Wednesday, July 1, 2020

Home » » American Legion - American Legion News Clips 7.1.20

American Legion - American Legion News Clips 7.1.20

Marine Corps League Yankee Detachment #255  July 01, 2020    No comments
 
Good morning, Legionnaires and veterans advocates, welcome to July! It’s Wednesday, July 1, 2020; we’re halfway through the year, so it’s all downhill from here…
National Headquarters is closed Friday, so just in case tomorrow turns out to be a slow news day, I’ll go ahead and wish you all a safe and happy Fourth of July weekend.
And some American Legion history for the week ahead:
  • July 1, 1931: Membership in The American Legion breaks 1 million for the first time.
  • July 1, 1946: American Legion membership hits a national all-time high of 3,326,556.
  • July 2, 1937: The American Legion fights for, and gets, approval for 24-hour guarding of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery. The “sentinels” of the tomb are members of the 3rd U.S. Infantry Regiment, known as “The Old Guard,” which originated in the Revolutionary War. From midnight July 2, 1937, through today, the tomb is continuously guarded, regardless of conditions.
  • July 4, 1919: Issue 1, No. 1 of The American Legion Weekly magazine is published. The introductory column is written by Gen. John “Black Jack” Pershing. George A. White, one of the four officers who met with Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., in January to begin plans for the organization, is identified as founder of the publication. “The Legion is destined to be of tremendous value in fostering the ideals and purposes for which we fought,” Pershing writes in the original issue.
 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
If you wish to be removed from this email list, kindly email mseavey@legion.org with “Remove” in the subject line.  If you have received this from someone who forwarded it and would like to be added, email mseavey@legion.org.
 
