Free Republic

The Trump transition team is compiling a list of senior current and former U.S. military officers who were directly involved in the withdrawal from Afghanistan and exploring whether they could be court-martialed for their involvement, according to a U.S. official and a person familiar with the plan. Officials working on the transition are considering creating a commission to investigate the 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan, including gathering information about who was directly involved in the decision-making for the military, how it was carried out and whether the military leaders could be eligible for charges as serious as treason, the two sources...

Oct. 26 falls on a Thursday this year. Ask the significance of the date, and you're likely to draw some puzzled looks — five more days to stock up for Halloween? It's a measure of men like Col. Mitchell Paige and Rear Adm. Willis A. "Ching Chong China" Lee that they wouldn't have had it any other way. What they did 58 years ago, they did precisely so their grandchildren could live in a land of peace and plenty. Whether we've properly safeguarded the freedoms they fought to leave us, may be a discussion best left for another day. Today...

I'm a sailor, but these guys are still good with us.

The USMC has released its final conclusions regarding its investigation into the bizarre loss of an F-35B that crashed in South Carolina on September 17th of last year. The Marines say that the mishap was caused primarily by pilot error, stating that “the pilot incorrectly diagnosed an out-of-controlled flight emergency and ejected from a flyable aircraft, albeit during a heavy rainstorm compounded with aircraft electrical and display malfunctions.” The jet went on to continue flying without a pilot for over 60 miles before slamming into a field. Thankfully, nobody was injured as a result of the incident. You can read...

A former deputy Palm Beach County sheriff who fled to Moscow and became one of the Kremlin’s most prolific propagandists is working directly with Russian military intelligence to pump out deepfakes and circulate misinformation that targets Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign, according to Russian documents obtained by a European intelligence service and reviewed by The Washington Post. The documents show that John Mark Dougan, who also served in the U.S. Marines and has long claimed to be working independently of the Russian government, was provided funding by an officer from the GRU, the country’s military intelligence service. Some of the...

On Oct. 16, Catherine Banks, a Marine Corps veteran, was asked to get off her flight, which was departing out of San Francisco International Airport. Once she exited the plane, the flight attendant explained that Banks needed to change because her shirt was “threatening,” Banks told NBC Bay Area (KNTV). It featured a message about veteran suicide rates in the U.S. “Do not give in to the war within,” the shirt read. “End veteran suicide.” Banks said that after informing the flight attendant of her service, she was still forced to change on the jet bridge and had to turn...

Hershel 'Woody' Williams is 17 years old and lives on a dairy farm in Quiet Dell, West Virginia, with his mother and 11 siblings. War is coming; one, he is sure, that will take away America's freedoms and privileges. Marines wear snappy blue uniforms around town and Woody is impressed. If he's going to war, he's going as a Marine. But, at 17, he needs his mother's signature to enlist. Mom refuses to sign the papers. He turns 18 next October - if he wants to be a Marine, he's going to have to wait. December 7, 1941: Japan attacks...

Bullets whizzed by Cpl. Daniel “Duke” Heller as he rescued wounded Marines who’d been trapped in a North Vietnamese Army ambush in the A Shau Valley, Vietnam, on Feb. 13, 1969. Despite being wounded by shrapnel from an RPG, Heller pushed on. He received a Silver Star Medal for his actions that day, but his fellow Marines campaigned for years to see the award upgraded. Five-and-a-half decades later, that happened. On Wednesday, Heller received the Navy Cross, the second-highest valor award a Marine can receive. The 39th Commandant of the Marine Corps, Gen. Eric Smith, pinned Heller’s Navy Cross to...

An FBI whistleblower has issued a chilling warning to the American people while testifying before U.S. Congress. Veteran FBI staff operations specialist Marcus Allen was called a witness during the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Weaponization of the Federal Government hearing on Wednesday. During a powerful and emotional statement to his fellow Americans, Allen urged “brothers and sisters of all faiths” to “pray” and stock up on food, water, guns, and ammunition. Fighting back tears, he also advised citizens to connect with “three to four friends in your neighborhood and promise to come to each other’s mutual aid.” Allen issued the...

Demonstrating what a hellhole of sin, sacrilege, and satanic cowardice the United Methodist Church has become, a prominent Bishop who has for years denied the divinity of Christ has finally retired on her own terms, according to a recent article, by Juicy Ecumenism, which calls her one of the” key architects of the UMC’s recent liberalization on human sexuality.” Bishop Karen Oliveto, a raging heretic if there ever was one, retired from the denomination’s Western Jurisdiction this week. She was elected Bishop in 2016 despite being “same-sex married,” which is against the denomination’s book of discipline. A year later, the...

