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There’s an old military maxim, which says, “Assumptions are the mother of all —-ups.” That ancient adage, along with commons sense and moral courage has been tossed straight into a Pentagon dumpster. Here are some assumptions that are wafting through the corridors of the Pentagon like a dense fog. “Two bombs a day keeps ISIS away” – Operation Inherent Resolve, the US led air campaign against ISIS has been going for over a year now and has been nothing but a dismal failure and a joke. No matter what the Pentagon says, two bombs a day, doesn’t keep ISIS away....

Separately from the political news this morning, the Sunday shows like This Week and CNN are discussing this video from a Kurdish news site which features “helmet-cam” footage of the U.S.-Kurdish joint rescue mission that liberated 70 prisoners from an ISIS prison in northern Iraq. The video shows Kurdish Peshmerga special forces and supported by elite U.S. Delta Force soldiers, searching prisoners; then after a moment, in a darker passage, gunfire and prisoners running around a dark corner, waved along by armed troops. After a few moments, the offscreen gunfire increases in frequency and volume and the prisoners run...

Master Sergeant Joshua Wheeler of Roland, Oklahoma, a highly-decorated soldier and father of four, rushed into action when he heard sounds of gunfire coming from a prison in Iraq where dozens of ISIS-held hostage were being held on Thursday. Those actions, Defense Secretary Ash Carter told reporters on Friday, weren't part of the original rescue mission plan, but were critical to its success. "I am immensely proud of this young man," Carter said adding that his thoughts and prayers go out to Wheeler's family. Earlier Friday, Defense officials confirmed to NBC News Wheeler, 39, as the American Delta Force commando...

The first American soldier to be killed fighting on the ground against ISIS was a twenty-year veteran Special Forces sergeant, it was announced today. Master Sergeant Joshua Wheeler, 39, was killed during a raid in northern Iraq this week to rescue 69 Iraqis who were about to be executed by ISIS. MSgt Wheeler is believed to have been a member of the Army's top secret Delta Force, and his unit was supporting Kurdish fighters in the raid on the ISIS stronghold on Hawija. Although the US commandos were not initially planning to directly take part in the raid, when the...

Updated March 27 to include responses from the FBI and the State Department. Emails disclosed by a hacker show a close family friend was funneling intelligence about the crisis in Libya directly to the Secretary of State’s private account starting before the Benghazi attack. Starting weeks before Islamic militants attacked the U.S. diplomatic outpost in Benghazi, Libya, longtime Clinton family confidante Sidney Blumenthal supplied intelligence to then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gathered by a secret network that included a former CIA clandestine service officer, according to hacked emails from Blumenthal’s account. The emails, which were posted on the internet...

And you thought Sidney Blumenthal was shady. Few people have heard of Cody Shearer, the unsanctioned diplomat, private eye, and Clinton flunky whose name surfaced in connection with the so-called intelligence reports Sidney Blumenthal was channeling to Hillary Clinton during her time at the State Department. But this shadowy fixture of the Clinton machine was everywhere in the 1990s — including war-torn Bosnia, where he became the subject of a State Department investigation after he represented himself as an agent of the U.S. government and took cash from a genocidal warlord. Now evidence suggests Shearer, working with his partner Blumenthal,...

Jeff Gerth and Sam Biddle explore an important sidebar both to the affair of the Hillary Clinton homebrew email server and to the Benghazi scandal: “Private emails reveal ex-Clinton aide’s secret spy network.” Long story short: enter Sid Blumenthal, one of the most unsavory characters of the Clinton era. Enter Sid Blumenthal along with Tyler Drumheller and Cody Shearer, that is. Mark Hemingway reviews the triumvirate in “Meet the men behind Hillary Clinton’s private ‘spy network’” Ed Morrissey finds NBC’s Chuck Todd commenting regarding Blumenthal that “nothing regarding Blumenthal surprises me,” but Blumenthal enters the story from left field. Gerth...

U.S. Special Operations Forces had to fight “hand to hand” in Friday night’s raid that killed the Islamic State terrorist group senior commander Abu Sayyaf, several defense officials told The Daily Beast Saturday. Troops from the U.S. Army Delta Force landed near a multi-story building with Ospreys and Blackhawks and were met with resistance when they entered, including “hand to hand” combat, one official told The Daily Beast. There was some resistance from armed guards and from the terrorist commander himself, but the troops were well prepared to handle that, another official said.

A one-time associate of Osama Bin Laden died in New York on Friday while awaiting trial for allegedly plotting the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Abu Anas al-Libi, 50, was captured in Libya by U.S. commandos in Oct. 2013 and brought to New York where he was due to stand trial. He had been wanted for more than a decade and there was a $5 million reward for his arrest. Al-Libi had pleaded not guilty. The al Qaeda terror suspect has been in poor health and suffered liver disease as a result of hepatitis C, according...

