The Destroyer of All Western Values

[heydaralon]

Even though Reagan made movies for the army and didn't fight in WW2, I still think he demonstrated courage in his life. Full disclosure, I'm not a Reagan fan at all. He has become to the right what Clinton has become to the left. Anyway, he was a lifeguard on a dangerous stretch of River (somewhere in the Midwest I believe), and he did save many drowning people. I am not a fan of many of Reagan's presidential actions, but I would not call him a coward either.

[kybkh]

>JSOC

(pic related)

[kybkh]

The JSOC formerly commanded by General Stanley McChrystal and his head of intelligence Major General Michael Flynn were assigned in 2004-2008 to do a transformation on intelligence gathering methodology within the espionage community. This was the first stop because this had to be accomplished before any other agency could be reformed.

The task was to repair the trampled relationships between the CIA and the JSOC, not to mention NSA and NGA as well as all of the related intelligence clones. Trust was not even an illusion but eventually Flynn performed miracles and this bin Laden termination is the result of his influence and Obama’s determination.

http://www.guns.com/2011/05/07/the-brai ... s-command/

[kybkh]

Tell you what, after watching the Netflix hit piece on McChrystal and his team you really get the feels that some greater struggle for power is at play.

I can't recall a movie ever created to tear down a specific US general officer.

[C-Mag]

Last year I learned a valuable lesson about how I view news reports on figures like Generals and Agency heads.

Starting about 2 weeks out of Comey delivering his findings on Hillary's illegal Email server I started hearing these news pieces on how wonderful Comey was................. a Paragon of Integrity, Honest to a Fault, a Serious Professional. I didn't know anything about the guy, so I was impressed that the media would speak so well of this guy. Then he failed to bring charges, even though he recognized crimes were committed.

Since then, if the Media loves a figure like Comey or Petreus, I will be suspicious of them until I have different information.

[DrYouth]

Loving this thread.

HeyDaralon interviewing Smitty...

I'm imagining the two of them sitting in Smitty's mancave sipping on Scotch.

This is Lagavulin worthy.

[kybkh]

There’s a debate in military circles about whether McChrystal or his friend and successor, Adm. William McRaven deserve credit for JSOC’s resurgence; but Ambinder’s reporting suggests Flynn is the real father of the modern JSOC..

implications for the secretive organization’s expanded reach into the spy world, especially as it becomes the lead force waging America’s Shadow Wars.

DR: Is JSOC now the tactical intelligence agency of choice for the U.S. government?

MA: Not only are they the tactical intel of choice, they also have the operational capacity to act on that intelligence. So they generate intelligence, they analyze it, and they act on it, all in one package.

https://www.wired.com/2012/02/jsoc-ambinder/

Look at those last two quotes and ask yourself if the CIA may have probable cause to attack the DIA and it's forefathers.

Also ask yourself how much power McChrystal and Flynn wielded.

All kinds of great stuff in that article.

DR: What was JSOC doing in Peru?

MA: My understanding is that they were pursuing the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and Hezbollah elements that were laundering money and using Peru as a base of operations for that type of activity throughout South America. Technically JSOC was attached to the embassy through the cover of one of these Defense Intelligence Agency programs.

[Smitty-48]

Even though Reagan made movies for the army and didn't fight in WW2, I still think he demonstrated courage in his life. Full disclosure, I'm not a Reagan fan at all. He has become to the right what Clinton has become to the left. Anyway, he was a lifeguard on a dangerous stretch of River (somewhere in the Midwest I believe), and he did save many drowning people. I am not a fan of many of Reagan's presidential actions, but I would not call him a coward either.

Oh, I didn't call Dutch a coward, but a dandy perhaps, and any sort of "toughness" was just an act, he was not actually tough at all, and certainly not as President, I mean, he caved into the liberals on everything, as soon as he was in office, he reverted to being a Hollywood Liberal Panty Waist.

[Smitty-48]

Moreover, I can't believe you're now defending Dutch Reagan as being a tough guy, after you called me "effete" just for putting fertilizer on my lawn, have you ever seen Reagan do yardwork? He had no clue what he was doing, and he wore jodhpurs fer fucks sakes.

[Smitty-48]

Carter was tough, Carter was tough enough to throw the Eagle Claw hail mary, Carter was tough enough to push for the neutron bomb, Carter was tough enough to force the Isrealis and Egyptians together, Carter was tough enough to personally walk into the control room at Three Mile Island when everybody thought it was about to meltdown.

