Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

There will be lawyers.

Naturally gregarious and alpha

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

False Scribes! False Scribes!

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.

I personally stopped the public option…

Saul Alinsky is my co-pilot.

We can agree to disagree, but i’m right.

Everybody saw this coming.

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

Well, except the wingnuts. fuck those guys!

Women: they get shit done

No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

How does anyone do Gilligan’s Island as trump world and not cast Jared as Gilligan?

All your base are belong to Tunch.

It’s been a really long fucking year.

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.

Yes we did.

It’s not even safe to go out and pick up 2 days worth of poop anymore.

You are here: Home / Archives for Adam L Silverman

Adam L. Silverman is a consulting national security subject matter expert specializing in low intensity warfare (asymmetric, irregular, and unconventional warfare, revolution, insurgency, terrorism), civil affairs, psychological operations, and cultural considerations for strategy and policy.

He routinely provides operational support to a number of US Army, DOD, and other US Government elements. Dr. Silverman holds a doctorate in political science and criminology from the University of Florida, as well as masters' degrees in comparative religion and international security. Full professional bio available here: https://www.balloon-juice.com/adam-silverman-bio/

Adam Silverman has been a Balloon Juice writer since 2015.

Breaking: Mass Shooting At a Boulder, Colorado King Soopers

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Here’s the YouTube live feed of KCEN 6’s coverage:

Law enforcement has taken away an individual in hand cuffs, but it is unclear if he is the suspect:

https://twitter.com/DanSnyderFOX25/status/1374112891419435020

There is a video bouncing around from an unidentified live streamer who actually caught some of the shooting on video. This includes several gun shots, several injured or dead people, and one exceedingly nonchalant old guy checking his cell phone and wearing his mask wrong…

I’ve yet to see anything official regarding the number of fatalities, I’ll update once a reliable and confirmable source provides credible and verified information.

Here’s Governor Polis’s statement:

Update at 6:50 PM EDT

Here’s reporting with footage from Reuters on the individual taken out in handcuffs:

Update at 7:15 PM EDT (via TaMara):

Open thread!

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Contra A Faux Hillbilly – Fauxbilly? – the Liberal Arts Education Was Created To Train What We Now Call Military Officers

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The other night AL brought the musings of fake hillbilly JD Vance on education for the officer corps of America’s All Volunteer military (AVF for All Volunteer Force) to the blog’s attention. I’d already seen his “jenius” on display earlier in the day.

Ordinarily I’d ignore Vance even as he’s receiving financial backing from Peter Thiel who seems to have a sweet tooth for Holocaust deniers, white supremacists, and neo-fascists and enjoys bankrolling them.

But in this case I just want to point out, as someone who has spent a lot of his career involved in professional military education, that the whole reason the Liberal Arts and the liberal arts education was created was to educate the young men who were destined to become the officer corps of their day. Take it away Professor DeLong (emphasis mine):

But originally the “liberal arts” had the most direct vocational objectives of all:

Wikipedia: The Liberal Arts: The liberal arts… are those subjects or skills that… were considered essential for a free person… participating in public debate, defending oneself in court, serving on juries, and most importantly, military service…. Grammar, rhetoric, and logic were the core liberal arts. During medieval times… these subjects (called the Trivium) were extended to include arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy…. Together the Trivium and Quadrivium constituted the seven liberal arts of the medieval university curriculum…

From which I deduce:

  • The original “liberal arts” make up a vocational program–an education suitable for some landlord scion who is going to be a player in civic governance.
  • Timothy Burke, Professor of History at Swarthmore, does not teach one of the seven “liberal arts”–and by calling what he teaches.

Ladies and gentlemen, please allow me to present JD Vance: fake hillbilly, funded by a neo-fascist, enlisted Marine Corps Public Affairs* veteran, and someone who apparently paid little to no attention to anything while attending THE Ohio State University and Yale Law School the producer, along with Harvard Law, of America’s worst elites and notables since the 1820s.

Open thread!

* Here is a simple pictorial explainer of Public Affairs.

