Starring Cheech and Chong

Today's AP (the All Propaganda news service) headline: "Police: Suspects Planned NYC Attack." (http://news.yahoo.com/police-boston-suspects-planned-attack-york-182015679.html. My local paper's version was a bit different. Sue me). Seems the Chechen brothers were bent on mayhem and murder again, this time along the Great White Way! Oh no!

But, then you read this:  "...in what they portrayed as a chilling, spur-of-the-moment scheme that fell apart when the brothers realized the car they had hijacked was low on gas."

In other words, this "plan" had all the highlights of stoners piling into a 1973 Pinto at two o'clock in the morning in an effort to score some pizza. Hijinks ensue. As if you needed any more evidence of the hubristic, self-absorbed my-life-is-a-movie character of these two idiots, it was both of them thinking that they, in a stolen vehicle, with their faces plastered all over the world, could actually pull something spur-of-the-moment like this off.

But according to Mayor McSoda of New York City: "We don't know if we would have been able to stop the terrorists had they arrived here from Boston," the mayor said. "We're just thankful that we didn't have to find out that answer."

What?

You mean, the overwhelming resources of the best anti-terror unit in the country, the NYPD, along with the sophisticated technologies, theories, and capabilities of the entire Federal Counterterrorist apparatus, all mobilized since the Marathon bombings, wasn't sure it could handle a couple of half wits?

Oh. Good. God.

And these very same people want to take care of your health, your education, your retirement, your job. They assure us, with magical words written on parchment so therefore it must be true and real, that we do not need our guns, our own doctors, nor to concern ourselves with what is taught in our classrooms or amass savings to stave off destitution because they, with degrees from Harvard, have developed a superior ability to handle every aspect of you peasants' lives.

But, yet, two morons with homemade hand grenades baffle them.

Okay. Thanks, anyway. But I think I'll take care of all this stuff myself.

Chickens Coming Home to Roost

So, Chechens. With pressure cooker bombs.

What do you think caused it? Well, let's follow liberal logic: while walking innocently down a Wal Mart (corporation! grrr!) aisle, they accidentally brushed against a display of cookware and were filled with rage and the urge to commit mayhem. So they bought the pressure cooker weapons of mass destruction and went after the Boston Marathon. Ban pressure cookers! Ban Wal Mart! And universal background checks for all caterers!

Because, you see, it is the object, not the person.

Or, how about this? Enraged by the racist patrimony of the white male overlord capitalist running dog lackey class, the two peace-loving legal immigrants decided to show eeevil conservatives that they, as immigrants, were just as legal as illegal immigrants. Take that, Boston Marathon, which is a real white person event!

Because, you see, racism justifies any kind of response. Any kind.

Or, maybe they were showing solidarity with their illegally detained Guantanamo brethren, or protesting the waste of funds that should go to the poor instead of elite privileged marathon runners flaunting their prosperity (poor people can't run marathons, man! It's a race just finding food!), or maybe they didn't like the exploitation of police dogs and every other desperate leftist Marxist liberal Democrat excuse you can muster.

Or maybe, let's try this: they are a couple of evil bastards, filled with the contempt for human life that only Islam seems to generate, and in their hubris, decided to kill and maim others.

And hey, Barack, when you tell Medyedev that you'll have more flexibility, America gets bumped up the Chechen enemy list.

We're All Gay Now

According to the news and Hollywood and polls and Republican leadership, that is. I doubt it. Methinks there is, instead, some creative polling going on, along with wishful thinking and the normal idiocy that is a hazard of being young. Which is puzzling, because, really, gay? Are you serious?

I put homosexuality in the same category as pedophilia, incest, bestiality, whatever we used to think was degenerate behavior (I say "used to think" because there's been some movement along those lines, too). It's like marrying a goat. And this does not make me homophobic. Not in the least. I have absolutely no fear of homosexuals. I am, instead, rather contemptuous of them.

Call me, then, homoscornic.

My attitude can be summed up in Sam Kinison's rather poignant question: How can a man look at another man's hairy ass and find love? Seriously, how? Men, at best, are just functional, while women, even the worst of them, are works of art. Stand a naked man and a naked women next to each other and note where the symmetry and beauty lie. And which parts actually fit together, indeed, seem to be DESIGNED to fit together. With ease. Not with a lot of effort and Vaseline.

