect pro Trump people’ and that many more would be available on standby,” the committee wrote, as if revealing some grand scandal to help their case.
In June, Miller and former Chief of Staff of the Department of Defense Kash Patel went on Sean Hannity’s program to dispel committee accusations that the president was indifferent to the National Guard.
“Mr. Trump unequivocally authorized up to 20,000 National Guardsmen and women for us to utilize,” Patel said.
Miller, whom Cheney cited as evidence of Trump’s negligence, corroborated Patel’s testimony on air.
“To be clear,” Miller said, “the president was doing exactly what I expect the commander in chief to do, any commander in chief to do. He was looking at the broad threats against the United States and he brought this up on his own. We did not bring it up.”
Tristan Justice is the western correspondent for The Federalist. He has also written for The Washington Examiner and The Daily Signal. His work has also been featured in Real Clear Politics and Fox News. Tristan graduated from George Washington University where he majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow him on Twitter at @JusticeTristan or contact him at Tristan@thefederalist.com.
Acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller confirmed Tuesday that the Pentagon will further reduce the number of U.S. service members in Iraq and Afghanistan at the direction of President Donald Trump, with a deadline that lands just days before Inauguration Day.
Fox News reported that, according to Miller, “U.S. forces will be cut by roughly half in Afghanistan to 2,500, and by 500 troops in Iraq to 2,500” by Jan. 15, 2021.
While the presidential race remains contested through several lawsuits filed by the Trump campaign, mainstream media outlets have roundly called the election for former Vice President Joe Biden. Regardless of who ultimately wins the White House, Inauguration Day is slated for Jan 20.
“This decision by the president is based on continuous engagement with his national security cabinet over the past several months, including ongoing discussions with me and my colleagues across the United States government,” Miller said during a briefing from the Pentagon.
“I have also spoken with our military commanders and we all will execute this repositioning in a way that protects our fighting men and women, our partners in the intelligence community and diplomatic corps, and our superb allies that are critical to rebuilding Afghan and Iraqi security capabilities and civil society for a lasting peace in troubled lands,” Miller said.
The announcement comes just days after Trump fired Miller’s predecessor, former Department of Defense Secretary Mark Esper. According to the Washington Post, Esper sent a classified letter to the White House prior to his termination, warning that “conditions on the ground were not yet right” for a full withdrawal from Afghanistan, “citing the ongoing violence, possible dangers to the remaining troops in the event of a rapid pullout, potential damage to alliances and apprehension about undercutting the negotiations.”
Trump vowed to bring troops home
President Trump has vowed to bring American troops home from Afghanistan and Iraq since he first took office. Yet, NBC News noted that “the move still stops short of Trump’s pledge to end America’s longest war. Just last month, the president tweeted that he wanted to pull out all remaining troops in Afghanistan by Christmas.”
The timing of Trump’s additional drawdown has been met with mixed reactions on Capitol Hill, even from the president’s own party.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) warned Monday about a “premature American exit” from Afghanistan amid rumors of plans for a reduction of troops, while Kentucky’s junior Sen. Rand Paul tweeted, “What brings Big Government Republicans and Democrats together? Support for Endless War. After 19 years in Afghanistan, it’s high time to bring our troops home!”
The House voted Tuesday night to block the Pentagon from using funding to implement its ban on most transgender troops.
The 243-183 vote came as an amendment to a $1 trillion spending package that includes the fiscal year 2020 defense spending bill.
“The president and his administration wrongfully argue that it’s about military readiness and unit cohesion, but these arguments were the same ones that were used to keep the military racially segregated,” Rep. Anthony Brown (D-Md.) said on the House floor. “Transgender service members increase lethality, readiness. They have served honorably and received prestigious commendations.”
Nine Republicans voted in support of the measure: Reps. Justin Amash (Mich.), Mario Diaz-Balart (Fla.), Tom Emmer (Ind.), Brian Fitzpatrick (Pa.), Anthony Gonzalez (Ohio), Trey Hollingsworth
The U.S. is sending an additional 1,000 troops to the Middle East amid increasing tension between the U.S. and Iran. Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan announced the additional forces in a statement Monday evening, saying that the increase came at the urging of U.S. military leaders in the Middle East.