Contra A Faux Hillbilly - Fauxbilly? - the Liberal Arts Education Was Created To Train What We Now Call Military Officers

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The Office of the Director of National Intelligence Has Released Its 2020 Election Assessment & the Executive Summary of Its 2021 Domestic Violent Extremism Assessment

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I had originally planned on covering the Office of the Director of National Intelligence’s (ODNI) assessment of Foreign Threats To the 2020 US Federal Elections on Tuesday night, but decided we needed something on the then just happened domestic terrorist attack in Atlanta. Yesterday, ODNI also released the executive summary from a recently completed threat assessment into domestic violent extremism. Given that the two assessments overlap in a key finding, I’ve decided to basically deal with them in one post. Especially because the assessment on foreign threats to the 2020 elections basically tracks with everything we covered here between my Black PSYOP series of posts beginning in October 2019 and Cheryl’s posts on the topic here and at her Nuclear Diner. In other words, between Cheryl and I, you all were getting pretty close to the same assessment that ODNI has put together. On behalf of Cheryl: we demand a raise!!!!  

You can click across and read the whole assessment for yourself, but here’s the key findings:

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence Has Released Its 2020 Election Assessment & the Executive Summary of Its 2021 Domestic Violent Extremism Assessment

You’ll notice that Key Judgement’s 2, 3, and 4 all track with what we’ve been discussing here since October 2019. In the Black PSYOP 1 and 2 posts we covered what misinformation and agitprop was being laundered, by whom, and why. Including this lovely little item dated May 2014, which I misdated to April 2014 in the post:

Anyone surprised by these findings, such as self declared information warfare expert Thomas Rid, quite simply, didn’t want to know about them because they had their own agendas. Specifically downplaying that anything that has actually been happening since at least 2014 if not 2011 in terms of Russian information warfare was actually happening. He’s suddenly surprised because he’s spent the past several years writing, publishing, and defending a book on information warfare that essentially denies it is actually occurring.

We also covered what Rudy Giuliani, Chanel Rian, and OAN News were doing to mule this Russian misinformation and agitprop to Trump, his surrogates in the House and the Senate, in the conservative movement, and in the conservative news media. As well as what Senators Johnson, Grassley, and Graham were doing with that material in the Black PSYOP Part X. And while it was reported at the time, in July 2020, we now have confirmation directly from Democratic members of Congress that Congressman Nunes received this fabricated material directly from Andreii Derkach. As in the Democrats actually have the delivery receipt!

The executive summary of the ODNI’s report on domestic violent extremism brings us to the overlap. Here are the findings:

(U) The IC assesses that domestic violent extremists (DVEs) who are motivated by a range of ideologies and galvanized by recent political and societal events in the United States pose an elevated threat to the Homeland in 2021. Enduring DVE motivations pertaining to biases against minority populations and perceived government overreach will almost certainly continue to drive DVE radicalization and mobilization to violence. Newer sociopolitical developments—such as narratives of fraud in the recent general election, the emboldening impact of the violent breach of the US Capitol, conditions related to the COVID-19 pandemic, and conspiracy theories promoting violence—will almost certainly spur some DVEs to try to engage in violence this year.

(U) The IC assesses that lone offenders or small cells of DVEs adhering to a diverse set of violent extremist ideologies are more likely to carry out violent attacks in the Homeland than organizations that allegedly advocate a DVE ideology. DVE attackers often radicalize independently by consuming violent extremist material online and mobilize without direction from a violent extremist organization, making detection and disruption difficult.

(U) The IC assesses that racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists (RMVEs) and militia violent extremists (MVEs) present the most lethal DVE threats, with RMVEs most likely to conduct mass-casualty attacks against civilians and MVEs typically targeting law enforcement and government personnel and facilities. The IC assesses that the MVE threat increased last year and that it will almost certainly continue to be elevated throughout 2021 because of contentious sociopolitical factors that motivate MVEs to commit violence.

