Tuesday, May 28, 2019

U.S. WAR MACHINE - PROTECTING THE BORDERS OF MUSLIM DICTATORS AND LEAVING AMERICAN LIVES SUICIDAL, DEPRESSED, VIOLENT AND LOST

HOW MUCH OF AMERICA HAS BEEN SQUANDERED PROTECTING THE BORDERS OF DICTATORS WHILE THE MEXICAN DRUG CARTELS INVADE AND HAUL BACK BILLIONS IN DRUG PROFITS YEARLY?


“It’s been hell for the world”

US Army tweet provokes outpouring of antiwar sentiment

28 May 2019
The United States Army did not get the response it intended when it asked in a tweet last week, “How has serving impacted you?” Instead of paeans to the military, the horrific reality of war on a world scale broke through the annual celebration of American militarism over the Memorial Day weekend.
By Monday night, there were over 11,000 comments in response to the US Army’s question. The official lies and platitudes employed by the ruling elite and the media to exalt war were shattered by stories detailing the living hell that has been imposed on millions of lives.
So massive was the outpouring of sentiment on social media that the response was covered by the mainstream news Monday night, a singular rarity on a day usually devoted to mindless jingoism. The incident even made headlines around the world, an expression of the vast global impact of US militarism.
Veteran suicides, depression, violence, recurring nightmares, post-traumatic stress disorder, drug abuse, addiction, alcoholism, rape and sexual assault by commanding officers, inadequate health care, generational trauma, exposure to chemical agents, war crimes. These were just some of the nightmarish tales that emerged.
Photo of a city burning in Northern Iraq [Credit: Mstyslav Chernov, WikiCommons]
Heartbreaking stories of veteran suicides were all too common. Shane Burley’s story was repeated in various forms by numerous people. “My best friend from high school was denied his mental health treatment and forced to return to a third tour in Iraq, despite having such deep trauma that he could barely function,” Shane wrote. “He took a handful of sleeping pills and shot himself in the head two weeks before deploying.”
Sean described what he called “the ‘Combat Cocktail’: PTSD, severe depression, anxiety. Isolation. Suicide attempts. Never ending rage. It cost me my relationship with my eldest son and my grandson. It cost some of my men so much more. How did serving impact me? Ask my family.”
Lies used to manufacture public consent for war were also opposed. “Don’t fabricate enemies and shove innocent Americans into wars that kill innocent civilians,” wrote one person. “You’ve gained nothing from all the wars combined. It’s been hell for the world.”
For all the nauseating glorification of the military by the media and the political establishment, those that serve in the military as cannon fodder are generally economic conscripts looking for a way out of poverty and the chance for a college degree. The reality is that they end up maimed, broken and scarred, with generations of families and friends affected by the trauma.
More than 5,500 veterans killed themselves last year, and active-duty military suicides were at an all-time high in 2018. More than 321 of those in active duty in the military killed themselves in 2018, with 138 in the US Army alone.
A 2018 study by the Council on Foreign Relations found that recruits from families with annual incomes less than $38,400 a year made up 19 percent of soldiers. Over 60 percent of recruits come from families with annual incomes less than $61,403, and over 80 percent come from families who make less than $80,912. The study did not show the levels at which the top 5 percent or the top 1 percent participated in the wars, but they no doubt constitute a tiny minority.
Numerous commenters on the US Army Twitter thread referred to the statements of Major-General Smedley Butler, who famously confessed in 1933, “War is just a racket. Only a small inside group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few at the expense of the masses.”
There is deep opposition to war in the working class in the United States and internationally. As with every other political issue, however, the real interests of the vast majority of the population are excluded from official political life.
In the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, this sentiment found expression in mass demonstrations of millions of people throughout the world. Opposition to the Iraq war was channeled behind the Democratic Party, culminating in the election of Barack Obama in 2008. Extending the Bush administration’s “war on terror” in Iraq and Afghanistan, Obama attacked more than seven countries, including Libya and Syria, and killed thousands of innocent civilians through drone warfare.
The Trump administration now plans to dispatch 1,500 new troops to the Middle East and has threatened to “end” Iran. His administration also announced the doctrine of “great power” conflict, preparing even bigger military conflagrations against Russia and China that hurtle the world towards a third world war.
In 2017, the Department of Veterans Affairs under the Trump administration proposed to close more than 1,100 facilities in an effort to privatize health care. While only $220 billion was allotted to Veterans Affairs for the 2020 budget, more than $718 billion was requested by the Pentagon, a five percent increase over the previous year. If the trend continues, more than $7 trillion will be spent on war over the next decade.
With the support of the Democratic Party, moreover, the Trump administration is intensifying its campaign against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange for exposing the crimes of American imperialism.
The Democrats have waged their opposition to Trump largely on the demand that the administration adopt a more aggressive position against Russia and expand the war in Syria and the Middle East. The Democrats have sought to position themselves as the party of the military and the intelligence agencies, hailing as heroes such arch warmongers as the late Republican Senator John McCain.
And the organizations of the complacent and privileged upper-middle class that surround the Democratic Party have become the most adamant supporters of American imperialism.
The sentiments expressed in the response to the US Army tweet must and will find organized form. The mass opposition to war must be connected to the growing struggles of workers, in the United States and internationally, against inequality and exploitation. The growing support for socialism must be connected to a conscious political movement of the international working class against capitalism and imperialism.


