Free Republic

This story is disturbing on multiple levels. It has been revealed that stockpiles of expired or degraded chemical munitions were discovered in Iraq during the initial years of the war and both American and Iraqi forces were exposed to them in more than twenty instances. This information was never revealed to the public. American troops were exposed to chemical weapons multiple times in the years following the 2003 invasion of Iraq, while the Pentagon kept their discoveries of the expired or degraded weapons secret from investigators, fellow soldiers, and military doctors, according to a published report. The New York...

Has anyone at the Pentagon determined the carbon footprint of our war on IS? Because if a Defense Dept. global warming report is right, we could be doing more harm than good to our national security. The 20-page report — the cover of which includes a cute picture of baby sea turtles along with tanks and battleships — says climate change "poses immediate risks to U.S. national security."

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel announced a new Climate Change Adaptation Roadmap at the Conference of Defense Ministers of the Americas in Peru today, saying the Pentagon has “nearly completed a baseline survey to assess the vulnerability” due to global warming of more than 7,000 bases, installations, and other facilities.The 20-page document details three “broad adaptation goals”: “Identify and assess the effects of climate change on the Deparment,” “integrate climate change considerations across the Department and manage associated risks,” and “collaborate with internal and external stakeholders on climate change challenges.”“Initial analysis indicates that four primary climate change phenomena are likely...

The Pentagon released a report Monday asserting decisively that climate change poses an immediate threat to national security, with increased risks from terrorism, infectious disease, global poverty and food shortages. It also predicted rising demand for military disaster response as extreme weather creates more global humanitarian crises. The report lays out a road map for how the military will adapt to rising sea levels, more violent storms and widespread droughts. The Defense Department will begin by integrating plans for climate change risks across all of its operations, from war games and strategic defense planning situations to a rethinking of the...

Rising sea levels and other effects of climate change will pose major challenges for America's military, including more and worse natural disasters and the threat that food and water shortages could fuel disputes and instability around the world, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said Monday. […] “Climate change is a ‘threat multiplier’ because it has the potential to exacerbate many of the challenges we already confront today—from infectious disease to armed insurgencies—and to produce new challenges in the future,” Hagel said. He spoke during the opening session of the conference, which was attended by defense ministers and military chiefs of more...

Official says military has made sure name is acceptable in languages other than EnglishWASHINGTON (CNN) —The military operation against ISIS now does have a name but the Pentagon is not expected to reveal it until later this week, a U.S. official confirms to CNN. The name will not be made public until a formal "execution order" covering the entire mission against ISIS is published by the Defense Department's Joint Staff, perhaps as soon as Wednesday.

The mysterious workings of a Pentagon office that oversees clandestine operations are unraveling in federal court, where a criminal investigation has exposed a secret weapons program entwined with allegations of a sweetheart contract, fake badges and trails of destroyed evidence. Capping an investigation that began almost two years ago, separate trials are scheduled this month in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Va., for a civilian Navy intelligence official and a hot-rod auto mechanic from California who prosecutors allege conspired to manufacture an untraceable batch of automatic-rifle silencers. The exact purpose of the silencers remains hazy, but court filings and pretrial...

Jim Rickards, the Financial Threat and Asymmetric Warfare Advisor for both the Pentagon and CIA. Recently, all 16 branches of our Intelligence Community have come together to release a shocking report. These agencies, that include the CIA, FBI, Army, and Navy, they've already begun to estimate the impact of the fall of the dollar as the global reserve currency. And our reign as the world's leading super power being annihilated in a way equivalent to the end of the British Empire, post-World War II. And the end game could be a nightmarish scenario, where the world falls into an extended...

Here we go. It looks like Barack Obama is getting ready to double cross us again. According to a report on the site militarycorruption.com Obama is waiting until after the mid-term election to declare the traitor Bowe Bergdahl a Prisoner of War. This designation would change him from a traitor who should be executed to a “hero” POW who is eligible for back pay, a promotion and an honorable discharge which will entitle Bergdahl to a variety of benefits that have been designed for genuine heroes. In spite of the mountain of evidence proving he is a deserter, Militarycorruption.com has...

