The Front Page Cover
2016 The truth will set you free
Featuring:
The Glory of a Warrior
by Matthew Hennessey
~~~
.
OPINION IN BRIEF
Star Parker: "Capriciously applied law has always been a disturbance for blacks. The civil rights movement was supposed to be about the country recognizing and remedying that, in a nation under God, there were citizens not receiving equal treatment under the law. Unfortunately, the civil rights movement came in the midst of the liberal wave of the 1960s. So instead of focusing on equal application of existing laws of tradition, we turned law over to men to make up new rules that were supposedly going to fix everything. But man-made law produces what we have just seen in a politically motivated FBI director rationalizing that a secretary of state ... somehow couldn't figure out that she was breaking the law and compromising our national security. When we don't take law seriously at the highest levels of power in the nation, the message reverberates throughout the land." -The Patriot Post
.
Just How 'Far Right' Is the GOP Platform?
Both The New York Times and NBC News have recently run stories on the GOP's preparation for its upcoming national convention in Cleveland next week. In their "reporting" on the Republican platform and its field of speakers, two telling words were invoked — "far" and "extreme" — buzz words that the Left often uses in seeking to dissuade anyone from taking conservative ideas seriously.
"Rudy Giuliani ... the far-right former mayor of New York City will also speak [at the GOP national convention]," reported NBC News. That was later redacted and replaced with the description that Giuliani is "extremely conservative on national security issues." Giuliani is strong on national defense, but he's also pro-gun control and pro-abortion. Hardly "far right."
Meanwhile, The New York Times headlined, "Emerging Republican Platform Goes Far to the Right." What are these "far" right and "extreme" conservative issues that make up the Republican Party platform? Four of the major planks of the party's platform to be highlighted at the convention are: 1. a strong immigration policy, 2. support for traditional marriage and opposition to forced assimilation into the Barack nObama's transgender bathroom directive, 3. support for a strong national defense, and 4. an "America First" policy when it comes to international trade agreements.
There is nothing novel about these Republican ideals — and most certainly no movement to the "far right." In fact, was it not nObama who stated in October 2010, "I have been to this point unwilling to sign on to same-sex marriage primarily because of my understanding of the traditional definitions of marriage"? In other words, until just a few years ago, the Republican platform was what nearly all Americans believed. So exactly which party should more accurately be described as being "far" and "extreme"? Where Leftmedia outlets are concerned, if you're not moving their direction, then you are the "extremist." -The Patriot Post
.
.
US government releases
secret chapter from 9/11 report
by foxnews.com
.
{foxnews.com} ~ The U.S. government on Friday released a once-classified chapter from a congressional report on the 9/11 attacks that some lawmakers suggested raise questions of Saudi involvement... The documents were posted Friday by the House intelligence committee. Former President George W. Bush originally classified the chapter to protect intelligence sources and methods and perhaps to avoid upsetting Saudi Arabia, a close U.S. ally. President nObama later ordered a declassification review of the chapter, which Congress released on Friday...http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/07/15/us-government-released-secret-chapter-from-911-report.htmlclassification
.
Jihadi Terrorism: You Think It's
Just the Jews? Think Again.
by Giulio Meotti
by Giulio Meotti
.
.
{gatestoneinstitute.org} ~ Last night, at least 84 people were murdered in the French city of Nice by a Tunisian-born Islamist terrorist, with dozens more victims wounded... The attacker drove a 19-ton truck into a large crowd of people celebrating Bastille Day, France's national holiday, running down men, women and children over a 2km stretch of road and sidewalk. On July 2, nine Italian citizens were butchered by Islamists in the assault at a restaurant in Dhaka, Bangladesh. They were tortured and killed with "very sharp blades" wielded by smiling terrorists who spared the life of those who knew the Quran. For almost a year already, poor Bangladeshis have been experiencing similar shocking massacres. But hose victims were not wealthy non-Muslim foreigners -- they were anonymous Muslim bloggers, accused of "blasphemy" and murdered out with "sharp blades" -- five victims in 2015 and a law student in 2016, as well as a Hindu priest hacked to death. The same cycle took place in Syria and Iraq, where the beheaders of the Islamic State first targeted many Western journalists, then expelled and killed Christians in Mosul, and then landed in Paris to exterminate Western civilians... http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/8409/jihadi-terrorism
.