“In response to a request from the US Central Command for additional forces, and with the advice of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and in consultation with the White House, I have authorized approximately 1,000 additional troops for defensive purposes to address air, naval, and ground-based threats in the Middle East,” Shanahan said in a statement.
“The recent Iranian attacks validate the reliable, credible intelligence we have received on hostile behavior by Iranian forces and their proxy groups that threaten United States personnel and interests across the region,”Shanahan said.
“We will continue to monitor the situation diligently and make adjustments to force levels as necessary given intelligence reporting and credible threats,”he added.
A pair of oil tankers were attacked earlier this month in the Gulf of Oman. The U.S. and the U.K. have placed blame for the attack on Iran. The move came just hours before Iran reportedly fired a surface-to-air missile at a U.S. drone. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo blamed the tanker attacks on the “maximum pressure campaign” that the U.S. is waging against the Iranian regime, targeting its financial industry.
“Iran is lashing out because the regime wants our successful maximum pressure campaign lifted,”Pompeo told reporters last week. “The international community condemns Iran’s assault on the freedom of navigation and the targeting of innocent civilians.”
Last month, four other tankers were targeted by Iran in what Pompeo described as an Iranian attempt to inflate international oil prices.
The U.S. also recently deployed the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group and a bomber task force to the Middle East.
A classified Senate briefing on Iranian plots against the United States turned into a tense clash between top U.S. officials and lawmakers frustrated with President Trump’s strategy toward Tehran.
“I would say there was a lot of heat in that room,” Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, told the Washington Examiner following the Tuesday afternoon briefing.
Key congressional Democrats suggested that President Trump’s administration was preparing for military conflict with the regime based on faulty intelligence or even false pretenses after ambiguous U.S. warnings that Iranian proxies might attack American personnel in Iraq. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan sought to allay that suspicion in separate meetings, first with House lawmakers and then the Senate Tuesday afternoon.
“Today I walked them through what the Department of Defense has been doing since May 3, when we received credible intelligence about threats to our interests in the Middle East and to American forces, and how we acted on that credible intelligence,” Shanahan told reporters after the Senate briefing. “That intelligence has borne out in attacks, and I would say it’s also deterred attacks. We have deterred attacks based on our re-posturing of assets, deterred attacks against American forces.”
The controversy shifted in the briefing to complaints that they didn’t communicate with Congress enough in recent weeks and a broader protest against the administration’s withdrawal from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, a top contender for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, was among the most aggressive in raising the specter of being misled into a conflict with Iran.
“Most Americans know way back when we were lied to about the situation in Vietnam and we went into a war which ended up costing us 59,000 lives, based on a lie,” he said. “In 2003, we were lied to in terms of Iraq supposedly having weapons of mass destruction.”
Sanders refused to answer whether he believes such lies are being told now. “I won’t talk about what we heard in the meeting,”he said. “But let me just say that I worry very much that, intentionally or unintentionally, we create a situation in which a war will take place.”
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer avoided that controversy entirely, focusing only on the frustration that the administration didn’t provide more information to lawmakers over the last three weeks.
“I told the people who were briefing us that I thought the consultation with the American people and the Congress was inadequate,”the New York Democrat told reporters in a brief appearance, without taking additional questions. “Both the American people and the Congress read about a lot of actions in the newspapers and had no idea what was going on. I told them they had to make it better next time.”
Shanahan acknowledged that desire for more information. “We heard feedback that they’d like more conversation,”he said. “They’d also like us to be more communicative with the American public, and we agreed to do more of that.”
Maryland Sen. Ben Cardin, a senior Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, conceded that the meeting was a “very helpful”survey of the intelligence reports and U.S. responses. Another lawmaker confirmed that the meeting was testy, but in this telling the confrontation was bipartisan and focused more on the administration’s policies than suspicions that they are fabricating intelligence.
