Let me fix that for you: Incompetent U.S. military under cowboy Pete Hegseth shoots down our own Border Protection drone in Texas BY accident

Why do Reuters and CNBC bend over backwards to obscure who did what to whom? 

U.S. military shoots down government drone in Texas accident, Reuters sources say

The U.S. military shot down a government drone with a laser-based anti-drone system, an accident that prompted the Federal Aviation Administration to bar flights on Thursday in an area around Fort Hancock, Texas, congressional aides told Reuters.

Congressional aides told Reuters the Pentagon used the high-energy laser system to shoot down a Customs and Border Protection drone near the Mexican border, in an area that often has incursions from Mexican drones used by drug cartels.

The Pentagon, Federal Aviation Administration and Customs and Border Protection issued a statement saying the military used a “counter-unmanned aircraft system ... to mitigate a seemingly threatening unmanned aerial system operating within military airspace.” ...

CBP deployed the laser technology this month to reportedly take down four suspected cartel drones, despite warnings from the FAA that the technology had not been deemed safe to use in the same vicinity as commercial flights, an aide told Reuters, adding agencies told them the laser had never before been deployed domestically.

Two weeks ago the military used this laser, and missed!

US military used laser to take down Border Protection drone, lawmakers say

 

 

Winning . . .

All today: 

Bill to fund DHS fails in the Senate

 

Judge blocks Pete Hegseth’s censure of Sen. Mark Kelly over troops video, for now

 

Fed chair drama: Tillis pours cold water on off-ramp for Powell criminal probe

 

Trump administration will end immigration enforcement surge in Minnesota: Homan

 

 

 

Venezuela's new dictator

Hegseth: When Trump Says U.S. Will "Run" Venezuela, He Means "He Will Be Able To Dictate"

Pete Hegseth's March and April 2016 NeverTrump comments about issuing illegal orders to the military make him look like an early member of the six Democrat panel he now criticizes

Link.

Link. 

Link. 

Link. 

Pete is nothing if not a shapeshifter like most of the people around Trump who were against him before they were for him. 

Oh, please Allah

The rising star tipped to end Hegseth's chaotic reign at Pentagon... 

 

NOEM ON CHOPPING BLOCK

 

 

Hegseth should never have been confirmed to SECDEF, Inspector General's report finds his use of Signal in March jeopardized troop safety against the Houthis

 Hegseth risked ‘potential harm to US pilots’ in using Signal to discuss strikes: Report

... “The Secretary sent nonpublic DoD information identifying the quantity and strike times of manned U.S. aircraft over hostile territory over an unapproved, unsecure network approximately 2 to 4 hours before the execution of those strikes,” the report states.

“Using a personal cell phone to conduct official business and send nonpublic DoD information through Signal risks potential compromise of sensitive DoD information, which could cause harm to DoD personnel and mission objectives.” ...

“Although the Secretary wrote in his July 25 statement to the DoD OIG that ‘there were no details that would endanger our troops or the mission,’ if this information had fallen into the hands of U.S. adversaries, Houthi forces might have been able to counter U.S. forces or reposition personnel and assets to avoid planned U.S. strikes,” the report concluded.

“Even though these events did not ultimately occur, the Secretary’s actions created a risk to operational security that could have resulted in failed U.S. mission objectives and potential harm to U.S. pilots.” ...

 

 

Oh what heroes these warriors imagine themselves to be, killing noncombatants in the Caribbean Sea, like shooting ducks in a barrel

 

Hegseth to Reporters: "This Is Called The Fog Of War," "That's What You in The Press Don't Understand"

This morning's drug boat crime cabinet meeting got one thing right

 

Comrade Karoline claims war crime was legal even as she said Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth knew nothing about it but Admiral Frank Bradley did

White House Throws Admiral Under the Bus on Boat Strike

S.V. Date, HuffPost

 

... Killing survivors of a destroyed vessel is literally an example of a war crime in the U.S. Department of Defense Law of War Manual. “For example, orders to fire upon the shipwrecked would be clearly illegal,” the manual reads.

Press secretary Karoline Leavitt, nevertheless, repeatedly stated that it was legal – even as she further claimed, as President Donald Trump did Sunday, that Hegseth was unaware that it had happened.

“On Sept. 2, Secretary Hegseth authorized Admiral Bradley to conduct these kinetic strikes. Admiral Bradley worked well within his authority and the law, directing the engagement to ensure the boat was destroyed and the threat to the United States of America was eliminated,” she said.