“Many of us are a shell of who we were before”

Memorial Day 2019: US Army tweet prompts outpouring of antiwar sentiment

Last Thursday, the US Army asked its followers in a tweet, “How has serving impacted you?” It was meant to be a routine Twitter post ahead of Memorial Day to draw responses which would glorify the United States Army and veterans who served as cannon fodder for the military. It did not go as planned and backfired spectacularly.
More than 10,000 people replied in response with an outpouring of antiwar sentiments detailing the horrors, crimes and ravages of war. Many of the comments are harrowing stories of lives completely undone, a portrait of an entire population scarred and destroyed by US militarism at home and abroad.
“Your impact is that you’re a death cult,” San declared bluntly on the US war machine in a typical response.
Credit: US Marines
Suicides, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), nightmares, depression, bipolar disorders, anxiety, alcoholism, drug addictions, eruptions of violence, sexual assault, marital breakdown, health issues from exposure to chemical weapons like Agent Orange, failures of the Veterans Administration, families and friends wrecked over multiple generations, and worse are some of the thousands of devastating stories detailed in these replies.
“Many of us are a shell of who we were before,” said one military veteran.
Shane spoke of veteran suicides and unending military deployments. “My best friend from high school,” he said, “was denied his mental health treatment and forced to return to a third tour in Iraq, despite having such deep trauma that he could barely function. He took a handful of sleeping pills and shot himself in the head two weeks before deploying.”
“I didn’t serve but my brother did,” Penny noted, recounting the tragedy that befell her family as a result. “He never went to war but still shot himself in the head. He was the sweetest most tender person I’ll ever know and the US Army ruined him.”
Veterans continue to kill themselves at alarming levels in the United States. More than 52 percent of military suicides occur among US Army veterans. A Veterans Administration study from 2016 showed that approximately 20 veterans die every day, or one every hour or so. According to the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA), more than 5,500 veterans killed themselves in 2018.
Alice spoke of the generational traumas felt by the scars of past wars going back to World War II. “My grandfather fought in Burma with the U.S. Army in WWII,” Alice wrote. “He lived a long life and had 7 children. But as he got older the nightmares came. It broke my heart to hear him tell me with tears in his eyes that he was dreaming every night of all he had seen.”
Chanda spoke of similar traumas affecting whole families. “My uncle was US Airforce,” she said, “and he came home with PTSD that went untreated for almost 50 years and had an impact on his ability to be the family man he needed to be. Now, he’s suffering serious physical side effects from agent orange exposure. It’s affected my whole family.”
“The real take away,” Brett remarked on the Army’s tweet, “for the social media/marketing folks whose brilliant idea this was should be to stop selling and glorifying military service to underprivileged 18-year-olds while covering up the consequences and side effects.”
A U.S. Marine stands guard duty near a burning oil well in the Rumaila oil field, Iraq, April 2003, Credit: US Navy
Another commentator declared, “Soldiers are not your money-bought pawns. They are not random collateral. They are family. They are friends. Our mothers and fathers. Our sisters and brothers. Our aunts, uncles, and cousins. They are more than a serial number. Even if they don’t lose their lives, they lose themselves.”
“The US Army takes advantage of those stuck in unfortunate circumstances,” said another, “while the elite continue to profit off their ‘service’ and reap their benefits. My heart breaks for every veteran in this thread brave enough to speak their painful truths of this dystopian cult.”
The pervasiveness of antiwar sentiment is detailed in comments like the following as well: “My grandfather was drafted from Puerto Rico against his will and taken to Korea to fight a war for the USA and when he didn’t want to kill people that didn’t do anything to him he was thrown in jail.”
A person in Sacramento, California spoke of the crimes of US imperialism in Vietnam and that war’s continuing impact: “My grandparents were used as pawns serving the US army in aiding them on the Ho Chi Minh trail. They served in The Secret War, and when the US lost the Vietnam war the Hmong were left to die in genocide. To this day Hmong veterans are not recognized by the US army.
“More than half of my people were wiped out through genocide. Only about a third of what once was the Hmong population are scattered in diaspora around the world. Many in the US who deal with PTSD through alcoholism, abuse, and addiction to opium.
“And the children are left to pick up the pieces and navigate a delicate past, present, and future for the years to come while inheriting intergenerational trauma.”
