Archive for the ‘National Security’ Category

Baron talks a good game on the military and on veterans, but time and again his actions speak louder than his words.

Like when he voted to tie the hands of General David Petraeus and tried to stop a strategy that everyone now recognizes has worked even better than hoped.

Or that time he told a supporter in Bloomington that he wasn’t going to vote for any more funding for the Iraq War.

Or, most recently, when he decided to go off to on a taxpayer-funded vacation in the Pacific, to tropical Guam, sunny Australia, and oh-so-friendly Vietnam instead of honoring the soldiers of Indiana’s largest National Guard deployment since WW2.

Baron was too good to join the Governor, Senator Lugar, the mayor of Indianapolis, and six of his fellow Hoosier members of Congress (including his fellow Democrats) to say goodbye.

Nope. He couldn’t come.

Improving his sun tan in Guam and saying hello to the folks in Vietnam was too important to him, despite the National Guard deployment to Iraq having been set over six months ago.

Baron might recall the Iraq War.

He voted to start it, a vote he has since variously stood by and repudiated.

Baron will vote to send Hoosier soldiers to war, but he won’t bother to see them off when they go.

Now, though, Baron seems to have realized that running off to Vietnam and to tropical Pacific island paradises for a taxpayer-funded vacation while troops are deploying is apt to get some attention.

So he’s going to Fort Stewart in Georgia today to see a few of the brave Hoosier National Guard soldiers that are finishing their training before heading to Iraq.

From the politics blog at the Courier-Journal:

Rep. Baron Hill, D-9th District, Indiana, is scheduled tomorrow to visit soldiers from his state who will soon be headed to Iraq.

The lawmaker will be visiting with members of the 76th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, which is training at Fort Stewart, Georgia.

Hill will travel to Georgia from Washington, accompanied by Maj. Gen. R. Martin Umbarger, adjutant general of the Indiana National Guard.

It’s about time.

(Though I suspect that General Umbarger has better things to do with his time than escort Baron Hill to Georgia for a photo op just because Baron was too busy with his taxpayer-funded vacation to make it to the main event.)

And Baron Hill should say something to those soldiers and their families to apologize for not joining everyone else in bidding them farewell in Indianapolis two weeks ago.

Even then it will be too little, too late.

Actions speak louder than words, Baron.

They also speak louder than staged photo-ops.

Your actions were heard loud and clear.
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On Wednesday while the rest of us focused on work, school, or the then-up-coming Iowa caucuses, families and dignitaries were sending off the 76th Infantry Brigade Combat Team. In a ceremony at the RCA Dome Hoosier families said good-bye to 3,400 of Indiana’s finest individuals. This is the largest deployment of Indiana National Guard soldiers since World War Two.

The Indianapolis Star has a special web page here devoted to the send off and Guard history.

A special photo gallery of the event is hosted by the Star here.

Here is an excerpt of Congressman Mike Pence’s remarks to the troops:

“I couldn’t help but be struck by how incongruous it is that I should be speaking to you. Our roles today are backwards. It is I and all of us on this stage who should be sitting in your seats, and you before the microphone. It is one thing to speak of courage; it is quite another to be courageous.

“Whatever ability to inspire may exist in us is but faint reflection of what already abounds in you.

“The fact is, it is YOU who inspire ME. It is you who bring me courage. It is you who teach me-and the entire nation-about bravery, sacrifice, commitment, and honor. What it means to be an American. And like all great teachers, you teach not through words, but by example. You go knowing what it means.”

You can read Congressman Pence’s full blog entry about this here.

May God grand the 76th success in its mission and safety in its operations. It is because of the courageous sacrifices and heroism of the warriors of the United States Armed Forces that we have the opportunity to be politically active and involved in the debate of ideas.

At least the House of Representatives did:

Congress signaled its disapproval of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad with a vote Tuesday to tighten sanctions against his government and a call to designate his army a terrorist group.

