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Going on record to confirm stories of Donald Trump’s contempt for wounded and killed US soldiers and their families, and commenting on the former president’s suggestion a top general should be killed, the former marines general and White House chief of staff John Kelly took in Trump’s commanding lead in the Republican primary and said: “God help us.” “What can I add that has not already been said?” Kelly, who was also homeland security secretary under Trump, told CNN on Monday. Much of what has already been said about Trump’s attitude to the US military is widely thought to have...

Democratic consultant and political commentator James Carville said in an interview with The Hill TV that former President Trump’s alleged mishandling of top secret documents could be the biggest story since the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Carville said, “This Mar-a-Lago story which might be the biggest story since 9/11. That’s not going anywhere. It’s not going anywhere. So if you are a Democrat, you are going to get asked about inflation. If you are a Republican, you are going to get asked about Trump. We can say inflation is bad. They can’t say Trump is bad.”

How the Pentagon’s top-brass generals burned the careers of subordinates but then pivoted to lucrative careers all while losing the wars they were supposed to be winning. My new book, A Few Bad Men, details the mendacity and mad dishonesty of retired Marine General James “Mad Dog” Mattis. The fact that it was written by a Marine once under his command, whom he betrayed for the sake of politics and getting to slap on another star, says volumes about this once-lionized figure. It all goes back to an incident in Afghanistan in 2007, and the Court of Inquiry trial of...

An Oregon gun owner went viral for having his AR-15 rifle and a handgun “destroyed” by police in the wake of the Uvalde school massacre. Ben Beers delivered a passionate speech about changing the nation’s gun laws in a video posted on TikTok before delivering his firearms to a local police station. “I no longer want them,” Ben Beers said in the video clip viewed by almost 200,000 users. “I know this will not change legislation or anything to do with gun culture in America but hopefully it’ll be a form of symbolism and hopefully America can wake up because...

<p>Arizona Rep. Ruben Gallego pulled absolutely no punches in his response to the tragic mass shooting that happened at an Uvalde, Texas elementary school Tuesday afternoon, answering his colleagues' tweets of "thoughts and prayers" with aggressive and explicit language, even going so far as to call Texas Sen. Ted Cruz a "f--king baby killer."</p>

A representative from Arizona has requested that the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) strip benefits from any service member and veteran who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, according to a Monday report from Business Insider. Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego, of Arizona, a Marine Corps veteran, wrote in a letter last Thursday that those veterans and service members “simply don’t deserve” the VA benefits. Gallego cited reporting that suggests “nearly 20% of the insurrectionists were either veterans or military retirees.” According to an NPR analysis in January, nearly 1 in 5 people charged in the riot appear to have...

Special counsel Robert Mueller filed a formal complaint against the judge presiding over Paul Manafort’s tax fraud case this week; claiming T.S. Ellis III violated protocol while ruling against the prosecution’s star witness. According to Politico, Mueller’s team is increasingly frustrated with the “cranky judge” who has rebuked the special counsel’s office on multiple occasions. [T]he judge’s condescending attitude [could give] the jury the impression that the prosecution’s case is dubious “[T]he judge’s condescending attitude [could give] the jury the impression that the prosecution’s case is dubious,

A former US Marine is at the centre of Israel’s response to the outrage caused by its raid on a Gaza-bound aid boat after it listed him as one of five people on board with terrorist links. Ken O’Keefe, 40, who lives in London, told The Times that he had met Ismail Haniya, the Hamas leader, and said that he supported the organisation’s “right to violent resistance”. He also said that he had helped to subdue two Israeli commandos after leaders of the Turkish Islamic IHH charity enacted a plan to defend the boat.

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) - U.S. Rep. John Murtha, an influential critic of the Iraq War whose congressional career was shadowed by questions about his ethics, died Monday. He was 77. The Pennsylvania Democrat had been suffering complications from gallbladder surgery. He died at Virginia Hospital Center in Arlington, Va., spokesman Matthew Mazonkey said. In 1974 Murtha, then an officer in the Marine Reserves, became the first Vietnam War combat veteran elected to Congress. One of Congress' most hawkish Democrats, he wielded considerable clout for two decades as the ranking Democrat on the House subcommittee that oversees Pentagon spending. Murtha voted...

Back in January, agents from the FBI, the IRS and the Defense Criminal Investigative Service searched the office of Kuchera Industries and Kuchera Defense Systems, as well as the homes of the firms' founders. These companies reportedly received over $100 million in earmarks, thanks to Murtha's efforts. While it was unclear whether Murtha was a target of the investigations, the heightened scrutiny of some of his closest donors including Kuchera and PMA allies signals that the Feds may be inching closer to the 35-year-member of Congress, who is a constant nominee for the Congressional Porker of the Year. Eventually the...