The Iran Deal’s Fatal Flaws
After One Year: Emboldened Iran
and Diminished American Deterrence
by Mark Dubowitz, Annie Fixler
.
.
{defenddemocracy.org} ~ As we mark the one-year anniversary of the announcement of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), it is worth recalling why this deal is fatally flawed... The JCPOA provides Iran with a patient pathway to nuclear weapons capability by placing limited, temporary, and reversible constraints on Iran’s nuclear activities. These nuclear “sunset provisions,” which begin to expire in eight years and mostly disappear over a period of ten to fifteen years, leave Iran as a threshold nuclear power with an industrial-size, uranium enrichment and plutonium program; near-zero nuclear breakout capacity; an advanced centrifuge-powered clandestine sneakout capability; advanced ballistic missile and ICBM programs; access to advanced heavy weaponry; greater regional hegemony; and a more powerful economy that could be immune to Western sanctions. Even as Iran temporarily scaled back some of its nuclear activities under the JCPOA, the regime’s illicit effort to obtain proliferation-related technology continues while its other non-nuclear malign activities are expanding... http://www.defenddemocracy.org/content/uploads/documents/Dubowitz_Fixler_Fatal_Flaws_After_One_Year.pdf
.
Top Intel Official:
Al Qaeda Worked on WMD in Iran
by Thomas Joscelyn, Stephen F. Hayes
.
.
{weeklystandard.com} ~ Al Qaeda operatives based in Iran worked on chemical and biological weapons, according to a letter written to Osama bin Laden that is described in a new book by a top former U.S. intelligence official... The letter was captured by a U.S. military sensitive site exploitation team during the raid on bin Laden's Abbottabad headquarters in May 2011. It is described in Field of Fight, out Tuesday from Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, the former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, and Michael Ledeen of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. "One letter to bin Laden reveals that al Qaeda was working on chemical and biological weapons in Iran," Flynn writes. Flynn's claim, if true, significantly advances what we know about al Qaeda's activity in Iran. The book was cleared by the intelligence community's classification review process. And U.S. intelligence sources familiar with the bin Laden documents tell us the disclosure on al Qaeda's WMD work is accurate... http://www.weeklystandard.com/top-intel-official-al-qaeda-worked-on-wmd-in-iran/article/2003264
.
nObama surprises offshore drillers
with costly changes
by John Siciliano
.
.
{washingtonexaminer.com} ~ The Interior Department issued new rules Thursday that will make it harder for the oil and gas industry to drill offshore... The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management issued a notice to all federal permit holders announcing it will be changing the financial rules of the road. It will be requiring more upfront capital to cover the risks posed by each oil and gas lessee not fulfilling its permit obligations and decommissioning wells...Congress do something to stop this jerk. http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/obama-surprises-offshore-drillers-with-costly-changes/article/2596551
.
An Award-Winning Documentary About
Islamic Terrorists Becomes Hate Speech
by Steven Emerson
.
.
{investigativeproject.org} ~ At what point over the past 20 years did citing statements and literature by Islamic terrorists become banned "hate speech?"... A documentary that I produced in 1994 for PBS concerning civilizational jihad won numerous awards, yet YouTube in recent days removed a video posted by CounterJihad that covered the very same topic in much more limited scope. Both my film, "Terrorists Among Us: Jihad in America," and CounterJihad's "Killing for a Cause: Sharia Law & Civilizational Jihad" expose the Islamification of the West waged by the Muslim Brotherhood and its front organizations in the U.S. The Brotherhood, born in Egypt in 1928, is the fountainhead of nearly every deadly Islamist organization on the planet today...