“A number of them questioned the conclusions of the administration about the reaction of the Iranians and what it might lead to,”a Democratic senator, speaking on condition of anonymity, said after the briefing. “I think there’s a lot of us with real misgivings about how serious this is and how much is a creation of the administration’s own provocative policy.”
Shanahan stressed that the administration, which has deployed an aircraft carrier strike group to the Persian Gulf and threatened devastating consequences for attacks on Americans, is trying to avoid a conflict.
“Our biggest focus at this point is to prevent Iranian miscalculation,”he told reporters. “We do not want the situation to escalate.”
Cruz kept the focus on Democratic hostility to Trump and their fidelity to the nuclear agreement that former President Barack Obama’s team negotiated with Iran.
“Far too many congressional Democrats are invested in appeasement for Iran, which manifests in effectively defending the mullahs against maximum pressure,” he told the Washington Examiner.
American military forces were available for a rescue operation not long after the U.S. diplomatic facility in Benghazi, Libya, came under attack by terrorists Sept. 11, 2012, according to an email to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s closest aides.
The Sept. 11, 2012, email was sent at 7:19 p.m. EST by then-Department of Defense Chief of Staff Jeremy Bash. The text reads:
“I just tried you on the phone but you were all in with S [an apparent reference to Clinton]
“Assuming Principals agree to deploy these elements, we will ask State to procure the approval from host nation. Please advise how you wish to convey that approval to us[REDACTED].”
Among the recipients of Bash’s email are Jacob Sullivan, Clinton’s deputy chief of staff, Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Wendy Sherman, and Deputy Secretary of State Thomas Nides.
The first assault on the U.S. facility’s main compound began at approximately 9:40 pm Libya time, which was 3:40 p.m. EDT in Washington, DC. The second attack on a related CIA annex 1.2 miles away began three hours later, at about 12 am local time the following morning or 6 p.m. EST.
Judicial Watch, the non-profit government watchdog, obtained the email from the Department of State after suing the government under the Freedom of Information Act in September 2014.
A spokesman for the House Select Committee on Benghazi told The Daily Caller News Foundation that the panel is dealing with an un-redacted version of the Bash email in its upcoming final report.
“The Select Committee has obtained and reviewed tens of thousands of documents in the course of its thorough, fact-centered investigation into the Benghazi terrorist attacks, and this information will be detailed in the final report the Committee hopes to release within the next few months,”said Matt Wolking, the panel’s spokesman.
“While the Committee does not rush to release or comment on every document it uncovers, I can confirm that we obtained the unredacted version of this email last year, in addition to Jake Sullivan’s response. This email chain helped inform the committee’s interview of Sullivan in September, and will help inform the Committee’s upcoming interviews with Thomas Nides and others,”Wolking told The DCNF.
Release of the Bash email is certain to reignite debate about why the U.S. failed to respond militarily to the attack that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans.
Former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta told the Senate Armed Forces Committee in 2013 that “time, distance, the lack of an adequate warning, events that moved very quickly on the ground prevented a more immediate response.”
Judicial Watch points to congressional testimony by Gregory Hicks, the former deputy chief of mission for the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli, Libya, who says the four Americans might have been saved “if we had been able to scramble a fighter or aircraft or two over Benghazi as quickly as possible after the attack commenced, I believe there would not have been a mortar attack on the annex in the morning because I believe the Libyans would have split. They would have been scared to death that we would have gotten a laser on them and killed them.”
As Russian warships rain down cruise missiles as part of its military strike in Syria, there’s now a glaring absence in the region: For the first time since 2007, the U.S. Navy has no aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf.
Military officials said Thursday that they’ve pulled the USS Theodore Roosevelt, which is home to about 5,000 service members and 65 combat planes, so that it can undergo maintenance. The ship officially exited the gulf around 11 p.m. ET. The temporary measure is also the result of mandatory budget cuts.
The aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt as it returns from sea duty on March 27, 2002. Mike Heffner / Getty Images File
The lack of a U.S. presence in the gulf comes as Russia is escalating its actions in the region and began pounding targets in Syria last week with airstrikes. Russian officials say they’re trying to obliterate ISIS, although the U.S. and its allies say they’re instead hitting rebel fighters who oppose Syrian President Bashar Assad, a Russian ally.