Famed Mercury astronaut John Glenn has an open seat at his lunch table, provided you're willing to foot the bill. Glenn, the first American to orbit the Earth, is offering an afternoon lunch as part of a charity auction for the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation, which is raising college scholarship funds for aspiring engineers and scientists. It was 50 years ago today that NASA unveiled Glenn and the six other Mercury astronauts - the country's first spaceflyers - to the world in a frenzied press conference that made the seven men instant national heroes. On that April 9 in 1959, Glenn...

PITTSBURGH (KDKA) ― Lt. Col. Bill Russell was in the Pentagon when it was attacked on September 11th. "The office I was in was actually one floor up and about 150 feet from where the cockpit ended," says Russell. That experience and his military service in Iraq shaped Russell's strong support for the Iraq war and his political challenge to long-time Democratic Congressman John Murtha. "People can disagree about whether we should be there, but the fact of the matter is that we are there -- and we have no choice but to win and achieve victory," says the Republican...

Iran has never manifested itself as a serious threat to the national security of the United States, or by extension as a security threat to global security. At the height of Iran’s “exportation of the Islamic Revolution” phase, in the mid-1980’s, the Islamic Republic demonstrated a less-than-impressive ability to project its power beyond the immediate borders of Iran, and even then this projection was limited to war-torn Lebanon. Iranian military capability reached its modern peak in the late 1970’s, during the reign of Reza Shah Pahlevi. The combined effects of institutional distrust on the part of the theocrats who currently...

Suspects Began Screaming, Rolling In AisleWhat, exactly, happened onboard a recent Northwest Airlines flight from Minneapolis to Boston? That's the question federal investigators are now contemplating, while a former police officer is being called a hero for his role in subduing two passengers. Boston's WBZ-TV reports Bob Hayden, a retired 28-year veteran police officer and former Lawrence, MA police chief, was a passenger on Northwest Flight 720 this weekend. Hayden says that even before the plane took off, one man started to act strangely -- pacing up and down the aisle, apparently aggravated. A flight attendant forced the man into...

Josh Rushing, the former Marine and Control Room star turned Al-Jazeera English reporter, spent nearly his entire adult life around combat gear. But a week ago, he seemed a bit uneasy with the pile of brand-new body armor piled in a corner of his downtown Washington office. He fingered the bright-blue canvas over the heavy protective plates—a major departure from the military’s more subdued palette—and decided the vest was “the wrong color.” Then he hefted the gear onto his forearm with a practiced motion, groaning in surprise with the strain of it. “Geez, Louise—it’s heavy! It’s much heavier than any...

<p>Sept. 26, 2006... Local Johnstown, PA station WJAC-TV announced during their 11PM news cast that former presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry will be speaking at the Murtha anti-war counter rally this Saturday. Murtha's counter rally is organized by former Sen. Max Cleland of Georgia. Former presidential candidate Gen. Wesley Clark is also expected to speak.</p>

Come to the National VFTT Boot Murtha Rally Sunday, Oct. 1st in Johnstown, PA Rally Location: Cambria County War Memorial Arena, 2 p.m. If you're considering going and spending the night, book your room now! The Max Cleland groupies that are rallying the day before aren't simply there to counter us. They're also trying to fill hotel rooms before we do.

SAN DIEGO // On Nov. 19, 2005, a unit of Marines arrived at the Iraqi village of Haditha to remove the bodies of civilians reportedly killed by a roadside blast. What they found were infants, women and children shot in the face and chest and the body of a wheelchair-bound elderly man riddled with bullets. A group of Marines are under criminal investigation that could lead to murder charges in the slayings of 24 civilians in the western Iraqi village. Like Abu Ghraib, Haditha has become synonymous with war atrocities, in this case an alleged act of retribution for the...

"...[w]hen people lose confidence in that official, they have no power at all." [said Murtha] Mr. Murtha's outspokenness has made him a target. A North Carolina-based group called Vets for the Truth has launched a "Boot Murtha" campaign, inviting protesters to an Oct. 1 rally in Johnstown. Organizer Larry Bailey is a retired Navy SEAL who said he was driven not by Mr. Murtha's stance on troop redeployment but by the congressman's assertion in May, before a thorough investigation, that Marines in Haditha had killed innocent Iraqi civilians "in cold blood." "I have some misgivings myself about what's going on...

John Murtha... is taking obscene criticism from the right for daring to point out that the Bush administration has given our troops an all-but-impossible job in Iraq. The 17-term congressman had already inflamed the Swift Boat crowd last year by calling for a rapid withdrawal of U.S. forces. The fallout reached a ridiculous low point last fall when a Republican congresswoman who'd never been within several time zones of a battlefield called Murtha, winner of two Purple Hearts, a coward on the House floor. [Coop note: Any bets as to how close any of these editors ever came to a...