600 Army Aviators Told They Owe Three More Years Than Previously Assured

600 Army Aviators Told They Owe Three More Years Than Previously Assured

As the Army struggles to come anywhere close to its recruiting goals, more than 600 US Army aviators who thought they were nearing the end of their service obligations have been notified they owe three more years. 

The affected officers, commissioned via West Point or ROTC, participated in a program called BRADSO, for Branch of Choice Active Duty Service Obligation. It let cadets choose their specific Army branch of choice in exchange for tacking on three more years onto their existing active duty service obligation (ADSO).  

CH-47 Chinook (foreground) and UH-60 Blackhawk helicopters in Laghman Province Afghanistan in 2015 (DoD photo)

The Army had routinely let aviators serve those three years concurrently with their separate, 6-year flight school ADSO — rather than consecutively. Starting last fall, however, the Army began informing affected officers that they owe up to three more years than they’d understood — and had frequently been told — all along.

Earlier this week, Daily Caller reported it had obtained video of an Army Human Resources Command officer assuring a 2020 audience that the three years would be served concurrently. “Your ADSO upon graduation … you’re not going to have to do three [years] after,” he said. 

Many of those aviators are now fighting the Army’s reversal of its practice and apparent betrayal of its previous assurances.  A group of 61 joined to send a letter to at least 11 members of Congress. They enclosed screenshots of previous written assurances they’d received about satisfying the three years concurrently. 

An Army AH-64 Apache “protects” a Syrian oil field from being used for the benefit of the Syrian people, who withstood a US-led regime change effort spearheaded by Salafist terrorists

On Thursday, Army officials told reporters that, a few months ago, they’d discovered that “errors” had been made in enforcing the three-year BRADSO obligation. “We are fixing those errors, and we are in communication with the unit leadership and impacted officers,” said Lt. Gen. Douglas Stitt, the Army’s deputy chief of staff of G-1 (personnel).

“Our overall goal to correct this issue is to provide predictability and stability for our soldiers while maintaining readiness across our force,” he said. The Army fell 15,000 short of its recruiting goal in 2022. 

In this 2022 correspondence, an Army career manager assured an aviator that his BRADSO would be served concurrently 

The longer aviators stay in the Army and the more they’re promoted, the less time they spend flying. Deterred by shifting to administrative and leadership responsibilities, many are prone to move on to civilian life.  

For many of the several hundred affected aviators who were primed for the next phase of their lives, the Army’s change of contract interpretation was a harsh blow. 

“That was the big kick in the gonads,” one aviator who was recently married told NBC News as he traveled on a new deployment. “We wanted to start having kids, and we no longer can. It’s a stressor we didn’t plan to deal with.”

This Apache crashed during a 2003 landing at Tactical Assembly Area SHELL in central Iraq (Wikicommons)

“Yeah, the war on Afghanistan ended,” he said. “There’s still a high demand for Army aviation. We have units still in constant training or deployment rotations. They’re failing to recognize the human aspect.”

Many other aviators have already been discharged after having been allowed to serve the three-year BRADSO obligation concurrently. “It’s a huge relief that I got out, but I have a lot of sorrow and pity for the others,” said one who was discharged in April 2022. She asked for her name to be withheld for fear of being ordered back to duty.  

“We’re captains. We’re commanders. We’re leaders. We’re not just going to say that checks out, we’ll serve. It’s not right,” one of the officers told NBC. “They thought we’d just accept our fates. Clearly, we did not.”

Tyler Durden
Sat, 04/29/2023 – 12:00

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Watch: CNN Host Shockingly Blasts Teachers Union Boss Over School Closure Lies

Watch: CNN Host Shockingly Blasts Teachers Union Boss Over School Closure Lies

Randi Weingarten is the president of the American Federation of Teachers and a member of the AFL–CIO, but she’s perhaps best known as being the key advocate for shutting schools down during the onset of the Covid pandemic.

Weingarten was called to task this week on the Don Lemon-less CNN by senior political commentator Scott Jennings, who excoriated the union boss after she engaged in historical revisionism over her role in school shutdowns – insisting before the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, that she had instead advocated for reopening schools as quickly as possible.

Not so fast, Randi…

“Speaking on behalf of millions of American parents, I had to teach them at home,” Jenning said. “My wife had to teach them at home. I am stunned at what you have said this week about your claiming to have wanted to reopen schools.” 

In 2020, Weingarten called attempts to reopen schools in the fall of 2020 “reckless, callous and cruel.”

What’s more, her union pushed aggressively for closures at the local level, while areas with high union influence remained closed much longer.