Russia remains a wild card in the region — and the absence of an American aircraft carrier is being noticed, said Peter Daly, a retired Navy vice admiral and CEO of the U.S. Naval Institute.
“The most important thing you need a carrier for is for what you don’t know is going to happen next,”Daly told NBC News.
That was especially important during the height of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, when the Navy often had two carriers operating in the region. The combat planes can fly into war zones and generally act as a show of force to Iran and other nations during tense standoffs.
The USS Theodore Roosevelt — a massive, nuclear-powered aircraft carrier — has had a central role in the fight against ISIS in Iraq and Syria since August 2014, when the U.S.-led coalition started bombing the Islamist extremists.
A Navy official told Washington lawmakers in July that the lack of a carrier was imminent — and could potentially hamstring operations. “Without that carrier, there will be a detriment to our capability there,”Adm. John Richardson said during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, prior to his confirmation in the Navy’s top post.
The USS Harry S. Truman, which is based out of Norfolk, Virginia, is expected to take over in the region, the Navy Times first reported in June.
Sidelining the USS Theodore Roosevelt also shows how Navy leaders are trying to shave off lengthy deployment times, which have not only worn down the ships, but taken a toll on sailors’ morale, the newspaper said.
The Navy has reportedly blamed the lengthy deployments — some more than 10 months — because of past requirements to have two carriers in the Persian Gulf between 2011 and 2013.
Daly said the U.S. still has options for launching its planes thanks to Turkey, Qatar and other coalition nations that have entered the fight to root out ISIS.
“The biggest value to those carriers is that they are huge, and you have the capability to go from one stop to another, and we don’t need a permission slip from another nation when we want to fly planes,”he added.
Just as essentially, the Navy’s fleet needs to be maintained, and the military can only put it off for so long, Daly said. “You can make exceptions anytime, but if you make it every time, it catches up with you,”Daly added.
God help us. Here’s what America’s newly homosexualized, “values neutral” military looks like.
Last week, in a strange fit of actual news reporting, the New York Times published an exposé revealing that, under this Obama administration, the Department of Defense is not only permitting the homosexual abuse of little boys at the hands of Muslim allies in Afghanistan, but is effectively facilitating it. A handful of U.S. servicemen have had enough and are courageously blowing the whistle on this unimaginably evil policy. Naturally, they’re being punished and drummed out of the service for doing so.
“Rampant sexual abuse of children has long been a problem in Afghanistan, particularly among armed commanders who dominate much of the rural landscape and can bully the population,” reports the Times. “The practice is called bacha bazi, literally ‘boy play,’ and American soldiers and Marines have been instructed not to intervene – in some cases, not even when their Afghan allies have abused boys on military bases, according to interviews and court records. …”
“At night we can hear them screaming, but we’re not allowed to do anything about it,” Lance Cpl. Gregory Buckley Jr. told his father, Gregory Buckley Sr., who recounted his conversation with the Times. “My son said that his officers told him to look the other way because it’s their culture,” Buckley added.
Isn’t multiculturalism peachy?
I sat down with Dr. Judith Reisman, research law professor and director of the Liberty Center for Child Protection, to discuss this shocking development. “Unfortunately, this has been going on for years, with the knowledge of our American government,”she told me. “I just received an email from one of my German child-protection colleagues. She included several links to violent torture films and photos of hundreds of real children being brutalized by animals in horrific scenes. There is no way the FBI, CIA, Interpol and all other policing agencies do not know about this, which is readily accessible.
“This is glamorization of ’50 Shades of Grey’ novels and films acted out on children, chained to beds, tortured, never to recover,” she added. “It’s a natural outgrowth of generations of Western ‘fee sex’ conditioning via the ‘sex science’ of violent bi/homosexual pedophile Alfred Kinsey in 1948 and his ‘pamphleteer’ Hugh Hefner, beginning in 1953. Kinsey’s claim he proved ‘children are sexual from birth’ has been supplemented by slow, devious conditioning of future generations through child pornography in Playboy. Can people be so brainwashed that they really believe we have always been so demonic?” she asks.