.
These Environmentalist Pay The Price
For Believing Their Own Lies
.
Eric Schniederman
.
{teapartyupdate.com} ~ The absurd attempt by several progressive attorney’s general to criminalize speech skeptical of climate change is one of the most under-reported assault’s on the first amendment in our history... Climate change Mullah, N.Y. Attorney General Eric Schniederman, takes his climate religion so seriously that he thinks he can sue Exxon-Mobile for donating money to groups skeptical of climate change and confiscate communications between skeptical groups. As the NY Post reports, reality is starting to rain on the progressive climate change parade:... http://teapartyupdate.com/these-environmentalist-pay-the-price-for-believing-their-own-lies/
.
The Islam Infiltration: Illinois Law Spells Trouble
by shawn
.
.
{totalconservative.com} ~ Americans, in huge majority numbers, understand that much of Islam is incompatible with our country’s norms and values... We may have varying opinions on just how incompatible, and we may all want American Muslims to enjoy the same religious rights as anyone else, but very few of us want Islam to begin influencing our laws. Sadly, that’s exactly where we’re headed. Organizations like CAIR operate under the pretense of protecting Muslims from unfair persecution. They’ve earned a seat at the table by pretending to be full-throated supporters of the Constitution. They don’t want special rights for Muslims. They just want to represent the voices of the unheard. That’s all. But that’s not all. These organizations can all be traced back to their radical origins. And once you peer behind the curtain, you can see that they have goals that go well beyond discouraging people from using the term “radical Islamic terrorism.” Goals that go well beyond protecting the civil rights of Muslims. They want to change America’s laws, slowly but surely, to make them closer to the Sharia laws that govern Islamic countries like Iran... http://totalconservative.com/islam-infiltration-illinois-law-spells-trouble/
.
Is liar-Hillary Guilty?
by Bill Whittle
.
.
{truthrevolt.org} ~ Bill Whittle is back with another Firewall video commentary. It takes Bill only 93 seconds to show liar-Hillary Clinton guilty of violating three separate Federal Statutes... It takes him another three minutes to explain why she and nObama simply DO NOT CARE. Let’s start by getting one thing out of the way right at the top: there is no question that liar-Hillary Clinton committed multiple violations of federal law... http://www.truthrevolt.org/videos/bill-whittles-firewall-hillary-guilty
.
Pentagon Approves U.N.
Use Of Force Against American Civilians
by MIchael DePinto
.
.
{freedomoutpost.com} ~ But… But… the folks at the “fact checking sites” said these were all being shipped overseas…. Then again, they never did have an answer for why there were guys with helmets and construction gear in lots of the trucks… but who knows, maybe their sources told them the soldiers were stowaways…All kidding aside… with all the credible threats from Black Lives Matter… and with the information contained in the documents linked to below… the same ones no one reads before they say, “BS!" Here’s an idea… since our country is on the line… and slipping away fast… how about everyone take a little extra effort to help one another be better informed… myself included. I welcome all the emails I’ve been getting! The federal government have announced their support for a set of principles that allow U.N. troops to police and use force in order to “protect citizens” in the event of an armed conflict...We don't need no stinking UN. http://freedomoutpost.com/pentagon-approves-u-n-use-of-force-against-american-civilians/
..
The Glory of a Warrior
by Matthew Hennessey
.
.
{city-journal.org} ~ Kevin Lacz was a Mohawked, 19-year-old recreational rugby player with a 0.7 GPA at Virginia’s James Madison University when al-Qaida terrorists attacked the United States on September 11, 2001. Days filled with weightlifting, heavy metal, and beer pong suddenly held no appeal to the Middlefield, Connecticut, native. Stunned by the death of a family friend who worked at the Twin Towers, Lacz did what many young Americans considered doing, but didn’t—he dropped out and joined the Navy SEALs. “I wanted to kill the men who planned the mass murder of nearly three thousand Americans,” Lacz writes in The Last Punisher, his just-published account of the Battle of Ramadi. “It was the first real risk I had taken—the moment I decided to step up and be a man.”
