[Grampa Dave]

FYI.

The Watermelon Jihadists never stop trying to weaken America. It is time to declare war on them!

[Grampa Dave]

This will drive you right up the wall.

[hattend]

BTTT

[Marauder]

I've been thinking about the various radical "causes" and their detrimental effects on the armed forces for quite a while, and I for one wouldn't be opposed to a Constitutional Amendment prohibiting civilian interference with the military. This depends on the resolution of the control issue - probably the POTUS.
But we really need to relieve our armed forces from the ham-fisted grip of these liberal judges and wacko-nazis, whatever their cause du jour.
The military's job is to defend the country, not provide a platform for social experimentation.

[Texas_Jarhead]

How quickly things change. A decade ago I dug a few 'fighting' holes on Pendelton. Although, as far back as the the 80s I remember special environmental considerations having an impact on training.

[Rockyrich]

On one hand, this appears to be insane - and it is. At the same time how much and what kind a training does it take to dig a fox hole?? I venture to say that the military of WWII vintage didn't have any training on fox holes, and I didn't have any back in the 60s. Sooooo.

[Rockyrich]

On one hand, this appears to be insane - and it is. At the same time how much and what kind a training does it take to dig a fox hole?? I venture to say that the military of WWII vintage didn't have any training on fox holes, and I didn't have any back in the 60s. Sooooo.

[Ben Hecks]

Radical Environmentalists Cut Army Down To Size
By Jane Chastain
FrontPageMagazine.com | July 23, 2002

The most important hearing of the year was held on Capitol Hill last week on a critical issue this country faces today. No, you didn't hear about it because there was no press coverage.

The information that was presented was so damaging to the left that a petty squabble occurred over the ground rules. This kept the fate of this hearing in doubt until one minute before the witnesses were to be seated. As a result, the press was never alerted, which may have been the point. It was the Democrats' only avenue to prevent this information from getting out.

The hearing, on July 9, before the Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works was on military readiness. More specifically, it dealt with the impact our environmental laws are having on the military's ability to prepare our soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines for the battlefield. General John Keane, vice chief of staff of the Army, said the problems created by these laws are "formidable."

He used Ft. Bragg, where our Special Forces and paratroopers are trained, as an example of the nonsense that now is bringing the military to its knees. At Ft. Bragg, the Army has been ordered to protect all the trees, in which birds might have or want to build a nest. In effect, every tree – and trees cover the majority of Ft. Bragg's 130,000 acres.

"We have a 250 foot buffer around each tree," Gen. Keane explained. "There can be no bivouacking or occupation for more than two hours at a time, no use of camouflage, no weapons fired other than 7.62 and 50 caliber blank ammunition, no use of generators or riot agents, no use of smoke grenades, no digging – that's tough on an army – and no vehicles closer than 50 feet."

In short, the Army cannot prepare these men for the real world of combat. Can you imagine asking a firefighter to train without smoke and then sending him to fight a major fire? Can you imagine training a police officer without real bullets? That is tantamount to what the military has been ordered to do.

Keane told those assembled how hard it is to face soldiers dealing with the reality of that impact on them. "They are in places that they wouldn't normally be or at a time they normally would not be there, because you can't make noise in order to protect the [nesting] cavities." We are talking about birds and trees here! The soldiers can't make noise because it might offend the birds. Let's get real!

The problems related by Keane are not unique to the Army. Each one of the vice-chiefs of staff had made himself available for this hearing. Each echoed Keane's concerns and told his own horror stories.

Unfortunately, this hearing was not held in the Senate Armed Services Committee where it belonged. Why? The House of Representatives included two provisions in the Defense authorization bill that would give the military a little relief. Before they could be debated properly in the upper chamber, all four of the environmental subcommittee chairmen: Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., Bob Graham, D-Fla., and Harry Reid, D-Nev., wrote to Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin, D-Mich., and asked him not to deal with them. These Democrat senators maintained that the proposals were outside of his jurisdiction and should come under Environment and Public Works.

Then their lackey, chairman Jim Jeffords, I-Vt., simply stalled the hearing on this critical issue until the full Senate passed the Defense authorization bill without these important measures. Jeffords' all-Democrat staff even pulled off those last-minute shenanigans to keep the hearing in doubt until the last minute. When the hearing finally was held, not a single Democrat senator even bothered to show up. Even those aforementioned sub-committee chairmen ducked this hearing, as did our former first lady, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.

This not only was an affront to the vice chiefs of staff, it was an affront to everyone who wears the uniform of the United States military. It was an affront to the parents of those young solders who will die needlessly in the war on terrorism because they will be sent into battle without the kind of training they will need to survive.

I know why those Democrat senators didn't show. They didn't want to admit that they consider trees, tortoises, snails, seagulls – even microscopic shrimp – more important than the lives of the men we are sending into battle to protect us.

To borrow some words from Gen. Keane, "There is an ever increasing tension between the two national goals of protecting the environment and military readiness, and it is out of balance and out of whack."

[Lobster 6]

Political action is the remedy.

Include in public law an exception to any & all environmental laws, regulations, rules, other strictures for: militay reservations,areas possessed, leased, controlled, occupied, captured, bases, ports, forts, structures,lands, waters, oceans, terrirories, airspace, for any purpose authorized by the President of the United States.

Simple & direct. Protection of the People of the United States is more important than critters! (Critters - You know: bats, rats & woodpeckers.)

Republicans! See if Democrats & the Greens are willing to protect & defend the People of the United States against ALL enemies - you know the rest!

Bats, rats & woodpeckers!

[nothingnew]

"Sometimes," says a miffed Lt. Gen. Edward Hanlon of the greens, "they view our military bases as wildlife parks."

Put military bases off limits to anyone who does not pass a stringent background check.

This is government property, and since the greens have made such an effort to deny the American people access to so much land, turn it on them!

I for one have enough of this shit.

FMCDH

[Tiemieshooz]

I want to go to Parris Island.

[First_Salute]

By order of the President.

  

There are so few people who will dare to study authority, when most of the struggle is about authority.

The answer to the question, "Well ... what rights have you lost?" is, "Any time our authority is diminished."

In the present "national security crisis," we are asked, "Well ... why would you object to such security measures if you have nothing to hide?" to which the answer is, "There are many, outstanding, wise security measures which do not, and would not, diminish our authority."

The President is a statist; he is not a democratic-republican; he denies the authority of the people, and of our Constitution.

He has the power to affect the establishment by operations management within the war department powers delegated to him under our Constitution, to affect national security on the homefront without a new department of the federal government.

Yet his solutions are statist.

Here we are, a country stressed-out by the A.C.L.U. and its motto: "separation of church and state," yet not much of a peep from the A.C.L.U. about President Bush's "faith-based initiatives" sermoned from the Executive pulpit.

And no wonder, because what establishment of church and state could more enthrall the extreme leftism of the A.C.L.U., than to be handed such an instrument with which they (and Hillary &Co.) will define what is, and what is not, politically correct faith to be federally supported?

The number of people who are supporting this new Republican- in- name- only- zeitgeist which was launched upon a so-called "new paradigm" that supposedly is some act the world has never seen ... is unfortunately yet another remake of an old story playing to a new audience.

In the countenance of our new government of the moment, we face an all-powerful state under presumedly-benign leadership, versus the American political tradition in the heartland that is the basis of the limited government in our worthy democratic-republic.

I am with the heartland, and I'll always remember you.

[realpatriot71]

I'm all for not screwing up the enviroment and saving as many species as possible, BUT now marines can't dig foxholes?!?! That's just plain crazy talk!