“My dad was in the marines in the 2000s,” another person explained. “He served in Iraq and then got honorably discharged. He talked a lot about how proud he was for that, but I’ve spent a lot of my time the past couple months crying. How does pride come into play when he’s gone?
“He’d been struggling with PTSD for so long. He’d been struggling with addiction and alcoholism, but he wanted help so badly. He spent the entirety of 2018 wanting to get better. He went to rehab and took all the medication he was told to, but there was so much medication.
“He slipped. He made the mistake of fueling his addiction. Once. But with all the medication prescribed to him his body couldn’t handle that. So he was on a ventilator and then they disconnected him a week later after giving him 72 hours.
“Take better care of our veterans. He was only 37. My mom used to do everything with him and now she looks so lonely. The calendar that he hung is still there, in our kitchen. It still says December 2018. No one has touched it.”
US soldiers in a firefight in Baghdad in 2007, Credit: US Army
Nathan spoke of the wars coming home with devastating violence, “You all make the world a scary place playing war games killing people overseas then the poor guys come home, get police jobs and end up shooting people in our communities.” More than one thousands Americans are killed by police every year, a reflection of the brutalization and militarization of all forms of social life.
Karen spoke of the falsehoods and imperialist deceits used to prosecute these illegal wars. “My uncle is still MIA in Laos,” she said. “He was involved in a secret war, and the military lied to my family about his location. He was 20 years old, too young to vote at that time.
“The US has learned nothing,” Karen added, “and continues to manufacture war under false pretenses.”
This outpouring of rage on Twitter highlights the latent but deep going antiwar sentiment in the American population that finds no expression in the current political system or the corporate media. A quarter century of endless wars of aggression waged to offset the decline of US capitalism on the world stage has taken a heavy human toll at home as well as abroad.
A continuous string of administrations from both parties of big business, from George H.W. Bush, to Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump, are the chief architects of a maelstrom of bloody imperialist violence unleashed around the world since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.
While George H.W. Bush went to his grave praised by the political establishment, thousands of veterans and millions of civilians have been scarred by the first Gulf War which he oversaw. Following Clinton’s crimes in Iraq and Yugoslavia, George W. Bush’s administration began the unending “War on Terror” that killed and maimed millions in Iraq and Afghanistan and destroyed and destabilized an entire civilization and region. Nearly two decades later the US military continues to occupy both countries.
Millions hoped that Obama would end the wars of the previous Bush administration, but he extended the theater of war to more than seven countries, including Libya and Syria, and carried out deadly drone strikes in multiple countries that killed innumerable innocent civilians. Trump has continued Obama’s wars, maintaining an illegal occupation of northeastern Syria and deploying 1,500 additional soldiers to the Middle East to threaten Iran.
The endless sociocide waged by American imperialism has unleashed the largest refugee crisis globally since World War II and threatens the world with the outbreak of a third world war with nuclear armed powers, Russia and China.
War criminals like George W. Bush, Clinton, Obama and Trump have yet to be held to account for their crimes; instead, they walk free and have made enormous fortunes since leaving office. Unlike the Nazi trials of Nuremberg following World War II, there has been no reckoning with the crimes of American imperialism.
For its part, the US media, including the New York TimesWashington Post, CNN, Fox News and the rest of the mainstream media have served as open propaganda instruments for the US ruling elite, justifying the lies and false pretexts manufactured to prosecute criminal wars of aggression and to suffocate mass antiwar sentiment in the population.
These are the crimes that Julian Assange, WikiLeaks and whistleblower Chelsea Manning courageously revealed and risked their lives. For revealing the truths about the wars of American imperialism, a responsibility the media have completely abdicated, both Manning and Assange have been thrown into prison. They are victims of a massive political frame-up by the US ruling class, which now seeks to criminalize the freedom of the press with the use of the Espionage Act.
As the comments in response to the US Army Twitter post reveal, there is a powerful revulsion to war and mass antiwar sentiment in the United States. The crimes of American imperialism are above all the product of the failure of the global capitalist system, the growth of social inequality and the continued division of the world into competing nation states.