I regard homosexuality as nothing more than arrested development. Gay guys never really got past the "Girls are icky" stage, and remember their middle school circle jerks with great fondness. They developed such a regard for ejaculation that they are willing to find another man equally in love with his and do unspeakable things to each other in order to achieve it. And they think that's love.

It isn't. No one over 14 mistakes orgasm with love...well, at least they didn't before the 30 year effort to reduce all relationships to mere orgasm. And since we all now believe that all relationships are measured primarily by the amount and level of sex contained therein, then a homosexual's particular brand of ejaculation is just one shade of gray. So why can't they get married?

Why can't brother and sister? Brother and goat?

Oh, tut, says the gay lobby, a goat or a child can't enter into a contract so marriage with them would never happen.

Yeah? Just give it some time.

And, please understand, because I am scornful of you doesn't mean I want to put you gay guys in jail or stone you or burn you at the stake or anything. You wanna be gay, knock yourselves out. Broadway is a better place because of it. Set up house together. Have a ball. Or two.

But don't think for a second I will ever consider you legitimate, even if the Supreme Court loses what's left of its mind and sanctions your marriage. You can't make a horse a Senator. Lots of horses' asses are, but no actual horses. And no gay guy will ever be anything more to me than a guy in love with another guy's hairy ass.

Now, lesbians. You're okay. Just take a lot of pictures.

Argony

Argo won Best Picture because of its opening and ending credits. Certainly not for anything else. I mean, where's the tension? Everyone knew they would all get out.

The action was just...not. I didn't buy the whole pulled aside by the crazed airport guard (Farshad Farahat, the best actor in the whole thing) episode and the ridiculous tarmac pursuit because I had (a) never heard of these events from subsequent interviews and (b) they looked too Hollywood. Apparently, my instincts were correct.

The acting was...okay. Farahat was terrifyingly intense and quite believable, that is, until the silly tarmac chase. Alan Arkin was terrifyingly funny, as always. Ben Affleck looked like he was practicing a cameo for The Walking Dead, but you expect that. Everyone else...meh. The movie overall...meh. So, why the big deal?

Because, in the beginning, some enraged woman with a kinda Farsi accent tells us that the entire Iranian Revolution is George Bush's fault.

Not George Bush per se, but eeeevil American corporate imperialists who crushed the innocent, peace loving natural genuine aspirations of the gentle Iranian people by deposing their beloved and revered dictator, Mossadegh, and replacing him with that eeeevil Western puppet, Shah Pahlavi. That's why Iranian students stormed the Embassy almost 30 years later (took a while to get organized, because that eeevil CIA was soooo good at penetrating the students' ranks), when those eeeevil American corporate imperialists sheltered the Shah from righteous Iranian justice, all of which forced that conflicted man of action Ben Affleck, er, Tony Mendez, to Risk His Life saving the poor, innocent American embassy workers cruelly exploited by eeevil George Bush Republicans and oil companies. All, ALL! the problems in the Middle East ever since were caused by this! Grrrr!!

What rot.

Mossadegh was a dictator who liked to nationalize private property. Should he have been coup'd? No, of course not, but the issue in 1979 was Islamic radicalism, not political orientation. Even Mossadegh would have been overthrown by the fundamentalist Revolutionary Guard. Islamists don't like Marxists any more than they like capitalists.

Jimmy Carter's voice-over at the end, claiming he got the hostages released without resorting to violence is, of course, the ultimate liberal fantasy. It was the promise of violence from the incoming Reagan administration that convinced the Iranians to let our people go. 

But that would be an inconvenient truth.

And would mean no Academy Award.

Bumps in the ground

No briefing. No phone calls. No interest.

That pretty much sums up Barack Obama's involvement with the Benghazi attack. Panetta told him about it during a pre-scheduled afternoon brief and then...crickets. Barry couldn't be bothered. Gotta go to Las Vegas, ya know, got that election thing, ya know. Dead ambassador? Eh, he knew the risks.

No, apparently, he didn't.

See, Ambassador Stevens believed, like any American who opts for public service, that the US government had his back. The US would exercise rights of sovereign territory over its consulates and personnel because, heck, a diplomatic corps cannot operate, otherwise. It's just standard governmental practice.