CNN‘s Jennings continued to shred Weingarten, stating: “I think you’ll find that most parents believe you are the tip of the spear of school closures. There are numerous statements you made over the summer of ’20 scaring people to death about the possibility of opening schools. And I hear no remorse whatsoever about the generational damage that’s been done to these kids.” 

“I have two kids with learning differences. Do you know how hard it is for them to learn at home and not in a classroom that was designed for them? And for you to sit in front of Congress and the American people and say, oh, ‘I wanted to open up them the whole time,’” I am shocked. I’m stunned. I’m stunned,” he continued. “And there are millions of parents who feel the exact same way.”

Watch:

Additionally, the NY Post reported last week that one epidemiologist claimed Weingarten even “fudged a scientific study” that showed low levels of Covid transmission in schools in order to keep schools closed during the pandemic. 

Co-author of the study, Dr. Tracy Høeg, wrote on Twitter last week: “We saw remarkably low in school transmission & no known transmission to teachers.”

She added: “The fact the [CDC] was taking the advice of the [AFT] & not the scientists publishing on this topic in their own journal and without considering the data from Europe seems to have played a role in the massive error that left millions [of] US kids out of school unnecessarily.”

Weingarten had used the study “multiple times as evidence schools needed ‘layered mitigation’ to reopen”, she said during a congressional hearing. 

“The way Ms. Weingarten mentioned me in her testimony, one might have thought I was being consulted all along but this was not the case,” Høeg said, shredding the assumptions of the union leader.

“Despite the wording in [Randi Weingarten’s] written testimony, I consistently *disagreed* w/ what she & AFT were requesting in terms of mitigation to reopen schools & I’ve said that consistently (on social media, in op-eds, on news interviews) since our study was published.”

Meanwhile, Weingarten has doubled down on Twitter – and locked down replies from the general public!

Community notes to the rescue;

Then and now;

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

A post shared by Defiant Ls (@defiant.ls)

Tyler Durden
Sat, 04/29/2023 – 12:00

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Inflation Still Too High? Let Them Eat EVs

Inflation Still Too High? Let Them Eat EVs

Authored by Patrice Onwuka via RealClear Wire,

Inflation rose 5% last month compared with one year prior, according to the latest consumer price index. That is the lowest level of price increases since May 2021, though it’s still not down to pre-Biden and pre-pandemic levels. Inflation’s easing may provide some relief, but it will be too late to rescue many once-thriving American households.

The harsh reality is that excessive government spending, starting with the American Rescue Plan in 2021, spurred inflation and the ensuing hardship that households – especially middle-class households – are struggling with today.

President Biden has denied responsibility for the high prices. Whether Americans blame him or not, they give him no credit for helping them through it. In new Monmouth polling this week, just 10% of Americans say middle-class families benefited “a lot” from Biden’s policies, while over half (51%) say the middle class has not benefited at all. Perceptions of Biden’s support for the middle class took a nosedive from early in his term. President Donald Trump had similar low numbers early in his term, but he had turned them around by the time he left office.

In the same poll, one-quarter of the public names inflation or rising gas prices as the biggest concern facing their family right now. This proportion is down from one-third last summer, signaling that Americans are feeling a little better about the slowing of inflation.

The left is quick to credit the misleadingly named Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) for this marginal improvement, but Americans aren’t buying it. Half of adults say that the federal government’s actions over the past six months have actually hurt their families. Just 1% rank climate change as a top priority. The IRA was a climate bill dressed up as price relief, but it is not helping Americans or addressing what matters most to them.

Simply put: the left is out of touch with middle America and the middle class. In Democratic political circles, Ohio Rep. Mercy Kaptur has been circulating a stunning data visualization showing how most of the wealthiest congressional districts are represented by Democrats, and most of the poorer half of districts by Republicans. Referring to colleagues like former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, she said, “There’s an elitism that pervades when you have wealth.”

The implications are clear. Politically, the terrain favors the right – at least in the House. As Cook Political Report’s Dave Wasserman told Axios, “Increasingly, districts that make up the majority of the Democratic caucus don’t really reflect the middle-income districts where the House is won and lost.”

The left’s elitism is on full display through its policies. Take President Biden’s push to force Americans to abandon gas-powered vehicles. His tougher new emissions standards could require as much as 67% of all new vehicles sold in the U.S. by 2032 to be all-electric; last year, though, electric vehicles accounted for just 5.8% of all the 13.8 million new vehicles sold in the country. The price tag of EVs is just too high, according to six in 10 Americans, which is why they wouldn’t purchase one any time soon.