By Karen DeYoung, Shane Harris, Ellen Nakashima and Karoun Demirjian | June 30, 2020 at 6:45 p.m. EDT
White House officials were first informed in early 2019 of intelligence reports that Russia was offering bounties to Taliban-linked militants to kill U.S. and coalition military personnel in Afghanistan, but the information was deemed sketchy and in need of additional confirmation, according to people familiar with the matter.
Several discussions were held with members of the National Security Council staff on the reports, which had been flagged as potentially significant and came at a time of growing tensions between Russia and the United States. Instructions were given to the intelligence community and the U.S. Central Command, one person familiar with the briefings said, to “find out more” about the bounty reports before proposing any action be taken.
Intelligence provided by captured Afghan militants suggested the bounty operation was in existence as far back as 2018, according to three people familiar with the matter, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the subject’s sensitivity.
Senior members of President Trump’s national security team indicated that they were not aware of the early intelligence, suggesting that it was mainly reviewed by lower-level officials.
It was unclear whether John Bolton, the White House national security adviser at the time, relayed information about that initial intelligence directly to Trump. Asked about it via an aide, Bolton said he had no comment.
Later, Bolton wrote on Twitter: “If reports that Russia offered bounty payments to Taliban forces for killing Americans in Afghanistan are true, it’s tantamount to an attack on Americans directly. At a minimum, we must consider strong economic sanctions as part of a comprehensive response.”
The White House’s awareness of the intelligence in 2019 was first reported by the Associated Press.
Intelligence analysts believe that the bounties probably resulted in the deaths of three Marines killed in April 2019 when the vehicle they were traveling in was blown up just outside Bagram, the main U.S. air base in Afghanistan, according to four people familiar with the matter.
This week, White House officials have said that intelligence about the Russian bounty program — which was examined again by the NSC in March — was not sufficiently substantiated to be brought to Trump’s attention.
At a White House briefing Tuesday, press secretary Kayleigh McEnany did not deny media reports on the intelligence, but repeated administration insistence that the information has not yet been “verified,” a process she said had been hindered by news leaks. The leaks, she said, were “targeted . . . against this president” and had damaged “our ability as a nation to collect intelligence.”
While numerous intelligence and former government officials have said that such reports would normally have reached the highest levels of government, including the president, McEnany said Trump is briefed only “when there is a strategic decision to be made.”
Trump, she said, has now been “briefed on what is unfortunately in the public domain,” although that “does not change the fact that there is still no consensus” within the intelligence community on its veracity.
But several people familiar with the matter noted that information is sometimes withheld from Trump, who often reacts badly to reports that he thinks might undermine what he considers his good relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The White House was “not the kind of environment, as in almost any business office, where you look to confront your boss with something,” Bolton said in a Washington Post interview last week. “And those are the circumstances we all worked in.”
It is not known whether the subject of the bounty reports came up last year in regular conversations between Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and his Russian counterpart, Gen. Valery Gerasimov. That was the customary channel for the United States to raise concerns with Russia on military matters.
In the early White House discussion of the reports, officials questioned the reliability of the sources of the information, aware that both the Taliban and the Russians were known to spread disinformation. More-recent information about the Russian bounty program has also come from captured militants in Afghanistan, current and former officials said.
Late on Tuesday, Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper said the Pentagon would do everything in its power to keep American troops safe. “Although the Department of Defense has no corroborating evidence at this time to validate the recent allegations regarding malign activity by Russian personnel against US forces in Afghanistan, I want to assure all of our service members that the Department takes very seriously any and all potential threats against U.S. military personnel,” he said in a statement.
Russia’s military intelligence agency, the GRU, which U.S. officials say ran the bounty program, was known to have been given a relatively free hand to engage in operations to rattle the Americans, according to several people familiar with administration assessments.
At the same time, the Russians were believed to want revenge for a number of perceived American transgressions, particularly against Russian interests in Syria. Among them were U.S. air and artillery strikes in February 2018 on forces in Syria that included members of the Wagner Group, a mercenary force run by a Russian businessman close to Putin that includes former members of Russian military and intelligence units. The U.S. strikes killed hundreds of attackers.
As U.S. officials last year weighed the closely held information about Russia paying bounties, disagreements about its credibility and importance were set aside until more information was available, people familiar with the matter said. The extent to which more intelligence made its way to the White House before the end of 2019 is uncertain.
But in February of this year, after discoveries of questionable militant cash flows and the interrogation of prisoners in Afghanistan, information again made its way to the NSC. In late March, after a restricted, high-level meeting at the White House, the CIA was tasked with assessing it.
CIA analysts determined that the information was credible and showed a Russian plot to target U.S. and coalition forces, current and former officials familiar with the matter said. One former official said that there was a significant amount of intelligence and that it left little doubt among those examining it that Russia was targeting American forces.
The National Security Agency, which examines intercepted communications, took a more skeptical view of the 2020 information and the credibility of the underlying sources, people familiar with the information said. But some said the disagreements between the NSA and the CIA have been overstated by Trump administration officials.
Potentially important intelligence is traditionally shared with the president and senior officials before it has been fully vetted, assessed and subjected to the scrutiny of several intelligence agencies, a former official said.
The 2020 information was deemed credible and significant enough to be included this spring in the President’s Daily Brief, which is produced for the president and shared with top aides. In May, it was converted for broader distribution in The Wire, a regular CIA compendium of intelligence reports, which may be accessed by other agencies as well as certain congressional officials, people familiar with the matter said.
“The President’s Daily Brief traditionally includes the best assessments that analysts can provide on the issues of the most importance to the president,” said David Priess, a former CIA briefer and author of “The President’s Book of Secrets,” about the secretive PDB and how it is constructed.
“The primary criterion for putting an assessment into the PDB is not whether it has universal analytic agreement, but whether it will help the president address threats to national security or take advantage of opportunities in foreign policy,” Priess said.
House Democrats sharply criticized administration officials for not doing more to make sure Trump was aware of the Russian operation, even if the intelligence community had not fully verified the information.
“There are frequently times that the president of the United States will be briefed along with caveats . . . but you don’t deprive the president of information he needs to keep the troops safe because you don’t have it signed, sealed and delivered,” House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) said after a briefing at the White House on the matter. “If you’re going to be on the phone with Vladimir Putin, this is something you ought to know.”
Some Republicans countered that the information, as they understood it, didn’t merit Trump’s attention. Sen. Ron Johnson (Wis.), who received a briefing on the intelligence from senior White House officials Monday, called it “unverified and completely not actionable.”
“This is not a big deal,” Johnson said. “The president’s got a big job, he can’t be made aware of every piece of unverified intelligence, and that’s what this was: unverified intelligence.”
Democrats said Tuesday that Washington should start considering sanctions on Russia for targeting U.S. troops, while leading House Republicans called for even harsher potential retaliatory measures.
“America’s adversaries should know, they should have no doubt, that any targeting of U.S. forces by Russia, by anyone else, should face a very swift and deadly response,” Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) told reporters.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who spoke Monday with the chief Taliban negotiator about ongoing U.S.-Taliban peace talks, said on Twitter that he pressed the militants “to live up to . . . their commitments . . . including, not to attack Americans.”
 
