Kelley Beaucar Vlahos, writing at The American Conservative, tells readers about the fast moving scene for mercenaries and contractors in the Middle East.
Not unlike the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq—where private military contractors fed, trained, equipped, and protected U.S. military forces “on the ground” in unprecedented numbers—an escalation of hired security forces in a hot spot like Syria would likely boost the presence of U.S. “boots” without causing the political heartburn of putting more actual soldiers and Marines in harm’s way.
“I don’t know if there are any contractors in Syria but I suspect there are a lot. We just can’t sustain military operations today without the private sector. We are strategically dependent on the private sector,” said author Sean McFate, also an Army special-forces veteran and assistant professor at the National Defense University.
If recent history is any indication, as the footprint grows, so will the private shadow army, said McFate. His book, The Modern Mercenary: Private Armies and What they Mean for World Order, argues that a global industry has been unleashed by the American reliance on the hired guns overseas since 9/11. It is unstoppable, partly because militaries like the U.S.’s have become so dependent on it. Private contractors also offer a cloak of deniability, and frankly, the ability to operate outside of institutional laws and boundaries.
“There is no oversight, no tracking mechanisms,” said McFate. “Obama pledged to hold this industry accountable, and did nothing about it—the lack of response is a story in itself.” Meanwhile, McFate likes to describe it as a largely unregulated, Wild West atmosphere in which soldiers of fortune for both Uncle Sam and private corporations protecting interests intermingle in hot zones like Iraq.
“We have contractors and mercenaries all over Northern Iraq, operating out of Erbil, some doing oil protection, others training with Peshmerga, some are basically adventurists trying to do their own thing out there,” McFate said. “Erbil is sort of like that bar in Star Wars, the Mos Eisley Cantina; it’s on the edge of civilization, it’s full of weird people, and a lot of them are armed.”
Flashback Video: Blackwater Founder: We Could Have Fought ISIS if Obama Hadn’t ‘Crushed My Old Business’
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WikiLeaks spells out the latest bombshell about the Clinton Foundation in the form of a memo written by Doug Band, the longtime errand boy of the Clintons, writes Kimberely A. Strassel in the WSJ. “The memo removes any doubt that the foundation is little more than an unregistered super PAC working on the Clintons’ behalf.”
Here’s the lasting takeaway: The Clintons spent their White House years explaining endless sleazy financial deals, and even capping their exit with a scandal over whether Bill was paid to pardon financier Marc Rich. They know the risks. And yet they geared up the foundation and these seedy practices even as Mrs. Clinton was making her first bid for the presidency. They continued them as she sat as secretary of state. They continue them still, as she nears the White House.
This is how the Clintons operate. They don’t change. Any one who pulls the lever for Mrs. Clinton takes responsibility for setting up the nation for all the blatant corruption that will follow.
Krauthammer’s Take: Clinton Had Her Server to Hide ‘Rank Corruption of the Clinton Foundation’
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 Scholarly work by Chris Preble and the team at the Cato Institute has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that Pentagon spending can be cut dramatically. Cato scholars have shown how American military dominance has made America “Less safe, Less Prosperous, and Less Free.”
Notwithstanding the solid evidence in support of deep Pentagon cuts, the Defense Department’s financial waistline continues to expand, no matter the administration in Washington. When are Americans going to rebel? What will it take for a full-scale nationwide blowback?
William D. Hartung, writing at The American Conservative, outlines in considerable depth the grasp the politicians and the military/industrial complex have the country in. What’s to do?
Through good times and bad, regardless of what’s actually happening in the world, one thing is certain: in the long run, the Pentagon budget won’t go down.
What accounts for the Department of Defense’s ability to keep a stranglehold on your tax dollars year after endless year?
Pillar one supporting that edifice: ideology. As long as most Americans accept the notion that it is the God-given mission and right of the United States to go anywhere on the planet and do more or less anything it cares to do with its military, you won’t see Pentagon spending brought under real control. Think of this as the military corollary to American exceptionalism—or just call it the doctrine of armed exceptionalism, if you will.