A senior al-Qaeda leader has been captured near the Libyan city of Tripoli in an operation apparently unrelated to the raid in Somalia, NBC News reports. Anas al Libi, whose real name is Nazih Abdul-Hamed Nabih al-Ruqai'I, has been wanted by the US for more than a decade and has a $5 million reward on his head.

Dr. John “Rob” Marsh was already more than 12 hours into his workday last Tuesday when he rolled up to a tiny darkened house in Vesuvius, an out-of-the-way town in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. “His willingness to come out here when we need him — well, it’s the kind of attitude you don’t find that much anymore,” she said. “We’re just fortunate. Tirelessness and the confidence to operate alone in a crisis — key requirements for rural physicians — were drilled into him in his previous job as the doctor for the Army’s elite Delta Force antiterrorism unit. Read the...

In a stunning display of callousness, the Defense Department has announced that thousands of soldiers — many serving as commanding officers in Afghanistan — will be notified in the coming weeks that their service to the country is no longer needed. Last week, more than 1,100 Army captains — the men and women who know best how to fight this enemy because they have experienced multiple deployments — were told they’ll be retired from the Army. The overall news is not unexpected. The Army has ended its major operations in Iraq and is winding down in Afghanistan. Budget cuts are...

America’s in-demand global force against terrorists is showing signs of stress and appears to be gliding toward a decline in readiness, says a Pentagon budget overview on special operations forces. With the end of U.S. military operations in the Iraq War, the thought was that fewer deployments would give some relief to special operations forces after a dozen years of overseas fighting. But the 2015 budget overview says demand for special operations forces is up, not down. It talks of “significant stress on the force” and notes that the demand for Delta Force troops, Green Berets, Navy SEALs and other...

A video of the U.S. special operations mission to capture al-Qaeda terrorism suspect Nazih Abdul-Hamed al-Ruqai (aka Anas al-Libi). The mission was carried out by the CIA, the FBI, and the U.S. Army’s elite Delta Force.

Masked from public view, two of the U.S. military’s elite special operations commandos have been awarded medals for bravery for a mission that further undercuts the Obama administration’s original story about the Benghazi tragedy. For months, administration officials have claimed no special operations forces were dispatched from outside Libya to Benghazi during the Sept. 11, 2012, al Qaeda terrorist attacks on the U.S. diplomatic mission and CIA annex because none was within range. The Pentagon, under intense public criticism for not coming to the aid of besieged Americans, published an official timeline in November that carefully danced around the issue....

WASHINGTON — The Libyan government in recent weeks tacitly approved two American commando operations in its country, according to senior American officials, one to capture a senior militant from Al Qaeda and another to seize a militia leader suspected of carrying out the Sept. 11, 2012, attacks on the United States diplomatic mission in Benghazi. The Qaeda leader, Nazih Abdul-Hamed al-Ruqai, was captured by American commandos in Tripoli on Saturday in a raid that the United States had hoped to keep secret, but that leaked out to the news media. The operation has been widely denounced by Libyan officials, who...

The reality television show cast member who died in a helicopter crash in Southern California on Sunday was an Army Special Forces veteran who had served four tours of duty in Iraq, family members said Monday. The cast member, Michael Donatelli, 45, “was going to show off a lot of his military skills” on the show, which was in production for the Discovery Channel, said one of his nieces, Venessa Vega.

Many speak; but not nearly enough listening. More must 'wake up' and damn the bonds of political correctness - restore 'critical mind' - so that America can recover it's original-intent purpose. Lt.Gen. Jerry Boykin; 'Special Forces'; Green Beret. . .taught at Hampden-Sydney; now Exec.Vice President/Family Rersearch Council - 'owns' his credentials; and so, has both credibility and authority. A video link to share. Lt.Gen.Boykin: marxist insurgency link Further hand/in/hand verification: http://www.wnd.com/2013/02/why

Small teams of special operations forces arrived at American embassies throughout North Africa in the months before militants launched the fiery attack that killed the U.S. ambassador in Libya. The soldiers' mission: Set up a network that could quickly strike a terrorist target or rescue a hostage. But the teams had yet to do much counterterrorism work in Libya, though the White House signed off a year ago on the plan to build the new military task force in the region and the advance teams had been there for six months, according to three U.S. counterterror officials and a former...

Retired Lt. Gen. William “Jerry” Boykin, whose fiery exhortations to protect America from encroaching Shariah law and other dangers have highlight headlines in recent months, has been named executive vice president of Family Research Council. According to today’s announcement, he will be tasked with the responsibility of overseeing day-to-day operations including policy, church ministries, finance, development, communications, human resources, facilities, information technology, constituent communications and customer service. An original member of the U.S. Army’s Delta Force, he ultimately commanded the elite team in combat operations, and later led the Army’s Green Berets as well as the Special Warfare Center and...