Shelling out an average of more than $58,000 for a car is an afterthought for coastal elites with comfortable six-figure incomes, but it’s out of reach for many U.S. households. Furthermore, fewer EVs may qualify for the full $7,500 federal tax credit that is supposed to make them affordable under new rules proposed by the U.S. Treasury Department.

Asking a semi-retiree like “Lynne Allen” of Key West, Fla, to pay that much to purchase a car is just another “let them eat cake” policy. “Lynne” came home from a paralegal job one day to find her husband collapsed at the bottom of the stairs. She was forced to retire early to care for him, but 40-year-high inflation drove her back into the workforce. She sometimes had to clock 50 hours a week to make ends meet.

Her adult son moved back in with her and her husband. Yet all their earnings and her husband’s disability check are still not enough to afford basic necessities. Eggs are a luxury for a woman who almost bursts into tears when a customer drops a $20 bill into her tip jar. She says, “Oh, wow, that means we get chicken tonight.” She often chooses between grains and veggies, meat or no meat at all.

“We worked our whole life. We owned a charter boat. We owned a home, and we lost it all. We were still happy. We were still making it, and then [the government] just turned around and made everything harder.”

Inflation may not be rising as fast as it was two years ago, but the damage to Americans’ financial situation will be lasting.

Patrice Onwuka is director of the Center for Economic Opportunity at Independent Women’s Forum and co-host of WMAL’s O’Connor & Company.

Tyler Durden
Sat, 04/29/2023 – 11:30

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US Army Grounds Aviators After Two Mid-Air Crashes, Killing 12 Soldiers

US Army Grounds Aviators After Two Mid-Air Crashes, Killing 12 Soldiers

After the tragic loss of 12 soldiers in two mid-air helicopter accidents in Alaska and Kentucky within the past month, the US Army immediately grounded aviation units for training.

“The move grounds all Army aviators, except those participating in critical missions, until they complete the required training,” the Army said in a statement, according to AP News

“The safety of our aviators is our top priority, and this stand down is an important step to make certain we are doing everything possible to prevent accidents and protect our personnel,” Army Chief of Staff James McConville said of the decision to ground flight units for training.

The order comes after two Apache helicopters in Alaska collided on Thursday, killing three soldiers and injuring one. About 30 days before that, nine soldiers were killed when two HH-60 Black Hawk helicopters, operated by the 101st Airborne Division, crashed during a nighttime training mission near Fort Campbell, Kentucky. 

The Army stressed that while the latest crash and the one in Kentucky remain under investigation, “there is no indication of any pattern between the two mishaps.”

Tyler Durden
Sat, 04/29/2023 – 11:00

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Biden Authorizes Southern Border Deployment Of Reservist Troops

Biden Authorizes Southern Border Deployment Of Reservist Troops

Authored by Chase Smith via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

President Joe Biden authorized the deployment of reserve troops to the southern border to combat “international drug trafficking” under the National Emergencies Act in an executive order signed April 27.

President Joe Biden speaks with a member of the Border Patrol as they walk along the U.S.–Mexico border fence in El Paso, Texas, on Jan. 8, 2023. (Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images)

The executive order authorizes the secretaries of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Department of Defense (DOD) to order to active duty reserve troops as they “consider necessary.”

“I am authorizing the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of Homeland Security to order to active duty such units and individual members of the Ready Reserve under the jurisdiction of the Secretary concerned,” Biden wrote in a subsequent letter to Congress. “The authorities that have been invoked will ensure the Department of Defense can properly sustain its support of the Department of Homeland Security concerning international drug trafficking along the Southwest Border.

The administration explained the reservist authorization is a response to a previous national emergency declaration, signed by Biden in December 2021, related to drug trafficking across the southern border.

That executive order from 2021 authorized the Treasury Secretary to impose sanctions on foreign persons involved in global illicit drug trafficking.

“I … find that the trafficking into the United States of illicit drugs, including fentanyl and other synthetic opioids, is causing the deaths of tens of thousands of Americans annually, as well as countless more non-fatal overdoses with their own tragic human toll,” Biden wrote in 2021’s executive order. “Drug cartels, transnational criminal organizations, and their facilitators are the primary sources of illicit drugs and precursor chemicals that fuel the current opioid epidemic, as well as drug-related violence that harms our communities. “

DHS, State Department Announce ‘Sweeping’ New Measures

The Biden administration also on Thursday announced “sweeping” new measures to “further reduce unlawful migration across the Western Hemisphere” after the Title 42 public health order ends.

