A Government Fraud - Take a Bonus to Re-enlist for the CA National Guard

Government lawyers in the Pentagon are demanding that California National Guard members who took bonuses to sign up for re-enlistment and future possible deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan ten years ago, now have to pay back those bonuses.  The government was not authorized to make them.

Now, how likely is it that the service members knew that government officials were unauthorized to offer the bonuses that helped the government to solve its shortage of war-fighters?  Of course most people hearing about this wonder how hard it would be for them if the government asked them to pay back $15,000 the government may have given them 10 years ago for any reason.

But worse than that, the government is compounding its mere incompetence with a very dramatic fraud.  Men extended their enlistments knowing they would likely be sent to Iraq or Afghanistan and might lose their lives or their limbs or their minds fighting there. But now they learn that the bonuses were a case of fraud upon their trust in their government!  Effectively, it was just a trick to help the government steal their labor, their lives, their limbs, and their minds.

Well, what can you expect of a government that expects everyone except high politicians and high bureaucrats to obey the laws?  It is government by fraud for the fraudsters laid heavily upon the defrauded.  This is a fine substitute for the Rule of Law.  The People are now no more than fleeced sheep in the hands of these monstrously evil rulers.  There is a multitude of such frauds, but this is one of the more egregious of that multitude.

Update:  Today, 27 October 2016, the policy of recovering the bonus money was revoked due to complaints by some Congress members, at least some of whom recognized the offering of bonuses to be later taken back as fraud.

Syria and Intervention

Generally, the American public and certainly most of the media, have concluded that George W. Bush was wrong to put Saddam Hussein out of power in Iraq.  Yet, many of these same people are calling for Obama to use military power against Bashar al-Assad in Iraq.  Let us take a quick assessment of the relative merits of the two cases.

It seems clear that if the action of George W. Bush in applying military power to Iraq was as wrong as so many now claim it was, then those same people should be having a very difficult time justifying military action against Syria.

To be sure, Obama is presently talking about a limited action and one might argue that it could be scaled appropriately to the lower level of justification for the retribution against the evil regime of Bashar al-Assad.  However, these efforts to tune actions to a lower level of violence and effort often become much escalated.  What is more, Obama very nearly took action without Congressional approval, which is an assertion of power on his part that can only be justified if he is acting to protect Americans from a clear and imminent danger.  No such danger exists, so the constitutional requirement for Congressional approval is clear.  I am very inclined to mistrust a man who is reluctant to acknowledge this constitutional requirement.  Note that George W. Bush did not ignore it.

Frankly, one also has to be sure that our own national interest is substantially involved.  Even a limited attack is expensive at a time when our economy is in stagnation and our government is already draining the private sector of its wealth by taking 24 and 25% of GDP year after year.  We have a huge unemployment rate and many people employed only part time.  We have the outrageous expenses and rights violations of ObamaCare hanging over us.  We have an energy policy designed to pay off Obama cronies and cost consumers skyrocketing energy bills with no valid justification in either fossil fuel shortages or a failed man-made global warming hypothesis.  We have a mushrooming dependency of people on food stamps and social security disability payments.  We have a Baby Boomer Generation about to begin retiring in huge numbers with the accompanying loss of production and taxes and a great increase in Medicare and Social Security expenses.

We have a government which refuses to face these realities and which indeed appears to be playing up the Syria atrocities and our military response as a distraction from our own problems.  What is more, we do not have either a clear policy for Syria or for the Middle East in general.  Our policy is pretty near completely befuddled in fact.  At some point one has to adjust our foreign policy to the intelligence and knowledge of those who would execute it and we have to note that the present regime is uniquely clueless.  A regime headed by a community organizer who cannot write a coherent report or article and which first put Hilary Clinton and then Hanoi John at the head of the State Department, is not one we should want leading such military adventures.  A regime that would not face the need for more security for our people in Benghazi and would not even try to come to their rescue, is not one that inspires confidence.  What is more, this regime has long been choosing our military leaders for their political compliance and even those leaders have recently been replaced in unusually large numbers because they were apparently not compliant enough.

