Perspectives; Thoughts; Comments; Opinions; Discussions

Posts tagged ‘recruitment’

Pete Hegseth Will Make The Pentagon Great Again


By: Mark Lucas | December 06, 2024

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2024/12/06/pete-hegseth-will-make-the-pentagon-great-again/

Pete Hegseth speaking onstage

Pete Hegseth has the combat leadership experience, academic pedigree, and profound love of country necessary to make our military great again. I served with him in the 34th Infantry Division and succeeded him in leading Concerned Veterans for America, and I wholeheartedly endorse his nomination to be our next secretary of defense.

President Trump knows that the Pentagon is in desperate need of reform, and the best way to accomplish that is to send a true outsider to run the show. The Make America Great Again movement has no better outsider to fix our broken military than Pete Hegseth, and he will also be a true loyalist to President Trump’s agenda. 

Hegseth’s leadership will ensure our military returns to the basics of defeating our adversaries, rather than pushing a social justice agenda. Our military is in the midst of a readiness and recruitment crisis, and reform is needed fast. Hegseth and I served as infantry rifle platoon leaders in combat. Warfighters don’t have the luxury of being distracted by frivolous matters during combat operations. We focused on what I called the Big Four: shoot, move, communicate, and stop bleeding. Transgender surgeries and understanding white rage didn’t quite make the list.

I served as the executive director of Concerned Veterans for America (CVA), succeeding Hegseth, who brought this group to national prominence. Contrary to media reports based on anonymous sources, I can confirm that Hegseth was not fired. It was common knowledge within CVA that he was going to Fox News. This is nothing more than another tired media attack from an apparatus hell-bent on destroying his nomination.

The media have falsely portrayed CVA as a dysfunctional organization under Hegseth’s leadership, but the executive team and strategy I inherited from him were world-class. The proof is in the policy victories we helped President Trump deliver for veterans by reforming the Department of Veterans Affairs in 2017 and 2018.

I personally briefed President Trump on CVA’s policy proposals during a roundtable discussion with other leaders from Veteran Service Organizations. My message was developed in part by the Fixing Veterans Health Care Task Force, created by Pete Hegseth. We wanted to bring accountability to the VA and provide veterans with a choice in their health care, and we did just that.

The president agreed with our strategy. I quickly deployed the CVA grassroots army, which Hegseth built, to pressure Congress to pass these critically needed reforms. Our volunteers made thousands of citizen contacts by knocking on doors, hosting phone banks, and calling their members of Congress.

In less than six months, President Trump signed the VA Accountability and Whistleblower Protection Act. This would allow the government to fire bad and underperforming VA employees, especially the ones who allowed vets to die on secret waitlists. The next summer, President Trump signed the VA Mission Act, which provided vets with a choice in their health care.

Thanks to the policy vision of Pete Hegseth and the leadership of President Trump, these reforms brought the VA into the 21st century and likely saved thousands of lives.

That is the Pete Hegseth I know — a warfighter and visionary who loves his country. He will make a tremendous secretary of defense.

Mark Lucas is the executive vice president of the Article III Project. Lucas served as an infantry officer in the Iowa Army National Guard and was awarded the Combat Infantry Badge and Bronze Star Medal in Afghanistan during the deadliest year of Operation Enduring Freedom.

Author Mark Lucas profile

Mark Lucas

More Articles

Category:

Military, Political

Tagged with:

One in Ten Islamic State Recruits Wants to Become Suicide Bomber


waving flagby Thomas D. Williams, Ph.D., 19 Apr 2016

Masked Islamic Jihad Militants Wear Explosive Belts During A Rally Commemorating Mohammed Irhaem And Saleh Hassouna April 23, 2002 In Gaza City, Gaza Strip. The Two Palestinian Men Were Shot And Killed On Friday, During An Exchange Of Fire With Israeli Troops Near The Jewish Settlement Of Netzarim In The Gaza Strip.

 

Recovered documents from the Islamic State terror group reveal that more than one in ten of their recruits would like to become suicide bombers.

A group of analysts at West Point who spent many hours sifting through thousands of leaked documents have found that 12 percent of Islamic State recruits are open to making the ultimate sacrifice as suicide bombers.

In March, German intelligence obtained a cache of Islamic State documents, revealing the names of 22,000 ISIS fighters including many foreign recruits hailing from Europe, Australia and the United States. The documents were reportedly leaked by a former Free Syrian Army fighter who switched over to fight for the Islamic State.

