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MAF Blogger Danny
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Well this is, frankly, just pissing me off. Desperate to push their anti-military agendas, so-called Human Rights groups are furiously trying to do everything they can to inject some life back into the campaign to shut down GITMO and bring the terrorists to American soil.

One group called Human Rights First has pieced together a group of about a dozen retired military officers who were willing to serve the goals of these anti-military groups, and for what reason I don’t know.

Do these select few generals and former military officers just have a more advanced moral compass than the millions of other enlisted troops, NCO’s and Officers currently fighting the War on Terror? Or are these generals somehow disgruntled? Were they stiffed by the military somehow? Did they become disillusioned with their service? Were they unable to raise in rank or dismissed due to some performance related factor?

Or is it possible that they are shamefully just willing to betray their former comrades in order to gain personal advancement or notoriety. I’m thinking of such historic examples as John Kerry…

Maybe they see it as a way to gain personal favor from a Presidential administration that is in great need of people with military credentials who will disagree with 99% of the rest of the military brass. Whenever liberals are capable of finding such people they are very quick to parade them around and put them on display and say “here look! even the military disagrees with your wars, your military budgets, your missions etc etc.”

It absolutely sickens me.

Well yesterday this group Human Rights First, got their turncoats together and held a press conference on Capitol Hill encouraging Obama to stand defiant, to close GITMO no matter what he has to do to get it done on schedule. They are of course reacting this way because Obama’s administration recently admitted that there is almost NO CHANCE they will be successful in closing GITMO by the self imposed one year deadline.

A Quote from the Human Rights First website about their media day…

Amidst the din of dissenting voices from media, lawmakers, and the public, these retired admirals and generals said loud and clear that they support President Obama’s decision to close Guantanamo, encouraging “responsible leadership” and denouncing “the politics of fear” around the issue. These meetings are part of Human Rights First’s broader campaign to ensure Guantanamo is closed.

Funny how they mention the fact that the media, lawmakers, and the public at large (not to mention a huge majority of non-retired military and national security experts!) remain VERY skeptical of Obama’s plans to close GITMO and bring the terrorists here. At least they recognize that they are the only crackpots around putting forth this dangerous idea.

For a little perspective, and to shed a little light on why these people are willing to get behind this humans rights group which is so hostile to our currently serving troops… look how the group BRAGS that the White House invited their retired generals to Obama’s GITMO closure signing ceremony last February.

http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/advocacy/militaryleaders.aspx

Yes, being willing to say anything, no matter how anachronistic, will win you friends and buy you a seat at the table with those anxious to use you and your name to push their positions. Congratulations to this group of modern day Benedict Arnolds, I hope you’re happy with your new friends at the ACLU, Amnesty Int’l, CAIR, Huaman Rights Watch, and of course your pals Eric Holder and Barack Obama. 

Posted By:
MAF Blogger Danny
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It was a good week for 3 the three GITMO detainees that Obama’s administration announced on Friday that they had transferred, two to Ireland and one to Yemen.

The Yemeni detainee is an interesting case according to this article from ABC:

Known at Gitmo as Captive 692, the government labeled Ali Ahmed an “enemy combatant,” saying he “was associated with Al-Qaeda. He was present on the front lines in Bagram, Afghanistan. He was identified by a senior Al-Qaeda facilitator as having been a resident at a safehouse in Kandahar, Afghanistan in 2000 (his individual also saw the detainee at a safehouse located in Faisalabad, Pakistan in February 2002 with a group of Yemenis who had fled Afghanistan). Finally, the Detainee was identified by another individual, a senior Al-Qaeda operational planner, as having resided at a safehouse located in Kandahar in 2001.”

The article also said that “The Yemeni Embassy to the US issued a statement saying the country welcomed, “with enthusiasm, the release and transfer of its citizen."”

I’m sure they are ecstatic. And I’m sure Detainee 692 is thanking his lucky stars that soon he will be tasting freedom again and then he will be free to join his buddies in Al Qaeda again and get right back to work plotting to kill Americans.

Alongside this refreshing and encouraging news from GITMO, Obama’s administration has made a series of interesting statements regarding their plans to shut down the base and bring the terrorists to American soil. For the first time last week we saw spokespersons for the administration and even Secretary Gates admitting that the pie in the sky ideas about closing GITMO in one year were not well thought out.