But on 11 Sep 12, Ambassador Stevens discovered that was no longer true. No help came. Leon and his Joint Chief wrung their hands and consulted some charts and well, we're sorry, just can't do it. No one called the wing commander of Sigonella Air Base to put some assets in the air. The rescue team from Tripoli landed at the Benghazi airport and just stayed put, waiting for a bus or to clear Customs, who the hell knows? Rescue teams from other countries flew here and there and landed and here and there, but nowhere near Benghazi. Doherty and Woods called and called for help, still foolishly believing, like Amabassador Stevens did, that their Commander-in-Chief would help them.

But he had a campaign event to get to. So, he told Leon to take care of it, and went to bed. Unbothered. Unconcerned. Probably slept great.

Because the lives and deaths of individuals just aren't important in the great scheme. When there's a Marxist utopia to be built, graves get dug- here and there an individual, at other places, mass ones. Barry and Mao and Lenin and Stalin, shoulder to shoulder, looking with satisfaction at those long, long lines of disturbed earth. Onward, forever onward.

So, Hillary, what difference did it make? Well, to your boss, none. To others:

 

 

Here's Why it Matters

For weeks, Hillary, you and Barry and Susan and Leon blamed a video that some horrible person dared, DARED! to put on YouTube. Why, Hillary, you even promised a grieving family member that the horrible, horrible person who dared to put up that video would be severely punished, and there he is, in jail.

And it was all crap.

Four people died, alone and calling for help, because your buddy Barry needed to swagger around telling everyone he was SO a tough guy! Hadn't he destroyed Al Qaeda, knocked that Moammar guy right off his throne, solved the Mid East crisis, ensured Israel's future, settled all the differences with the Muslim world and just should be elected to another four years because he has done so much to secure America's, and the world's, peace?

Well, no Hillary, he hadn't. And if you and Barry and Susan and Leon had admitted that, well, your chances of getting more of those tax payer funded trips would be threatened, wouldn't it?

But it matters for another reason, Hillary, because see, four people died, alone and calling for help, not because crapheads took offense to a video. Oh, no, not at all.

They died because of you.

It is your fault. Not just as the head of a department that screwed up so badly, but as someone directly responsible for their deaths. See, a naif like you, drunk on your Peace Studies theory of engagement, with your postmodern view of American diminishment and the romance of Third World revolutionary movements, might as well have sent a written invitation to Al Qaeda to come on down and bugger a dead ambassador. See, Hillary, ideas have consequences, and your faculty lounge statesmanship caused a beast to lurch towards Benghazi.  

And I think you know that. That's why you cried at the hearing.

Guilt.

And I think you are holding to this egregiously insensitive "What difference does it make!" line because you know the honorable thing to do, the right thing to do, is resign. In disgrace. But you won't.

Because you're not honorable.

So, where was he?

Where was the President during Benghazi, and who refused to send help?

I keep asking this question. So far, no answers.

 

Now, if you read Senator Lieberman and Collins' report Flashing Red, there appears to be an answer to the last half of the question: no one refused to send help. There was no help to be sent.

 

According to the report, AFRICOM, that puzzling and new combat command which has a few problems of its own, has military responsibility for Libya. Any assets to be scrambled would come from AFRICOM inventory. The problem is that AFRICOM did not have any assets in close enough proximity to do said scrambling:

Finding 8. The Department of Defense and the Department of State had not jointly assessed the availability of U.S. assets to support the Temporary Mission Facility in Benghazi in the event of a crisis and although DOD attempted to quickly mobilize its resources, it did not have assets or personnel close enough to reach Benghazi in a timely fashion. (page 20 of Flashing Red)... 

...AFRICOM’s lack of operational assets near Benghazi hindered its capacity to evacuate U.S. personnel during the attacks. The Djibouti base was several thousand miles away. There was no Marine expeditionary unit, carrier group or a smaller group of U.S. ships closely located in the Mediterranean Sea that could have provided aerial or ground support or helped evacuate personnel from Benghazi. AFRICOM also lacked a dedicated Commander’s In-extremis Force (CIF)—a specially trained force capable of performing no-notice missions. As a result, General Ham was forced to call on the European Command’s CIF whose location in Eastern Europe prevented it from getting to Benghazi before the four Americans were killed and all other U.S. personnel were evacuated. We note that AFRICOM later received an independent CIF in October, 2012.89 DOD and AFRICOM tried to provide effective support on September 11th, but given the nature of the attack in Benghazi and the distance of their assets from Benghazi, they were tragically unable to do so. (page 21 of Flashing Red).

