Tag Archives: Iraq War

Wounded warriors deserve much better than this

March 11, 2016 kanelis2012

You hear about scandals occasionally involving high-profile charities.

They usually involve extravagance. Such is the case with the Wounded Warriors Project.

For the life of me I’m having trouble mustering the right words to convey the outrage I’m feeling at what’s been reported.

CEO Steven Nardizzi and chief operating officer Al Giordano have been fired by the WWP board, which said an “independent study” confirmed some grotesque “irregularities” in the way the organization was spending money donated to help care for heroes wounded in battle.

The outrage should sweep the nation. Politicians keep telling us how we must treat our wounded veterans with all the care and compassion we can deliver. People give to organizations expecting their money to go toward that care. Sure, there are “administrative costs” to be paid.

The WWP, though, reportedly was funneling roughly half of the money it gets to far more than paying salaries and buying stationery.

There were reports of extravagant parties at posh resorts. Nardizzi reportedly rappelled down the side of a hotel to make a grand entrance.

One report revealed that in 2014 alone, the organization spent $26 million on parties. Twenty-six million dollars!

I don’t know if there will be any criminal prosecutions involved with the two individuals who’ve been canned by the board. A part of me wishes they would just vanish from the face of the planet. Another part of me thinks there ought to be an examination into possible criminal malfeasance.

The Wounded Warriors Project is supposed to help the 50,000 or so vets who’ve been injured in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. People give money to this group expecting the money to do good for those who need the help.

We’ve come a huge distance from the Vietnam War era when our veterans were virtually scorned by the country that sent them into battle.

This hideous story must not dampen our resolve to continue to help our wounded veterans.

Indeed, it should cause us to redouble that effort.

national news, political news

Trump confounds foes on all sides

March 2, 2016 kanelis2012

Just how wacky is this presidential campaign?

I cannot identify any single source, but it seems as though we can find some element of that wackiness in this scenario.

Donald J. Trump is getting pounded by foes on both ends of the spectrum as he continues to lead the way among the Republican Party presidential candidates.

Consider this, for instance.

Intellectual conservatives say Trump isn’t one of them. They point to his statements in favor of a woman’s right to choose an abortion; they take note of his stance in favor of universal health care; they question why he has said President Bush “lied” the nation into fighting the Iraq War.

He’s not a true Republican, let alone a conservative Republican, which is where the party establishment has been leaning for the past decade or two.

The party establishment cannot stomach the idea of Trump being the party nominee. They fear what that would mean for the party’s control of the U.S. Senate and in the many statewide races across the country. Trump cannot possibly lead the Republican slate of candidates, they say.

Then we have those on the other end. I’m one of those folks.

Trump’s public presence is a ghastly reminder of how ignorant he is about government. He doesn’t understand the limits of the presidency. Trump’s stated intention is to do all manner of things by himself, or so one could be led to assume.

Many of us are horrified at the insults he has hurled: at a TV news anchor, at disabled people, at a U.S. senator’s distinguished military service, at voters of Iowa, at all of his political foes, at Hispanics.

He recently actually threatened the speaker of the House of Representatives, fellow Republican Paul Ryan, by saying he could pay a price if he and Trump don’t get along.

And, oh yes, there’s that feigned ignorance of who ex-Klansman David Duke is and what the organization to which he once belonged stands for.

Those on the right and those on the left cannot stand this guy.

But he’s leading the race for the Republican Party presidential nomination. Who’s voting for him?

Evangelical voters are giving him a pass for his acknowledged extramarital affairs. Hard-core Republicans are backing him because he “tells it like it is.”

They’re fed up with “politics as usual.”

Well, what they’re likely to get with Donald Trump is a brand new kind of politics never before seen.

You want wackiness? This guy is delivering it.

International news, military news

Now you tell us, general …

December 4, 2015 kanelis2012

Michael Flynn didn’t disclose much that many Americans already didn’t believe or even know.

The retired Army lieutenant general — who once headed the Defense Intelligence Agency — told a German newspaper that the Iraq War was a big mistake and that the Bush administration started it on “sketchy evidence” that Iraq had a hand in the 9/11 attacks.

Who knew?

History, Gen. Flynn said, won’t be kind as the Iraq War legacy is written over time.

Gosh. Do you think?

I guess my question for the general might be: Why didn’t you tell us before now?

