Free Republic

Another retired general has joined the criticism of President Donald Trump. Martin Dempsey, the former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, criticized Trump's threat to use military force to suppress the protests around the nation as 'dangerous' and 'very troubling.' 'The idea that the president would take charge of the situation using the military was troubling to me,' Dempsey told NPR.

Of all the lies that Edward Snowden has told since his massive theft of secrets from the National Security Agency and his journey to Russia via Hong Kong in 2013, none is more provocative than the claim that he never intended to engage in espionage, and was only a “whistleblower” seeking to expose the overreach of NSA’s information gathering. With the clock ticking on Mr. Snowden’s chance of a pardon, now is a good time to review what we have learned about his real mission.

Like many officers in the retired community, I am puzzled as to why the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and other senior service leaders are so supine in the face of those Obama administration’s policies that are clearly inimical to maintaining a strong national defense. The most blatant recent example is the policy to assign women to the combat arms. Whatever the prevailing political view may be, the Chairman, Chief of Staff of the Army, and Commandant of the Marine Corps know the policy is deeply flawed. Beyond compromising unit cohesion, morale, and combat effectiveness, the policy contains...

Will the Joint Chiefs ever make a stand against the Obama Administration? Will the Joint Chiefs ever stand up against the insane social engineering policies which are eviscerating the military like a late night Ginsu chef? Last September, General Martin Dempsey retired as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and escaped in a rowboat down the Potomac as the Pentagon began to sink into the cold depths of the wide, grey river. Dempsey’s reign of cowardice and political correctness was a genuine disaster for the US military. Under Dempsey and his sidekick, Army Chief of Staff, General Ray Odierno,...

Deceit: Newly declassified transcripts show top defense officials who briefed Obama on the day of the Benghazi attack described it as a terrorist attack and told the president so, yet he pushed a false narrative about a video. Just as the new book by former Defense Secretary Bob Gates confirmed what many believed, that President Obama was a politically motivated commander-in-chief who had no faith in an Afghan surge he put 30,000 Americans in harm's way to execute, transcripts of congressional testimony by military leaders confirm that President Obama knew Benghazi was a terrorist attack before he went to bed...

US Defense Watch has obtained new information concerning special training for female soldiers in preparation for attendance to the US Army’s Ranger School. In the Fall of 2014, a group of female soldiers were given three months of training to specifically prepare them for Ranger School. The female soldiers were pulled away from their regular duties in the Army to eat, breathe and sleep Ranger School for ninety days. One of the female soldiers who attended the training, was First Lieutenant Shaye Haver, who, along with Captain Kristen Griest, became the first two women to ever graduate from Ranger School,...

It's come to this: The Obama administration - and in particular the CIA - knowingly armed Islamic State terrorists in Syria. Okay, take it with a grain of salt. It came from Seymour Hersh. Barack Obama’s repeated insistence that Bashar al-Assad must leave office – and that there are ‘moderate’ rebel groups in Syria capable of defeating him – has in recent years provoked quiet dissent, and even overt opposition, among some of the most senior officers on the Pentagon’s Joint Staff. Their criticism has focused on what they see as the administration’s fixation on Assad’s primary ally, Vladimir...

As the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi was unfolding, a high-ranking Pentagon official urgently messaged Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s top deputies to offer military help, according to an email obtained by Judicial Watch. The revelation appears to contradict testimony Defense Secretary Leon Panetta gave lawmakers in 2013, when he said there was no time to get forces to the scene in Libya, where four Americans were killed, including U.S. Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens. “I just tried you on the phone but you were all in with S [apparent reference to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton],” reads...

Across the world, the War with ISIS is exploding; in Paris, Brussels, in the Middle East and at the US/Mexican border. ISIS continues to attack, attack, attack, following George Patton’s motto of “l’audace, l’audace, toujours l’audace (audacity, audacity, always audacity). While the world seems to be continually shocked by one ISIS atrocity after another, in the White House, one thing is crystal clear, President Obama has chosen to fight rising seas and disappearing glaciers before taking the fight to the marauding maniacal murderers of ISIS. While the President has been pelted for two weeks for having no strategy to fight...