“I think it has proven more complicated than anticipated,” Gates said in an interview broadcast Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

Obviously. Anyone could have seen that the administration was not taking the question seriously, yet at the same time making outrageous statements that the Prison could be closed in a year. LONG BEFORE Obama even sent a team to actually assess the conditions at GITMO. So of course when you’re making policy decisions predicated on ZERO information gathered, you’re going to miscalculate.

Odd how President Obama can make decrees about closing GITMO based on no information yet when it comes to providing our Generals with the manpower and the firepower they need to crush the Taliban then he needs tons of reports and time to make a deliberate decision. Meanwhile more of our troops are being hurt and they can’t even call in the big guns to soften up the enemy.

Senator McCain makes another guest appearance that makes one pause and ask whose side are you on?

“Apparently they’re certainly not going to make that deadline,” McCain said. “But we should continue to work towards the closure of Guantanamo Bay because of the image that it has in the world, of brutality, [which] harms our image very badly.”

Image of brutality? That’s a complete farce, and McCain knows it. So why is he saying we should bow to this pressure? When did McCain, who was such a strong supporter of our war on terror start making decisions, like Obama, based on what other people THINK when you KNOW the truth to be contrary to that.

Well, wasting no time, Democrats have started pointing fingers at each other and at the Administration to place blame on someone for dropping the ball.

Here, some blame congress

Several advocates of closing the prison — as Obama pledged to do within one year as one of his first acts as president — said Craig is being made the fall guy for a lack of attention across the senior levels of the government, combined with the unwillingness of congressional Democrats to stand behind the plan to close the prison.

Then some in congress blame the Administration

“Those of us on the Hill who wanted to defend the administration’s policy because we knew we had the facts on our side got no back up, no support, no information,” Moran said, speculating that the Obama team simply didn’t want to spend political capital on the issue.

Moran is featured in a youtube video being called out by one of his constituents - a vet - for not attending their homecoming ceremony and sending them postcards thanking them for their service in Iraq when they were serving in Afghanistan.

Now the administration is trying to press the reset button on Guantanamo, but Moran argued the damage is done and it is now nearly impossible to sell the idea of moving the prisoners to U.S. soil.

“This is their first major f—- up, and it’s an enormous f—- up, because now that you’ve lost ground you’re not going to be able to recover it,” said Moran.

Posted By:
MAF Blogger Danny
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It seems that Immigrations and Customs Enforcement is disputing the legality of a marriage that took place between a U.S. Marine and his Japanese wife while he was stationed in Iraq. This American hero and his new wife already have a child together (I think from before they were actually wedded), but under some weird technicalities, ICE is saying that the marriage between this Marine and his Japanese mate is not valid, and that therefore she AND their child will be ineligible for the citizenship they would normally be awarded if said Marine had not made the ultimate sacrifice for his country, and was still around.

Legal technicalities aside, I think, and I think most rational people would agree, that when one of our troops gives up his life for his country, allowing his wife (or at least the woman he intended to be his wife) and his own flesh-and-blood son to stay in the country is THE LEAST we can do to honor his memory

Read the full story at Black Five and read all the way to the bottom where there is a call to action. The idea is that if we can convince a Senator from Tennessee (where the family is from) to be an advocate, they can push through some exception or get her citizenship taken care of ASAP.

Let’s see what we can do to help this military family out!

Click Here for the full story on Black Five

Here is an excerpt from BlackFive:

A Marine’s Japanese widow is fighting to raise her son in the nation her husband died protecting. Hotaru Ferschke and Sgt. Michael Ferschke had a proxy wedding, filing marriage papers after he deployed. He was killed in Iraq. Now U.S. immigration refuses to acknowledge the marriage.

Also interesting is the longer AP story on this family

Ferschke and his bride had been together in Japan for more than a year, and she was pregnant when he deployed. They married by signing their names on separate continents and did not have a chance to meet again in person after the wedding, which a 57-year-old immigration law requires for the union to be considered consummated.

“She is being denied because they are saying her marriage is not valid because it was not consummated — despite the fact that they have a child together,” said Brent Renison, an immigration lawyer in Oregon who has advised the family.

Hotaru Ferschke and the baby, Michael “Mikey” Ferschke III, are staying for now on a temporary visa at the home of her parents-in-law, in the Smoky Mountains town of Maryville. Robin and Michael Ferschke Sr., who are fighting for their daughter-in-law to stay, have emblazoned their son’s picture on everything from a blanket draped on the back of the couch to a waving banner on the fence outside.

The 22-year-old Marine radio operator met the young Japanese woman at a party while he was stationed in Okinawa. Though neither knew much of the other’s language, something clicked.

“He called me after they met and he goes, ‘Mom, I am in love,’” Robin Ferschke said.

Posted By:
MAF Blogger Danny
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this is a great editorial from the Washington Times

How could we ever have claimed any legitimacy for Iraq’s free elections without Saddam Hussein on the ballot? How can we stand behind the legitimacy of the recent Afghan elections despite seeing a few irregularities and a few cases of fraud, but at the same time call this election illegitimate before it even occurs?

And of all the things for the United States to find agreement with a guy like Chavez on… the installment of a leftist dictator! I am totally ashamed… what ever happened to the America described by President JFK, the one who came to the aid of countries under dictatorship, when we opposed our enemies rather than throw our friends under the bus.

Either way, this is a great editorial and worth a read!

The shameful siege of Honduras continues. In the past few weeks, the United States has cut more than $30 million in non-humanitarian aid, suspended most visa services and sided with Venezuela, Cuba and other of Latin America’s worst dictatorships in undermining democracy. Meanwhile, the people of Honduras are desperately trying to maintain their freedom and prevent the return of a regime that Washington is committed to forcing down their throats.

The United States rushed to the wrong side of this issue when former Honduran President Manuel Zelaya was ousted on June 28, and since then it has reinforced a bad policy. Rather than seek means of mitigating the crisis, the United States clings obdurately to demands that Mr. Zelaya be returned to power. The “San Jose process,” a peace initiative brokered by Costa Rican President Oscar Arias that the United States supports, would place Mr. Zelaya in office to serve out the rest of his term, which ends in January. But the Honduran government - all of it, the president, Congress and the Supreme Court - has determined that Mr. Zelaya’s ouster was a legal response to his illegal attempts to rig a referendum to establish himself as president for life. This scheme followed the model of Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez.

The United States has attacked Honduran autonomy with bullying tactics. Washington recently stood by as Honduras was hectored out of the United Nations Human Rights Council by Cuba and Nicaragua, and current Honduran President Roberto Micheletti said he would not attempt to travel to New York to attend the upcoming meeting of the U.N. General Assembly because his U.S. visa was revoked. All the while, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad - who heads a government that is among the world’s most odious human rights abusers - is being welcomed to the city to spread his message of hope and change.

The United States has a chance to make a diplomatic escape from this perverse policy. On Nov. 29, Honduras will hold its regularly scheduled presidential election, which is the one Mr. Zelaya was seeking to undermine. Term limits make him ineligible to run, so his current status should have nothing to do with the validity of the election. The central premise of the San Jose process - that Mr. Zelaya serve out the rest of his term - will be moot by January, when the new president is inaugurated. After the ballots are counted and a new president is elected, that would be a perfect opportunity to recognize the will of the Honduran people, declare the crisis over and move forward.

But offering no particular reason, the United States has decided not to recognize the outcome of the election. This not only is bad policy but is amateurish diplomacy. The November election and January inauguration are natural firebreaks that end any pretense Mr. Zelaya would have to continue his rule. Undermining the succession process will put relations with Honduras into free fall with no clear mechanism for resolution. The State Department said that “policy and strategy for engagement is not based on supporting any particular politician or individual,” but this claim is hard to square with the facts.

Taking a stand against a constitutionally mandated, free and fair election is a statement from the Obama administration that Mr. Zelaya - the would-be autocrat - is the administration’s man, right or wrong. The Honduran people be damned.

Posted By:
MAF Blogger Danny
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Not a huge news item here folks, but if you like facebook, it’s kinda cool!

MAF has been growing steadily on facebook and we have now upgraded our facebook PAGE with a custom URL. Now instead of linking to MAF on Facebook with a big long scary url with seemingly random characters scattered about, MAF has a sleek, simple, easy to remember address.

it’s simply www.facebook.com/moveamericaforward

just like our youtube site www.youtube.com/moveamericaforward

Doesn’t really change anything else about the MAF Facebook account, except that it gives us occasion to encourage EVERYONE to join up, add MAF as a fan and stay in the loop!