The swift rebuke was a rare display of bipartisan cooperation in a Congress bitterly divided on the Iraq war. It reflected lawmakers’ long-standing nervousness about Tehran’s intentions in the region, particularly toward Israel—a sentiment fueled by the pro-Israeli lobby whose influence reaches across party lines in Congress.

“Iran faces a choice between a very big carrot and a very sharp stick,” said Rep. Tom Lantos, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. “It is my hope that they will take the carrot. But today, we are putting the stick in place.”

The House passed, by a 397-16 vote, a proposal by Lantos, D-Calif., aimed at blocking foreign investment in Iran, in particular its lucrative energy sector. The bill would specifically bar the president from waiving U.S. sanctions.

Current law imposes sanctions against any foreign company that invests $20 million or more in Iran’s energy industry, although the U.S. has waived or ignored sanction laws in exchange for European support on nonproliferation issues.

In the Senate, Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., and Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., proposed a nonbinding resolution urging the State Department to label Iran’s military—the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps—a terrorist organization.

The Bush administration had already been planning to blacklist a unit within the Revolutionary Guard, subjecting part of the vast military operation to financial sanctions.

The legislative push came a day after Ahmadinejad defended Holocaust revisionists, questioned who carried out the Sept. 11 attacks and declared homosexuals didn’t exist in Iran in a tense question-and- answer session at Columbia University.

Every member of the Hoosier delegation save one voted for this, and kudos to them (and that goes for Baron, too).

The lone non-vote was from Julia Carson.

As usual, she wasn’t present to vote.

Someday, the folks in Indianapolis are going to wake up and wish that they had representation in Congress.
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Heh. It’s amazing what you can do with those video programs these days.

It’s worth noting that, as of right now, “Majority” is actually the most unpopular person in town, and the most unpopular person in the town’s history.

Hat tip on the video: Left in Aboite, who dedicated it to Brad Ellsworth, Joe Donnelly, and (of course) Baron Hill.

YouTube Direct 

Congressman Dan Burton was on Fox News this week during the committee hearings with Gen. David Petraeus. As the hearing was in recess, he and Florida Democrat Bob Wexler had a chance to chat with Shepard Smith about how the hearing was going.

As was to be expected Wexler did a lousy job of attacking Gen. Petraeus all the while calling him a liar without ever really saying it. Well that caused Congressman Burton to bring out the Hammer of Thor upon Wexler. He really rips him to pieces until Shep has to call off the interview because the hearing was starting up again. Too bad. Wexler deserved the verbal beat down for trashing Gen. Petraeus the way he did.

For a long time, I subscribed to CNN’s breaking news email alerts (at least I did until they started considering Paris Hilton breaking news but not things that were happening in Washington or on Wall Street, so I unsubscribed).

Six years ago today, I got a great many breaking news emails.

I have them saved, and rereading them is a chilling and haunting account of that day.

I have every email saved from September 11 to the fall of Kabul, but I will repost the September 11 ones and those for the immediately following days.

I repost them today, because I think that we should all read and remember. It is too easy to forget and too simple to exploit.

Think back to that day.

Remember what you were doing.

What you saw.

What you felt.

What you thought in those chaotic early hours when nothing was clear and everything was surreal and the fog of war obscured for the first time in almost two centuries three locations on American soil.

The emails are after the leap.
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The image shown at left ran yesterday as a full-page ad in the New York Times.

It is an attack on General David Petraeus, the commander of American forces in Iraq and probably our country’s best general (to say nothing of being the guy that wrote the book on how to fight counterinsurgency warfare and countless other accolades).

The ad was paid for by the feverishly anti-war lefty political 527, MoveOn.org.

The National Republican Campaign Committee was quick to point out in a press release that Baron Hill’s political campaign took a great deal of money from the folks at MoveOn.org and he was endorsed by them in 2006.

Read the release, and more, after the leap.
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They’re on C-SPAN right now.

If you don’t get cable, or are at work without a television, Politico is streaming the testimony over at their site (up in the top header).

Feel free to post any comments on this you might have; we’ll sticky the thread for the rest of the day.

Read updates below the fold.

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