U.S. General: Troops Fighting Ebola Will Be SafeSpecialized U.S. troops setting up mobile labs in Africa to test for Ebola are likely to come into contact with the deadly virus, the Pentagon said Tuesday. U.S. troops already have set up three mobile labs, and there are plans to set up four more. The Pentagon said the troops are highly trained and that those working in the laboratories will wear protective suits. They will also receive pre-deployment training and be constantly monitored, Army Gen. David Rodriguez, commander of U.S. Africa Command, said at a Pentagon briefing. “I am confident that we...

Only a small number of highly trained U.S. troops among the thousands bound for West Africa will have direct contact with potential Ebola patients, military leaders said Tuesday. Those soldiers will be posted at testing labs to help identify people showing Ebola-like symptoms. They “meet the highest level of standards” and are already trained to deal with major crises, including nuclear disasters, said U.S. Army Gen. David Rodriguez, the commander of U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM). Rodriguez also pledged during a Pentagon news conference that the 4,000 service members deployed to the ravaged region will be kept safe — and won’t...

Well that’s great. The question is how useful will this audit actually be, and how truthful? In the 3 years since the birth of this site we have chronicled plenty of examples of waste in the military. It is PERVASIVE. The level of waste speaks frankly to a culture of accounting negligence at the Pentagon which is perhaps only rivaled by the chicanery at the Federal Reserve. Heads (and many many heads at all levels) should have rolled long ago. But, because a large portion of the American people have given the US military a pass on waste (Republicans) nothing...

The Pentagon is deploying 300 airmen and 12 A-10 combat jets to the Middle East in early October, according to the Indiana Air National Guard.

Post your conditions or noticable behavior of your city officials here. Little Rock-

To get an idea of why this White House has placed America in what Senate Armed Services Committee ranking Republican James Inhofe of Oklahoma calls "the most dangerous position we've ever been in as a nation," we turn to one of Obama's biggest mainstream media devotees. In "The Promise," the fawning book about Obama's first year in office by ex-Newsweek columnist Jonathan Alter, we read of a May 2009 meeting with the presidents of Pakistan and Afghanistan on how to "Disrupt, dismantle and defeat al-Qaida." Alter writes, "Nothing much concrete was accomplished ... . The session was kicked off not...

The US has lodged a formal protest with Beijing after a Chinese fighter jet conducted a barrel roll "very, very close" over an American Navy plane this week, the Pentagon has said. Rear Admiral John Kirby said the Chinese plane exposed its undercarriage to show that it was armed to the P-8 anti-submarine warfare aircraft during Monday's incident in international airspace near Japan. He said the Chinese aircraft came within 30ft (9 metres) of the American plane, while the wing tips of the two aircraft were just 20ft apart.

Pentagon Press Secretary RADM John Kirby says Russia must remove a convoy from Ukraine immediately. VIDEO

Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer (Ret.) is a CIA-trained former senior intelligence officer and he says that the rescue operation for American journalist James Foley wasn’t successful because President Obama “dragged his feet”. "Thursday morning, Shaffer appeared on WMAL radio in Washington, D.C., to discuss the ISIS execution of American journalist James Foley earlier this week. He told me and co-host Brian Wilson that the recently revealed rescue attempt led by Special Forces earlier this summer failed because President Obama was slow to give the go-ahead: I’m hearing from my friends in the Pentagon, they are giving him every single option...

State and local police departments obtain some of their military-style equipment through a free Defense Department program created in the early 1990s. ..... detailed data from the Pentagon illustrates how ubiquitous such equipment has become. Highlighted counties have received guns, grenade launchers, vehicles, night vision or body armor through the program since 2006. (Interactive Map at the linked source)

On Saturday, President Obama said the intelligence community underestimated the threat by ISIS which is why he did not act until now: There is no doubt that their advance, their movement over the last several months has been more rapid than the intelligence estimates and I think the expectations of policymakers both in and outside of Iraq. Aside from the fact that advances by ISIS has been known to anyone who’s had access to YouTube or Twitter, the Pentagon, when asked if they were caught off guard by ISIS today, tells a completely different story. They responded that the US...