(U) The IC assesses that US RMVEs who promote the superiority of the white race are the DVE actors with the most persistent and concerning transnational connections because individuals with similar ideological beliefs exist outside of the United States and these RMVEs frequently communicate with and seek to influence each other. We assess that a small number of US RMVEs have traveled abroad to network with like-minded individuals.

(U) The IC assesses that DVEs exploit a variety of popular social media platforms, smaller websites with targeted audiences, and encrypted chat applications to recruit new adherents, plan and rally support for in- person actions, and disseminate materials that contribute to radicalization and mobilization to violence.

(U) The IC assesses that several factors could increase the likelihood or lethality of DVE attacks in 2021 and beyond, including escalating support from persons in the United States or abroad, growing perceptions of government overreach related to legal or policy changes and disruptions, and high-profile attacks spurring follow-on attacks and innovations in targeting and attack tactics.

(U) DVE lone offenders will continue to pose significant detection and disruption challenges because of their capacity for independent radicalization to violence, ability to mobilize discretely, and access to firearms.

And it is the last sentence of Key Judgement 2 regarding US officials and prominent Americans promoting the Russian misinformation and agitprop against Biden that was key to Putin’s efforts to effect the 2020 election outcome and the final sentence of the first finding on domestic violent extremism –  narratives of fraud about the election, calling “patriots” and “real” American to the Capitol to stop the certification of the Electoral College votes, use of racial slurs when referring to COVID-19, etc – overlap. Because we’ve seen the same US officials and prominent Americans within the conservative movement and conservative news media promote Putin’s misinformation and agitprop and promote the conspiracy theories about the election being stolen, calling “patriots” and “real” Americans to action to do something about it, and using racial slurs to refer to COVID-19. Additionally, as in Key Judgement 2 and the fourth finding on domestic violent extremism, we see the connection to foreign actors promoting, facilitating, and encouraging Americans to act on either Russia’s misinformation and agitprop, a variety of conspiracy theories, and white Christian supremacy. It is well documented that the Russians have funded, supported, and manipulated American white supremacists, Christian supremacists, and anti-government extremists.

Do take the time to read both documents, neither is very long, and you’ll get both a real solid understanding of how the Intelligence Community understands these problem sets and an appreciation for having professional, mature leadership running the US Intelligence Community.

Open thread!

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Breaking: Eyewitness Reports Indicate the Atlanta Mass Shooter/Domestic Terrorist Was Specifically Targeting Asians, Contradict This Morning’s Law Enforcement Statements

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It did not take long for what everyone expected Robert Aaron Long’s motive was to be reported:

His social media feed lines up with what the eyewitnesses are telling the Korean language press. As always, take the reporting on the social media posts with a grain of salt:

It should not be a surprise to anyone that Long was lying when he told the police that he committed his act of domestic terrorism against Asian-Americans and Asians living in America because of a possible sex addiction. Which led Cherokee County, GA Sheriffs Captain Jay Baker to make this exceedingly stupid remark:

Apparently the police really dropped the ball, which, perhaps, explains Captain Baker’s stupid statement.

Hate crimes targeting Asian-Americans and Asians residing in or visiting the US went up by about 150% last year. Atlanta has a very, very large number of strip clubs, gentlemen’s clubs, massage parlors, sex shops and emporiums. That the only three places that the possible sex addict felt the need to target were the ones owned by Asians/Asian Americans and predominantly employing Asians/Asian Americans should have been what is known as a clue that this was specifically targeted at the Asian American community.

If someone broke into the Cherokee County Sheriff’s Department and stole all the toilet seats, Captain Baker would likely tell the press that his investigators were stymied because they had nothing to go on…

Every time a Republican elected or appointed official or a conservative movement official or a conservative “news” personality – from the anchors on Fox News to the commenters – refers to COVID-19 with a derogatory slur instead of “COVID-19” or insinuates that immigrants – documented or undocumented – as well as those seeking asylum or refugee status are somehow bringing COVID-19 in and will make things worse, all they’re doing is feeding the fear, grievance, and victimization of their political base, their supporters, and their viewers. If you want to know where Long was radicalized, the answer is simple. Right here in the US, by Trump, Stephen Miller, Peter Navarro, Kevin McCarthy, at least 2/3rds of McCarthy’s House Republican Caucus, at least 1/2 of the Senate Republican Caucus, by hundreds of elected and appointed Republican officials, by Fox News, OANN, Newsmax, Breitbart, Ben Shapiro and his execrable writers and commenters at the Daily Wire, by right wing talk radio, by right wing social and digital media.