The Harris-Biden administration is a boon to Putin. A Trump presidency will destroy all that. Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and former US Marine Paul Whelen, both of whom have been languishing in the Soviet, I mean, Russian prisons for years on trumped-up espionage charges, have been released. It appears that their release is part of a larger, multi-nation prisoner swap that includes the exchange of prisoners from Germany, Great Britain, the US, and Slovenia on the one side and Russia and Belarus on the other. The basis for the suspicion about the multi-national, multi-prisoner release is the sudden...

On the occasion of his 100th birthday, United States Marine Corps and World War 2 veteran Carl Dekle reflected on his long life and the blessings he’s enjoyed in an interview with Tampa’s Fox 13. The Silver Star recipient recalled the Battle of Guadalcanal and his gratitude that the Lord brought him home and says that he would do it again if he had to — and if he were the right age. In full uniform for the interview, Dekle said: “Most important thing in my life was serving my country. I don’t think I could take away from that…It...

He served as a rifleman from 2008 to 2012 and deployed twice. The lance corporal received multiple awards, including the Combat Action Ribbon, National Defense Service Medal, and Global War on Terrorism Service Medal, among others. He was also a two-time recipient of the Navy Unit Commendation and Sea Service Deployment Ribbon.

On Memorial Day 14 years ago I was in Helmand Province, Afghanistan, ready to go home to see my pregnant wife and family in North Carolina after months of endless gun fights with the Taliban and watching my friends die. Eight days earlier I had a brush with death when a Taliban sniper round hit a bank just inches from my face and held the hand of a teenage Marine whose life slipped away after he was shot in the head. I heard the radio call for a Marine killed in action: 'Fallen Angel'. 'Fallen Angel, Fallen Angel', their initials,...

A Marine truck mechanic received a medal typically awarded to more senior service members for saving the Defense Department more than $140 million through work he began as a teenage lance corporal. Cpl. Gage Barbieri, now 21, received the Meritorious Service Medal on Friday from Col. Damon Burrows, commanding officer of 2nd Marine Division’s Headquarters Battalion. Barbieri is only the second Marine corporal to receive the Meritorious Service Medal since at least 2008, Burrows wrote on LinkedIn

A dying Marine veteran was finally handed his high school diploma while receiving hospice care after dropping out to fight in World War Two over eight decades ago. Richard Remp, a 98-year-old marine veteran in hospice care, left school at 17 years of age to serve in World War II, before later continuing his service in Korea and Vietnam. But on Friday he was finally handed the high school diploma he had longed for all these years but never received. Remp told local San Antonio NBC affiliate NEWS4SA: 'On behalf of myself and the Marine Corps, I thank you very...

A Jordanian national who had recently crossed the southern border into the United States was on the U.S. government’s terrorist watch list….. It’s only a matter of time. A better headline, "Biden's Open Border Policies enable attempted terrorist attack on Quantico".https://t.co/NprDD99ugb — William Joseph Hellmann (@w_j_hellmann) May 15, 2024 2 people in ICE custody after attempting to breach Virginia Marine base By: Marine Times, May 15, 2024; https://www.marinecorpstimes.com/news/your-marine-corps/2024/05/14/2-people-in-ice-custody-after-attempting-to-breach-virginia-marine-base/ The Marine Corps prevented two people from breaking onto a Marine installation in Virginia on May 3 and turned them over to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The two people drove up...

New video evidence uncovered by CNN significantly undermines two Pentagon investigations, the latest of which was released last week, into an ISIS-K suicide attack outside Kabul airport, during the American troop withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021. The incident was a gruesome coda to America’s longest war, leaving dead 13 United States military service members and about 170 Afghans who were desperately seeking US help to flee the Taliban takeover of Kabul. For two years, the US military has insisted that the loss of life was caused by a single explosion, and that troops who reported coming under fire and...

Life in the Old Corps - but likely the same as the New Corps too

During the Battle of Iwo Jima, in the face of powerful enemy resistance, Marine Cpl. Hershel "Woody" Williams succeeded in destroying several heavily-defended machine-gun pillboxes, and was awarded the Medal of Honor. But his service to his country, and his gallantry, did not end there. In this "Sunday Morning" profile that originally aired on May 30, 2021, Williams (who died on June 29 at the age of 98) talked with CBS News national security correspondent David Martin about his efforts for uring the Battle of Iwo Jima, in the face of powerful enemy resistance, Marine Cpl. Hershel "Woody" Williams succeeded...