Five years and lots of specialized military training later, Lacz found himself a man transformed. The “unfuckwithable” kid who had quit Little League, Boy Scouts, and the high school golf team was now a BTF—a Big Tough Frogman—on a six-month deployment as a platoon sniper and medic in the white-hot war in Iraq’s Anbar Province. He and his fellow SEAL Team Three BTFs were wisecracking hard-men all. Sporting spotty mustaches and cinematic nicknames like Pepper, Doc, Biff, Spaz, and Biggles, their charge was to rain lethal violence down upon Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s brutal Sunni insurgency. The SEALs of Charlie Platoon wanted nothing more than to take the fight directly to the enemy’s front parlor. Some, including Chris Kyle of American Sniper fame—nicknamed Legend—had been at it for a while. Lacz was dubbed Dauber for his resemblance to the big, blond lug on the 1990s sitcom Coach.
Two weeks into his deployment, Lacz developed an itchy trigger finger. Eager to meet the enemy, he volunteered to work the stone guard tower at Camp Corregidor, an Army installation on Ramadi’s outskirts. It was, he says with scorn for the politically correct sensitivities of Americans who have never been to war, “a good place to smoke some muj.” Packing a fresh load of ever-present Copenhagen tobacco into his lower lip, Lacz settled in to wait for the muezzin’s amplified voice sounding the call to afternoon Islamic prayer. That would be when the city’s deserted streets and alleyways sprang to life. Among the suddenly numerous women, children, and goatherders, Lacz knew, would be young men looking to ambush American troops with small-arms fire and improvised explosive devices (IEDs). With tobacco spit pooling on the floor between his feet, he kept stock-still, staring down the 20-inch barrel of his MK11 sniper rifle at a man periodically glancing up at the guard tower. His behavior indicated that he was a “muj”—short for mujahedeen—and Lacz had a clear shot, but the American military’s rules of engagement prevented him from firing absent hostile action or hostile intent. “Looking shady wasn’t enough.”
Dressed in the insurgent’s uniform of t-shirt, track pants, and flip-flops, the man scooted across an alleyway and ducked behind a wall. Lacz focused on keeping his breathing steady. The muj reappeared seconds later cradling an AK-47 rifle. His fate was sealed. Lacz calmly put a 7.62 millimeter round through his upper torso. The muj hit the dirt. It was the first of Lacz’s dozens of confirmed kills.
That night, back in his rack, Lacz took inventory of his emotions. He hadn’t minded taking a life, he decided. “If you volunteer yourself to do the business of doing bad things to bad people, you have to be prepared for the eventuality of being required to do it.” During training, Lacz and his fellow SEALs sat for a lecture by retired army lieutenant colonel Dave Grossman, author of On Killing, a study of the psychological effects of combat. Grossman’s theory is that 2 percent of the male population is capable of killing without remorse. These “levelheaded” warriors are drawn to military special operations units like the SEALs. They get missions guaranteed to end with someone—the enemy, preferably—in a body bag. Lacz no longer wondered whether he was one of Grossman’s “2 percenters.” He settled into an easy sleep.