But the lifting of the Title 42 order does not mean the border is open,” according to a DHS fact sheet announcing new measures. “When the Title 42 order lifts at 11:59 PM on May 11, the United States will return to using Title 8 immigration authorities to expeditiously process and remove individuals who arrive at the U.S. border unlawfully.”

Title 8 consequences for unlawful entry include a five-year ban on reentry and potential prosecution for repeat offenders.

“The return to processing under Title 8 is expected to reduce the number of repeat border crossings over time, which increased significantly under Title 42,” DHS officials say in the fact sheet. “Individuals who cross into the United States at the southwest border without authorization or having used a lawful pathway, and without having scheduled a time to arrive at a port of entry, would be presumed ineligible for asylum under a new proposed regulation, absent an applicable exception.”

DHS and the State Department say the measures will be implemented in “close coordination” with Mexico, Canada, Spain, Colombia, and Guatemala. The agencies call on Congress to take action, stating Congress “alone” can provide reforms and resources to manage the “migration challenge.”

Measures announced by DHS and the State Department include stiffer consequences for failing to use lawful pathways, expedited removal, the launch of an anti-smuggling campaign in the Darien corridor, and additional “lawful pathways” for entry including expanded access to the CBPOne App and new family reunification parole processes.

Another effort the agencies announced is to combat smuggler “misinformation.”

Read more here…

Tyler Durden
Sat, 04/29/2023 – 10:30

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“We Are Not Optimistic”: Top Sony Exec Doesn’t See Smartphone Demand Recovery This Year

“We Are Not Optimistic”: Top Sony Exec Doesn’t See Smartphone Demand Recovery This Year

The downturn in the global smartphone market is likely to persist through this year, according to Tokyo-based Sony Group Corp., the world’s top provider of image sensors for handheld devices. 

“We are not optimistic about the smartphone market outlook this year,” Sony president and COO Hiroki Totoki told analysts during an earnings call on Friday. 

“In China, handset inventories in distribution channels increased in March, and we expect prices of low-end and midrange image sensors will fall a lot due to piled-up inventories by competitors,” Totoki said. 

Sony has a direct view of device inventories and demand as a top supplier to the world’s largest smartphone makers, which means it can easily forecast industry trends. Totoki said oversupply concerns would pressure handset makers through the second half of this year. 

Totoki expects softness in premium handsets in the US market, a high degree of uncertainty in China, and a slowdown in Europe. 

He noted Sony increased its share of the global smartphone image sensor market to 51%, up from 44% last year. 

In a separate report, data from the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker showed global smartphone shipments fell 14.6% year over year to 268.6 million units in the first quarter of 2023. This is the seventh consecutive quarter of declines as the market sours due to mounting macroeconomic headwinds, inflation, and sliding demand. 

“The industry is going through a period of inventory clearing and adjustment. Market players remain cautious deploying a conservative approach rather than dumping more stock into channel to chase temporary gains in share. I think is the smart thing to do if we want to avoid an unhealthy situation like 2022.

“While we are optimistic about recovery by the end of the year, we still have a tough 3-6 months ahead. Everyone is anxious about exactly when the tide will turn and wants to be first to ride the wave of recovery. However, it’s a tricky situation. Anyone who jumps in too soon will drown in excess inventory. Now more than ever, it’s important to keep a close pulse of market. Barring unforeseen elements, IDC expects the market to cross into positive territory in the third quarter and see healthy double-digit growth by the holiday quarter,” said Nabila Popal, research director with IDC’s Worldwide Tracker team.

Concerns about recession may be pushing demand lower for pricy smartphones and other electronics among consumers. 

Tyler Durden
Sat, 04/29/2023 – 09:55

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Watch: ABC News Admits It Censored RFK Jr. Interview For “False Claims About Covid-19 Vaccines”

Watch: ABC News Admits It Censored RFK Jr. Interview For “False Claims About Covid-19 Vaccines”

Authored by Steve Watson via Summit News,

In a remarkable video, ABC News presented a pre-recorded interview with presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, telling viewers that parts of what was said had been edited out because he said something about the COVID vaccine that the news network disagrees with.

The interview was aired with clear edits made during parts where Kennedy spoke about his views on vaccines.

The interviewer Linsey Davis asked RFK Jr. about his belief that vaccination was linked to autism, which he began to explain before she jumped in and claimed that has all been debunked. The footage then skipped to a different topic entirely.

After the interview concluded, Davis told viewers “We should note that during our conversation, Kennedy made false claims about the Covid-19 vaccines.”

