Free Republic

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, a proponent of the coronavirus vaccine, said he will work to counter misinformation about the shots by mounting an ad blitz in his home state of Kentucky. ​”There is bad advice out there, you know. Apparently you see that all over the place: people practicing medicine without a license, giving bad advice. And that bad advice should be ignored,” McConnell told Reuters in an interview published Wednesday. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky on Tuesday issued new guidelines that call for even fully vaccinated people to wear masks indoors in areas where...

14 December 2020 Washington, D.C. Yon-Genre, unedited mind dump: This is intended for journalists -- the few still on the field -- and peaceful people. I spent all day Saturday, 12 December 2020, with various protest groups in Washington, D.C. I believed the probability for violence was 90 percent. And it happened. Numerous stabbings, beatings, large fireworks, pepper spray, arrests, etc. Long time readers know that I spent years in serious wars, and more years in serious conflicts short of war but that were often as violent as war. And yet more time in lower-level conflict. This stuff is second...

Air Force researchers are designing an autonomous aircraft that can take down a manned plane in air-to-air combat, with the goal of pitting the two against each other in July 2021. Lt. Gen. Jack Shanahan, head of the Pentagon’s Joint Artificial Intelligence Center, said the Air Force Research Laboratory team is pushing the boundaries of what the military can build, compared to the aircraft that already fill the service’s squadrons. “[Team leader Steve Rogers] is probably going to have a hard time getting to that flight next year … when the machine beats the human,” Shanahan said during a June...

(CNSNews.com) – In a new report, the Center for Military Readiness says that 84% of women fail the New Army Combat Fitness Test and that “all military officials should drop the ‘gender diversity’ agenda and put mission readiness and ‘combat lethality’ first.” “It makes no sense for recruiters to devote more time and money recruiting ‘gender diverse’ trainees who are more likely to be injured, less likely to want infantry assignments, and less likely to remain through basic training or physically-demanding combat arms assignments for twenty years or more,” states the CMR report . On the other side of the...

An advanced U.S. Navy combat ship struck a berthed freighter in Montreal

Combat isn’t black and white -- I know, I’ve lived it. When it was announced over the weekend by the New York Times that President Trump is preparing to pardon multiple veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan who have been wrongfully convicted or charged with war crimes, a firestorm of opinions and accusations began to fly. Salon described President Trump’s decision to pardon veterans as taking “imperial overreach to a new level;” The Washington Post’s Editorial Board said “such pardons would send a message of disrespect for the laws of war;” and The New Yorker published an interview with Yale Philosophy Professor Scott Shapiro who argued that pardoning military veterans...

I was listening to the Larry O'Connor Show this afternoon on WMAL and while he was discussing the latest mass shooter atrocity at the synagogue in Poway, a caller named Todd called in and described being in shock that VA facilities had "no security checks" and after all, "veterans have PTSD" and "could bring a weapon in at any time".I tried to call in to the show to talk to Larry but he very shortly segued into Redskins football and the bored-sounding lady screener let me know that I wouldn't be on.First of all, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is the...

While this subject has largely fallen into the “settled” category for the most part, it’s still being brought up for discussion among the public. We’re once again talking about women in combat. Back during the Obama administration, Ash Carter was directed to open all combat roles to women. At the time, we were assured that female recruits would have to meet the same physical standards as their male counterparts. Slowly but sure, however, that principle was eroded.As Heather Mac Donald writes in the Wall Street Journal (subscription required), the standards did indeed change. But even with those relaxed standards,...

Air Force leaders, like the leaders of the other military branches, are moving to quickly adapt the Trump administration’s National Security Strategy, which calls for a military-wide reorientation away from low-intensity conflicts like those in Iraq and Afghanistan to refocus on fighting major wars against great power near-peer competitors. It’s important to note that other great powers such as Russia and China, along with regional powers like North Korea and Iran, have been studying the U.S. way of war for decades, and as such, they have developed tactics and strategies designed to exploit what they see as operational weaknesses should...

Meet the Army of 2018, where men are women, women are men, Mommies are Rangers and breast milk is served on tap in the First Sergeant’s lactation station. In order for the complete and final unraveling of the Army’s fighting spirit and combat power to occur, the concept of gender neutrality has to be served up on a platter to the young, gullible Millennial masses and shoved down the throats of the last breed of hardass old school holdouts who are 60 days and wake up away from escaping from an organization they have seen go from the Dirty Dozen...