Indeed, Kinsey, though married to a woman who took part in his many filmed “scientific” orgies, was a promiscuous homosexual and sadomasochist. He managed to completely upend and twist the world’s perception of human sexuality in the 1950s and ’60s with his world famous “Kinsey Reports.”
Even today, most are completely unaware that during his tenure at Indiana University, Kinsey facilitated, with stopwatches and ledgers, the systematic sexual abuse of hundreds, if not thousands, of children and infants – all in the name of science.
Among other things, Kinsey asserted that children are “sexual from birth.” He further concluded, based upon experiments he directed and documented in his infamous Table 34, that adult-child sex is harmless, even beneficial, and described child “orgasm” as “culminating in extreme trembling, collapse, loss of color, and sometimes fainting. …” Many children suffered “excruciating pain,” he observed, “and [would] scream if movement [was] continued.” Some “[would] fight away from the [adult] partner and may make violent attempts to avoid climax, although they derive[d] definite pleasure from the situation.”
Yeah. Sounds like it.
Disturbing though this may be, what’s equally disturbing is that nearly all of today’s liberal “comprehensive sex education” curricula – such as that pushed by extremist groups like the National Education Association (NEA), Planned Parenthood and the Gay Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) – is derived entirely from the criminally fraudulent, pro-pedophile “research” of Alfred Kinsey.
What’s even more disturbing is that, in addition to the DOD, Obama’s Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has likewise embraced the debunked Kinsey sex-education model and has long pushed curricula based upon it.
You may recall, for instance, that during his first term, the Obama administration provided on the HHS “Questions and Answers About Sex” website, a “Quick Guide to Healthy Living” section which, like Kinsey, outrageously claimed that “Children are human beings and therefore sexual beings … which is healthy and normal.”
And what do “sexual beings” do? Well, they have sex, of course. “It’s hard for parents to acknowledge this,” admitted the page.
You think?
So we shouldn’t be surprised in the least that, since Obama repealed the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy a few years back, not only have we seen a massive spike in male-on-male homosexual assaults in the armed services, we now discover that this administration is looking the other way as similar homosexual assaults are being perpetrated against children. After all, “Children are sexual from birth,” right? They’re “born that way.”
A Public Affairs Officer escorts media through the currently closed Camp X-Ray which was the first detention facility to hold
Abdul Shalabi, a Guantanamo detainee and former bodyguard of Osama bin Laden, was just released to Saudi Arabia, bringing the total number of detainees in the prison down to 114. This is the second transfer in under a week. Last week, the Department of Defense announced the release of Younis Abdurrahman Chekkouri to Morocco.
“The United States is grateful to the government of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia for its willingness to support ongoing U.S. efforts to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility. The United States coordinated with the government of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to ensure this transfer took place consistent with appropriate security and humane treatment measures,” the Defense Department said in a statement.
A detainee assessment from 2008 found that 39-year-old Shalabi, who comes from a wealthy and educated family, not only served as bin Laden’s bodyguard, but also has familial ties to the bin Laden family. Shalabi belonged to al-Qaida and was part of an aborted component of the September 11 attacks. But Shalabi consistently denied involvement and claimed to be a religious teacher.
On December 15, 2001, Pakistani authorities captured Shalabi along with 31 other al-Qaida fighters, who were fleeing from Tora Bora, Osama bin Laden’s mountain complex.
Near the end of December, authorities transferred Shalabi over to U.S. custody, who then was sent to Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, where he stayed for 13 years.
At the time, the assessment determined Shalabi was too dangerous to release, but the board changed its mind in June, clearing him for release.
“The board also considered the detainee’s well-established family, their willingness and ability to support him upon his return, and their prior success in assisting with the rehabilitation and reintegration of a former Guantánamo detainee,” the review panel said.