Bashar al-Assad is a monster.  One cannot help but wish to see such people removed from the face of the Earth.  But, it is not sufficiently in the interest of the U.S. to do this by ourselves and it sure is not a task I want to entrust to Obama.

Now let us return to discussions of the ObamaCare train-wreck, the stagnant economy, huge government overspending, the needed reforms of Medicare, Social Security, tax policy, the regulatory agencies, the Department of Education, the Department of Labor and its NLRB, the Department of Energy and an anti-fossil fuel bias, the monetary messes of the Federal Reserve, the massive snooping on Americans, the general anti-business climate, and the promotion of really bad climate science by the government.  Solving these problems is in the national interest.  Ignoring them is not.

Krauthammer - Young Hamlet's Agony

Charles Krauthammer has written a well-done commentary on Obama's handling of the war in Afghanistan called Young Hamlet's Agony.  He says:

When the Iraq War (which a majority of Senate Democrats voted for) ran into trouble and casualties began to mount, Democrats followed the shifting winds of public opinion and turned decidedly anti-war. But needing political cover because of their post-Vietnam reputation for weakness on national defense, they adopted Afghanistan as their pet war.

Summarizing his argument:

• "Brilliantly crafted and perfectly cynical, the "Iraq War bad, Afghan War good" posture worked. Democrats first won Congress, then the White House. But now, unfortunately, they must govern."
• Obama chose a civilian-military counterinsurgency campaign to defeat the Taliban in Afghanistan in March after an extensive review and much consultation with military commanders.  He made a big deal of this.
  
• He picked Stanley McChrystal as the ground commander in Afghanistan to implement the strategy.
• McChrystal requested 30,000 to 40,000 more troops to save Afghanistan on 30 August.
• The Commander-in-Chief and his foremost military experts, Rahm Emanuel and Joe Biden, all gagged.
• Obama dithered and now we hear that it because we have no strategy.
  
• General Joe Biden has chosen a counter-terrorism strategy and is eschewing the counter-insurgency strategy decided on in March.  He wants us to fight only with cruise missiles, predator drones, and special operations troops.
• General McChrystal is the expert who did just this kind of counter-terrorism effort in Iraq for 5 years, but he is now recommending the kind of counter-insurgency strategy that worked in Iraq under General Petraeus, who wants that strategy used now in Afghanistan.
• Whose advice makes more sense, that of Generals David Petraeus and Stanley McChrystal or that of Generals Emanuel and Biden?

OK, Krauthammer did not use the Generals title before the names of Emanuel and Biden.  I just could not resist throwing that in.

Krauthammer observes:

Less than two months ago -- Aug. 17 in front of an audience of veterans -- the president declared Afghanistan to be "a war of necessity." Does anything he says remain operative beyond the fading of the audience applause?

Obama is rather like Peter Keating brought up as a Marxist.  This gives him a great many twisted reference points and always has him peering at reality through a muddy, translucent window.  He surrounds himself with the advisers he is comfortable with and all of them are as removed from reality as he is.  Their view of reality is so hazy that their dreams and whims take over in helping them develop their ideas of what is out there.  They are all Platonists, more precisely Marxist Platonists.

Meanwhile good Americans are dying in Afghanistan and are removed from their families without adequate support as Obama, Biden, and Emanuel stir their tea leaves in a pot and try to read them through natural sphalerite lenses for advice on a strategy for the war in Afghanistan.

Sphalerite is crystalline ZnS, commonly found with pyrite (Fool's Gold, FeS2).  It is commonly found in a range of colors from yellow to red-brown to black.  When reacted with HCl, it gives off H2S, the rotten egg smell.