Zach England | 20 hours ago
Although Department of Defense officials say they like to “recruit the member, but retain the family,” there will naturally always be people transitioning out of the military — about 200,000 per year, according to the DOD.
And those transitioning are seeing many problems, according to a 2019 survey released June 23 by the Military Family Advisory Network, a non-profit that researches the needs of military families.
MFAN asked 7,785 servicemembers and spouses across the military a variety of open-ended and multiple-choice questions, ranging from health and well-being to employment and transition. They recently released a report on their results.
Upon transitioning, 55.4 percent of those surveyed felt they received no or not much help with the process. The rest relied heavily upon assistance from the military, with some using private sector sources, government help, or family and friends.
This group of more than half of respondents specifically complained that the support provided was insufficient and lacking for both servicemembers and their spouses.
“The TAPS seminar was not very helpful. Other than that, here was no assistance,” said the spouse of a Coast Guard veteran in a survey response.
The Transition Assistance Program (TAP) is one of the resources available at the all of the 307 employment assistance centers at military installations worldwide, according to the DOD. They also aid in career exploration, resume writing, and developing interviewing skills and job search techniques.
A report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office found that “complete and reliable usage data are not yet available” for these employment assistance centers. But MFAN’s survey results indicate that these centers are either not being used much or provide insufficient help.
Respondents’ number one concern in transition support was employment assistance, when the majority of respondents described difficulties seeking employment.
Most people said they can’t find any support to help them find work. According to the report, “nearly 30 percent said nothing is working, and an additional 22.8 percent said they wished they had more information and resources.”
At the same time, about a quarter of respondents said it was “very easy” to find employment opportunities. Networking, including LinkedIn and career fairs, and nonprofit assistance were at the top of the list of helpful resources, while only about 6 percent referenced military programs.
Alongside additional employment assistance, respondents said they could use extra support adjusting to civilian life, navigating medical and other benefits, and more information on retirement pay.
Despite these challenges, MFAN found that people leave the service for a variety of reasons, the first being retirement eligibility, which was consistent with their 2017 survey. The subsequent top factors in the 2019 survey were much different – some examples being leadership and work climate issues, or family and lifestyle reasons.
But amid a pandemic, the military is reaching retention goals across the board.
As of May, the Army surpassed its goal by 2,000 soldiers, the Air Force was on track with their target, and the Marine Corps was just 100 soldiers short of where they need to be by the end of September. The Navy was not able to provide retentions numbers at the time.
This has been largely attributed to an economic slump and uncertainty brought by the COVID-19 crisis — the military, with its job security, steady paycheck and benefits, is currently looking like a good place to be.
Currently, many soldiers are taking advantage of programs to delay their military departure past the peak coronavirus period, specifically in the Army and Marine Corps.
“What we’re seeing this year, which is directly related to COVID, is we do have a population of soldiers that what they were expecting at the end of transition has suddenly disappeared,” said Sgt. Maj. Stuart Morgan, a senior Army career counselor. “And now you have a soldier that is trying to go through a transition period that is now facing uncertainty on the outside.”
 
