News and Comment by the Col: Killing Osama and trashing the biggest intelligence coup of the war.
Mike Visser: How to get armed
Riki Ellison: Founder/Pres Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance on Russian threat to NATO
Drop: Stanford U Military Network; More Threats; ESGR; Last Thoughts
The following is the exact message I received today about the actions of the Bank of America. It speaks for itself:
McMillan Fiberglass Stocks, McMillan Firearms Manufacturing, McMillan Group International have been collectively banking with Bank of America for 12 years. Today Mr. Ray Fox, Senior Vice President, Market Manager, Business Banking, Global Commercial Banking ( Bank of America ) came to my office. He scheduled the meeting as an “account analysis” meeting in order to evaluate the two lines of credit we have with them…. He spent 5 minutes talking about how McMillan has changed in the last 5 years and have become more of a firearms manufacturer than a supplier of accessories.
At this point I interrupted him and asked “Can I possibly save you some time so that you don’t waste your breath? What you are going to tell me is that because we are in the firearms manufacturing business you no longer want my business.”
“That is correct” he says.
I replied “That is okay, we will move our accounts as soon as possible. We can find a 2nd Amendment friendly bank that will be glad to have our business. You won’t mind if I tell the NRA, SCI and everyone one I know that BofA is not firearms industry friendly?”
“You have to do what you must” he said.
“So you are telling me this is a politically motivated decision, is that right?”
Mr Fox confirmed that it was. At which point I told him that the meeting was over and there was nothing left for him to say.
I think it is important for all Americans who believe in and support our 2nd amendment right to keep and bear arms should know when a business does not support these rights. What you do with that knowledge is up to you. When I don’t agree with a business’ political position I cannot in good conscience support them. We will soon no longer be accepting Bank of America credit cards as payment for our products.
Kelly D. McMillan
Director of Operations, McMillan Group International, LLC
623-582-9635
1638 W Knudsen Dr, Phoenix, Arizona 85027
McMillan Integrity-Global Vision
General of the Army Douglas MacArthur was an amazing man who lived a life doing things most people don’t even dream of. He was one of the most popular generals in the world after WWII. He rebuilt Japan. He fought the Korean War—until he was fired by President Truman.
On 12 May 1962 he personally touched my life. I was a cadet at West Point when he addressed us at our noon meal. Officially, he was there to accept the Sylvanus Thayer Award, given to only the most outstanding of citizens. What he did was say good-bye as he formally stepped out of public life. I still have (somewhere) a tape of that speech. It touched all of our lives—and still does. It catches the very values, culture, and core of West Point—values I have lived by, or tried to live by, my entire life. Here are some key parts of the speech to the Corps of Cadets.
Duty … Honor … Country. Those three hallowed words reverently dictate what you ought to be, what you can be, what you will be. They are your rallying points: to build courage when courage seems to fail; to regain faith when there seems to be little cause for faith; to create hope when hope becomes forlorn.
Let civilian voices argue the merits or demerits of our processes of government; whether our strength is being sapped by deficit financing, indulged in too long by federal paternalism grown too mighty, by power groups grown too arrogant, by politics grown too corrupt, by crime grown too rampant, by morals grown too low, by taxes grown too high, by extremists grown too violent; whether our personal liberties are as thorough and complete as they should be. These great national problems are not for your professional participation or military solution.
The shadows are lengthening for me. The twilight is here. My days of old have vanished tone and tint; they have gone glimmering through the dreams of things that were. Their memory is one of wondrous beauty, watered by tears, and coaxed and caressed by the smiles of yesterday. I listen vainly for the witching melody of faint bugles blowing reveille, of far drums beating the long roll. In my dreams I hear again the crash of guns, the rattle of musketry, the strange, mournful mutter of the battlefield.
Today marks my final roll call with you, but I want you to know that when I cross the river my last conscious thoughts will be of the Corps, and the Corps, and the Corps.
I recently blogged about the huge trashing of incredibly valuable intelligence information our SEALs retrieved when they took Osama out a year ago. By telling the world that we’d taken Osama the minute our troops were out of Pakistan we totally blew the opportunity to exploit the intell and go after bad guys, their bank accounts, etc.
Well, one of the places that evaluated all that data was the Terrorism Center at West Point. Some of the “revelations” in these first documents include complaints about FOX News and recommendations to use the other news channels so the Islamic Jihadi position can be favorably reported. I mean, who’d guess that the Main Stream Media is wildly biased to the left?
Anyway, here’s the link to what has been released.
http://www.ctc.usma.edu/posts/letters-from-abbottabad-bin-ladin-sidelined
President Obama went to Afghanistan on the anniversary of Osama bin Laden’s capture and killing by US Navy Seals a year ago. There’s been lots of political analysis and talk about this raid and the President’s visit overseas on the anniversary. Here’s the bottom line from this former Mideast War Planner.
First, I’ve received a lot of info about how Mr. Obama made his decision to go after Osama. My opinion, Mr. Obama did it right. He considered all the options and made the call. Things can always be done better, especially with the benefit of hindsight, but I feel Mr. Obama acted very properly for the Commander In Chief. Maybe it could have/should have been done sooner, but, it was his call, and he made it. And it worked. He deserves the credit for making the right decision; that’s what we pay presidents to do. If it had failed, he would have to have taken the blame. It worked. The world is now rid of Osama thanks to US Special Operations Forces.
Mr. Obama’s trip to Afghanistan at this time has been picked on. I agree with it. He went there to rally and encourage the troops; this is something the Commander in Chief should do.
The document he signed with Afghan President Karzai is quite another thing. Mr. Obama’s plan is for us to cut and run. We’re saying the war is or is about to be over—only problem, the enemy doesn’t know that. Karzai has been doing little but trashing the US this past year—what would you do if you knew Big Brother was leaving shortly and the bad guys were staying forever? While our operations were and are working very well over there—in the countryside, they weren’t and aren’t working in the very, very corrupt capital of Kabul. So Afghanistan will soon become a home for Radical Islam, as it has been in the past. But, that, too is off my subject.
The big thing that has been almost totally left out of the news analysis this week is, to me, perhaps equal to the killing of Osama. When our great Special Operators took out Osama they also brought home a huge amount of great intelligence information. The data included such things as bank account numbers used by Osama’s folks, names and locations of many leaders, plans for future operations, and the like. This was a treasure trove of data we had no idea about.
And, it’s seems likely that at least many senior folks in Pakistan’s government didn’t know Osama was nearby. The only way Osama’s network heard from him was by occasional messenger—and very, very few of his people knew where he was. So, the fact that we got Osama could have easily have remained a secret for up to a couple of weeks. Think what we could have done with that intelligence information if we’d kept quiet about the hit for, seven to ten days. Bank accounts could have been wiped out and people using them traced. Subordinate leaders could have been identified and even taken out. Future operations could have been dealt with by planned counter-attacks. The list goes on.
But what did we, the good old US of A, do? We blabbed the whole thing to the world instantly. Would it not have been just as big a coup—indeed, a bigger one, to tell the world we got him and cleaned up a bunch of his subordinates, etc? We threw away all that benefit, and we, and many peoples around the world, are paying for that goof with human lives, because once the word was out, of course, the bad guys closed their own accounts and moved people and assets—wouldn’t you?
The real anniversary of this past week was the killing of Osama and the dumping of perhaps the biggest intelligence coup of the war. Folks, let’s never let that happen again. That was institutional strength stupidity.
