Free Republic

Rep. Chaffetz: ..."in my meeting with Gen. Ham, I asked very specifically, "did we have resources in the area?" the asnswer is "Yes", "Did we have proximity?", the answer is "Yes". And asked why we didn't send in some of those assets, the General said he was not requested to do so." -excerpt- "Was he directed by the President or the Sec'ty of Defence, he said "No""

If Obama ordered the military to “secure our personnel,” where is the order?Ambassador to Libya was killed in our own consulate in Benghazi on the night of September 11. For the next six weeks, President Obama repeated the same talking point: The morning after the attack, he ordered increased security in our embassies in the region.Suddenly, on the campaign trail in Denver on October 26, he changed his story. “The minute I found out what was happening . . . I gave the directive,” he said, “to make sure we are securing our personnel and doing whatever we need to...

A U.S. ambassador is missing and his diplomatic team is desperately fighting off terrorist attacks. Our commander-in-chief and his national-security team in Washington are listening to the phone calls from the Americans under attack and watching real-time video from a drone circling overhead. Yet the U.S. military sends no aid. Why? On September 11, at about 10 p.m. Libyan time (4 p.m. in Washington), Ambassador Chris Stevens and a small staff were inside our consulate in Benghazi when terrorists attacked. The consulate staff immediately contacted Washington and our embassy in Tripoli. The White House, the Pentagon, the State Department, and...

Ex-Reagan official: 'If you think your partner may kill you, there's something wrong' Scores of U.S. troops have been killed by supposed allies within the Afghan military and police forces. These green-on-blue murders prompted the Pentagon to suspend joint patrols. Retired U.S. Marine Bing West, an author and former assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs in the Reagan administration, has been embedded with U.S. troops in Afghanistan on many occasions and just returned from going on a series of patrols. He told WND’s Greg Corombos there really isn’t more that can be done to screen the Afghans going...

THE WRONG WAR Grit, Strategy, and the Way Out of Afghanistan By Bing West Random House. 307 pp. $28 In a new book about the war in Afghanistan, distinguished military affairs writer Bing West argues that hazy objectives, bad political assumptions and a long strategic muddle have burned away whatever structure of success American grunts have built on the battlefield. In this telling, tactical excellence and the considerable courage of frontline troops are forever being rendered nugatory by failed leadership. West spreads the blame widely, but finds a failure of political culture at the heart of the problem. Endlessly engaged...

Placing hundreds of thousands of classified military and diplomatic cables on the Internet constitutes a massive betrayal of America. A nation must safeguard its military and diplomatic secrets if it is to be trusted in the international system. Whoever provided the material to WikiLeaks should be prosecuted under the death sentence, regardless of his or her alleged motivations or mental worries. Traitors always feel aggrieved. Al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups read the Internet avidly, so it is likely that, by now, some individuals who cooperated with America have fled for their lives, or been murdered. (Capital punishment is a deterrent...

April 06, 2009, 0:30 p.m. Distinguished DisserviceIn honoring Murtha, the Navy insults its own. By Bing West In bestowing the navy’s highest civilian medal, the Distinguished Public Service Award, upon Rep. John P. Murtha (D., Pa.) last month, the secretary of the Navy acted as a supplicant — an accountant happy to be given funds and disinclined to question the source. The secretary (Donald C. Winter, a Bush administration holdover who has since left the job) demonstrated that he did not understand his official role as a leader when the country is at war. Murtha smeared the reputation of...

THE persistence of the insurgency in Iraq has divided America in a way not seen since Vietnam. Now the blame game among the principals has begun. The former presidential envoy to Iraq, L. Paul Bremer III, has written in his new memoir that he informed President Bush that the military did not have "a strategy to win." Quite. The lesson the Pentagon should learn from Iraq is to avoid another L. Paul Bremer. This is less a reflection on Mr. Bremer, who accurately described himself as "the American viceroy" in Iraq and "the president's man," than on the position he...

Here at Free Republic there were some pretty heated debates about Fallujah. Some were convinced Bush had started to "pull an LBJ," interfering with the soldiers on the ground; others argued that the Marines (who took over for the 82nd Airborne in March 2004) knew what they were doing in hesitating before going in, guns a-blazing. It turns out that at one time or another, almost all Freepers were right. Former Marine Bing West, who co-authored the excellent story of the Marine Expeditionary Force in Operation Iraqi Freedom in his book The March Up provides something of a sequel in...

Harrison Ford signs for Iraq war film Staff and agencies Thursday December 16, 2004 Harrison Ford: Commissioned. Photo: PA Harrison Ford is to star in what will be Hollywood's first feature about the current Iraq war. Producers Michael Shamberg and Stacey Sher have bought the option for No True Glory: The Battle for Fallujah, a non-fiction written by Slate reporter Bing West. The book is due to be published in May and tells the story of an assault on Iraqi insurgents in Falluja, from the perspective of US marines. Variety reports that Ford is already attached to play General Jim...