Flynn told Der Spiegel, “When 9/11 occurred, all the emotions took over, and our response was, ‘Where did those bastards come from? Let’s go kill them. Let’s go get them.'”

I don’t think the emotional part of the response should be criticized. We were angry as hell at what happened. that day.

But to assign complicity for the 9/11 attack almost immediately to Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein after going after the Taliban and al-Qaeda strongholds in Afghanistan is where the policy came apart rapidly.

Flynn believes that eliminating Saddam Hussein helped strengthen and embolden the Islamic State, the Sunni terrorist organization that has risen to become a fearsome force in the Middle East. He lays responsibility for that squarely on the Bush administration.

Flynn, though, doesn’t spare Barack Obama from blame in this conflict. According to the Huffington Post: “In a recent interview with Mehdi Hasan on Al Jazeera’s ‘Head to Head,’ Flynn took aim at Obama’s publicly stated goals to ‘degrade and ultimately destroy’ the Islamic State, saying that while the administration is effectively degrading the organization, the group cannot be ‘destroyed,'”

He added: “We may cause it to change its name, but we are never going to destroy this organization,” Flynn said. “Destroy means to completely eliminate — he should not have used those words, those were incorrect words to use and he should have been more precise.”

So … the debate goes on.

military news, national news, political news

‘Cadet Carson’ never suited up

November 6, 2015 kanelis2012 3 Comments

The vetting of the latest Republican presidential front runner has begun.

It’s gotten a bit bumpy for the noted neurosurgeon.

Politico reports that contrary to what he’s written about himself, Dr. Ben Carson never was offered a scholarship to the U.S. Military Academy. He didn’t even apply for admission, Politico reports.

Carson, though, says he was told when he was 17 years of age that if he applied, he’d be offered the full ride. Who told him? He said it was Army Gen. William Westmoreland, who had just finished commanding U.S. forces in Vietnam.

So … did the good doctor lie, fib, “misremember,” or what?

Carson’s record is under scrutiny more than ever now for a simple reason. He’s among the leaders of a still-packed GOP presidential field of candidates.

If he made it all up, then he’s likely guilty of something approaching stolen valor … you know, when folks make up war stories about themselves. It’s more or less what former NBC News anchor Brian Williams did when he claimed to have to been shot down by an Iraqi rocket-propelled grenade in 2003; oops, didn’t happen, we found out later.

Still, one shouldn’t be allowed to get away even with “misremembering” such details about one’s life when he seeks to become president of the United States of America.

It kind of reminds me of when Democratic presidential candidate Bill Clinton once said he didn’t remember getting a draft notice. Interesting. As one who did get such a notice from Uncle Sam, I can speak for others who did as well that you do not forget getting such a letter.

Dr. Carson has some serious explaining to do. His campaign now says he didn’t get the scholarship or the appointment to West Point.

Now, let’s hear from you, Dr. Carson. Did you make it up?

International news, military news, national news, political news

Should the president return that Peace Prize?

November 1, 2015 kanelis2012 1 Comment

Barack H. Obama campaigned for the presidency vowing to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

His election in 2008 prompted the Nobel Committee to award him the Peace Prize the following year with the hope of a peaceful future in those two countries. The new president accepted the prize while acknowledging the unusual context in which the committee awarded it.

I never thought I’d say this, but I have to wonder if President Obama has ever considered giving the award back.

Why? Well, consider that that he vowed to end both wars. They haven’t ended. Now he’s about to commit a handful of U.S. troops into a third country to engage in the battle against the Islamic State.

Obama faces dilemma

The president recently announced that he would keep troops fighting in Afghanistan past the time he leaves office in January 2017; our commitment in Iraq remains, despite the pullout of frontline combat troops. Now this, the deployment of Special Forces to assist the Kurds fighting ISIS in northern Syria.

He took office while the country was fighting in two countries. He likely will leave office with the nation fighting in three countries.

This is not the legacy that Barack Obama ever wanted, but it’s part of the legacy he will leave the next president of the United States.

I get that circumstances have changed since he took office as the so-called “transformational” president. The Islamic State has exploded onto the scene. Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad has brutalized and murdered hundreds of thousands of his people. The Iraqi military has fallen far short of its mission to defend the country against Islamic State murderers. The Taliban has fought back in Afghanistan.