Leo Shane III | 10 hours ago
House Democrats will push to make extremist activity a stand-alone crime under the Uniform Code of Military Justice and call for the appointment of a new defense inspector general focused on racial issues among the armed forces as part of broader efforts to include issues of equality in the annual defense authorization bill being debated this week.
The move comes after more than a month of nationwide protests on issues of racial inequality and police brutality, and just a few weeks after House Armed Services Committee members expressed concerns during a Capitol Hill hearing on diversity that military leaders haven’t done enough to track those problems in the ranks.
The authorization bill, which has passed into law for 59 consecutive years, is a massive defense budget policy measure including issues like the annual service member pay raise, equipment funding priorities and personnel reforms.
But lawmakers have also used the legislative package in the past to try and highlight a host of social justice issues and societal changes. Issues of expanding combat roles for women, allowing gay and transgender troops to serve openly, and broadening religious expression have been among the most contentious arguments surrounding the legislation in recent years.
On Wednesday, when the House Armed Services Committee hosts a day-long mark-up of the fiscal 2021 authorization bill, the issues of racial justice and diversity will be among this year’s pressing debates.
Rep. Jackie Speier, D-Calif. and chairwoman of the committee’s personnel panel, plans to introduce amendments related to both the new inspector general proposal and UCMJ changes.
“For too long, the military has refused to accept that it has a problem with white supremacy and other far right extremists in the ranks,” she said. “Equally appalling is its failure to address or even provide adequate information on the systemic racism that has kept servicemembers of color from rising through the ranks for generations.
“This is a fatal combination not only for issues of equity, but for the sake of troop readiness and morale and our national security.”
The draft authorization bill already includes language mandating more monitoring of extremist and white supremacist language in the ranks, amid mounting reports of hate groups recruiting and enticing troops.
In a survey of Military Times readers last year, more than one-third of all active-duty troops and more than half of minority service members say they have personally witnessed examples of white nationalism or ideological-driven racism within the military in preceding months.
Currently, troops can be charged for activity with such extremist groups, but only through indirect crimes like poor conduct or disruptive behavior. The new proposal would make extremist activity its own charge, with the goal of more easily prosecuting such cases.
The new inspector general’s office would also monitor that kind of racial criminality among the services, but would also have a broader mandate of looking at things like racial disparities in promotions, inequality in military prosecutions, and effectiveness of programs designed to increase diversity among the fighting force.
Committee staff said the proposal — which is expected to be offered as an amendment in the Senate’s authorization bill draft in coming days — will be modeled after the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, which for the last eight years has issued frequent reports on waste and inefficiency related to military projects in that combat zone.
Speier said she hopes the new inspector general can produce “an impartial and exhaustive investigation” into the racial disparities.
Both proposals have support among Democrats on the Democratic-controlled House Armed Services Committee, making it likely they’ll advance at least to negotiations with the Republican-controlled Senate.
 
Leo Shane III | 16 hours ago
More than a month after a national debate over the role of the military in response to protests concerning racial inequity and police brutality, Pentagon leaders will belatedly appear before Congress next week to testify about the scope and legality of such missions.
Democrats on the House Armed Services Committee had hoped to summon Defense Secretary Mark Esper and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley to Capitol Hill earlier this month to discuss the issue.
Defense leaders said those plans were upended by scheduling problems, but committee Chairman Adam Smith, D-Wash., suggested in public statements that White House officials were blocking the move in an effort to undermine oversight and avoid controversy.
On Tuesday, Smith announced that the two men will answer questions from the committee on July 9 at 1 p.m. for a hearing titled “Department of Defense authorities and roles related to civilian law enforcement.”
The two military leaders will face a mix of in-person and online questions from members, in keeping with current House coronavirus prevention measures.
The debate over military involvement in the protest response comes after more than 40,000 National Guard members at the peak were activated in cities throughout the country in the wake of protests related to the death of George Floyd, a Black Minneapolis man prosecutors say was murdered by a white Minneapolis police officer during an arrest on non-violent charges on May 25.
Four officers have been charged with crimes in connection with his death. Tens of thousands of protesters have taken part in demonstrations since then demanding changes in police tactics and a broader response to the problem of racism in society.
At the height of the protests, Trump indicated he might invoke the Insurrection Act to “dominate” U.S. cities and stop demonstrations he blamed on “professional anarchists, violent mobs, arsonists, looters, criminals, and rioters.”
He also announced that Milley would head up the military response to the problem, but defense officials never clarified if that was a new role and if that involved granting any new authorities for military troops on U.S. soil.
Smith and other committee Democrats have accused Trump of obscuring clear lines of separation between active-duty military responsibilities and state-controlled National Guard missions.
Army officials are still conducting an investigation into the decision by some personnel on June 1 to use two DCNG helicopters to conduct low flights over the streets of Washington, D.C. in an effort to disperse protesters. The incident caused minor property damage and drew widespread outrage as military overreach.
Esper and Milley are likely to face questions on a host of other military topics during their appearance before lawmakers, including recent allegations that administration officials ignored intelligence reports that indicated Russian officials offered financial incentives to Taliban fighters to kill U.S. troops deployed to Afghanistan.
 
