Free Republic

A recent military report on sexual assault in the military shocked many in Washington and around the nation, but a leading expert on military personnel revealed the prevalence of men assaulting other men is one of the major headlines in this study. The extended analysis of the report first appeared in Monday’s edition of the the Washington Times. The Defense Department survey of sexual assault in the military during fiscal 2012 estimated 26,000 assaults took place in the armed forces. Nearly 3,000 of them were formally reported. Just more than 6 percent of women reported being victims of assault and...

Colonel Tim Collins has acknowledged the possibility that a teenage soldier who allegedly committed suicide may have been a victim of a "homosexual predator" at a time when both men were under his command. The commanding officer of the 1st Bn the Royal Irish Regiment, who was internationally praised for a rousing speech before the Iraq conflict, conceded in a confidential report that he "would not have them (homosexuals) in proximity of young soldiers again" following the death of Ranger Paul Cochrane. The controversial circumstances of the 18-year-old soldier's death led to an Army board of inquiry report, chaired by...

The military leadership is proving to be a solid ally of President Obama in political Washington, adopting his social revolution and willing to serve as backdrops to the White House's campaign-style drive to win the budget battle with Republicans. The armed forces have launched an unrelenting lobbying effort on Capitol Hill with a flood of briefing charts to defense staffers. They show the damage that automatic budget cuts called "sequestration" would do to the troops -- and to jobs in congressional districts. The charts coincide with the White House push to blame congressional Republicans for the spending cuts, which begin...

Notice: Free Republic has been in full rebellion mode since 2008 and will remain in full rebellion mode for the duration! No more Doles!! No more McCains!! No more RINOS!! NO ROMNEY!! Those who cannot stomach rebellion might as well start looking for a new home on the net!! Those who have ignored my hundreds of posts on this crucial issue or who have doubted me these last three or four years might as well get used to it. FR will never support the abortionist, homosexualist, socialist, mandate loving, constitution trampling liar Mitt Romney. In case you haven't noticed, a...

...Six months after the military dropped the controversial “don’t ask, don’t tell” law barring gays from serving openly, Pentagon officials and gay rights advocates say the policy change has largely been a non-issue, with few complaints and no major headaches resulting from the new rules...

Take a break from looking for black helicopters, fellow Extremists! It's short story time here at Absolutely Nobama! -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "Now, when Drill Instructor gives you the command, you will open your footlocker and break out your shower crap and and your shining crap. Port side shower up, starboard side shine 'em up. Ready....Move!" The one thing Senior Drill Instructor Sergeant Brown hated was slow recruits. Slow recruits, if allowed to graduate, became slow Marines. If Sgt. Brown could say anything with 100% certainty after two tours in Iraq and one in Afghanistan, slow Marines were a danger to themselves and...

Four branches of the military have begun sending training material to 2.2 million active and reserve troops as a prelude to opening the ranks to gays, with instructions on, for example, what to do if an officer sees two male Marines kissing in a shopping mall. Key themes are that sexual orientation will no longer be a bar to service, that all service members must respect each other, and that the partners of gay troops will not receive the benefits of heterosexual spouses. “We are going to make [gay ban] repeal training expeditiously,” said Maj. Joel Harper, an Air Force...

They already passed an amendment to repeal DADT back in May, but that was part of a broader defense bill. Today’s vote was on the standalone DADT bill that Lieberman and Collins are hoping to put in front of the Senate next week. The vote in May: 234-194, with just five Republicans voting yes. The vote today: 250-175, with 15 Republicans in the majority. (Among the 10 who flipped to yes this time: Jeff Flake.) It was smart of Pelosi to force a vote in the House, just as it was smart of Reid to table the vote on the...

Defense Secretary Robert Gates is instructing his staff to accelerate by one day the public release of a yearlong study into the implications of repealing the ban on openly gay people serving in the military. That study, initially due Dec. 1, will now be ready for release on Nov. 30 to allow the congressional defense committees to hold hearings on the report as soon as possible. Supporters of repealing the Clinton-era law, known as "Don't ask, don't tell," are eying the weeks after Thanksgiving recess as the last opportunity to see the ban scrapped. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.)...

President Obama and his friends in the media want the public to think Americans serving in uniform are just fine and dandy with homosexual conduct in the military. This view is being spread through a series of selective leaks from the Pentagon's Comprehensive Review Working Group, which is putting the finishing touches on a report regarding the future of the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy. Mr. Obama has promised the fringe special-interest activists who helped him win the 2008 election that he will deliver what for them is the symbolic victory of opening barracks to lesbians, gays, bisexuals and the...