Yes, we killed Osama bin Laden. We’ve continued to hunt down and kill terrorists all across the Middle East and South Asia. And we’ve known all along that the Global War on Terror would not end in the conventional way, with one side signing a peace treaty to end the hostilities. We are fighting an elusive and cunning enemy.

However, all that hope that Barack Obama brought to the presidency has dissipated as he heads for the final turn of his two terms in office.

I’m not going to say President Obama should give back the Nobel Peace Prize, although I wouldn’t complain out loud if he did.

International news

Blair apologizes for Iraq War … more or less

October 27, 2015 kanelis2012

Tony Blair had me going there for a little while.

I thought the former British prime minister actually was going to say he was sorry for joining the parade into war with Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

Then he backed away.

Blair tempered his apology by saying it was not a mistake to get rid of Saddam, but then said he regrets following the faulty intelligence that persuaded his country and the United States that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction.

You know how it turned out. We invaded Iraq, tossed Saddam out, captured him, tried him, hanged him … all the while scouring Iraq for those WMD.

They weren’t there.

Am I glad Saddam Hussein is gone? Of course I am! The price we paid in thousands of American lives lost, however, was too great.

Blair’s almost-apology, though, does go a lot farther than President Bush, Vice President Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld ever have done — or likely ever will do.

If only the U.S. brass would acknowledge the mistake. If only it acknowledge the war’s impact on the enabling of the Islamic State, the Sunni militant group that is waging war against the Shia government in Iraq.

That won’t happen. Instead, we hear from Cheney (mostly) about how they were right and how others, namely the Obama administration, have squandered all the progress we made in Iraq.

Well, the Iraq War was a war of choice.

Saddam Hussein was being contained within Iraq. He posed barely a fraction of the threat that he was said to pose.

And, oh yes. Let’s not forget that Saddam Hussein and his Baath party had nothing — zero — to do with the 9/11 attacks, which was another pretext that the Bush administration used to justify our invasion of Iraq in March 2003.

I don’t expect an apology from the Bush administration. I was hoping one might be forthcoming from our allies across The Pond.

It came. Sort of …

International news

Cheney wrong on Iraq, but right on Iran?

September 10, 2015 kanelis2012

Let me stipulate up front that I can be a bit slow on the uptake.

Having made that admission, I now must wonder aloud why the immediate past vice president of the United States, Richard B. Cheney, should be taken seriously when he criticizes the Iran nuclear deal.

Why question it? Because Vice President Cheney and the rest of the Bush administration national security team were woefully wrong about Iraq and the conditions that lured us into the Iraq War.

Yet, there he is, out there blasting the Iran nuclear deal while actually defending the decision to go to war in Iraq. Remember the weapons of mass destruction? Or that Saddam Hussein was working to develop a nuclear arsenal of his own? Or that we’d be greeted as “liberators” by the Iraqis?

Cheney and the rest of the Bush gang said all of that.

Now we are supposed to believe him when he assesses the Iran nuclear deal as presenting a far greater risk to the United States than the terrorists who hit us on 9/11.

Cheney was wrong in 2003. He’s wrong now.

But he stands firm on the rationale he, the president, the national security team and the secretary of state all presented to the world that, by golly, Saddam was going to present a threat to the entire world. We had to take him out, Cheney said.

We weren’t greeted as liberators. The WMD? Not a sign of it anywhere. Ditto for the Iraqi nuke program.

Mr. Vice President, your miscalculation — or perhaps it was a deception — on Iraq disqualifies you from speaking out against an agreement that has far greater chances for success than the misadventure you helped create in Iraq.

International news, national news, political news

Some self-awareness, Mr. Vice President

August 29, 2015 kanelis2012

Dick Cheney’s utter lack of self-awareness is an astounding thing to behold.

The former vice president and his daughter, Liz, have co-written a book, “Exceptional: Why the World Needs a Powerful America.” In an extended excerpt published in the Wall Street Journal, Cheney writes that President Obama has made “false” statements about the Iran nuclear deal.

False statements? Yes, the man who orchestrated — along with the rest of the George W. Bush national security team — this nation’s invasion of Iraq on a whole array of falsehoods has now laid the charge on the man who succeeded President Bush in the White House.

He has joined the GOP amen chorus in blaming Obama for the rise of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, contending that the United States has “abandoned” Iraq and is “on course” to do the same thing in Afghanistan.