The Last Punisher is an unapologetic tribute to the habits and attitudes of the professional warriors of SEAL Team Three. Lacz and his dehydrated co-belligerents storm enemy positions, clear courtyards, and fight their way out of ambushes in 120-degree heat. “Ramadi in the summer was a perpetual state of full-body swamp ass.” They convoy on the bomb-cratered thoroughfare known as Route Michigan, where, in the summer of 2006, you had as good a chance of being blown sky high by an IED as you did of getting sunburn. Lacz patrols with an American flag folded neatly and tucked between the plates of his body armor. He is ready to give all, at any minute, for his teammates. Preparing to break out of a fortified position under heavy fire, the thought occurs to him that he “wouldn’t want to be anywhere else than next to these bad motherfuckers.” Two of the BTFs of SEAL Team Three—Marc Lee and Medal of Honor winner Mike Monsoor—ultimately gave their lives in Ramadi. It stung; beneath the macho swagger, Lacz and his BTF buddies are still human. But they live, as few of us do, by the warrior ethos. “Pain is temporary. Death is fleeting,” Lacz writes. “The glory of a warrior lasts forever.”
The Last Punisher—the title refers to the Marvel Comics vigilante hero, whose death’s-head logo Lacz and his cohorts adopt—is a late but worthy arrival to the Navy SEAL memoir genre. Marcus Lutrell’s Lone Survivor (2007), Eric Greitens’s The Heart and the Fist (2011), Brandon Webb’s The Red Circle (2012), and Kyle’s American Sniper (2012)—among others—have already peeled back some of the desert camouflage on this mysterious fighting fraternity. The increased exposure has ruffled some feathers. Not all BTFs want their stories told. When two SEAL Team Six operators wrote competing and contradictory tales of the Top Secret 2011 mission to kill Osama bin Laden, the brass at Naval Special Warfare Command weren’t pleased. “A critical tenet of our Ethos is ‘I do not advertise the nature of my work, nor seek recognition for my action,’” wrote Rear Admiral Brian Losey and SEAL Force master chief M.L. Magaraci, in a “dear teammates” letter.
Lacz opts not to give a day-by-day, challenge-by-challenge account of SEAL life, such as the grueling Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL (BUD/S) training that makes sailors into SEALS. Others have provided those accounts. Nor does Lacz opine on the politics of the Iraq War. Instead, Lacz devotes The Last Punisher to filling in gaps in the story of the Battle of Ramadi and memorializing the sacrifices of BTFs like Lee and Monsoor. His pungent, plain-spoken account has lots of butt-kicking and some tears, and serves to remind civilian readers again that war is another world.
Five years and lots of specialized military training later, Lacz found himself a man transformed. The “unfuckwithable” kid who had quit Little League, Boy Scouts, and the high school golf team was now a BTF—a Big Tough Frogman—on a six-month deployment as a platoon sniper and medic in the white-hot war in Iraq’s Anbar Province. He and his fellow SEAL Team Three BTFs were wisecracking hard-men all. Sporting spotty mustaches and cinematic nicknames like Pepper, Doc, Biff, Spaz, and Biggles, their charge was to rain lethal violence down upon Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s brutal Sunni insurgency. The SEALs of Charlie Platoon wanted nothing more than to take the fight directly to the enemy’s front parlor. Some, including Chris Kyle of American Sniper fame—nicknamed Legend—had been at it for a while. Lacz was dubbed Dauber for his resemblance to the big, blond lug on the 1990s sitcom Coach.
Two weeks into his deployment, Lacz developed an itchy trigger finger. Eager to meet the enemy, he volunteered to work the stone guard tower at Camp Corregidor, an Army installation on Ramadi’s outskirts. It was, he says with scorn for the politically correct sensitivities of Americans who have never been to war, “a good place to smoke some muj.” Packing a fresh load of ever-present Copenhagen tobacco into his lower lip, Lacz settled in to wait for the muezzin’s amplified voice sounding the call to afternoon Islamic prayer. That would be when the city’s deserted streets and alleyways sprang to life. Among the suddenly numerous women, children, and goatherders, Lacz knew, would be young men looking to ambush American troops with small-arms fire and improvised explosive devices (IEDs). With tobacco spit pooling on the floor between his feet, he kept stock-still, staring down the 20-inch barrel of his MK11 sniper rifle at a man periodically glancing up at the guard tower. His behavior indicated that he was a “muj”—short for mujahedeen—and Lacz had a clear shot, but the American military’s rules of engagement prevented him from firing absent hostile action or hostile intent. “Looking shady wasn’t enough.”