There are 52 detainees left who have been cleared for release. The rest require further detention. President Barack Obama still wants to close the prison before his term is up, and so the Pentagon has investigated domestic facilities to hold detainees in the long-term if the administration manages to shutter Gitmo.
Dimona nuclear reactor circa 1960s National Security Archive/Flash 90
In a development that has largely been missed by mainstream media, the Pentagon early last month quietly declassified a Department of Defense top-secret document detailing Israel’s nuclear program, a highly covert topic that Israel has never formally announced to avoid a regional nuclear arms race, and which the US until now has respected by remaining silent. But by publishing the declassified document from 1987, the US reportedly breached the silent agreement to keep quiet on Israel’s nuclear powers for the first time ever, detailing the nuclear program in great depth.
The timing of the revelation is highly suspect, given that it came as tensions spiraled out of control between Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and US President Barack Obama ahead of Netanyahu’s March 3 address in Congress, in which he warned against the dangers of Iran’s nuclear program and how the deal being formed on that program leaves the Islamic regime with nuclear breakout capabilities.
Another highly suspicious aspect of the document is that while the Pentagon saw fit to declassify sections on Israel’s sensitive nuclear program, it kept sections on Italy, France, West Germany and other NATO countries classified, with those sections blocked out in the document.
The 386-page report entitled “Critical Technological Assessment in Israel and NATO Nations” gives a detailed description of how Israel advanced its military technology and developed its nuclear infrastructure and research in the 1970s and 1980s.
Israel is “developing the kind of codes which will enable them to make hydrogen bombs. That is, codes which detail fission and fusion processes on a microscopic and macroscopic level,” reveals the report, stating that in the 1980s Israelis were reaching the ability to create bombs considered a thousand times more powerful than atom bombs.
The revelation marks a first in which the US published in a document a description of how Israel attained hydrogen bombs.
The report also notes research laboratories in Israel “are equivalent to our Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore and Oak Ridge National Laboratories,” the key labs in developing America’s nuclear arsenal.
Israel’s nuclear infrastructure is “an almost exact parallel of the capability currently existing at our National Laboratories,” it adds.
“As far as nuclear technology is concerned the Israelis are roughly where the U.S. was in the fission weapon field in about 1955 to 1960,”the report reveals, noting a time frame just after America tested its first hydrogen bomb. Institute for Defense Analysis, a federally funded agency operating under the Pentagon, penned the report back in 1987.
Aside from nuclear capabilities, the report revealed Israel at the time had “a totally integrated effort in systems development throughout the nation,” with electronic combat all in one “integrated system, not separated systems for the Army, Navy and Air Force.” It even acknowledged that in some cases, Israeli military technology “is more advanced than in the U.S.”
Declassifying the report comes at a sensitive timing as noted above, and given that the process to have it published was started three years ago, that timing is seen as having been the choice of the American government. US journalist Grant Smith petitioned to have the report published based on the Freedom of Information Act. Initially the Pentagon took its time answering, leading Smith to sue, and a District Court judge to order the Pentagon to respond to the request. Smith, who heads the Institute for Research: Middle East Policy, reportedly said he thinks this is the first time the US government has officially confirmed that Israel is a nuclear power, a status that Israel has long been widely known to have despite being undeclared.
President Obama appears poised to nominate former Deputy Defense Secretary Ashton Carter to lead the Pentagon.
Carter has been considered among the top candidates for the job since Chuck Hagel announced last week he was resigning, and other top candidates — including Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, former Pentagon official Michèle Flournoy and Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) — have removed their names from consideration in recent days.
White House press secretary Josh Earnest said Tuesday that Carter is “on the short list” and declined to name any other candidate under consideration.
While Earnest would not confirm that Carter was the choice, he say he had served “ably” in his prior position at the Pentagon.
“He’s somebody that certainly deserves and has demonstrated strong bipartisan support for his previous service in government,”Earnest said. “He is somebody that does have a detailed understanding of the way that the Department of Defense works.”
Earnest went on to note that Carter had been confirmed by unanimous consent in 2011, saying it was an indication he had “succeeded in the past winning strong bipartisan support.”