I don’t disagree with the title of the Cheneys’ book. The world does need a “powerful America.” I will simply add my own view that the world still has a powerful America in its midst.

We remain the world’s pre-eminent military power — by a long shot. Our economy is still the envy of the world. People are aching to gain entry into the United States. Yes, many of them come here illegally, but many more come here legally and in accordance with federal immigration law.

Let us stop denigrating our current role in the world — as many of the GOP presidential candidates have done — by suggesting we’ve lost our place at the top of the geopolitical food chain.

As for the former vice president, he needs to take time for some serious introspection before he accuses others of stating foreign-policy falsehoods.

‘Sniper’ family excluded from ceremony?

August 29, 2015 kanelis2012

A curious development has popped up regarding a ceremony that honored the memory of the “American sniper,” the late Chris Kyle.

Kyle’s brother and father have stated on social media they weren’t invited to the ceremony in which Texas Gov. Greg Abbott awarded Kyle the Legislative Medal of Honor.

Kyle was the Navy SEAL who has been credited with more kills in battle than anyone on U.S. military history. He returned from four tours of duty in Iraq, but was murdered at a gun range here in Texas. His story became the subject of the film “American Sniper.”

The governor bestowed the state’s highest military honor to Chris Kyle … and it is richly deserved. But the hero’s father and brother are not invited? Huh?

According to the Texas Tribune: “We as the Kyle family (my parents, my wife and our kids) knew nothing about this and were not invited to the ceremony,” Jeff Kyle, Chris Kyle’s brother, wrote on Facebook. “It’s kinda funny how the family isn’t asked to be involved!”

Chris Kyle’ widow, Taya, accepted the award from Gov. Abbott.

The governor’s office hasn’t yet responded to the report.

I hope the governor’s staff has an explanation for it. Is there an estrangement between Chris Kyle’s widow and the hero’s brother and father? Is it an honest oversight? Is it a deliberate snub … which I rather doubt?

http://www.texastribune.org/2015/08/28/kyle-family-says-it-wasnt-invited-abbott-ceremony/

Let’s get to the bottom of this curious story, shall we?

International news, political news

ISIL’s rise: It’s Obama’s fault?

August 12, 2015 kanelis2012 2 Comments

Jeb Bush is trying a remarkable misdirection play as he seeks the Republican Party’s presidential nomination in 2016.

The former Florida governor sought in a speech at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library to blame former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Barack Obama on the rise of the Islamic State in Iraq and, I presume, in Syria as well.

Well now. Let’s look at the record for a moment.

The Iraq War began in March 2003 when President George W. Bush launched the invasion of that country, which at the time was governed by a Sunni Muslim tyrant, the late Saddam Hussein. (Hang with me for a moment; the Sunni reference is critical.)

Americans were told by those high up in the Bush chain of command that we’d defeat the Iraqis easily and we’d be welcomed as “liberators.”

Didn’t turn out that way.

Yes, we defeated the so-called “elite” Iraqi forces. We drove Saddam from power. We caught him later in that spider hole, pulled him, jailed him, put him on trial, convicted him and then hanged him.

All of this was done on Jeb’s brother’s presidential watch.

Then came the new government. Iraqis elected a Shiite leader, who formed a Shiite government.

Oh yes. The Sunnis hate the Shiites and vice versa. The Islamic State — aka ISIL — is a Sunni cult.

Thus, ISIL was born — on President Bush’s watch.

Now, though, the next Bush who wants to be president, says it’s Obama’s fault. It’s Clinton’s fault.

Why? We didn’t maintain a sufficient troop garrison in Iraq to keep ISIL in check. I ought to mention that the Bush administration set the deadline for full withdrawal from Iraq.

Jeb Bush now says he would send troops back into Iraq, in effect restarting a war that we shouldn’t have fought in the first place. Weapons of mass destruction? Hideous chemical weapons? The threat of a “mushroom cloud”? It was bogus.

I’m not yet ready to declare that the pretext for war was concocted deliberately by the Bush administration high command.

Let’s just say for now that “faulty intelligence” isn’t much of an excuse for sending thousands of American service personnel to their death in a war designed to overthrow a sovereign leader who we had kept in check through a series of tough economic sanctions.

Jeb Bush is treading on some squishy ground whenever he mentions the words “Iraq War.”

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