And Leon Panetta did give it the old college try, at least, according to the report:  

From 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. EST, Secretary Panetta met with senior DOD officials to discuss the Benghazi attack and other violence in the region in reaction to the anti-Muslim video. The Secretary directed three actions: 1) that one Fleet Antiterrorism Security Team (FAST) platoon stationed in Rota, Spain, deploy to Benghazi and that a second FAST platoon in Rota prepare to deploy to Tripoli; 2) that U.S. European Command’s In-extremis Force, which happened to be training in central Europe, deploy to a staging base in southern Europe; and 3) that a special operations force based in the United States deploy to a staging base in southern Europe. The National Command Center transmitted formal authorization for these actions at 8:39 p.m. A FAST platoon arrived in Tripoli the evening (local time) of September 12th, and the other forces arrived that evening at a staging base in Italy, long after the terrorist attack on the U.S. facilities in Benghazi had ended and four Americans had been killed. (Flashing Red, page 4) 

And well, well, it's just the logistics of the thing. Rota NAS is 2046 miles from Benghazi, about four flight hours. By the time you get everybody out of the bars, suited up and on the plane, it's about six hours. Say Panetta makes his decisions at 6 (I know, I'm being generous); the FAST doesn't get there until midnight. Okay, good, still time to kick some terrorist butt, but the FAST team didn't go to Benghazi—they went to Tripoli.  

Huh? 

The guys from Europe (I'm guessing Ramstein) had 2646 miles to travel but, it's a quicker flight, only 3 hours (prevailing winds, no doubt). So, give them the two hours to round up the boys and get gear and go, and they should have been in Benghazi by 11:00 pm,which is even more time to kick some terrorist ass.  

But they didn't go to Bengahzi. They went to Italy. 

Oops. 

All you guys who've ever been in the military understand this. Things break. Orders are muddled. Things don't work out. Couldn't be helped. Panetta shrugs his shoulders in the press conference with Dempsey. Oh well, we tried. Sorry about that. Just another bump in the road. 

Except for one thing: Sigonella NAS, Sicily. 

Sigonella NAS is 610 flight miles from Benghazi. 610. An hour and ten minutes. 

Now, it is a little difficult trying to find out what units are stationed at Sigonella. I can understand that; don't want the bad guys to know what we got. But, the site Global Security reports that Sigonella has airplanes. Lots of big, honking, airplanes. 

Why weren't those sent? 

Fortunately, Bing West, former Assistant Secretary of Defense and a man much smarter than Schlub, has already asked this question in a National Review article called "First, Aid the Living." He says that Sigonella had Special Operations forces and F18s. F18s! Imagine one of those bad boys roaring in. Craphead terrorists running for their lives. 

Yes. Imagine. 

But, they didn't. And you gotta ask why. 

Mr. West thinks it's due to "...passive groupthink..., with the assumption being that a spontaneous mob would quickly run out of steam." But I don't. I think there's other things to blame. 

First, chains of command. Panetta and Ham and all the other high falutin' commanders and administrative generals really, really believe in chains of command and assigned responsibilities and jurisdiction and territories and who gets to do what with what assets and its AFRICOM and Sigonella is not AFRICOM so, no, don't call them. Bing West got that part right because groupthink excludes  the ability to consider other options. 

But there is something far worse: zeitgeist. 

Look who you have here: Panetta, Clinton, and Obama. All of them, each damned one of them, hold the US military in complete and utter contempt. Sneering contempt. The first thing you cavemen want to do is blow stuff up and kill babies so no, NO! We're not sending any damned F18s or forces to save those two stupid ex-SEALS who disobeyed orders in the first place and deserve everything that happens to them.  

And Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty called for help. And called. And called. Frantic. Desperate. Wondering why a major tenet of US military doctrine—never abandon your troops—was being ignored. Why a second tenet—by God, send everything!—wasn't happening. And they fought and called and fought and called and died. Alone. Abandoned. 

And where were you, Barack Obama, while this was happening? 

Where were you?