She claimed “Data shows that the Covid-19 vaccine has prevented millions of hospitalizations and deaths from the disease.”

“He also made misleading claims about the relationship between vaccination and autism,” Davis further asserted, adding “Research shows that vaccines and the ingredients used in the vaccines do not cause autism, including multiple studies involving more than a million children and major medical associations like the American Academy of Pediatrics and the advocacy group Autism Speaks.”

“We’ve used our editorial judgment in not including extended portions of that exchange in our interview,” Davis explained.

Remarkable.

What did Kennedy say? That the COVID vaccines don’t prevent transmission of the virus, despite government claims to the contrary? That the vaccines have caused deaths? We simply don’t know because ABC News declared itself to be the arbiter of information and openly censored him.

Here is the full interview (minus the parts you’re not allowed to hear):

*  *  *

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Also, we urgently need your financial support here.

Tyler Durden
Sat, 04/29/2023 – 09:20

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Space Force, Assemble!

Space Force, Assemble!

General Chance Saltzman, Chief of Space Operations for the U.S. Space Force, warned last week that the U.S. is facing a new era of space activity:

“The threats that we face to our on-orbit capabilities from our strategic competitors [have] grown substantially”, he told CNBC’s “Manifest Space” podcast.

The Space Force has grown substantially since its 2019 inception: Both in terms of personnel and budget.

Infographic: Space Force, Assemble! | Statista

You will find more infographics at Statista

As Statista’s Martin Armstrong shows in the infographic above, end-strength personnel in 2021 was almost 10 thousand, while the budget was $15.4 billion.

In 2023. the personnel level had to over 13,500. Representing an even larger jump, Space Force’s budget leapt up to nearly $25 billion in 2023.

Tyler Durden
Sat, 04/29/2023 – 08:45

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Blinken Draws Fire Over Afghanistan Blame Game, ‘Stonewalling’

Blinken Draws Fire Over Afghanistan Blame Game, ‘Stonewalling’

Authored by Susan Crabtree via RealClear Wire,

Former Ambassador Thomas Boyatt, a highly decorated foreign service officer who served in multiple senior U.S. foreign service roles in the 1970s and 80s, has a bone to pick with Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

Since the chaotic and deadly U.S. exit from Afghanistan, Blinken has refused to turn over to Congress a key internal State Department dissent document signed by 23 U.S. diplomats at the embassy in Kabul. The classified cable was sent to Blinken and top leadership at State in July 2021, one month before the evacuation descended into chaos. The classified memo reportedly urged the administration to accelerate evacuation plans because the Afghan government was on the brink of collapse as the Taliban swept the country. Its existence was leaked to the Wall Street Journal after the Taliban took control of the country and the U.S. withdrawal quickly went sideways.

What’s worse, in Boyatt’s view, is that the State Department is now using a misleading precedent surrounding a dissent cable he sent nearly 50 years ago as its rationale for withholding the Afghanistan dissent document from Congress.

When Boyatt learned about Blinken’s refusal and his reasons –  that he was trying to protect future dissent cables from a chilling effect – “It was like tearing off the scab of an old wound of mine,” Boyatt, now 90, told RealClearPolitics Tuesday.

Blinken had cited the 1975 precedent of the department’s refusal to provide Congress the dissent cable written by Boyatt before Turkey invaded Cyprus just a year before. Boyatt recently provided a statement to Rep. Mike McCaul, slamming Blinken’s stated concerns about protecting the integrity of the dissent cable system as “bullshit.”

McCaul, a Texas Republican who now chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee, has been requesting the cable since first learning about it in late August of 2021 while events were unraveling in Kabul. Last week, a deadline passed for McCaul’s subpoena for the cable, with Blinken still resisting.

While serving as the State Department’s director for Cyprus affairs, Boyatt used the official dissent channel to warn then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and the Nixon administration that the Greek army was planning to overthrow the Cypriot president and install a puppet Cypriot government. If this were to occur, his cable warned, Turkey’s armed forces would invade Cyprus and establish a Turk-Cypriot mini-state on Cyprus, leading to the displacement of Cyprus’s ethnic communities and fueling Turkey’s expansionist objectives. Boyatt says he decided to utilize the dissent cable process to alert the Nixon administration about the impending invasion after exhausting normal State Department channels.

Instead of attempting to stop the invasion, however, Kissinger removed Boyatt from his position in Cyprus five days after he sent the cable. Boyatt went on to serve as counselor in the U.S. embassy in Chile while events in Cyprus unfolded just as he had warned.

