Free Republic

When Capt. Derek Herrera was called to stand in the place of honor Friday at his retirement ceremony, he pressed buttons on what appeared to be a wristwatch as a fellow Marine came to his aid. After another push of a button and three short beeps, Herrera rose, legs shaking, and walked deliberately toward his commander. With each step, the exoskeleton he wore emitted a robotic whirring noise, as though it were Iron Man striding through the cordoned off parking lot in digital camouflage. Herrera was paralyzed from the chest down in June 2012, when he was shot in...

Critics said the M-14 was what happened when the U.S. government took many years and spent millions of dollars designing a rifle that was really just a glorified M-1 Garand from World War II. The M-14 was the U.S. military’s last battle rifle. It appeared in 1959—the contemporary of the Pentagon’s first jet fighters and ICBMs. With its heavy steel parts and walnut stock, the M-14 looked positively archaic. It was hardly a Space Age weapon. And it only endured as America’s battle rifle until 1970, when the M-16 completely superseded it—the shortest service record of any U.S. military rifle...

SAN DIEGO - The attorney for a Marine under arrest on charges of battery on a police officer and resisting arrest told Team 10 the video recorded by the San Diego Police Department's own body cameras proves the officers were the real abusers. "What you're seeing here appears to be an assault and battery under color of authority," said attorney Paul Neuharth, who shared the video with Team 10. Neuharth is defending one of the Marines against the criminal charges. The incident happened Sept. 21 in the Gaslamp Quarter. According to Neuharth, the Marines were celebrating the return of one...

The U.S. Marine Corps will phase out the Boeing AV-8B Harrier II jump jet by 2025 — about five years earlier than planned — and will instead extend the life of its fleet of aging Boeing F/A-18 Hornet strike fighters, according to the service’s recently released 2015 aviation plan. In previous years, the service had said it would replace its increasingly older fleet of original model Boeing F/A-18A – D Hornet strike fighters before retiring the Harriers before replacing both fighters with the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lighting II Joint Strike Fighter (JSF). Now, the Harrier will be retired in 2025...

I'm just wondering how long it will be before they are forced to take it down.

U.S. Marine veteran Andrew Tahmooressi has been released from a Mexican jail, where he had languished for months on weapons charges after crossing the border with three guns in his car earlier this year. Tahmooressi has long maintained his innocence, saying that he made a wrong turn at the Mexican border and was unable to return to the U.S. upon realizing his mistake. His release became a cause célèbre for conservatives nationwide. The San Diego Union-Tribune notes that Tahmooressi's legal strategy shifted in recent weeks: "He initially pressed for dismissal of the case on the grounds that his client’s rights...

(CNSNews.com) -- As U.S. Marines withdraw from Operation Enduring Freedom (the Afghanistan war), CNSNews.com's database on casualties shows that 418 Marines gave their lives in the conflict and that 92% of those casualties, 385 deaths, occurred since President Barack Obama took office in 2009. “U.S. Marines and service members from the United Kingdom left Regional Command Southwest in Afghanistan’s Helmand province today, turning their facilities over to the Afghan security forces,” reported the Department of Defense on Oct. 27. “We lift off confident in the Afghans’ ability to secure the region,” said Army Lieutenant General Joseph Anderson, commander of the...

Just weeks after three women passed a rigorous day-long test qualifying them to potentially lead US Marine infantrymen for the first time in history, news came that all three women have been asked to leave the course. They were physically disqualified from the training last week for falling behind in hikes while carrying loads of upwards of 100 pounds, says Maj. George Flynn, director of the Infantry Officers Course (IOC) at Quantico, Va.

The 31st Beirut Memorial Observance Ceremony will be held at the Beirut Memorial in the Lejeune Memorial Gardens aboard Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune, N.C. Thursday, October 23, at 10:30 a.m. The special ceremony will honor the fallen service members and survivors who served in Lebanon from 1958 to 1984 and in Grenada. Major General Richard L. Simcock, the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade commanding general, is scheduled to deliver the Beirut memorial address. Scheduled from Oct 23 2014 10:30 AM EDT to Oct 23 2014 12:00 PM EDT

It's been a rough campaign for Rep. Bruce Braley (D), who is running for the U.S. Senate in Iowa. It got a bit worse Friday when first lady Michelle Obama campaigned for him. First, she called him "Bruce Bailey." [seven times] (Bill Clinton also recently made the same mistake.) Then she said he was a Marine Corps veteran. (He's not.)The Des Moines Register posted video of the event:... Somebody quickly pounced the Braley/Bailey flub. The Web site votebrucebailey.com redirects to the campaign Web site of Republican nominee Joni Ernst.

