Report: Army at Smallest Since WWII

(Hat tip: KimR) - The Army's active force has shrunk to its lowest level since before World War II, Army Times reported Saturday. According to the military's headcount by the Defense Manpower Data Center, nearly 2,600 soldiers left active duty in March without being replaced, the news outlet reports, adding that during the past year, the size of the active forced has been reduced by 16,548 soldiers. Read more at Newsmax Read More......

Judicial Watch: Documents Reveal US Army Indoctrinated Soldiers on Dangers of ‘White Privilege’

(Hat tip: KimR) - Judicial Watch announced today that it obtained documents from the United States Department of the Army revealing that in April 2015, 400 soldiers in the 67th Signal Battalion at Fort Gordon, Georgia, were subjected to a “white privilege” briefing, including a PowerPoint presentation instructing the attendees: “Our society attaches privilege to being white and male and heterosexual..." Read more at Judicial Watch Read More......

Army is breaking, let down by Washington

Last month, Gen. Ray Odierno, outgoing Army chief of staff, and Gen. Mark Milley, his successor, testified to the difficulties faced by the Army. I’d like to make the same points by telling a story.

Read more at Stars and Stripes
(Hat tip: KimR) Read More......

'Soldier' gets death sentence for Fort Hood attack

The Corvallis Gazette-Times reports that a military jury on Wednesday sentenced Maj. Nidal Hasan to death for the 2009 shooting rampage at Fort Hood, handing the Army psychiatrist the ultimate punishment after a trial in which he seemed to be courting martyrdom by making almost no effort to defend himself. ✧ The rare military death sentence came nearly four years after the attack that stunned even an Army hardened by more than a decade of constant war. Hasan walked into a medical building where soldiers were getting medical checkups, shouted "Allahu akbar" _ Arabic for "God is great!" _ and opened fire with a laser-sighted handgun. Thirteen people were killed. Read more at the GT...

Is it okay to call Hasan a 'terrorist' now?
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In the 10th Year of War, a Harder Army, a More Distant America

POLITICS DAILY, 9/2010 by David Wood, Chief Military Correspondent (Hat tip: John H. Detweiler) - The U.S. Army now begins its 10th continuous year in combat, the first time in its history the United States has excused the vast majority of its citizens from service and engaged in a major, decade-long conflict instead with an Army manned entirely by professional warriors. ∴ This is an Army that, under the pressure of combat, has turned inward, leaving civilian America behind, reduced to the role of a well-wishing but impatient spectator. A decade of fighting has hardened soldiers in ways that civilians can't share. America respects its warriors, but from a distance. Read more at Politics Daily... Read More......

Obama's private army in health care bill?

Judge Andrew Napolitano discusses a two-page portion of the health care bill dealing with a 6,000 person army of regular and reserve doctors. This part of the bill went without debate before the vote. The judge questions the purpose, the constitutionality of such an army, who wrote the bill and who is responsible for this part of it?

(Hat tip: Stella Guenther) Read More......

Miracle of the Army-Navy Game

From Family Security Matters, December 3, 2007, by KT McFarland
Hat tip: Patrick Wills

Every year, something miraculous happens the first Saturday in December - the Army-Navy game. It is one of the most fabled and long-standing rivalries in American athletics. Navy Midshipmen and Army Cadets spend their entire four years of college saying ‘Beat Army’ or ‘Beat Navy’ dozens of times a day. In the weeks leading up to the contest both Academies wage mock war against each other - with pranks, commando raids and high jinx. This year a squad of Army Cadets-turned-Special-Forces sneaked from West Point to Annapolis to kidnap Navy’s mascot, Bill the Goat, then made a hostage video and sent it around the world on YouTube. The day before the game, each Academy sends a game ball hundreds of miles, tucked under the arms of Cadet and Midshipmen marathon runners. On game day the entire Army Corps of Cadets and Navy Brigade of Midshipmen traveled to a neutral city for the battle.

Not only is the Army-Navy game one of the oldest college football competitions in the nation, in many ways it is one of the best. It’s not that the football is great, because it’s usually not. The young men who play for Army or Navy weren’t recruited by the top university teams - they’re too small, or too light. They aren’t semi-professional football stars, living, eating and studying apart from their college classmates. The men who play at West Point or Annapolis major in physics or electrical engineering and spend more time doing homework and marching in drills than at football practice. When they graduate they won’t be drafted by the NFL. It is the last organized football game most of them will ever play. In a few months time, they will be ensigns standing watch on ships in the Persian Gulf, marine lieutenants flying helicopter reconnaissance missions in Afghanistan, and army lieutenants walking the streets of Baghdad.

So why is the Army-Navy game one of the best in college football? Because it is a metaphor for what is best about America. It shows us that we are at our best when we fight ferociously in the game but afterwards, no matter who wins or who loses, we come together as brothers.

The finest moment of the Army-Navy game comes after the whistle blows. Last Saturday [December 1, 2007], Navy won 38-3, in a game that was closer than the final score suggests. At the end, no fans rushed onto the field. Nor did they head for their cars to get ahead of the traffic. They stood at their seats, took off their hats, and put their hands on their hearts. The entire stadium was silent, respectful, alert.

The players don’t do war dances or whoops of victory, either. Both teams walked solemnly across the field and met at the 50-yard line. They shook hands and patted the backs of their opponents. They took off their helmets, tucked them under their arms and walked together to Army’s side and, shoulder to shoulder sang the Army alma mater to the entire 4000 Corps of Cadets.

Both teams then turned and walked to the Navy stands and sang the Navy Blue and Gold anthem to the 4000 Brigade of Midshipmen. If you looked up at the stadium screens you could see that many of the players had tears in their eyes. If you looked at your neighbors in the stands, they did too. Because what everyone in that stadium witnessed was the miracle that is America - that after the fiercest of contests we can rise above the victory or the defeat and come together as one nation. Regardless of our religion, family heritage or political affiliation, we are first and foremost, Americans. As much as our differences matter to us, our shared patrimony matters more.

Within a few weeks Americans will begin our presidential campaign ritual. The contests will be fiercely fought, sometimes honorably, sometimes not. But politics is not for the faint of heart. There will no doubt be plenty of times the ref should throw a flag on the play, but in politics the only referees are the voters.

When this campaign season is over, the ballots cast and counted, and the victor declared we should all remember the sight of the Army and Navy football players standing shoulder to shoulder on their field of battle, paying homage to their opponents in the shared belief that what matters more than our partisanship is our brotherhood.

Wouldn’t it be a miracle if we could follow their example and, after this next election, lay down our rivalries and animosities and suspicions, and realize that we’re in this together - and that what is more important that being a Republican or a Democrat is being an American.

FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor KT McFarland is a former top Pentagon official in the Reagan Administration and a frequent television and radio commentator on national security issues and foreign affairs. Read More......

Terrorists target Army base — in AZ

Washington Times, November 26, 2007 - Sara A. Carter wrote,

Fort Huachuca, the nation's largest intelligence-training center, changed security measures in May after being warned that Islamist terrorists, with the aid of Mexican drug cartels, were planning an attack on the facility.

Fort officials changed security measures after sources warned that possibly 60 Afghan and Iraqi terrorists were to be smuggled into the U.S. through underground tunnels with high-powered weapons to attack the Arizona Army base, according to multiple confidential law enforcement documents obtained by The Washington Times. Continued...

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