The intolerable conditions millions confront in their daily lives are driving them into opposition to capitalism and war. This opposition, however, can only be mobilized in progressive direction through the building of a mass antiwar, anti-capitalist and socialist movement of the international working class to once and for all end the scourges and horrors of war and capitalism.



 “Our entire crony capitalist system, Democrat and Republican alike, has become a kleptocracy approaching par with third-world hell-holes.  This is the way a great country is raided by its elite.” ---- Karen McQuillan  THEAMERICAN THINKER.com


LAMBAST

Senator Feinstein's War Profiteering - by Joshua Frank - Antiwar.com

www.antiwar.com/frank/?articleid=8609

1.      

2.      

Feb 28, 2006 - Dianne Feinstein and her husband are also making tons of money off the ... It's a disgusting display of war profiteering, and just like Cheney, the ...

Army contract for Feinstein's husband / Blum is a director of firm that ...

www.sfgate.com/.../Army-contract-for-Feinstein-s-husband-Blum-is-a-2621196.php

1.      

2.      

Apr 22, 2003 - URS Corp., a San Francisco planning and engineering firm partially owned by California Sen. Dianne Feinstein's husband, landed an Army ...

War brings business to Feinstein spouse / Blum's firms win multimillion ...

www.sfgate.com/.../War-brings-business-to-Feinstein-spouse-Blum-s-2652085.php

1.      

2.      

Apr 27, 2003 - When it comes to scoring mega-military-related contracts, Sen. Dianne Feinstein's multimillionaire husband, Richard Blum, is right in the thick ...

War profiteering - Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_profiteering

1.      

2.      

war profiteer is any person or organization that profits from warfare or by selling weapons and .... The Center for Public Integrity has reported that US Senator Dianne Feinstein, who voted in favor of the Iraq Resolution, and her husband, ...

# 23 Feinstein's Conflict of Interest in Iraq – Top 25 of 2008

projectcensored.org/23-feinsteins-conflict-of-interest-in-iraq/

1.      

Apr 28, 2010 - Dianne Feinstein—the ninth wealthiest member of congress—has been ... With Blum's financial backing, Klein, a war contractor, operates a ...

Unacceptable! Senator Profits from War and Post Office - Roots Action

act.rootsaction.org/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=7309

1.      

2.      

Senator Dianne Feinstein's numerous apparent conflicts of interest are clear grounds for an Ethics Committee investigation.

Dianne Feinstein: War profiteer and war criminal | Freepress.org

freepress.org/article/dianne-feinstein-war-profiteer-and-war-criminal

1.      

Dianne FeinsteinWar profiteer and war criminal. by Gerry Bello. July 5, 2013. Somewhere in northwest Pakistan Tuesday a sound was heard. Hellfire missiles ...

The Greatest Threat to Campus Free Speech is Coming From Dianne ...

https://theintercept.com/.../dianne-feinstein-husband-threaten-univ-calif-demanding-b...

1.      

2.      

Sep 25, 2015 - But none of that seems to matter to Dianne Feinstein and her war-profiteering husband, Richard Blum. Not only is Blum demanding adoption of ...

Feinstein quits committee under war-profiteer cloud - WND.com

www.wnd.com/2007/03/40845/

1.      

2.      

Mar 28, 2007 - Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., has abruptly walked away from her responsibilities with the Senate Military Construction Appropriations ...

Senator Feinstein's War Profiteering- Democratic Blood Money By ...

www.countercurrents.org/frank050407.htm

1.      

Apr 5, 2007 - Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein of California silently resigned from her post on the Military Construction Appropriations subcommittee ...

Senator Feinstein's War Profiteering



Senator Feinstein's War Profiteering



by Joshua Frank
It happens all the time. If the antiwar movement takes on the Democrats for their bitter shortcomings, a few liberals are bound to criticize us for not hounding Bush instead. It doesn't even have to be an election year to get the progressives fired up. They just don't seem to get it. "How can you attack the Democrats when we have such a bulletproof administration ruling the roost in Washington?" somebody recently e-mailed me. "Don't you have something better to do than write this trash?!"