At the time of the attack off the Trinidad coast, Frank Bradley was head of the Joint Special Operations Command. According to a Washington Post report about the incident, it was he who relayed the order from Hegseth to “kill everybody” by sending Navy SEALs back to the disabled boat to have them kill the two people clinging to the wreckage.

In October, Bradley was promoted to run the U.S. Special Operations Command. ...

Seal Team 6 disgraces itself and the country it serves, obeys illegal Hegseth order to finish off survivors of already illegal September 2nd drug boat attack

One illegal act leads to another, and another, and another. 

Over 80 alleged criminals are now dead in such attacks, but we'll never know if they really were criminals.

 Hegseth order on first Caribbean boat strike, officials say: Kill them all: As two men clung to a stricken, burning ship targeted by SEAL Team 6, the Joint Special Operations commander followed the defense secretary’s order to leave no survivors.

... The alleged traffickers pose no imminent threat of attack against the United States and are not, as the Trump administration has tried to argue, in an “armed conflict” with the U.S., these officials and experts say. Because there is no legitimate war between the two sides, killing any of the men in the boats “amounts to murder,” said Todd Huntley, a former military lawyer who advised Special Operations forces for seven years at the height of the U.S. counterterrorism campaign.

Even if the U.S. were at war with the traffickers, an order to kill all the boat’s occupants if they were no longer able to fight “would in essence be an order to show no quarter, which would be a war crime,” said Huntley, now director of the national security law program at Georgetown Law. ... "the state using force is judge, jury and executioner," Huntley said. ...

If the video of the blast that killed the two survivors on Sept. 2 were made public, people would be horrified, said one person who watched the live feed. The Intercept first reported that the survivors were killed in a follow-up attack. ... There has been no public release of a subsequent strike video ...

Another Tuesday, another crime committed by Mad King Ludwig and his man who just follows orders

 

Secretary of War Crimes Pete Hegseth wants you to know he was just following orders

German General Anton Dostler was executed by firing squad in December 1945 after admitting he ordered the executions of fifteen captured American soldiers in March 1944 because he was ordered to do so by Field Marshal Albert Kesselring.

The latter was convicted in the Ardeatine massacre of hundreds of Italian citizens and sentenced to death in May 1947, but, incredibly, pressure exerted by the sympathetic English, including by Winston Churchill and Harold Alexander, resulted in a commutation of his sentence to life in prison by General John Harding in July 1947.

Kesselring would have died in prison, but even more incredibly was released from there in October 1952 for health reasons, and didn't die until 1960 of a heart attack.

The Kesselring affair is emblematic of the decadent trajectory of the English character still plumbing new depths even today, a trajectory America is also on. At least the Americans of the time dispatched Dostler expeditiously within months of his arrest.

The Italians hated Kesselring about as much as they hated Mussolini.

It's probably too early to guess how Pete will be remembered here. After all, he has crimes to go before he sleeps, and promises to keep.

 

Speaking of fatsos, here's a picture of a slightly pudgy Patton, who died aged 60 after an auto accident in Germany in December 1945

Rank has its pudgy privileges.

 

Just think of all the money Pete Hegseth wasted on all those military VIP flights for his fat-shaming session

 

So Pete Hegseth's whole point of bringing in all the Generals and Admirals was to fat shame them all in one place

No more Milleys. 

OK man, but it would have cost a lot less just to fire them all when they failed their next fitness tests.

 

 

Gee, I hope all those Generals and Admirals Pete Hegseth required to be in Quantico to hear his speech don't have any trouble returning to their duty stations when the government shuts down tonight

The round trip tickets must have cost a fortune, paid by the taxpayers.

Populism means speaking fifty words of English: Pete Hegseth joins Marco Rubio in his own more welders, less philosophers moment

Take courage people!

You too can become populists just like Pete and Little Marco. Just get your degrees from Princeton and Harvard and the Universities of Florida and Miami.

 

 

I'm so embarrassed for my country

 

It's not how MAGA Millennials feel, it's how they rook

 

Hegseth orders makeup studio installed at Pentagon

It's important to remember that screw-up Pete Hegseth is SECDEF because of J. D. Vance

 

... Vice President Vance had to break a tie vote to get Hegseth confirmed after three Republicans — Sens. Susan Collins (Maine), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) and Mitch McConnell (Ky.) — voted no. ...

More.