Earlier Tuesday, CNN reported that Carter would be the choice, barring any last-minute complications.
White House officials declined to comment on the CNN report, although members of the administration have previously acknowledged that Carter was among the names being considered.
“We have no presidential personnel announcements at this time, and we’re not going to speculate on any decisions before the president announces one,”said White House spokesman Eric Schultz.
Although attention has focused on Carter, former Navy Secretary Richard Danzig and former Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Kurt Campbell also are thought to be in the running for the job.
But a major selling point for Carter, who was the Defense Department’s No. 2 official from 2011-2013 and previously oversaw the Pentagon’s sprawling procurement operation, could be early signals of support from Republican lawmakers who will be important to his nomination.
“It’d be good,”said Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), ranking member on the Senate Armed Services Committee. “He’s always performed well; he’s not going to be as much of a political person as somebody might be.”
Inhofe said that, if Carter was nominated, “it should be an easy confirmation.”
Rep. Buck McKeon (R-Calif.), the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, called Carter “a good guy” but said he hoped the next Defense Secretary would be able to stake out more independence from the White House.
“The first thing they do in the morning is call the White House, he says do something, they say, yes sir, and go do it,”McKeon said. “Regardless of the situation or what is best to do.”
White House officials said Hagel’s exit came amid concern he was not best equipped to lead the Pentagon’s efforts to combat the rising threat posed by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). But Hagel also reportedly struggled to break into the president’s inner circle, and multiple reports suggested simmering tension between the Pentagon and the president’s national security staff.
VIEW RELATED VIDEO NEWS REPORT:
— Kristina Wong and Martin Matishak contributed to this report, which was updated at 1:50 p.m.
President Obama has, for years, worked to undermine the direction of military leaders by purging from the ranks top military officers who wish to maintain a more “hands-on” approach to military policy.
From religious rights to lifting the ban on openly homosexual soldiers serving in the military, the Obama Administration has worked very hard to undermine the ability of military leaders to lead the military; instead, the Obama Administration has carefully-crafted a political environment within the ranks where policy comes from politicians and unelected officials, not military personnel who might have a firmer grasp on the needs of our military.
According to reports, Colorado Republican Rep. Doug Lamborn, who sits on the House Armed Services Committee, has called upon generals and other top military officials to refuse to put up with Obama’s micromanaging and social experimentation and resign rather than serve under a president who so clearly holds a disdain for those who wear the uniform.
“[L]et me reassure you on this,” Lamborn told a small gathering of so-called liberty voters in Colorado Springs on Tuesday. “A lot of us are talking to the generals behind the scenes, saying, ‘Hey, if you disagree with the policy that the White House has given you, let’s have a resignation.’
“You know, let’s have a pubic resignation, and state your protest, and go out in a blaze of glory. I haven’t seen that very much. In fact, I haven’t seen that at all in years.”
The president holds a tough relationship with his generals as the U.S. military engages radical Islamists in the Middle East again while refusing to commit fully to the actions that many argue are necessary to secure victory. The Huffington Post reports:
Since Obama launched military operations against the Islamic State in mid-September, several reports have suggested that he may have a less than perfect relationship with his generals. Several high-ranking military officers and Pentagon officials have publicly voiced their disagreement with Obama’s airstrikes-only approach in Syria. Former defense secretary Robert Gates said, “There will be boots on the ground if there’s to be any hope of success.”
Lamborn, who sits on the House Armed Services Committee, has been an outspoken critic of Obama’s military actions and his foreign policy as a whole. “After watching President Obama’s rudderless foreign policy for the past five years, I have lost confidence in the president’s ability to lead,” Lamborn said in a statement earlier this month.
The military is not a Petri dish meant for social experiments and it is not a tool to be used to only maintain the semblance of getting things done. If we are to engage the enemy, we are to try and decimate the enemy as quickly as possible.
Conservative Watchdog group Judicial Watch has obtained United States Defense Department education materials that expose the indoctrination that is being attempted within their ranks. The documents warn of “extremists” who “talk of individual liberties, states’ rights, and how to make the world a better place.”