Well, not really. It's too cold in upstate New York right now to do anything other than fume over the liberal villains in Washington. "Why do I write about the putrid Democratic Party?" I responded, "I'll tell you, there's a reason this Republican administration is so damn bulletproof – nobody from the opposition party is taking aim and pulling the trigger."

And that's why the Dems are just as culpable in all that has transpired since Bush took office in 2000. They aren't just a part of the problem – the Democrats are the problem.
I mean, who is really all that surprised Bush and his boys wanted to conquer the Middle East? Not me. That's just what unreasonable neocons do: they stomp out the little guy, kill off the weak, and suffocate the voiceless. They only care about the girth of their wallets and the number of scalps they can tack above their mantles.

The Democrats aren't just letting the Republicans get away with murder, however: some of them are also reaping the benefits of the Bush wars. We constantly hear about Dick Cheney's ties to Halliburton and how his ex-company is making bundles off U.S. contracts in Iraq. But what we don't hear about is how Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein and her husband are also making tons of money off the "war on terror."

The wishy-washy senator now claims Bush misled her prior to the invasion of Iraq. I don't think she's being honest with us, though. There may have been other reasons she helped sell Bush's lies. According to the Center for Public Integrity, Feinstein's husband Richard Blum has racked in millions of dollars from Perini, a civil infrastructure construction company, of which the billionaire investor wields a 75 percent voting share.

In April 2003, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers gave $500 million to Perini to provide services for Iraq's Central Command. A   month earlier in March 2003, Perini was awarded $25 million to design and construct a facility to support the Afghan National Army near Kabul. And in March 2004, Perini was awarded a hefty contract worth up to $500 million for "electrical power distribution and transmission" in southern Iraq.

Feinstein, who sits on the Senate

 Appropriations Committee as well as the

 Select Committee on Intelligence, is reaping

 the benefits of her husband's investments.

 The Democratic royal family recently

 purchased a $16.5 million mansion in the

 flush Pacific Heights neighborhood of San

 Francisco. It's a disgusting display of war

profiteering, and just like Cheney, the leading

 Democrat should be called out for her

 offense.

And that's exactly why the Bush

 administration is so darn bulletproof.

 The Democratic leadership in

Washington is just as crooked and just

as callous.

War profiteering

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (November 2009) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)
war profiteer is any person or organization that profits from warfare or by selling weapons and other goods to parties at war. The term can have strong, negative connotations. General profiteering may also occur in peace time. An example of war profiteers were the "shoddy" millionaires who allegedly sold recycled wool and cardboard shoes to soldiers during the American Civil War. The ten highest war profiteers are Lockheed MartinBoeingBAE SystemsGeneral DynamicsRaytheonNorthrop Grumman, European Aeronautic Defense and Space Company EADSFinmeccanicaL-3 Communications, and United Technologies.[1] These corporations are all directly connected with production of weapons, machinery, vehicles, aircraft, electronics and artillery(including missiles) and as such have significant political influence given their lobbying efforts and campaign contributions to members of the United States Congress in the promotion of war efforts. In 2010, the defense industry spent $144 million on lobbying and donated over $22.6 million to congressional candidates.[2]

In the United States[edit]