Boyatt notes that his friend, Rodger Davies, who was serving as ambassador to Cyprus at the time, was shot dead during a Greek Cypriot protest outside the U.S. embassy. It was just a week after Turkey’s invasion, and roughly 300 people were protesting against the United States’ failure to prevent the Turkish invasion.

After the Nixon administration, Boyatt served as ambassador to Upper Volta in 1978 and ambassador to Colombia in 1980. Even before Kissinger punished him for airing opposition through the classified dissent cable process, Boyatt was already a hero within the agency – lauded for his bravery demonstrated during a 1969 TWA flight he was on that was hijacked by Palestinian terrorists. That year, the State Department honored him with its Meritorious Honor Award for helping injured passengers to safety and negotiating the passengers’ release with the Syrian government.  

Roughly a year after Turkey invaded Cyprus, a Democratic-controlled House committee decided to scrutinize the Nixon administration’s foreign policies in Cambodia, Chile, and Cyprus. It demanded that Kissinger hand over Boyatt’s dissent cable on Cyprus. Kissinger refused, arguing that he wanted to protect Boyatt from retaliation.

“That was a joke at the time,” Boyatt recalled, explaining that back then, “everybody in my world” was well aware of Kissinger’s penchant for punishing those who challenged his judgment and the administration’s prevailing foreign policies.

State Department officials across the agency were on edge because Kissinger had recently retaliated against another U.S. diplomat, Archer Blood, for sending what was considered one of the most strongly worded cables in the history of the U.S. foreign service while serving as U.S. consul general to Dhaka, East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). Signed by 20 members of the diplomatic staff. the “Blood Telegram” protested the atrocities being committed in the Bangladesh Liberation War.

The dissent memo angered Kissinger, who recalled Blood from the position and assigned him to the State Department personnel office, retribution for airing his views contradicting Kissinger’s and Nixon’s hopes of using the support of West Pakistan for diplomatic openings with China.

Even though the demotion severely harmed Blood’s career, his telegram became the precursor to the creation of the official State Department “dissent channel” that formed in the following years, the same system Boyatt used to air his warnings. The State Department agreed to establish the channel partly in response to concerns that contrary opinions were suppressed or ignored during the Vietnam War. In 1971, Blood received a prestigious Christian Herter Award for “extraordinary accomplishment involving initiative, integrity, intellectual courage, and creative dissent.” The Herter Award was established by the American Foreign Service Association, AFSA, the U.S. foreign service labor union, to honor senior diplomats who challenge the status quo.

“The point is that nobody in Washington or the State Department or anyone else believed that Kissinger’s concern was for the well-being of the dissenters,” Boyatt recalled. “His concern was that he did not want a series of mistakes in the public record with respect to the Cyprus crisis. I strongly suspect that that is the same motive with Blinken.” 

The State Department has vigorously defended its decision to fight McCaul’s subpoena. The agency also denied a request for the cable by Rep. Gregory Meeks, a New York Democrat who chaired the panel before Republicans won the majority last year.

Instead, State has offered to provide a closed-door briefing, proposed for later this week, for McCaul and other members of Congress about the “concerns raised and the challenges identified” by U.S. embassy staff in Kabul before and during the withdrawal, State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel told RCP.

Secretary Blinken has continued to make clear his and the State Department’s commitment to working with the House Foreign Affairs committee to provide relevant information while also upholding his responsibility to protect the integrity of the Department’s dissent channel,” Patel said in an emailed statement. “We continue to believe that our offers can satisfactorily provide the committee with the information it needs to conduct its oversight function while still protecting the dissent channel.”

McCaul has repeatedly dismissed Blinken’s justification for withholding the Afghanistan dissent cable and has pledged to pursue legal recourse if Blinken continues to ignore his subpoena. While McCaul has accepted State’s offer for a briefing, he has told the agency that it in no way satisfies the subpoena.

“I am currently discussing next steps with my staff and House legal counsels to decide on what action to take if the State Department continues to refuse to comply with the subpoena despite their legal obligation to do so,” McCaul said in a statement last week.

Boyatt also rejects the State Department’s rationale that it’s simply protecting dissenters from retaliation and trying to prevent a chilling effect on future dissent.

“The reality is that if a dissent cable or dissent memorandum for one reason or another reaches public purview, it’s good for a variety of national security reasons because it forces the bureaucracy to confront its mistakes and to concentrate on not repeating them,” Boyatt said.

The dissenters themselves are applauded by their peers, Boyatt said, and rightly so because all foreign service officers take an oath to support and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and to do their best to support U.S. foreign policy interests.