The documents were obtained by Judicial Watch in response to a Freedom of Information Act request (FOIA) that was filed on April 8, 2013. The FOIA requested “Any and all records concerning, regarding, or related to the preparation and presentation of training materials on hate groups or hate crimes distributed or used by the Air Force.”
Judicial Watch claims that the Defense Department is teaching that conservative and liberty-minded individuals’ views are “extremist.”
Defense Equal Opportunity Management Institute, a Defense Department-funded diversity training center, reportedly authored the materials. On top of that they cite the racist, hate group Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) as their source for defining “hate groups.” Isn’t that telling?
SPLC, a hate group unto themselves, identified the Family research Council (FRC) as a hate group on its website, along with other well-known conservative organizations such as the American Family Association, concerned Women for America, and Coral Ridge Ministries. SPLC cannot stand for people to tell the truth about abortion being murder and homosexuality being a perversion. As a result of their identifying FRC in this manner, 28 year old year old Floyd Lee Corkins II, used his computer to access SPLC’s website to target FRC and other organizations. He then went into the FRC building wanting to kill as many people as possible, then smear their faces with Chick-Fil-A sandwiches and kill the guard. He was able to wound the guard, Leo Johnson, but Johnson was still able to subdue him until police arrived.
There are 133 pages of lesson plans and PowerPoint slides provided by the Air Force. Included in those plans is a January 2013 Defense Equal Opportunity Management Institute “student guide” titled “Extremism,” which begins on page 32 of the downloadable PDF. Though the documentation reads “do not use on the job” and “for training purposes only,” it does cause one to wonder why the Defense Department would invest so much money and time into “education materials” that are not to be used.
Following Corkins conviction, FRC President Tony Perkins said the SPLC “can no longer say that it is not a source for those bent on committing acts of violence.”
“The day after Floyd Corkins came into the FRC headquarters and opened fire wounding one of our team members, I stated that while Corkins was responsible for the shooting, he had been given a license to perpetrate this act of violence by groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center, which has systematically and recklessly labeled every organization with which they disagree as a ‘hate group,’” Perkins said.
Judicial Watch highlights some of the sections:
The document defines extremists as “a person who advocates the use of force or violence; advocates supremacist causes based on race, ethnicity, religion, gender, or national origin; or otherwise engages to illegally deprive individuals or groups of their civil rights.”
A statement that “Nowadays, instead of dressing in sheets or publically espousing hate messages, many extremists will talk of individual liberties, states’ rights, and how to make the world a better place.”
“[W]hile not all extremist groups are hate groups, all hate groups are extremist groups.”
Under a section labeled ”Extremist Ideologies” the document states, “In U.S. history, there are many examples of extremist ideologies and movements. The colonists who sought to free themselves from British rule and the Confederate states who sought to secede from the Northern states are just two examples.”
In this same section, the document lists the 9/11 attack under a category of “Historical events.”
“[A]ctive participation…with regard to extremist organizations is incompatible with military service and, is therefore prohibited.” [Emphasis in original]
The document details the “seven stages of hate” and sixteen “extremists’ traits.”
The SPLC is listed as a resource for information on hate groups and referenced several times throughout the guide.
Of the five organizations besides the SPLC listed as resources, one is an SPLC project (Teaching Tolerance) and one considers any politically or socially conservative movement to be a potential hate group (Political Research Associates).
Other than a mention of 9/11 and the Sudan, there is no discussion of Islamic extremism.
Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said the “Obama administration has a nasty habit of equating basic conservative values with terrorism.”
“And now, in a document full of claptrap, its Defense Department suggests that the Founding Fathers, and many conservative Americans, would not be welcome in today’s military,” he added. “And it is striking that some the language in this new document echoes the IRS targeting language of conservative and Tea Party investigations. After reviewing this document, one can’t help but worry for the future and morale of our nation’s armed forces.”
About Tim Brown: Husband to my wife. Father of 10. Jack of All Trades. Christian and lover of liberty. Residing in the U.S. occupied Great State of South Carolina.
American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
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American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
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American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
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