Companies such as Halliburton have been criticized in the context of the Iraq War for their perceived war profiteering.[24]
Steven Clemons, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation think tank, has accused former CIA Director James Woolseyof both profiting from and promoting the Iraq War.[25]
The Center for Public Integrity has reported that US Senator Dianne Feinstein, who voted in favor of the Iraq Resolution, and her husband, Richard Blum, are making millions of dollars from Iraq and Afghanistan contracts through his company, Tutor Perini Corporation.[26][27]
Indicted defense contractor Brent R. Wilkes was reported to be ecstatic when hearing that the United States was going to go to war with Iraq. "He and some of his top executives were really gung-ho about the war," said a former employee. "Brent said this would create new opportunities for the company. He was really excited about doing business in the Middle East."[28]
The War Profiteering Prevention Act of 2007 intended to create criminal penalties for war profiteers and others who exploit taxpayer-funded efforts in Iraq and elsewhere around the world.[29] This act was introduced first on April 25, 2007, but was never enacted into law.[30] War profiteering cases are often brought under the Civil False Claims Act, which was enacted in 1863 to combat war profiteering during the Civil War.[31]
Major General Smedley Butler, USMC, criticized war profiteering of US companies during World War I in War Is a Racket. He wrote about how some companies and corporations increase their earnings and profits by up to 1,700 percent and how many companies willingly sold equipment and supplies to the US that had no relevant use in the war effort. In the book, Butler stated that "It has been estimated by statisticians and economists and researchers that the war cost your Uncle Sam $52,000,000,000. Of this sum, $39,000,000,000 was expended in the actual war period. This expenditure yielded $16,000,000,000 in profits."[32]
In the American Civil War, concerns about war profiteering were not limited to the activities of a few "shoddy" millionaires in the North. In the Confederacy, where supplies were severely limited, and hardships common, the mere suggestion of profiteering was considered a scurrilous charge. Georgia Quartermaster General Ira Roe Foster attempted to increase the supply of material to the troops by urging the women of his state to knit 50,000 pairs of socks. Foster's sock campaign stimulated the supply of the much needed item, but it also met with a certain amount of suspicion and backlash. Either the result of a Union disinformation campaign, or the work of suspicious minds, rumors, which Foster denied as a "malicious falsehood!",[33] began to spread that Foster and others were profiteering from the socks.[33] It was alleged that contributed socks were being sold, rather than given freely to the troops. The charge was not without precedent. The historian Jeanie Attie notes that in 1861, an "especially damaging rumor" (later found to be true) had circulated in the North, alleging that the Union Army had purchased 5,000 pairs of socks which had been donated, and intended for the troops, from a private relief agency, the United States Sanitary Commission.[34] As the Sanitary Commission had done in the North, Foster undertook a propaganda campaign in Georgia newspapers to combat the damaging rumors and to encourage the continued contribution of socks.[35] He offered $1,000.00 to any "citizen or soldier who will come forward and prove that he ever bought a sock from this Department that was either knit by the ladies or purchased for issue to said troops."[33]

Unacceptable! Senator Profits from War and Post Office

Shortly after San Francisco's then-Mayor Dianne Feinstein married private equity financier Richard C. Blum in 1980, those who knew them called theirs "a marriage of the public and private sectors."

Although Feinstein lost a gubernatorial bid to Republican Pete Wilson, she soon took his seat in the U.S. Senate. Working across the aisle, her power rapidly grew along with her husband's diversified investments and their mutual wealth.1

• As Chair and ranking member of the Military Construction and Appropriations Subcommittee, Senator Feinstein appears to have steered contracts to companies controlled by her husband.2  Blum has profited handsomely from military contracts.

• In 2009, Senator Feinstein introduced legislation to provide $25 billion in taxpayer money to the FDIC after it gave Blum's CBRE real estate company a contract to sell foreclosed properties at unusually high rates.4

• As a Regent of the University of California, Blum appears to have profited from contracts with the UC-run nuclear weapons laboratory at Los Alamos.5

• In the summer of 2012, the U.S. Postal Service awarded Blum's CBRE company the exclusive contract to sell its portfolio of public properties. Feinstein's office denies any influence in the awarding of the contract. 
Ask your Senators to request an Ethics Committee investigation of Senator Dianne Feinstein now.
In order to address your message to the appropriate recipient, we need to identify where you are.
Please enter your zip/postal code:  

Background: 


Exclusive — Memorial Day: Navy SEAL Eddie Gallagher’s Wife, Brother Fight the Swamp: ‘Domestic Terror Unleashed on Our Family’


Eddie Gallagher
JusticeForEddie.com
MATTHEW BOYLE
Washington, D.C.7,404
9:33

The family of Eddie Gallagher, the decorated Navy SEAL veteran of eight combat tours currently facing war crimes charges over allegations that members of Congress say video proves untrue, is speaking out this Memorial Day weekend about the “terror” Navy prosecutors have put them through.