Carter was too tough actually, because domestically, that was the whole problem, couldn't get along with anybody, wouldn't listen to alternative views, tried to ram everything through, by sheer stubborn persitence and nothing else, and in the process, ground everything to a halt. Carter went to war with everybody, not just the Republicans, the Democrats too, the Democrats more than the Rebublicans in fact. And not just the Congress, he went to war with his own people too, Carter tried to act like a tyrant, and ended up a despot with nowhere to turn.

Finally, out of sheer frustration with the corner he had boxed himself into, he lashed out at the American people, live on TV, with the Malaise Speech, a dressing down, sort of like Hitler, "It's not me, it's you, the American people have failed, der krieg ist forlorn..."

Eagle Claw hail mary; I don't fault him for that. "Fuuuuuuuuuck!!! Der krieg ist forlorn"; what a jackass.

One of the most interesting takes on Carter I've ever read.

Agreed!

I've never gotten why Americans blamed Carter for the Iranians seizing hostages, they don't blame him for not foreseeing the Iranian Revolution, they just blame him for "not doing anything about it", but in the end, he did do something, and it wasn't cravenly trading American weapons for hostages, he green lit a hostage rescue which would have made Entebbe look like a dog n' pony show, and Entebbe is the greatest hostage rescue of all time.

The US military just wasn't up to the job, the Pentagon botched it, but I don't get why that's Carter's fault, seems more like typical American; let the military off the hook for its congenital failings, find some other scapegoat to take the heat for the bumbling Pentagon.

In the end, total KIA was 8. Meanwhile, the Great War Chief Reagan, goes into Beirut Lebanon with absolutely no idea what he was doing, and gets 240 Marines killed, to absolutely no purpose at all. To scale, the Ronald Reagan "don't mind us, we're just going to wander into Beirut here, plan schlan, who needs a plan" operation, was equivalent to losing the entire Eagle Claw mission force with all hostages killed. There were only 52 hostages, Reagan blew almost five times that many Americans up in Beirut, without even having a good reason to do it.

The Pentagon assured Carter that Eagle Claw both could and should be done, they lobbied hard for it, whereas when Reagan told the Pentagon he just wanted to park some Marines on the dock in Beirut, the Pentagon said "Er, what's the plan here, Mr. President? We haven't prepped for this, not sure what the objective is neither."

Reagan got more operators killed with his planned on the golf course over the weekend dog n' pony show Grenada "hostage rescue", and the Americans there weren't even being held hostage.

Cold War to hot war, when it came to war, Carter was a serious guy, taking the hard decisions on hugely consequential operations, whereas Reagan, he was just using the military as props and extras, and the operational theatre as his Hollywood back lot.

I will give Reagan props for taking it to the North Cape with the Soviets in 81', that was hella ballsy, but again, did he really grasp how close he was dancing, to the edge of a precipice which could spiral into a nuclear war? I don't think Carter would have done that, but the reason is, Carter would have said "too reckless, billions of lives hang in the balance, this is no place for a dick measuring contest".

And yeah, I get that Americans don't give a rats ass about we Unpersons, but still, how many Korean hostages were on KAL 007 when the Soviets shot it down after Reagan went and spooked the shit out of them? And God have mercy on Reagan, if the Americans were actually using that airliner as a stalking horse for the RC-135. I mean, airliner straying into Soviet airspace, Americans tracking its progress, RC-135 in the overwatch, nobody gets on the horn to warn the airliner nor wave the Soviets off?

I wont even get into Iran-Contra, because by that point I think the Gipper was actually senile to the threshold of barely even knowing what was going on around him. He couldn't even recall what he had had for breakfast, never mind that he had signed off on an operation which was literally treason.

I'm not saying Carter didn't deserve to be fired, he did, "der krieg ist forlorn" was a firing offence in of itself, but he gets a bad rap for things he did well, Cold War, Iran Desert One, Three Mile Island, he was stone cold steady handed there, while the things that he actually botched, the things that he actually had full control of, his dingbat domestic policy, nobody remembers anymore.

Carter didn't write the plan for Eagle Claw, he wasn't actually flying the helicopter at Desert One, but the Pentagon didn't make him give a Malaise Speech neither, if he had run that by the Pentagon, they would have said "Whoa, are you crazy? Don't matter if it's true, you can't just haul off and dress down the American people like that..."

Reagan on the other hand, he gets a pass, on absolutely everything, talk about teflon, to the absurd, all because he just blew sunshine up America's ass and bumbled around like the White House was an old folks home.