Morrow was born in the Bronx, (New York) to a middle class Jewish family, the son of Jean (née Kress) and Harry Morrow, an electric engineer. When he was 17, Morrow dropped out of high school and joined the U.S. Navy. While on active duty he finished his high school requirements and upon his discharge he enrolled under the GI Bill at Florida Southern College, 1948 and 1949, where he first studied pre-law and switched to drama/theatre. Vic then moved to Mexico City and attended college there majoring in drama. He was also a student of the famous "Actors Workshop"...

Some of you asked me to write some more about my experiences all those years ago. This one is about a close call and my memories of it.

General James “Mad Dog” Mattis, was apparently the second coming of Patton, a real world walking, talking version of Frederick the Great’s maxim, “L’Audace, L’Audace, Toujours L’Audace”, a well-read grunt who spit napalm and ingested cut glass, a Marine who made Dan Daly and Chesty Puller look like campus snowflakes. During more than 30 years on active duty as a gyrene, the Mad Dog said many classic statements, but these were some of his favorites: ‘It’s quite fun to shoot them, you know. It’s a hell of a hoot. It’s fun to shoot some people.’ In 2005, he offered this...

SAS soldier 'chopped off ISIS thug's head with SHOVEL and used his gun to kill more militants' The British sergeant was said to have run out of ammunition during a bloody battle in Afghanistan By Chris kitching Updated 20:40, 7 JAN 2018 An elite SAS soldier cut off an ISIS fighter's head with a spade after he ran out of ammunition during a bloody six-hour battle, it was claimed. After killing the jihadist, the British sergeant used the enemy's gun to kill more militants. The brutal battle is said to have occurred six weeks ago in war-torn Afghanistan. The British...

Click on YouTube link. These guys are getting prepared and ready for civil war. We can't just sit back and take it for granted that we can defeat them.

In today’s wars, American troops face not one enemy, but three: jihadists, infiltrators, and lawyers. Today, our soldiers and Marines are held not just to the laws of warfare, but to unprecedented standards of criminal law, even though they are operating in a combat environment,” said John Maher, a former Army attorney and current reserve lieutenant colonel who specializes in the defense of military accused. Incidents that in the past would have been viewed as collateral damage in the ‘fog of war’ are now being prosecuted as war crimes. Texas defense attorney Colby Vokey, a retired Marine lieutenant colonel, considers...

Last Saturday, the 13th of May, I posted my article about the day I was wounded in Vietnam. hereBecause I had such wonderful responses and because a flood of memories have come back, I decide to write the next part of the story, my time in the hospitals after that pivotal day all those years ago.As I described before, I had been shot on May 13th, 1967 and underwent surgery that evening in Charlie Med, Danang Vietnam. That following morning I woke up in a Spica cast, a plaster sheath that enclosed my whole body from the top of my...

A new TV ad from the U.S. Marine Corps focuses on a woman in combat, the first commercial of its kind for the military branch. The woman starring in the new spot, Marine Capt. Erin Demchko, has served in Afghanistan and was a logistics officer on a Female Engagement Team, according to the Marine Corps website. “FETs build trust with local civilians to gather information and improve relations with the community,” says the website. “Capt. Demchko worked side by side with her fellow Marines to complete missions in the region.” The ad follows a young girl who stands up...

On May 13th, 1967, I was shot through my upper right thigh, shattering my femur and almost severing my leg. I celebrate this day every year because it was the day I almost died but through God’s grace, I have lived this half century more. I was a twenty-one year old Lance Corporal (E-3) in the Marines serving as an Artillery Scout (an enlisted Forward Observer) with Golf Company 2nd Battalion, 1st Marines (2/1) about 16 kilometers Southwest of Danang, Vietnam. Our company was on a local sweep a little north of Hill 55, following the edge of the Song...

ELVERUM, Norway — An explosion just a few feet away rocks the unmarked station wagon as it travels along a dirt road in the Norwegian woodland. Immediately, two soldiers jump from their front seats and run for cover behind the carcass of an old, rusty tank. Firing their weapons at targets along the snowcovered hillside, they call for support from the rest of their unit. This firefight is just a drill, but the soldiers taking part are battling to break down one of the final barriers to women serving in the armed forces. They are training to become part of...