“We’ve gone through eight deployments as a family, raising three children and really sacrificing my husband to the war on terror was our goal of achieving victory over what happened on 9/11,” Andrea Gallagher said in a Breitbart News radio exclusive hourlong special on her husband’s story that aired on Saturday and Sunday this weekend.
“Over the years, we let him go time and time again. Never in a million years would I have foreseen that on his very last combat trip, which was to Mosul where he was previously awarded number one chief and number one platoon, he was tasked with clearing Mosul of ISIS, which he succeeded in, and then over a year later he would come back to a disgruntled group of individuals who, once they found out he was yet again being elevated for his twilight tour to a very coveted billet where he would be training every Navy SEAL on the West Coast, and once they found out they were going to be under him again, they set up a plot to take him down. Now, it never would have occurred to them, I don’t think, that it could have gone this far,” she said.
Now, Andrea Gallagher says her family has been put through a “horrific nightmare” that she called “domestic terror” at the hands of NCIS Naval prosecutors who brought war crimes charges against her husband and for which he has been awaiting trial.
“But our family has been entrapped in what I can only call a horrific nightmare, and it definitely has been encompassed by some domestic terror unleashed on our family by NCIS who picked up the case in April of 2018,” she said. “They raided our home, pulled out our kids at gunpoint into the streets in their underwear by June. So, less than 60 days on basically just rumors, lies, and hearsay is how they cobbled together this case. Ever since, we have suffered. My husband was taken out of a TBI clinic on 9/11. He was thrown in jail and he actually was in jail for seven and a half months before President Trump intervened in March.”
Gallagher is charged with killing an ISIS fighter while deployed in Iraq during President Donald Trump’s administration—even though there is video, according to Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA) and the Gallager family, that proves Gallagher was actually trying to save the life of the fighter after all of his ISIS comrades in a facility were killed by a U.S.-launched hellfire missile.
“I always like to remind people of the absurdity of the premise,” Sean Gallager, Eddie’s brother, said on the Breitbart News radio Memorial Day weekend special. “Eddie is a Navy SEAL, eight combat tours over there, fighting ISIS—a just relentlessly brutal enemy. They shell a compound, they found out where these guys were hiding in Iraq. Mosul is a pretty densely urban city. It’s pretty hard to find out where everybody’s hiding. They found them, they hellfire missile the compound, a ton of them die. Reports are anywhere from 30 to 50 ISIS fighters died immediately from the hellfire missile. One survives. It’s a 17-year-old. Iraqi special forces were actually the first ones on the scene. They get the 17-year-old, they interview him actually—there’s an Iraqi journalist with them—this kid is severely injured. He had a severed artery in his left leg, he has what they call ‘blast lung,’ so basically a punctured lung after you’re in a compound hit by a missile. They interview him. He admits that he’s ISIS. He admits that he joined. He tells everybody why he joined. The Iraqis then drag him to the streets and they have him for two hours, pretty much, after the shelling. They bring him into the Navy SEAL compound. So this guy has been shelled, he’s severely wounded if not mortally wounded. The first one to render medical aid to an ISIS fighter who just hours before was trying to kill Eddie and his men was Eddie. So I always like to tell people the premise. The premise is that my brother, a decorated Navy SEAL, someone who was trained to fight and kill the enemy, almost does—right? They almost killed all of the enemy. All but one died. They bring him into a compound and then instead of killing him, my brother actually tries to save him. Not because he likes him, not because he’s compassionate, but because it’s tactically smart. They find one ISIS fighter alive, they try to revive and resuscitate him so they can grab valuable intelligence out of him later. So he’s sitting there, and there’s video. This is what Andrea and Eddie and I have been fighting against since day one.”
Sean Gallagher added that the government had this exonerating video when it brought the charges against Eddie to begin with, and did it anyway.
“What I always say about this is it’s not spin, it’s not context, it’s not anything—it’s just video,” Sean Gallagher said. “You can see exactly what happened. What happened is Eddie is providing medical care. He’s triaging this ISIS fighter. He flips him over. Members of Congress described the content where it’s a very kinetic compound, everybody is moving around. Eddie cuts the pants away from the ISIS fighter to begin bandaging the wound and that’s where the video subsides. This is one of those things that there is a video out there that clearly shows Eddie providing medical care. Prosecutors have had this, the government has had this from day one. They knew that this existed and yet they went forward with this anyway.”
LISTEN TO FULL ANDREA AND SEAN GALLAGHER INTERVIEW ON BREITBART NEWS RADIO:
In his own interview on the Breitbart News Memorial Day weekend radio special, Rep. Hunter explained it even further.