Open thread!

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Breaking: Mass Shooting Apparently Targeting Asian-Americans In Atlanta; Suspect In Custody

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Amid a recent spike in anti-Asian-American hate crimes and acts of violence, many of which have been directed at older Asian-American women or Asian women residing in the US, we now have a mass shooting in Atlanta that, from the initial reporting on the casualties appears to be targeted against Asian-Americans.

From KIRO Channel 7:

ATLANTA — At least eight people were killed Tuesday after shootings at three spas in the Atlanta area, authorities said.

Update 8:52 p.m. EDT March 18: Robert Aaron Long, 21, of Woodstock, the suspected gunman in the Cherokee County massage parlor shooting, was caught following a chase in Crisp County, WSB reported. Crisp County is located about 175 miles south of Acworth.

Officials in Cherokee County have updated the death toll to four, bringing the overall total from all three shootings to eight.

Original report: At a news conference, Atlanta police Chief Rodney Bryant confirmed that the four victims at the northeast Atlanta spas were women and appeared to be Asian.

“It appears that they were Asian,” Bryant told reporters.

Bryant told reporters that police originally responded to a robbery call at the Gold Massage Spa.

Unlike past mass shootings, this one is not currently getting wall to wall breaking news coverage on CNN and MSNBC. They’re showing the regularly scheduled episodes of Chris Cuomo’s and Rachel Maddow’s nightly shows respectively.

While we do not yet have more information on the other four victims, as in if they are also Asian-American or Asian, my guess is that because the shooter was targeting massage parlors, we’re likely to find out that at least some of the other victims are also Asian-American or Asian.

I want to make four important points here as the reporting on this mass shooting develops:

  1. The Asian-American and Asian communities in the US are not monolithic. The identifying language – Asian-American and Asian – covers a tremendous diversity in ethnicities and, as a result, obscures almost as much as it reveals.
  2. Whether it is because Asian-Americans and Asians residing in America are considered to be a successful ethnic group or immigrant group by Americans who are not of Asian descent or for some other reason, attacks on these communities – from hate crimes to domestic terrorism – seem to get underreported. This is, itself, not that unusual. Until everyone was carrying their own camera and video recording device in their phones, crimes against Black Americans, as well as Latinx and Hispanic Americans was also under reported by the news media.
  3. I fully expect that this attack, because it involved massage parlors, is going to get rolled into the breathless news media obsessions and narratives, promoted by law enforcement, that these women were victims of human trafficking and/or were sex workers. So both victims and had it coming at the same time. We saw this bullshit narrative* in the south Florida arrests a couple of years back that snared New England Patriot’s owner Bob Kraft. And we saw it again in Tampa during this year’s Super Bowl. It is important to remember that Kraft was let off the hook regarding preliminary charges, but the Asian and Asian-American women involved with the spas that were raided in the stings all got charged for sex crimes.
  4. I will NOT BE SURPRISED to find out that the shooter was motivated by some bizarre conspiracy theory, related to QAnon or not, about human trafficking for the sex trade and his attack was motivated by that, as well as the recent attempts by conservatives to ramp up the negative rhetoric regarding the Peoples Republic of China in general and in regards to the origins of COVID-19 in specific.

If I see any updates, I’ll add them below.

Update at 10:05 EDT

CBS News has some additional details that, I think, are going to confirm my worst assumptions regarding this being specifically targeted at Asian-Americans:

Police said it was too early in the investigation to identify potential motives.

A shooting at Young’s Asian Massage in Cherokee County left three people dead and two wounded, according to the Cherokee County Sheriff’s office. The two wounded people were taken to the hospital, where one later died.