The second pillar supporting lavish military budgets (and this will hardly surprise you): the entrenched power of the arms lobby and its allies in the Pentagon and on Capitol Hill. The strategic placement of arms production facilities and military bases in key states and Congressional districts has created an economic dependency that has saved many a flawed weapons system from being unceremoniously dumped in the trash bin of history.
The overwhelming consensus in favor of a “cover the globe” military strategy has been broken from time to time by popular resistance to the idea of using war as a central tool of foreign policy. In such periods, getting Americans behind a program of feeding the military machine massive sums of money has generally required a heavy dose of fear.
For example, the last thing most Americans wanted after the devastation and hardship unleashed by World War II was to immediately put the country back on a war footing. The demobilization of millions of soldiers and a sharp cutback in weapons spending in the immediate postwar years rocked what President Dwight Eisenhower would later dub the “military-industrial complex.”
After the 9/11 attacks, the rogue state doctrine morphed into the Global War on Terror (GWOT), which neoconservative pundits soon labeled “World War IV.” The heightened fear campaign that went with it, in turn, helped sow the seeds for the 2003 invasion of Iraq, which was promoted by visions of mushroom clouds rising over American cities and a drumbeat of Bush administration claims (all false) that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and ties to al-Qaeda. Some administration officials including Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld even suggested that Saddam was like Hitler, as if a modest-sized Middle Eastern state could somehow muster the resources to conquer the globe.
The administration’s propaganda campaign would be supplemented by the work of right-wing corporate-funded think tanks like the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute.
The Afghan and Iraq wars would prove an absolute bonanza for contractors as the Pentagon budget soared.
Recent terror attacks against Western targets from Brussels, Paris, and Nice to San Bernardino and Orlando have offered the national security state and the Obama administration the necessary fear factor that makes the case for higher Pentagon spending so palatable. This has been true despite the fact that more tanks, bombers, aircraft carriers, and nuclear weapons will be useless in preventing such attacks.
The “war budget”—money meant for the Pentagon but not included in its regular budget—has been used to add on tens of billions of dollars more.
The abuse of the war budget leaves ample room in the Pentagon’s main budget for items like the overpriced, underperforming F-35 combat aircraft, a plane which, at a price tag of $1.4 trillion over its lifetime, is on track to be the most expensive weapons program ever undertaken.
As long as fear, greed, and hubris are the dominant factors driving Pentagon spending, no matter who is in the White House, substantial and enduring budget reductions are essentially inconceivable.
Unfortunately, the military-industrial complex that Eisenhower warned Americans about more than 50 years ago is alive and well, and gobbling up your tax dollars at an alarming rate.
Christopher A. Preble Discusses America’s Power Problem
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How can Hillary Clinton possibly be elected president of the United States? Pat Buchanan outlines in spades the case against this congenital liar and disgrace to American politics. And while Pat makes a case no American can possibly refute, he is being kind. As Pat correctly notes. An election of Hillary Clinton is going to kick off an immediate retribution wave that is going to be deadly news for all Americans.
A big percentage of Americans believe the Clintons should be drummed out of the American political landscape, and Hillary jailed.
Pat Buchanan tells readers: “Should Donald Trump surge from behind to win, he would likely bring in with him both houses of Congress.”
He writes at The American Conservative:
Much of his agenda — tax cuts, deregulation, border security, deportation of criminals here illegally, repeal of Obamacare, appointing justices like Scalia, unleashing the energy industry — could be readily enacted.
But consider what a Hillary Clinton presidency would be like.
She would enter office as the least-admired president in history, without a vision or a mandate. She would take office with two-thirds of the nation believing she is untruthful and untrustworthy.
The hostility Clinton would face the day she takes office would almost seem to ensure four years of pure hell.
The reason: her credibility, or rather her transparent lack of it.
Forty times during her FBI interrogation, Clinton said she could not or did not recall. This writer has friends who went to prison for telling a grand jury, “I can’t recall.”
After studying her testimony and the contents of her emails, FBI Director James Comey virtually accused Clinton of lying.
Yesterday’s newspapers exploded with reports of how Bill Clinton aide Doug Band raised money for the Clinton Foundation, and then hit up the same corporate contributors to pay huge fees for Bill’s speeches.
What were the corporations buying if not influence? What were the foreign contributors buying, if not influence with an ex-president, and a secretary of state and possible future president?
Did none of the big donors receive any official favors?
And, with the election over, the investigative reporters of the adversary press, Pulitzers beckoning, would be cut loose to go after her.
The Republican House is already gearing up for investigations that could last deep into Clinton’s first term.
This election is not over. But if Hillary Clinton wins, a truly hellish presidency could await her, and us.
Hillary Clinton lying for 13 minutes straight.
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Last Friday, the FBI announced it was reopening its criminal investigation into matters relating to Hillary Clinton’s emails. Mrs. Clinton’s reaction? During a news conference in Iowa Friday evening, she told reporters, “We’ve heard these rumors, we don’t know what to believe. … And I’m sure there will be even more rumors. That’s why it is incumbent upon the FBI to tell us what they’re talking about.”
“Good diversion, Hillary,” writes Francis Menton in the Manhattan Contrarian.
But the problem is, we know that the FBI is duty-bound not to disclose what it knows in an ongoing investigation. So, your demand was fake. On the other hand, there is someone who works for you and who knows what is on Huma’s computer, and on Anthony’s, and who is not subject to the FBI’s duty to keep its ongoing investigations confidential. That person is — Huma! So, Hillary, when will we see you publicly instructing Huma to tell us everything she knows about what is on her or Anthony’s computers? I’m not holding my breath waiting for this.
Hillary’s campaign has been arguing that doubting the election’s outcome was undermining democracy. Now Hillary is suggesting that FBI Director James Comey is launching a partisan witch-hunt against her. Instead of acting like “a paranoid, chronically deceptive politician who has something to hide,” suggests Peter Spiliakos in NRO, Hillary “could have leveraged public trust in the FBI to her advantage and downplayed the news.”
She could have said that she had no doubt that the FBI would do a thorough and competent job, and find nothing of any interest — and now let the FBI do its job while we talk about good jobs, affordable education, secure retirements, and the rest.
FBI announces new investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails
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Hillary Clinton has the potential to be one of the most dangerous presidents ever when it comes to Second Amendment freedoms. Cato Institute’s Adam Bates explains Clinton’s “vague and ambiguous” positions on the Second Amendment here.
Hillary Clinton made two seemingly conflicting assertions about the Second Amendment: that she supports an individual right to bear arms and that the Heller case was wrongly decided.
Here’s the problem for Secretary Clinton: The Supreme Court held in District of Columbia v. Heller that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to own a handgun for self-defense in the home. There were two dissents to the case. One by Justice Stephens, which rejected a self-defense justification for the Second Amendment, and another by Justice Breyer arguing that even if there is a right to self-defense, it does not include the right to keep a handgun or immediately operable long gun in the home. Each dissent received votes from the same four justices.
So what does Secretary Clinton mean when she says that Heller was wrongly decided? Both dissents in Heller would have upheld a law that effectively banned handguns. Both dissents would have upheld a law that rejects the ability to defend yourself from criminals in your own home as a fundamental right. Or would Secretary Clinton reject both dissents in favor of some fourth view of the case?
Her position is vague and ambiguous. To say that you accept an individual right to bear arms but also believe that the government can ban individuals from owning handguns or operable long guns in the home raises the question of exactly what this individual right does protect.
How much will Clinton try to limit the Second Amendment?
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Lost in all the recriminations over James Comey’s investigation and subsequent re-investigation of Hillary Clinton are the details of the meeting between Bill Clinton and Loretta Lynch on the tarmac in Phoenix. What did they discuss, and why would they do something so obviously unethical? Pat Buchanan analyzes the issue here at The American Conservative.
Still unanswered is what Bill Clinton and Attorney General Lynch discussed during that 30-minute meeting on the Phoenix tarmac, prior to the FBI and Justice Department decision not to indict Hillary Clinton.