Dressed in the insurgent’s uniform of t-shirt, track pants, and flip-flops, the man scooted across an alleyway and ducked behind a wall. Lacz focused on keeping his breathing steady. The muj reappeared seconds later cradling an AK-47 rifle. His fate was sealed. Lacz calmly put a 7.62 millimeter round through his upper torso. The muj hit the dirt. It was the first of Lacz’s dozens of confirmed kills.
That night, back in his rack, Lacz took inventory of his emotions. He hadn’t minded taking a life, he decided. “If you volunteer yourself to do the business of doing bad things to bad people, you have to be prepared for the eventuality of being required to do it.” During training, Lacz and his fellow SEALs sat for a lecture by retired army lieutenant colonel Dave Grossman, author of On Killing, a study of the psychological effects of combat. Grossman’s theory is that 2 percent of the male population is capable of killing without remorse. These “levelheaded” warriors are drawn to military special operations units like the SEALs. They get missions guaranteed to end with someone—the enemy, preferably—in a body bag. Lacz no longer wondered whether he was one of Grossman’s “2 percenters.” He settled into an easy sleep.
The Last Punisher is an unapologetic tribute to the habits and attitudes of the professional warriors of SEAL Team Three. Lacz and his dehydrated co-belligerents storm enemy positions, clear courtyards, and fight their way out of ambushes in 120-degree heat. “Ramadi in the summer was a perpetual state of full-body swamp ass.” They convoy on the bomb-cratered thoroughfare known as Route Michigan, where, in the summer of 2006, you had as good a chance of being blown sky high by an IED as you did of getting sunburn. Lacz patrols with an American flag folded neatly and tucked between the plates of his body armor. He is ready to give all, at any minute, for his teammates. Preparing to break out of a fortified position under heavy fire, the thought occurs to him that he “wouldn’t want to be anywhere else than next to these bad motherfuckers.” Two of the BTFs of SEAL Team Three—Marc Lee and Medal of Honor winner Mike Monsoor—ultimately gave their lives in Ramadi. It stung; beneath the macho swagger, Lacz and his BTF buddies are still human. But they live, as few of us do, by the warrior ethos. “Pain is temporary. Death is fleeting,” Lacz writes. “The glory of a warrior lasts forever.”
The Last Punisher—the title refers to the Marvel Comics vigilante hero, whose death’s-head logo Lacz and his cohorts adopt—is a late but worthy arrival to the Navy SEAL memoir genre. Marcus Lutrell’s Lone Survivor (2007), Eric Greitens’s The Heart and the Fist (2011), Brandon Webb’s The Red Circle (2012), and Kyle’s American Sniper (2012)—among others—have already peeled back some of the desert camouflage on this mysterious fighting fraternity. The increased exposure has ruffled some feathers. Not all BTFs want their stories told. When two SEAL Team Six operators wrote competing and contradictory tales of the Top Secret 2011 mission to kill Osama bin Laden, the brass at Naval Special Warfare Command weren’t pleased. “A critical tenet of our Ethos is ‘I do not advertise the nature of my work, nor seek recognition for my action,’” wrote Rear Admiral Brian Losey and SEAL Force master chief M.L. Magaraci, in a “dear teammates” letter.
Lacz opts not to give a day-by-day, challenge-by-challenge account of SEAL life, such as the grueling Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL (BUD/S) training that makes sailors into SEALS. Others have provided those accounts. Nor does Lacz opine on the politics of the Iraq War. Instead, Lacz devotes The Last Punisher to filling in gaps in the story of the Battle of Ramadi and memorializing the sacrifices of BTFs like Lee and Monsoor. His pungent, plain-spoken account has lots of butt-kicking and some tears, and serves to remind civilian readers again that war is another world.
Comments