The leaked files reveal that some 10 percent of the militants hail from Western countries, with 128 jihadists from France, 80 from Germany and 57 from the UK.

The most common countries of provenance, however, were Saudi Arabia and Tunisia, with 797 and 640 recruits respectively.

Germany’s interior minister, Thomas de Maizière, confirmed the authenticity of the documents and their usefulness for counterterrorism forces. Maizière said the discovery would facilitate “speedier, clearer investigations and stricter prison sentences” for fighters returning from Syria and Iraq. He also said that the documents help elucidate “the underlying structures of this terrorist organization.”culture of deceit and lies

The files contain the names, nationalities, addresses, telephone numbers and other personal details of jihadists who joined the terrorist network in 2013 and 2014. According to the analysts, two thirds of the ISIS recruits are between the ages 21 and 30, though ages range from the teens all the way to a 70-year-old father of five from Kyrgyzstan.

The analysts said the find was the largest and “most significant” document cache of its kind, and furnished new insight into the terror group’s ambitions, structure and recruitment.

“The largest takeaway from these documents is the massive diversity of the population,” Brian Dodwell, deputy director of the Combating Terrorism Center at U.S. Military Academy at West Point. The only thing all the recruits had in common was their deep attachment to Islam.

“We’re talking about very diverse backgrounds from an education perspective — individuals who list their education as none up to those who listed their educations as PhDs, masters degrees, MBAs … Everything from laborers to doctors and lawyers,” Dodwell said.

Questionnaires filled out by new recruits contained a variety of queries, including whether they wanted to be a regular fighter or a suicide bomber or suicide fighter. Given the options, approximately 12 percent checked the box for martyrdom.Do you want

This percentage of willing martyrs is reportedly lower than from among the foreign fighters who joined Al Qaeda in Iraq in 2006 and 2007, more than half of whom volunteered to blow themselves up.

“While they do need some suicide bombers, if all of their troops selected into the suicide category who would be left to fill that conventional army? Who would be left to serve as the Sharia officials, the police or the administrative?” Dodwell said.

“They’re selling this narrative of victory and sustaining… Many of these individuals it would seem are buying into that message and are going into there to live — not die.”

Follow Thomas D. Williams on Twitter

Category:

Islamic News

Tagged with:

FBI Director: Islamic State Recruiting ’24 Hours a Day’ in All 50 States


waving flagby Breitbart News  14 Oct 2015

URL of the original posting site: http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/10/14/fbi-director-islamic-state-recruiting-24-hours-a-day-in-all-50-states

GettyImages-479457898

Eduardo Munoz Alvarez/Getty Images

CINCINNATI (AP) — FBI Director James Comey said Wednesday the recruitment of potential homegrown terrorists by the Islamic State group is widespread and goes on “24 hours a day” across the United States.

Hundreds of people are “consuming” social media efforts to either draw them overseas to join the extremists “or if you can’t come, kill where you are,” Comey said. “And that is a two-pronged siren song that goes out through social media.”

He said Twitter, other instant messaging, and encrypted communications have made the recruiting efforts of extremists easier and pervasive over the past two years.

“So we have investigations in all 50 states to try to identify, among hundreds of people who are consuming this poison, where are they on the stages from consuming to acting, and how do we stop them from acting,” he said.Islam is NOT

Comey talked with reporters during a visit to the FBI field office in the Cincinnati area. Its Ohio region had two arrests this year of young men charged with plotting terrorist acts to support ISIS extremists. Both pleaded not guilty.

Comey said authorities try to identify those being recruited who might need mental health care and see that they get it, but have “very tough messages” for the others. “This is not a game,” he said. “If we catch you doing this, you’re going to get a very long stretch in jail.”

Another top concern for the FBI is rising violent crime in many U.S. cities, including Cincinnati, he said. The reasons may vary, but he said the spread of heroin use has likely played a role in some cases. Comey said he couldn’t offer much assurance that an end is in sight for curbing heroin use. In Ohio, heroin and opioid use have contributed to record numbers of overdose deaths. Comey said it’s also likely the region will see a rise in the use of methamphetamines.

In God We Trust freedom combo 2

Category:

Islamic News

Tagged with:

Tag Cloud