By: Joe Gould | 19 hours ago
WASHINGTON ― Congress is readying proposals to rebuke President Donald Trump’s plans to pull about 10,000 U.S. troops from Germany amid dissatisfaction with the administration’s rationale for the move and concerns it will weaken NATO.
As Trump confirmed rumored plans to draw down American military personnel levels in Germany in the coming months, a bipartisan group of senators led by Utah Republican Sen. Mitt Romney proposed an amendment to the Senate’s version of the annual defense policy bill that would freeze troop numbers in Germany.
House Armed Services Committee Chairman Adam Smith, D-Wash., said separately Tuesday that the plan seemed strategically unsound and that Congress should block the administration until it makes its case. Legislative action is likely in the House on Wednesday when Smith’s panel marks up the HASC version of the bill.
“It is possible that there is a scenario where repositioning troops out of Germany is in our national security interests. The president has not made that case to date, the [Department of Defense] has not made that case to date, and the president is doing it in a very haphazard manner,” Smith told reporters.
“We need to know what they’re talking about, and it’s appropriate for the moment to say: ‘Yeah, hold up until we know where you’re going and what you’re doing on this.' We don’t think it’s a good idea.”
Trump said during an Oval Office meeting last week with Polish leader Andrzej Duda that the U.S. plans to move some troops from Germany to Poland, and that some troops “will be coming home.” He repeated accusations that Germany has been “delinquent in their payments” to the NATO security alliance.
Though Trump did not disclose the troop numbers involved, White House national security adviser Robert O’Brien said in a Wall Street Journal essay this month that the U.S. will reduce its permanently stationed force in Germany from 34,500 troops to 25,000.
“The Cold War practice of garrisoning large numbers of troops with their families on massive bases in places like Germany is now, in part, obsolete,” he wrote.
The Pentagon has said it is working options with U.S. European Command to meet Trump’s directive. Based on the U.S. agreement with Poland, the U.S. will add a division headquarters, a combat training center, an unmanned aircraft squadron and structure to support an Army brigade that could rotate in and out of the country.
An amendment in the House Armed Serviced Committee to counter that move is likely, according to the top Republican on the panel, Rep. Mac Thornberry of Texas. He’s among a bipartisan group of lawmakers who have expressed concern and deep skepticism about the drawdown plans, which would “benefit the Russians,” “disillusion our allies” and create a logistical headache for the DoD, he said.
“It’s totally unrealistic that you would take thousands of people out of Europe by Sept. 30. Where would you put them? Where’s the housing?” Thornberry told reporters separately on Monday. “Part of the reason I was so concerned about this is I think this idea or this plan ― such as it is ― came from a couple of people in the White House with input really from DoD.”
“There has to be some tie to strategy and our national interest, not issues of personality and so forth,” he said. “I think we will do something [at the HASC markup], and hopefully cooler heads are prevailing.”
The Romney amendment would prevent funds from being used to reduce the number of troops serving in Germany below 34,500 until the defense secretary verifies for Congress the move would not harm NATO, U.S. military operations or military families. There would also have to be assurances the administration consulted allies and that relocating troops would not result in significant costs.
Romney’s co-sponsors include Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.; Marco Rubio, R-Fla.; Chris Coons, D-Del.; Tim Kaine, D-Va.; and Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H.
Though the Senate began debate on the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act this week, it’s unclear whether the amendment will receive Senate floor consideration. It’s one of hundreds that have been offered.
Meanwhile, the co-sponsors are cautioning the move would weaken NATO and conflict with U.S. national security interests.
“The withdrawal of U.S. troops from Germany would be a gift to Russia, and that’s the last thing we should be doing,” Romney said in a statement. “We cannot abandon our commitment to our allies, and instead must strengthen our alliances in order to reign in the world’s bad actors and promote the values of freedom and democracy around the world.”
“The administration’s withdrawal plans would inflict lasting damage to our transatlantic relations and harms our national security,” Shaheen said in a statement. “I’m proud to support this bipartisan amendment and hope that the Senate takes this opportunity to send a resounding message to the administration and our allies alike that the United States stands firmly with our allies.”
 
 
 
     

0 comments:

Post a Comment