Update on the War in Iraq

Michael Yon, who is an independent war correspondent and blogger embedded with U.S. troops in Iraq for a very long time, seems to understand that war better than any other reporter. He has declared the war won and backs that claim up with a very interesting PowerPoint presentation. In addition to the decreased number of deaths due to fighting, the decreased number of attacks against infrastructure is very important. The lifeblood of Iraq is oil and many of the infrastructure attacks have been against oil facilities. This has resulted in a very high unemployment rate in Iraq, which is commonly a cause of great mischief when many have nothing constructive to do with their time and little hope that they are building a better future. Increased oil and gas production is a key to peace within Iraq and will allow the Iraqis to concentrate on rebuilding a country which has gone downhill for decades under Saddam Hussein and suffered so much at the hands of terrorists since he was overthrown. Of course, increased oil and gas production will benefit the rest of the world greatly as well and will help to bring down the very high fuel prices we have seen lately.

The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has determined that the time has come to start pulling troops out of Iraq and building our strength in Afghanistan. The surge has done its job and with some care not to withdraw too rapidly from Iraq and to continue supporting the Iraqi government, unlike what the Democrat Congress did with respect to the South Vietnamese government when we pulled troops out of South Vietnam, Iraq should be able to create a nation in the heart of the Middle East which is significantly more civilized than most there.

In evaluating this important victory in Iraq, we should be careful to note who opposed the surge and who approved and recommended it. The problem of Afghanistan must be addressed with renewed vigor and we should be careful in assessing who has the judgment and strength of determination to see that project through. There are also major problems to be addressed with respect to Pakistan and Iran. Who has the experience, backbone, and judgment to deal with those problems?

Iran at War with U.S., Pelosi Spokesperson for Iran

For many months, it has been clear that Iran has been waging war upon the United States. They have provided training, supplies, money, medical support, and safe havens for forces fighting American troops in Iraq. Weapons supplied by Iran have been used, with their knowledge and their intent, to kill American soldiers. Iran has been the chief supporter of the Shiite Mahdi militia, which long controlled the very important port of Basra and cut-off much of the flow of oil out of that port. The Mahdi militia also played the major role in creating friction and fighting with the Sunnis, thereby bringing Iraq to the brink of all-out civil war. The recent crack-down of the Iraqi government to oust the Mahdi militia from control of Basra and its surroundings did much to improve Sunni cooperation with the government and to recently increase the flow of oil. This flow of oil is extremely important as a means to put Iraqis back to work and to give them a means to concentrate on re-building the country Saddam Hussein destroyed in decades of looting, neglect, and legal instability.

But, for all of its nefarious activities, the Speaker of the House of Representatives is acting like a spokesperson for the theocratic tyrannical government of Iran. Here is her perspective of the situation in Iraq and the role of Iran:

"Well, the purpose of the surge was to provide a secure space, a time for the political change to occur to accomplish the reconciliation. That didn’t happen. Whatever the military success, and progress that may have been made, the surge didn’t accomplish its goal. And some of the success of the surge is that the goodwill of the Iranians-they decided in Basra when the fighting would end, they negotiated that cessation of hostilities-the Iranians."

How wrongheaded. Yes, Iran did seek to have hostilities cease when their proxy forces were too hard-pressed by the Iraqi government and the American troops. But, there is no indication whatsoever that they did this as a matter of goodwill. Our Speaker is clearly disassociated from this world. How can one so readily describe a country at war with us throughout most of the surge as being responsible for its success because of their goodwill as evidenced by a partial surrender. This is as ridiculous as describing Japan as being responsible for our success in the Pacific campaign of WWII because hostilities ceased due to Japan's goodwill!

The leadership of the Democrat Party is utterly astounding. Yes, the leadership of the Republican Party is often incompetent, but mostly there is evidence that they live in this world. Nancy Pelosi seems rarely able to observe reality without coming up with some incredibly wrongheaded assessment of it. Is she a holographic projection created by beings from a far off anti-matter galaxy for the purpose of subjugating the United States and then the Earth? What can explain such distortions of reality? I really want to know. Is there anybody out there who can explain this to me? I really am completely befuddled by it.