“There’s actually two videos. The Iraqi military shot this ISIS fighter as he came out of the building. He was the lone survivor, as you said,” Hunter, a GOP congressman who represents the San Diego area and himself served in the Marines, said. “Of the 50 ISIS fighters killed, this guy walks out of the building with a gun and the Iraqis shoot him in the inner leg and take his gun from him. Then the Iraqis interrogate him. We have that video too. We don’t know how long passed between the Iraqi interrogation of the ISIS fighter, but they interviewed him and that was on Iraqi national television—them interviewing the ISIS fighter. The ISIS fighter admits he is an ISIS fighter. Then some indeterminable amount of time later, the Iraqis pass this guy over to the Navy SEALs who then try to save his life. We’re looking at possibly hours in between the actual bombing and the U.S. Navy SEALs trying to render medical aid and save this guy’s life. So here’s what we have. You have that video. Then you have the body camera, the helmet cam videos and pictures of Eddie Gallagher receiving the ISIS guy, the ISIS fighter saying, ‘I’ll take care of him,’ they drop him down, Eddie then goes to work on his pants and rips his pants open where he was shot in the leg. That’s what the video shows. You then have pictures and you can’t tell when the guy died, but we have pictures of a tracheotomy—that’s when you try to open up someone’s airway by putting a tube down their throat basically. And we also have pictures of them trying to, it’s some medical procedure where you open up the lungs and the ribcage—this ISIS fighter had needles in both sides of his ribs where the SEALs tried to perform aid. There were two other SEALs performing this medical treatment with Eddie Gallagher at the same time. That’s what the video shows and the pictures show the Navy SEALs doing their job and trying to save the ISIS terrorist’s life.”
LISTEN TO FULL INTERVIEW WITH REP. DUNCAN HUNTER (R-CA) ON BREITBART NEWS RADIO:
Retired Navy Lt. Commander Ed Hiner, who served with the SEALs, said in his own interview on Breitbart News radio for the Memorial Day weekend special that the bureaucrats in the military are out of touch.
“To me, they’re detached from the actual reality that we’re in combat—that we’re in war,” Hiner said. “It’s been going on since 9/11. These guys are incentivized—these prosecution teams—they’re incentivized to get convictions, not justice. Convictions. To them, they’re chomping at the bit to put this man in jail because it’s a career-maker. If these guys get a prosecution, it’s the first time a Navy SEAL has been prosecuted successfully for a war crime. To them, that’s a big straw in their hat. That’s why if you look, and I’ve been to the hearings and paid attention here, I bet they have 30 to 40 people on their prosecution team doing research and conducting interviews. They are intentionally trying to drown the defense with paperwork. Thousands and thousands of papers, it’s unbelievable. But they want a conviction, and they know that video that Congressman Duncan Hunter and the other congressmen saw exonerates him. The guy is giving medical treatment. He’s what’s called an 18 Delta Corpsman. That’s the highest level you can get in the medical field. And that’s way above a paramedic. These guys do battlefield surgeries. They know how to treat trauma wounds. That’s what Eddie was doing, and that’s why Congressman Hunter and the other congressmen are adamant about how Eddie is being railroaded.”
LISTEN TO LT. COMMANDER ED HINER’S FULL INTERVIEW ON BREITBART NEWS RADIO:
It has come out in recent weeks that the prosecution engaged in surreptitious leaks to further its narrative—again, in contravention of the evidence—prompting the judge to allow the sharing of the video with members of Congress. It has also come out that the prosecution engaged in spying on not only the defense but the media through various intelligence-gathering pieces of malicious software sent into the defense team’s and the Navy Times’ servers via emails.
The case caught President Trump’s attention, as speculation mounted ahead of Memorial Day that the president might preemptively pardon Gallagher before his trial—something Trump’s 2016 opponent, Democrat nominee Hillary Rodham Clinton, ripped him for even considering. While Trump has yet to make a move on a pardon as of now, with the trial set to begin soon, including a scheduled hearing this week, the president did move to help Gallagher get into a better facility while he awaits trial. Gallagher was also reunited with his wife Andrea recently amid the speculation over the potential pardon, photos released this weekend show. It was the first time they had been together since 2017, when Gallagher was arrested.
Whatever happens next, there is a deeper narrative about political correctness in the military bureaucracy hurting the efficiency and efficacy of the U.S. military, Hunter said.
“It happens over time when you’re in an 18-year war in Afghanistan, a 16-year war in Iraq, here’s what happens,” Rep. Hunter said on Breitbart News radio. “You got about one percent of the U.S. military is actually out fighting. The other 99 percent are back here behind the gates safe and sound. That means the people that run the military right now, mostly Obama guys because the people that are in power now were put into power by him four years ago, six year ago, eight years ago, those guys are now more political—those admirals and generals—and run by the lawyers and bureaucrats, than politicians are. That’s what’s happened. You have the very few select guys who go outside the city gates and do bad things to bad people, and carry our U.S. flag to foreign soil, while the other 99 percent of folks sit back here and try to judge those fighters, those warriors who fight on our behalf—on the American people’s behalf. The people sitting back here, the bureaucrats, the lawyers, and the politicians, try to judge those warriors in the context of our freedom, safety, and security and rules of law back here at home. It’s happened over a period of time. It didn’t happen all of a sudden.”

No comments: