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Napolitano: Returning vets too stupid to avoid extremists
HOTAIR.COM ^ | 4/20/2009 | Ed Morrisey

Posted on 04/20/2009 8:39:29 AM PDT by SeekAndFind

Janet Napolitano continues to thrash around for any rationalization she can find for the DHS report that painted political organizing on abortion, federalism, and immigration as potential national-security threats and called returining military vets a danger to the country they served. Yesterday on CNN, Napolitano tried explaining that the DHS doesn’t see these vets as threats. The DHS sees them as saps who don’t know any better than to fall into extremist traps:

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano on Sunday portrayed veterans as victims – not perpetrators – of right-wing extremism as she sought to combat the political controversy arising out of an April 14 Homeland Security memo warning that returning soldiers could be ripe for domestic terrorism participation.

“The report is not saying that veterans are extremists. Far from it,” Napolitano said on CNN’s State of the Union. “What it is saying is returning veterans are targets of right-wing extremist groups that are trying to recruit those to commit violent acts within the country. We want to do all we can to prevent that.”

Yes, the poor dears are victims that obviously can’t decide themselves not to join violent groups … none of which the report bothers to name, by the way. Unlike the report on left-wing extremism, which names several known groups with track records of violence, the DHS report that Napolitano continues to defend never bothers to name an actual threat. Instead, it repeatedly states that DHS has no data on actual threats:

The DHS/Office of Intelligence and Analysis (I&A) has no specific information that domestic rightwing* terrorists are currently planning acts of violence, but rightwing extremists may be gaining new recruits by playing on their fears about several emergent issues.

And how does the DHS identify “domestic rightwing* terrorists”?

Rightwing extremism in the United States can be broadly divided into those groups, movements, and adherents that are primarily hate-oriented (based on hatred of particular religious, racial or ethnic groups), and those that are mainly antigovernment, rejecting federal authority in favor of state or local authority, or rejecting government authority entirely. It may include groups and individuals that are dedicated to a single issue, such as opposition to abortion or immigration.

So the Federalist Society has gone from being a group that follows the Constitutional tradition to being a potentially dangerous extremist group! And what did the report actually say about veterans? Page 2, the first mention of veterans in the report, makes veterans sound more like perps than victims:

The possible passage of new restrictions on firearms and the return of military veterans facing significant challenges reintegrating into their communities could lead to the potential emergence of terrorist groups or lone wolf extremists capable of carrying out violent attacks.

That doesn’t say that terrorist groups will exploit senseless veterans and trick them into becoming violent terrorists. It presumes that veterans have a predisposition to become violent extremists because of the difficulties that they have “reintegrating into their communities.” It’s the latest corollary to the every-Vietnam-vet-is-a-powderkeg belief. It’s not until two pages later that the report mentions the issue of recruitment and radicalization. And on page 8, we get this rather large section header: (U) Disgruntled Military Veterans

Napolitano is not only condescending towards veterans in her latest rationalization, she’s being completely dishonest about the way the DHS assessment treats returning combat vets. The report identifies them as a potential national-security threat to the country which they defended on the front lines.

DHS needs to stick to watching the groups themselves, and not people exercising their First Amendment rights and returning military veterans. In fact, the first thing Napolitano should do is to actually get threat data, instead of making up a bunch of scare stories about political dissent while not bothering to identify actual known racist and white-supremacist groups with track records of violence who should be watched.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial; Front Page News; Government; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: bhodhs; bhoveterans; democrats; dhs; donttreadonme; extremists; fascism; homelandsecurity; military; napolitano; oefveterans; oifveterans; rightwing; rightwingextremism; tyranny; veterans
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To: SZonian

Because I forgot.
Sorry.


61 posted on 04/20/2009 12:54:39 PM PDT by netmilsmom (Psalm 109:8 - Let his days be few; and let another take his office)
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To: ExTexasRedhead
They’re still searching for their gonads with hands and a mirror and coming up empty!!

One would be tempted to send them the following, a flashlight, a GPS system, and a seeing-eye-dog, but all that expense and effort would be futile, as it appears that they are seeking something which plainly no longer exists...

the infowarrior

62 posted on 04/20/2009 12:55:53 PM PDT by infowarrior
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To: April Lexington
I'm beginning to think the unthinkable.

Welcome to the club.

63 posted on 04/20/2009 1:05:35 PM PDT by Centurion2000 (We either Free America ourselves, or it is midnight for humanity for a thousand years.)
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To: ExTexasRedhead

That’s for sure.


64 posted on 04/20/2009 1:27:32 PM PDT by freekitty (Give me back my conservative vote.)
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To: SeekAndFind

I once saw Donna Shalala on tv being interviewed,and she disputed that our “best and brightest” went to Vietnam.she said something to the effect that the losers and dregs of society went there.
Okay.I don’t think those of us who went were necessarily all the brightest,but we weren’t the cleverest either.Meaning we did what we had to without trying to squirm out of it(read Clinton,Rove,Cheney,Matthews,Dershowitz,etc-pick a name from any political spectrum)so why the vile disrespect?Shalala and Napolitano have something in common-two ugly bitches who’d have trouble getting a date in a penitentiary.
Napolitano is a lesbian,as I understand it,so maybe she wouldn’t be looking for a guy anyhow.
Someday the wine and cheese pukes will push it too far and then they’ll be gone.


65 posted on 04/20/2009 3:06:21 PM PDT by steamroller
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To: SeekAndFind; All

Napolitano must resign.

PERIOD.


66 posted on 04/20/2009 3:14:18 PM PDT by longtermmemmory (VOTE! http://www.senate.gov and http://www.house.gov)
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To: GOPJ
Hey Janet Napolitano - did you know Bill Ayers was a self confessed unrepentant terrorists - and he's a liberal?

As is his wife?

Ayers and Dohrn are revolutionary communists.

67 posted on 04/20/2009 3:18:26 PM PDT by Interesting Times (For the truth about "swift boating" see ToSetTheRecordStraight.com)
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To: netmilsmom

Fair enough.

I’ll tell you this though regarding my previous posts, as a 1st Sergeant for 3 years, I was involved in a few disciplinary actions that involved gang members resulting in separation from the service and that’s not including the drug dealers, thiefs, fraudsters and the many other types of criminals that eventually get caught while in the service.

Now, taken as a whole, one base, a few units, doesn’t mean there are “tons” of gangbangers, but it does mean one needs to be careful of blindly supporting or expecting ALL military folks to be upstanding, patriotic citizens who are going to be fully supportive of any effort to oust the current occupant of the WH.

That’s all I was saying, don’t blindly assume that just because a man or woman is in uniform that they’re on your/our side.

Regards,
SZ


68 posted on 04/20/2009 3:29:18 PM PDT by SZonian (I'm a Canal Zone brat)
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To: DFG; All

I read “The Third Terrorist” by Jayna Davis, and I am convinced that the Oklahoma City Bombing was an act of Muslim extremists. The book was well documented and compelling.

Timothy McVeigh and his comrade were tools in both the literal and figurative sense.


69 posted on 04/20/2009 5:10:42 PM PDT by rlmorel ("The Road to Serfdom" by F.A.Hayek - Read it...today.)
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To: Interesting Times

People can be communists but not terrorists. Then again, Napolitano doesn’t care. In her little brain, communists would fall on the “left side” and be “good”. I suspect she’s not too complex a thinker...


70 posted on 04/20/2009 5:16:49 PM PDT by GOPJ (If Obama had been king of England, the Globe wouldn't have covered the American Revolution-Graham)
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To: netmilsmom
Are there tons of libs and gangbangers with your men, Mystery-AK? LOL...no gangbangers that I know of....they are all true patriots...but I am sure there are a few libs...the military is a composite of society, so yes they are there....
71 posted on 04/20/2009 5:17:27 PM PDT by mystery-ak (..gopachy.com)
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To: al baby

Long before she was Anita Hill’s lawyer, Janet and her friends would go out to the airport to spit on the GI’s. (Not provable, but we can understand her sentiments)


72 posted on 04/20/2009 5:30:07 PM PDT by oyez (To the extent veterans read it as an accusation -- and apology is owed(i.e. not given))
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To: mystery-ak

Thanks, my FRiend!
See you over at the 24 thread!


73 posted on 04/20/2009 5:49:47 PM PDT by netmilsmom (Psalm 109:8 - Let his days be few; and let another take his office)
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To: netmilsmom

I’m on my way there now


74 posted on 04/20/2009 5:54:19 PM PDT by mystery-ak (..gopachy.com)
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To: GOPJ
People can be communists but not terrorists.

True. I was pointing out that they aren't liberals.

75 posted on 04/20/2009 6:03:10 PM PDT by Interesting Times (For the truth about "swift boating" see ToSetTheRecordStraight.com)
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To: knarf
and Captain Nemo,

I know your story has a point but I can't help myself, Captain Nemo was on a different ship, one that was able to under water and used a power source that was probably electric in nature generated by some unknown means. The name of the boat was the Nautilus. Sorry!:)

76 posted on 04/20/2009 6:09:01 PM PDT by calex59
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To: mbynack
The only saving grace in your scenario would be that there will still be (if we can retain them), a new generation of "experienced" NCOs and officer corps.

Of course the operative word is "retain". The way ZerØ and his fellow Marxists are going; we'll be damn lucky to retain any of them.

77 posted on 04/20/2009 6:20:54 PM PDT by AFreeBird
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To: AFreeBird
I was in the military when Clinton and Carter were in office. It is very frustrating for the military. Personnel are drastically cut and you can't get spare parts, but the mission doesn't change. I was a vehicle mechanic at a Radar sight in Germany during the Carter years and we couldn't get spare parts. We had buses that we used to transport personnel to the outlying radar sights and some of them were broken when I arrived and stayed broken for the whole three years that I was assigned. They were bluebird school buses - nothing special. They took off-the-shelf parts, but we still couldn't get them.

We were prying apart flasher units that were sealed and rewinding the wires on the magnetic coils by hand to try to get the blinkers to work. They would work for a couple of days and then we had to do it over again. We cannibalized parts off the "hanger queens" that stayed broke to try to keep the few buses that we had running. We had guys who were going on leave to the states pick up parts that we paid for out of our own pockets.

We were authorized twice as many personnel as we had assigned, so we usually worked from four in the morning until the last bus returned at 7 p.m. and was fixed and ready to go out at 5 the next morning. We only had about eight buses that were running and we needed every one of them to get all the crews to both radar sights. As they say "Failure was not an option". We had to keep all eight buses running no matter what. Sometimes that meant working all night long and grabbing a couple of hours sleep in the back of a truck or in the break room. The last three months I was stationed there we worked 12+-on and 12-off with no days off.

I retrained into command and control while I was at that station and spent three months during the winter sleeping in a tent on the shores of the North Sea. We returned to garrison and didn't even have time to completely unpack before they sent us to Saudi to live in tents for another three months.

If my wife hadn't been pregnant at the end of the tour and the economy still in the tank, I would have gotten out of the military. As it was, we ended up getting a divorce because of the stress it caused on our marriage. Now that I'm older and less self-centered, I can understand the stress that she was under. We lived off base because there was not enough on-base housing for Jr NCOs. There was no English-speaking radio or TV available. There were no Americans anywhere near where we lived and we couldn't afford a car. We borrowed a car once or twice a month to do grocery shopping. The rest of the time my wife sat alone in an old drafty farmhouse with no one to talk to and nothing to do.

The damage that Carter and Clinton did wasn't fixed when they left office; it will take decades to fix. The bottom line is that a lot of people in the mid NCO ranks got out due to the stress. That creates a gap in the enlisted force that takes 10 years or more to fill. The equipment was so run down that it took at least five years of the budget cycle to repair or replace it. That money should have been spent on other priorities.

78 posted on 04/21/2009 5:26:24 AM PDT by mbynack (Retired USAF SMSgt)
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To: blueyon

I am sick of their BS and I hope people get tired of waiting that long and something is done right away.
They are trashing our country.


79 posted on 04/21/2009 6:30:33 AM PDT by Piquaboy (22 year military veteran of Navy, Air Force, and Army.)
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To: al baby

“Did you know that n 1991, while a partner with the private Phoenix law firm Lewis and Roca LLP, Napolitano served as an attorney for Anita Hill.”

Oh yeah. And she brags about being US attorney for Arizona, where her chief accomplishment was to hound a great governor out of office and take his place after a Frankenstein election involving months of recounts. She’s a bad one, pure evil.


80 posted on 04/21/2009 9:49:06 AM PDT by Luke21
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