“They instantly become heroes to some 15,000 foreign service officers serving all over the world,” he added. “They become eligible for, and many do receive, awards from the American Foreign Service Association for creative dissent.”

Underscoring his point, two diplomats stationed in Kabul who signed the July 2021 dissent cable recently received AFSA’s William R. Rivkin Award for Constructive Dissent by a Mid-Level Foreign Service Officer. The union publicly recognized the pair for their “courage” in using the classified dissent channel to “speak an unpopular truth to power.”

Elisabeth Zenos and Anton Cooper, foreign service officers who served in Kabul in 2020 and 2021, embody “the best traditions of the Foreign Service and constructive dissent in a uniquely difficult moment, bringing their intellectual courage, astute analysis and willingness to speak an unpopular truth to power,” AFSA wrote about the pair on its website.

“Using the appropriate internal embassy channels, Ms. Zentos and Mr. Cooper presented their concerns and a proposed course of action,” the organization said, adding that Zentos and Cooper turned to the dissent channel when their positions differed from the “established views of decision-makers.”

AFSA also noted that the cable received the “required response from the secretary of state’s policy planning staff, and preparations reportedly sped up – but unfortunately, not quickly enough to avoid the events that transpired in Kabul.”

Despite choosing Zentos and Cooper for the award, one of several the union handed out in 2022, AFSA has defended Blinken’s decision to withhold the dissent cable from Congress. In March, Eric Rubin, the union’s president, said the dissent channel must be protected under the executive branch or risk undermining the privileged purposes the secure communication line provides.

“AFSA maintains that constructive dissent can only thrive and be successful if it remains confidential and confined to internal discussion within the executive branch,” Rubin said in the statement. 

Boyatt strongly disagrees and says he’s hardly alone among his State Department colleagues, current and retired. “I think they’re wrong, and the next time I see [Rubin], the current president, I’m going to tell him that,” Boyatt told RCP.

Republicans over the last week have hammered the Biden administration for what they characterized as more than a year of stonewalling their oversight requests for key Afghanistan documents. McCaul on Tuesday sent a separate letter to Blinken asking for the public release of key parts of its after-action review of the Afghanistan withdrawal. The Texas Republican stressed that some of the information in the report that he’s reviewed “stands directly at odds with the administration’s public narratives.”

The 87-page report was completed more than a year ago and was only provided to Congress recently after a subpoena threat from Republicans. McCaul also took issue with State’s decision to withhold parts of the after-action review from the public even though the vast majority of its contents are marked as either “sensitive but unclassified” or “unclassified.” The unclassified sections of the review, including the executive summary, findings, and recommendations, should be released “immediately,” and an unclassified version of the complete document within 60 days, McCaul argued.  

State Department spokesman Vedant Patel on Tuesday said there are “no plans” at the moment to declassify the after-action review and release it publicly.

On April 6, while Congress was out of town and two days before Easter weekend, the Biden administration released a 12-page unclassified document claiming to summarize the findings of the after-action review. John Kirby, the National Security Council spokesman, released the summary 10 minutes before appearing at a White House press conference. The move drew criticism from several reporters who publicly complained of being blind-sided by the report.

While the summary acknowledged mistakes in evaluating the risks of a Taliban takeover of the Afghan government, the Biden administration defended its decision to end the war and blamed the Trump administration for leaving them with few options and even less planning capability. 

When RealClearPolitics’ Phil Wegmann asked if the after-action review summary included information about the dissent cable, Kirby referred him to the State Department. During the briefing, reporters also repeatedly questioned Kirby for denying that the Afghanistan evacuation was chaotic despite disturbing photos and videos that emerged amid the final days of the withdrawal.

“For all this talk of chaos, I just didn’t see it,” Kirby told reporters during the White House briefing, adding, “I just don’t buy the whole argument of chaos.”

The shocking images from the final days of the Afghanistan withdrawal showed desperate Afghans clinging to the wings and wheels of U.S. military planes taking off from Kabul, including images of several Afghans falling to their deaths. On August 26, a suicide bomber killed 13 U.S. servicemen and women, injured 45 others, and killed 170 Afghans after the Taliban took control of the country and panicked Afghans, along with U.S. citizens, jammed into the Kabul airport in a desperate attempt to flee.

Last month, Sgt. Tyler Vargas-Andrews, a Marine sniper, told a House hearing convened by McCaul that his military leaders ignored his warnings about the suicide bomber’s movements. Several minutes later, the bomber detonated his vest in a blast that cost Vargas-Andrews a leg, an arm, and a kidney. Vargas-Andrews has undergone 44 surgeries over the last year and a half. 