SAN FRANCISCO -- A federal appeals court has indefinitely extended its freeze on a judge's order halting enforcement of the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy. A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday granted the government's request for a stay while it challenges the trial court's ruling that the ban on openly gay service members is unconstitutional. The same panel imposed a temporary hold keeping "don't ask, don't tell" in place last week.

Gay rights groups are concerned about possible skewed results in the Pentagon’s massive survey of military attitudes toward the repeal of “don’t ask don’t tell,” because of the way questions are reportedly worded and the potential for a lack of privacy for respondents. On Wednesday, the Defense Department e-mailed survey questions to 400,000 members of the active duty and reserve forces, seeking information on how they viewed the ban on gays serving openly in the armed forces. “This is an extraordinary initiative,” said Aubrey Sarvis, president of the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, saying the military didn’t poll troops when President...

Democrats wanting to reshape the military into a more mutlti-cultural, sexual/gender liberating experiment to promote buggery is just one more reason why they cannot be trusted for anything from spending money to health care to reconstructing our armed forces. Contact Congress and let them know that Obama is on the wrong track again with his sucking up to the gay lobby, not for enhancing military effectiveness, but quite the opposite. Here's my short fax to Congress and the Prez. Yes, its IN CAPS FOR EFFECT. DEAR Senator/Representative XYZ; I CANNOT OVERLY EXPRESS HOW HARMFUL I BELIEVE YOUR REJECTING THE 'DON'T...

Congressional Democrats reached an agreement Monday with the White House and possibly the Pentagon on a key legislative step toward repealing the "don't ask, don't tell" policy that bars openly gay soldiers from the military. In a letter to President Obama obtained by CNN, three congressional sponsors of legislation to repeal the policy outlined the proposed agreement that would set contingencies based on completion of a military review of the matter already under way and subsequent final approval from the president and military leaders. Specifically, the proposed agreement calls for repeal to become final only after completion of the military...

The commander in chief on Saturday reiterated his support for having homosexuals serve openly in the military. Fortunately, there's a good chance this is another issue on which President Obama is all talk.

Commander In Chief Obama Is Considering Allowing Uncloseted Gays In The Military, And At The Same Time Putting The Smoking Lamp Out - Permanently. Mr. President, Could We Not Run The Military Like Acorn? Here's A View From Someone Who Served In The Military In Vietnam. The point is also made that comparing African Americans with Homosexuals is a ploy. I served with Marines of all stripes and colors, and none of them jumped into my bunk - but a gay guy did. . . It is beyond me how some of these armchair generals, who more likely than...

If you are wondering what would be one of the top initiatives of a Barack Obama presidency, here is something that is virtually written in stone. Obama would do away with the "Don't ask, don't tell" presidential edict initially put into place by Bill Clinton during his first term. Obama's ultimate goal would be to change the Uniform Code of Military Justice (USMJ) to accommodate homosexuals. In plain language, the United States Armed Forces would have to allow homosexuals to openly serve in our nation's military. Early on in Hillary Clinton's primary fight against Obama, she said this issue would...

(CNSNews.com) - A report on the U.S. military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy that aired Sunday on the CBS News program "60 Minutes" was hailed by a homosexual advocacy group as illustrative of the policy's "arbitrary and uneven enforcement." However, a conservative organization criticized the report as demonstrative of "San Francisco-style social experimentation." According to a news release on the CBS News Web site, the story featured an interview with Army Sgt. Darren Manzella, a medic who served in Iraq for a year and currently is a medical liaison for the 1st Cavalry Division in Kuwait. He said he came...

Remember the gay retired brigadier general who chastised Republicans for their stance on gays in the military at Wednesday's CNN/YouTube debate? Turns out Keith Kerr was packing a partisan sword. He's served as a member of an advisory team on gay and lesbian issues to the Sen. Hillary Clinton Campaign. In the words of CNN's debate crew: D'oh! And here's Anderson Cooper falling on his nonpartisan sword. So how did this slip under CNN's radar? Maybe CNN could have checked its own website. Instead, they paid for Kerr's airfare and hotel to St. Petersburg for the debate. This is a...

As the Democratic presidential candidates gather in Washington to make their pitch to party activists this week, "liberal" is suddenly no longer a dirty word. In recent months, virtually the entire Democratic field has tacked left -- not just on the Iraq War, but on health care, taxes, energy issues and gay rights. In each of those areas, much of the field is standing to the left of where Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., stood in 2004, when President Bush lampooned Kerry as a "Massachusetts liberal." "They're responding to the reality of the primaries, where the center of gravity is far...