The Pentagon is deploying 100 troops from a special Marine response force to West Africa to help fight the Ebola outbreak. "These personnel will arrive in Senegal tonight and in Liberia tomorrow," said Pentagon press secretary Rear Adm. John Kirby at a briefing on Wednesday. The 100 troops — mostly Marines, along with some Navy corpsmen — are part of a force of up to 3,600 U.S. troops that could deploy to West Africa to help efforts to stem the spread of the deadly Ebola virus. The outbreak has so far claimed more than 3,000 lives and could infect 1.4...

Veteran Neglect: A Navy and Marine Corps veteran asks a House panel why an administration that says it leaves no one behind has let a soldier with post-traumatic stress disorder sit in a Mexican jail for six months. From the famous "latte salute" to the Marine holding the presidential umbrella, President Obama's respect for our men in uniform has been open to question. Unless, of course, they desert their post in Afghanistan to try to join the Taliban, like Bowe Bergdahl. Then you have the parents to the White House and trade the Taliban general staff to obtain their release....

Should he have switched hands? Dropped the cup? Not drank the coffee? Declared war on coffee growers? Any way, the right woulda whacked him.Since his inauguration, Republicans have criticized President Obama for everything. For launching military strikes. For not launching military strikes. For taking vacations. For being too uptight. For fist-bumping. For being too detached. You name it. Progressives and those who simply like fair-minded political debate have alleged that the actual facts of President Obama’s actions are irrelevant, that Republicans who were determined to oppose everything the president did from Day One would criticize his every move no matter...

As President Obama continues to openly state U.S. ground troops on Iraq to combat terror army ISIS are not an option, a number of top military commanders have openly criticized or questioned his strategy, both in the press and in congressional testimony. Now we can add former head of the Marine Corps, General James Conway, to a long and growing list. Speaking at the Maverick PAC Conference in Washington D.C. last week, Conway didn't hold back or mince words about how he views current strategy against ISIS. The Daily Caller has the story: “I don’t think the president’s plan has a snowball’s...

While reading the February issue of the Marine Corps Gazette, I skimmed past the “Be Bold” advertisement calling for readers to submit articles that challenge a Marine Corps policy or way of doing business. Immediately a current “hot topic” came to mind, but as usual I quickly discarded it because I have purposely avoided publicly disagreeing with the passionate opinions of many of my female peers and friends. After weeks of contemplation and debate, I am “being bold” and coming clean: I am a female Marine officer and I do not believe women should serve in the infantry.

What to make of the peculiar situation unfolding just across the border in Tijuana, where U.S. Marine Sgt. Andrew Tahmooressi languishes in solitary confinement for the crime of mistakenly crossing the border with his personal weapons in his truck on March 31? ADVERTISEMENT Nothing to inspire confidence, for certain. In fact, Tahmooressi’s ordeal might just confirm many of our worst fears about the Obama administration. [Big SNIP] That he refuses to get involved despite so obvious a brief for doing so—not to mention a legal duty—isn’t just a reflection of his incompetence. It looks more sinister than that. Tahmooressi is...

CAMP PENDLETON, Calif. — A Marine sentenced to 11 years in prison for the 2006 killing of an unarmed Iraqi in Hamdaniyah will be retried later this month after his conviction was thrown out because a confession was obtained after he had been improperly denied a lawyer. But the civilian lawyer of the Marine, Sgt. Lawrence G. Hutchins III, argued in a hearing Thursday that he should first get a new Article 32 hearing because the confession was the centerpiece of the government’s case against him. Hutchins was convicted of unpremeditated murder in 2007 for the death of the unarmed...

The challenge for the Marines, and for the Army, is how to open up ground combat jobs to women in January 2016, without lowering standards. And here's where things stand in the Marines. Eighty-five female Marines already made it through an infantry training course last fall at Camp Lejeune, N.C., which included drills such as attacking a mock enemy force, hidden in a pine forest. That course lasted eight weeks, and the men and women all completed the same training. Now the Marines have a more ambitious plan that will take a new group of volunteers from the deserts to...

Border Justice: While armed Mexican police and military have crossed the border hundreds of times in recent years, sometimes firing at U.S. agents, a Marine with PTSD spends his Fourth of July in a Mexican jail. Lately it seems that Sgt. Andrew Tahmooressi, a Marine who has done two tours in Afghanistan, is the only one President Obama doesn't want crossing into the United States from Mexico. We tolerate armed incursions by Mexican authorities and a flood of unaccompanied minors and other illegal aliens but are quite content to let a Marine with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder who made a...

Defense: Seeing his commander in chief turn a Muslim convert deserter into a national hero, another Muslim soldier — a double deserter — has finally turned himself in. He deserves no leniency. Following in the footsteps of Army deserter Bowe Bergdahl, Marine deserter Wassef Ali Hassoun has resurfaced in Virginia after years of faking his own kidnapping in Iraq. Like Bergdahl, Hassoun appears to have collaborated with the enemy. An Arabic translator, he refused to translate questions about Islam and showed jihadist clerics undue respect during interrogations. Later he abandoned his guard post at his base in Fallujah during the...