BERLIN—As his convoy sliced lights flashing through the busy streets of Berlin on a recent morning, Gen. Martin Dempsey could see a good part of his own career. He could see through the tinted windows of his limousine the bombed out ruins of the World War II-era Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, and the Brandenburg Gate where the Iron Curtain once placed Germany on the front lines of the Cold War—and where as a young Army lieutenant Dempsey helped guard the border against massed Soviet and Warsaw Pact forces. Soon the convoy would arrive at the German Ministry of Defense where...

On Wednesday evening, moments after finishing a summit meeting with African leaders at the State Department, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff delivered a stark message to President Obama as they rode back to the White House in Mr. Obama’s limousine. The Kurdish capital, Erbil, once an island of pro-American tranquillity, was in the path of rampaging Sunni militants, the chairman, Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, told the president. And to the west, the militants had trapped thousands of members of Iraqi minority groups on a barren mountaintop, with dwindling supplies, raising concerns about a potential genocide. With American...

President Obama plans to overhaul the Joint Chiefs of Staff this year as he seeks to replace a handful of longtime members whose terms are coming to a close. Obama on Tuesday nominated Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford, commandant of the Marine Corps, to succeed Army Gen. Martin Dempsey as chairman this fall. He also tapped Air Force Gen. Paul Selva, head of U.S. Transportation Command, to replace Navy Adm. James “Sandy” Winnefeld as vice chairman. In the roles since 2011, Dempsey and Winnefeld are expected to retire after their current two-year terms end in October and August, respectively. What’s more,...

The Maersk Tigris was released Thursday, more than a week after the ship was seized by Iran in the Strait of Hormuz, according to a statement from the shipping company. The cargo vessel was transiting the Strait of Hormuz on April 28 when Iranian military vessels fired warning shots at the ship and directed it to proceed into Iranian waters. The ship and crew has been held ever since over a business dispute with Maersk Line. “The release follows a constructive dialogue with the Iranian authorities, including the Ports & Maritime Organization, and the provision of a letter of undertaking...

The Chairman of the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff on Sunday defended the pace of the air war against Islamic State (ISIS) jihadists, warning that escalating bombing raids or sending in more American troops would be a mistake. During a visit to a French aircraft carrier in the Gulf taking part in the air campaign, General Martin Dempsey appealed for "strategic patience" in the fight against the ISIS group in Iraq and Syria, according to AFP. Expanding the air war could risk civilian casualties and play into the hands of ISIS propaganda, he said aboard the Charles de Gaulle....

Iran's direct support for an Iraqi push to dislodge the Islamic State group from the northern city of Tikrit could turn out to be "a positive thing" if it does not inflame sectarian tensions, the top U.S. general said Tuesday. The statement by Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, reflected the delicate balance Washington is trying to strike between limiting Iranian influence and allowing Iraqi leaders to determine their own path to defeating the Islamic State. U.S. officials have said Iraq did not ask the U.S. to provide air support for the Tikrit offensive, even though...

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has established a research and essay competition in honor of Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah Bin Abdul-Aziz hosted by the National Defense University. The king, who died Jan. 23 at age 90, oversaw the modernization of his country’s military during the time he spent as commander of the Saudi Arabian National Guard, a position he held from 1963 until he became king in 2005. Army Gen. Martin E. Dempsey said the essay competition is a fitting tribute to the life and leadership of the Saudi Arabian monarch. The king was a lifetime supporter...

Count the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman among those who believe it’s in the national interest to close the Guantánamo Bay detention center. Army Gen. Martin Dempsey said the facility at the U.S. Navy base in Cuba “does create a psychological scar on our national values. Whether it should or not, it does.”

The U.S. military is considering sending a limited number of American ground forces to fight alongside Iraqi troops as they launch complex missions to regain territory lost to Islamic State militants, the country’s top military officer said Thursday. Thus far, American military personnel have been limited to serving as rear guard advisers to the Iraqi security forces and the Kurdish peshmerga. But Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, said that could change as the campaign against the Islamic State becomes more difficult. “As it evolves there are certain operations that could be more complex than the ones in...

Hagel, Dempsey testify at House hearing on fighting ISIS

Barack Obama did not tell the whole story this autumn when he tried to make the case that Bashar al-Assad was responsible for the chemical weapons attack near Damascus on 21 August. In some instances, he omitted important intelligence, and in others he presented assumptions as facts. Most significant, he failed to acknowledge something known to the US intelligence community: that the Syrian army is not the only party in the country’s civil war with access to sarin, the nerve agent that a UN study concluded – without assessing responsibility – had been used in the rocket attack. In the...