After the Biden administration released the 12-page summary report, a former U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan called the document “shameful” and “a White House whitewash.”

Retired Ambassador Ryan Crocker, who capped a four-decade foreign service career as the top U.S. diplomat in Kabul in 2011 and 2012, said the Trump administration bears blame for adhering to a pre-determined end date for the exit of U.S. and NATO forces, but that doesn’t absolve Biden for carrying out the Trump policy without setting conditions or considering shifting dynamics on the ground.

“Frankly, it’s dishonest,” Crocker said of the Biden administration’s repeated blaming of Trump and his senior foreign policy leaders. “This administration – ably and amply assisted by the previous administration, of course – were the ones who set the stage for that incredibly swift Taliban takeover.”

Crocker also blasted the summary for touting the Biden administration’s work to ramp up the processing of special immigrant visas for Afghans who aided Americans as interpreters and in other roles that makes them Taliban targets while failing to mention that hundreds of thousands of Afghan allies are still trying to flee the country.

The absence of any mention of our broken promises to Afghan allies is “as shameful and as egregious to me as anything in that document,” Crocker said. More than 150,000 special immigrant visa applicants are still trying to escape Afghanistan, according to internal Biden administration estimates, Foreign Policy reported in March. Other advocates say the numbers could be twice as high.

Crocker says he believes Blinken should provide the dissent cable to Congress without the names of those who signed it to protect their identities and prevent any possible harm to their careers “down the line,” especially when it comes to younger foreign service officers. 

“I certainly believe that with an issue of this magnitude, Congress has an obligation to seek, and the executive has an obligation to provide, access to reports that have a direct bearing on a huge foreign-policy issue,” he told RCP. 

It was appropriate to keep the document classified in the weeks after it was first generated amid a quickly deteriorating situation in Afghanistan, Crocker said, but those reasons no longer apply.

“That’s not what you would want to have out on the street available to our adversaries in the middle of this whole thing, but my guess is now that we are way, way past that … the classification has to be re-looked in light of the current situation,” he said.

Crocker also has a personal experience of voicing dissent, although there was no time to put his views into writing or to get a cable out. In the fall of 1983, several months after the deadly bombing of the U.S. embassy in Beirut, Crocker said the Reagan White House envoy for Lebanon, Robert “Bud” McFarlane, “got himself panicked by a Lebanese brigade commander that the forces of darkness were sweeping all the forests and unless we did something, they would have seized the presidential palace complex within a matter of hours.”

Crocker said he received a call from David Mack, a former ambassador to the United Arab Emirates who was serving as the director of Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan back at the State Department at the time. Mack told him what the recommendation was and asked for his thoughts.

“I thought it was a catastrophic mistake, and then dictated to him over a secure phone my opposition to it and why – [That it was] essentially dragging us as a participant into the Lebanese civil war,” Crocker recalled. “Like most messages, it was basically ignored.”

McFarlane has been criticized for his decision to order the USS New Jersey to bombard Lebanese opposition forces, which may have led to the 1983 Beirut barracks bombing where 241 U.S. servicemen, 58 French military personnel, and six civilians were killed. After that assignment, McFarlane returned to Washington and became President Reagan’s national security adviser and a central figure in the Iran-Contra affair.

A year or so later after formally objecting, Crocker received an award by AFSA for creative dissent for choosing to voice his opposition to the prevailing foreign policy opinion.

“Again, it had no impact whatsoever, but I would have been perfectly fine if that message was released or the transcription was released and my name was attached to it,” he said. “It would not have bothered me in the slightest. I would have been happy.”

The White House also has tried to defend itself against searing criticism from Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction John Sopko, who accused the administration last week of unprecedented obstruction of his oversight of the chaotic withdrawal from Kabul.

The morning before Sopko testified to the House Oversight Committee, the administration, in a memo to reporters, argued that it had provided “thousands of pages of documents, analyses, spreadsheets, and written responses to questions, as well as hundreds of briefings to bipartisan members and staff and public congressional testimony by senior officials, all while consistently providing updates and information to numerous inspectors general.”

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre repeated the claim in tense exchanges with reporters during her daily briefing. There was no mention, however, of Blinken’s refusal to provide a copy of the dissent cable.

Susan Crabtree is RealClearPolitics’ White House/national political correspondent.

Tyler Durden
Sat, 04/29/2023 – 08:10

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/auFf8Ht Tyler Durden