The stench of corruption is reaching Bhopal dimensions.
What appears about to happen seems inevitable and predictable.
If Hillary Clinton is elected, the email scandal, the pay-for-play scandal involving the Clinton Foundation, “Bill Clinton, Inc.,” the truthfulness of her testimony, and reports of Clinton-paid dirty tricksters engaging in brownshirt tactics at Trump rallies, are all going to be investigated more thoroughly by the FBI.
And if Clinton is president, there is no way her Justice Department can investigate the Clinton scandals, any more than this city in the early 1970s would entrust an investigation into Watergate to the Nixon Justice Department.
If Clinton wins this election, and Republicans hold onto one or both houses of Congress, investigations of the Clinton scandals will start soon after her inaugural and will go on for years. And the clamor for a special prosecutor, who will, as Archibald Cox did with Nixon, build a huge staff and spend years investigating, will become irresistible.
Realizing that this is the near-certain fate and future of any Hillary Clinton presidency, and would be disastrous for the country, Sunday night, Doug Schoen, who worked for President Clinton for six years, said he has changed his mind and will not be voting for Hillary.
Donald Trump says this is worse than Watergate. As of now, it is only potentially so.
But if Hillary Clinton, this distrusted and disbelieved woman, does take the oath of office on Jan. 20, there is a real possibility that, like Nixon, down the road a year or two, she could be forced from office.
Do we really want to go through this again?
Entire Chamber Laughs At Lying Loretta Lynch Over Hillary Clinton’s Emails
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Former CIA bin Laden unit chief Michael Scheuer explains the duty of Americans under the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.
All of the republic’s enemies — Liberals, Neocons, media personalities, Israel-Firsters, socialists, teacher unions, abortionists, etc., etc. — brilliantly chose to gather together under Clinton’s tent and and loudly proclaim their support for her plans to destroy America and those they deem “deplorable” inhabitants via taxes, interventionist wars, and executive orders. It is only commonsense to say that it always is a good thing to know who and where your enemies, and the pro-Clinton folks have made that as easy as targeting apples bobbing in a barrel of water.
Historically, Americans are one for two in armed rebellions against those whom they perceived as intending to impose tyrannical rule on them. The Founder’s generation won; the Confederate-American generation lost. The Founders delayed rebellion until Britain’s tyranny was installed in the northern parts of British North America and could be seen to threaten all of it; the patience-short Confederate-Americans rebelled on the suspicion that a northern-run tyranny was coming their way.
Why did the civil war’s conclusion fail to make a future armed rebellion impossible? Simple. The door to and duty of rebellion can never be permanently closed or denied to citizens who are armed; who sense the approach and/or have experienced the beginnings of tyranny; and who believe a failure to attempt rebellion will only yield their enslavement as serfs to the elite. This hard and ominous fact, of course, is why Clinton and her ilk are striving to neuter the 2nd Amendment.
It seems quite likely that there are many millions of nationalistic Americans who now stand only a short step or two from the enough-is-enough line, and that they may soon see little recourse save an armed rebellion while the 2nd Amendment is still operative and doing what the Founders intended.
The Founders’ goal for the 2nd Amendment was, of course, to ensure that succeeding generations of Americans always have the tools with which to overturn rigged elections, protect and defend their Constitution, and, especially, to kill as many as necessary, and then a few, of their fellow citizens who are trying to subject them to the whims and wickedness of a liberty-murdering tyranny imposed — in this case — by a lying, corrupt, arrogant, power-and-money hungry, and obviously mentally disturbed politician.
If Mrs. Clinton and her supporters — that is, the criminal and her accomplices — win the 2016 election, the “obligation to allegiance” to her government ceases for those who opposed her and her abettors.
Under God, the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution, and plain commonsense, the citizens’ duty and responsibility lies squarely in refusing to submit to the taking of their liberty, and a grim willingness to risk death, family, and property by seeking to preserve the republic by destroying the tyrant, her associates, and their enslaving intentions.
Dr. Michael Scheuer Addresses Leaked Emails & More…
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