History's greatest democracy continued its love affair with hereditary monarchy Wednesday, as Jeb Bush captivated listeners with A Very Important Foreign Policy Speech full of original insights about being his own man and America needing leadership and believing that "weakness invites war … and strength encourages peace."
It's Benghazi redux: As they secured the U.S. embassy in Yemen, the final Marines to leave the country handed their weapons over to Iran-friendly Houthi rebels, on orders from some Obama administration bureaucrat. That's the right-wing blogosphere's story, anyway, even though the Marine Corps calls it bullshit.
Since visiting Iraq in 2003, NBC and its star news anchor, Brian Williams, have maintained that Williams was aboard a Chinook helicopter when it was hit and grounded by enemy fire over Baghdad. But after repeating the claim last week, Williams was forced by contrary reports from the helo's crew to completely recant his story today.
Bowe Bergdahl, the eccentric Army enlistee and final Afghanistan P.O.W. whose release from Taliban custody left detractors screaming for his corpse, may face desertion charges soon. Or maybe not. No one knows for certain just yet. But either way, these blogospheric anti-Bergdahl snuff-porn fantasies will be heard, dammit.
The Yemeni government just collapsed, its president prodded into resignation by an Iran-affiliated insurgent group. In the south, citizens are demanding an independent state. The U.S. is freaking out at the possibility of losing its drone-friendliest partner in the middle east. What the hell is going on? Let us explain.
There is a point, about a third of the way through American Sniper's conventional narrative, where a different kind of war movie threatens to break out. SEAL sniper Chris Kyle is dropping Iraqi bodies left and right. He is protecting colleagues, but opening a wound on himself. It is not a glorious sacrifice. He seems to wonder how many more he will have to kill.
Much of the recent media debate around American Sniper concerns the legacy of Chris Kyle, the SEAL in the title, who may be a hero, a cold-blooded killer, a loudmouthed liar, or all three. In fact, Kyle—the real man and the dramatic character—seems to be the latest in a long history of men I call military braggadouches.
Investigators this week called the military to task for paying Afghan contractors half a million dollars to construct a training base "made mostly of sand" that melted in the rain four months later, calling the now-demolished project "not only an embarrassment, but, more significantly, a waste of U.S. taxpayers' money."
Freedom Alliance is dedicated to freedom. Which means it's dedicated to our amazing combat veterans. Which means it invites those veterans, especially the ones spooked by "loud noises and crowds," to hunt doves, the universal symbol of peace and spirituality, and shoot dozens of the delicate winged creatures to death.
We live in a world with walls. And those walls have to be guarded. Who's gonna do it? You, Barracks Hussain Obummer? Of course not. You can't even extend the slightest of courtesies to America's Guardians™ when their love stands, like a wall, between you and your dumb 16th-hole sextuple-bogey play-through.
One of the original tires on the axis of evil is apparently being swapped out for a more aggressive tread: Iran, that longtime Islamic bogeyman used in bedtime stories to scare Republican children straight, is now bombing the far-more-terrifying Islamic State in an apparent convergence of interests with the U.S.
Alois Brunner, a high-ranking SS officer who helped run the concentration camps and was convicted and condemned in absentia for Nazi war crimes, died only recently after spending his twilight years as a trusted terrorism adviser to then-Syrian president Hafez al-Assad, according to a New York Times report.
"As a senior commander in Iraq and Afghanistan, I lost 80 soldiers," retired three-star general Daniel Bolger writes in today's Times. "As veterans, we tell ourselves it was all worth it." But Bolger points out what we rarely acknowledge on days like today: The stories we tell ourselves, more often than not, are bullshit.
You may not know or remember the earlier exploits of Lt. Gordon "Dr. Chaps" Klingenschmitt (USN-Ret.), the new state representative for evangelical wackadoo-heavy Colorado Springs. But let us remind you, because he's probably the most insane of nutso politicians elected last night.
The U.S. Navy has a three-star admiral in charge of all its intelligence-gathering and analysis efforts. But for a year, he has been barred by officials from viewing any secret intelligence, essentially making his job moot and leaving the service dead in the water when it comes to gathering critical information.
The Free Syrian Army, a moderate militia being trained and equipped by the Obama administration in hopes that it could defeat both ISIS and Syria's secular dictator, was routed by Al Qaeda allies over the weekend, with many of its men and weapons being taken over for the jihadi cause.
A member of the secretive, all-about-the business special operations team that killed Osama bin Laden will participate in an upcoming Fox News Channel documentary and explain how it was him who fired the shots that killed the Al Qaeda leader.
