Chuck Hagel – A Voice Of Reason On Foreign Policy?

Mandeville, LA – Exclusive Transcript – Ladies and gentlemen, what I’m about to read to you will illustrate why all the decepticonia was in an uproar and did everything they could do to try to destroy Chuck Hagel, as they’re trying to destroy Senator Rand Paul, before he could be confirmed as Secretary of Defense.  They must not allow anyone to get inside the tent that has any, any, any motivation or any intention for our vast military that is outside of the current status quo, and maybe even returning to the 2003 to 2008 status quo.  Let’s find some new countries to go and screw up.  Yes, let’s find new places to invade.  We have an army.  Let’s use it.  Check out today’s transcript for the rest…

 

Begin Mike Church Show Transcript

Mike:  Those that were covering the appearance by the Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel as he visited with troops at Fort Bragg, this is just, I was reading this and just thinking out loud to myself: Self, what is it that can be done about this?  I actually posted the quote from Hagel in today’s Pile of Prep as he had asked one of the officers at Fort Bragg what life was like in this man’s army today.  The answer that Hagel got was I guess not the answer that he was expecting to get.  I’ll share it with you.

[reading]

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel warned on Monday that U.S. troops are “close to the breaking point,” after many deployments — and Congress risks worsening the situation if it doesn’t help the Pentagon with its budget.

“Our people are strong and resilient after 12 years of war, but they are under stress — and so are the institutions that support them,” Hagel told the Veterans of Foreign Wars at the group’s annual convention in Louisville, Ky.

[end reading]

Mike:  He was being interviewed in Louisville, Kentucky and there was a quote that he relays from a prior visit to Fort Bragg, just to be clear on the timeline.  Ladies and gentlemen, what I’m about to read to you will illustrate why all the decepticonia was in an uproar and did everything they could do to try to destroy Chuck Hagel, as they’re trying to destroy Senator Rand Paul, before he could be confirmed as Secretary of Defense.  They must not allow anyone to get inside the tent that has any, any, any motivation or any intention for our vast military that is outside of the current status quo, and maybe even returning to the 2003 to 2008 status quo.  Let’s find some new countries to go and screw up.  Yes, let’s find new places to invade.  We have an army.  Let’s use it.  As Secretary Hagel is pointing out and is discovering, those that are in that army are going: Dude, we’ve had enough of this, really, seriously.  Most of us have been four, five, six times deployed and you guys keep screwing us over with benefits and pay and all the other things we were promised.  I would just rather stay, kind of hang out here.  Why don’t I just guard Fort Bragg for a couple years, how about that?  This is a direct quote from Hagel:

[reading]

“Last week at Fort Bragg’s Soldier and Family Assistance Center, I met a first sergeant who told me that in Afghanistan, he froze up and became overwhelmed by anxiety. He couldn’t command. He had lost his ability to command,” Hagel said. “I asked him how many deployments he had. He told me he was on his fifth consecutive combat tour when this happened. When you push human beings this hard, they break. Some people have been pushed beyond the breaking point.”

[end reading]

Mike Church Show Transcript – American Exceptionalism Demagoguery, Lincoln Myths, And Rand Paul

Mike:  How many of you out there know lots of military people that listen to this program?  How many of you can share similar sentiment, have shared similar sentiment, are experiencing this man’s current state of mind and condition as I speak?  Ever since Franklin Delanobama Roosevelt lied to the American sheeple in the election of 1940 and told them that their sons would not be conscripted or sent overseas to fight someone else’s war, ever since that day, our military has basically been on ready alert, on call, and deployed somewhere.  Many of you have done so out of your valorous and honorable sense of duty and patriotism….

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Well, the political class has betrayed you because many of them, if not most of them, have assisted in your deployment and have sent you into these faraway places for not the same causes and not the same reasons.  It’s not a far stretch of the imagination to flesh out a case that most of what has happened, if not nearly all of what has happened, has happened and has occurred and these deployments and engagements and entanglements have been entered into for economic and financial reasons.  They have nothing to do with security, nothing to do with securing the coastline of San Diego, have nothing to do with securing the coastline of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina or Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, or Pensacola, Florida.  It doesn’t have anything to do with that.  It doesn’t have anything to do with securing the border between Canada and the United States.  It has nothing to do with securing any border.

As a matter of fact, it has nothing to do with security period, unless you’re talking about the security of all the dollars that are to be made in these endeavors, whether those dollars are made by manufacturing armaments, whether those dollars are  made by altering the course of petroleum and fossil fuel markets across the planet so that production occurs where it is desired to have occurred instead of where the market would have had it occur, whether it is the disposition or elimination of certain leaders in certain countries for the same ends, this has all been about designing and corrupt men’s pursuit of money, as most wars are.  The tragedy is that so many have lost so much, and they’re proud of the fact that they’ve lost much.

It’s fair to say that those that have been sent and have served all these combat tours, I’m not just talking about Iraq and Afghanistan.  This goes all the way back to the Korean conflict.  As I said, you can go all the way back to the lies that were told by Franklin Delanobama Roosevelt in the lead up — there’s a documentary you can watch on YouTube about this, how Roosevelt was secretly communicating with Churchill and was going: Come on, just bide your time.  Let me get through this election and I’ll help you out.  We’ve got this lend-lease program.  We’ll get you some ships.  We’ll help you out, just give me a little time.  We can get involved in this, but we’ve got to do it on a timetable.  That’s the great human tragedy and that’s the great human toll.  It’s been taken out on some of our best and bravest and most honorable.

Mike Church Show Transcript – Americans With Guns Are Dangerous But Terrorists With Tanks And Jets Are Safe, Really!?

[reading]

Moving forward, Hagel said, the armed services “will require careful rebalancing.” [Mike: This is why Hagel had to be opposed, folks, for what I’m about to read to you.]

“Strengthening readiness will ultimately demand that we address unsustainable growth in personnel costs, which represent half of the department’s budget and crowds out vital spending on training and modernization,” he said. “If trends continue, we could ultimately be left with a much smaller force that is well-compensated but poorly trained and equipped. That would be unacceptable.”

Congress, he said, must be reasonable.

“Opposing, for political reason or any other reason, every reform or cost-savings measure is shortsighted and irresponsible, and it does not help our men and women in uniform — especially when these savings can be used to fund readiness and modernization,” Hagel said. “This will require Congress joining DOD in a partnership of difficult choices, priorities and decisions. Not easy. It will take some courage.”

Members of Congress have so far blocked most of the Pentagon’s cost-saving proposals, including its requests for smaller pay increases, higher health care fees and base closures. Congress also has not been able to end sequestration, which Hagel said was already hurting readiness.

“During a visit to Fort Bragg last week, I heard from infantrymen whose units were short on training rounds for their weapons,” he said. [Mike: They can borrow some ammo from the Department of Homeland Insecurity and the IRS and the Department of Education, couldn’t they? They seem to be armed up and ready.] “Each of the services have curtailed activities — flying hours have been reduced, ships are not sailing and Army training has been halted. These kinds of gaps and shortages could lead to a force that is inadequately trained, ill-equipped and unable to fulfill required missions.”

[end reading]

Mike:  Maybe what ought to happen is there should be a lot fewer required missions.  There should be a lot fewer of the things that Secretary Hagel mentioned.  Maybe we put the remainder of our vainglorious military force on a diet, the same way we put other departments on a diet.  It’s all government spending at the end of the day.

End Mike Church Show Transcript

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