Later, three people were shot and killed at Gold Spa on Piedmont Road in Atlanta, according to Atlanta Police Chief Rodney Bryant. While officers were responding to the scene at Gold Spa, they received another call for a shooting across the street at Aromatherapy Spa, where they found another person who had been shot and killed, Bryant said.

Bryant said all four victims from the Piedmont Road shootings were female.

Cherokee County Police identified Robert Aaron Long, 21, of Woodstock as a suspect in the Young’s Asian Massage shooting. Long was taken in to custody Tuesday night in Crisp County, Georgia, according to Cherokee County sheriff’s Office Director of Communications and Community Relations Captain Jay Baker.

Updated at 10:27 PM EDT

Apparently Trump went hard into the slur during his interview on Fox earlier this evening.

Open thread!

* I am not denying the reality that women, as well as some men, and children are trafficked for sex. As well as for other work. Nor am I denying the reality that a lot of the women working in these spas are, in fact, actual victims as they are being forced to do sex work to pay off the debt accumulated to get to the US. But there is a difference between the reality and the breathless, something must be done narrative that law enforcement and tough on crime politicians push and that the news media seems to have a gigantic sweet tooth for.

Also, sex work should be decriminalized. Flat stop.

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A Quick PSA: The CDC Has Updated The Underlying Medical Conditions That Place People at Risk For Severe COVID-19

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The CDC recently updated the underlying medical conditions that place people at risk for severe COVID-19 illness. How recently? I have no idea since I only found out about it when someone texted me about it yesterday asking if I’d seen it. When I spoke to my own physician three or four weeks ago about my pre-existing conditions and he pulled up the CDC site it still had the original list that was prepared and published under the Trump administration in December 2020. So the change to the guidance has been within the past month give or take a day or so despite the website saying the revision went up in December 2020, which is not true. Since I’d not seen any reporting on this, I figured I’d make sure to bring it to everyone’s attention. While I figured that the Anderson on insurance guy knew and didn’t need me to tell him, I just checked and he DID NOT!!! I think we can all agree that Richard Mayhew would never have missed this type of thing… But I still want to make sure all of you readers and commenters and other front pagers know.

More seriously, the real reason I want to make sure you all see this is that while some of you live in states and municipalities that are handling the vaccination roll out well, including West By G-d Virginee!, which is why Cole got his first shot a couple of week’s ago if I’m recalling correctly, a lot of us are unfortunately living in places governed by the likes of Ron DeStupid, Charlie Baker, Greg Abbott, etc, etc, etc. Here in Florida, Governor DeStupid has decided to pick fights with both teachers, law enforcement, and emergency service personnel by refusing to lower the vaccination age requirement below 50 for people in those professions. This boiled over a bit when Walgreens, CVS, and Wal-Mart, which are all part of the Federal pharmacy COVID vaccination program told him to go piss up a rope, because they got their doses directly from the Federal government, and they’d follow the just revised Federal guidance on these classes of professionals not his guidance. I know from recent reporting that Charlie Baker in Massachusetts has decided to join the DeStupid is as DeStupid does vaccination regime and is picking fights over vaccine access with teachers and asthmatics. From the reporting we also know that as Greg Abbott was lifting the mask, social distancing, and occupancy mandates and forbidding municipalities from putting their own in place, Texas was almost at the bottom of states for percentage of the population vaccinated.

Before you start your inner ethical monologues about whether this is somehow cheating to use the form documenting your underlying medical conditions to get vaccinated now, it is important to remember that in places where a lot of the population are also all in on the DeStupid is as DeStupid does program, vaccines are just sitting waiting for someone to inject them into people that both want and need them. This happened in Florida last week where at the end of the weekend, the primary FEMA non-mobile vaccination site in Tampa for the greater Tampa Bay region had 3,000 doses left over that went unused. The site is set up to dispense 3,000 doses per day, so they basically had an entire day’s worth of doses left over. The reporting says this isn’t typical, so hopefully it’s a unique and not to be frequently repeated occurrence.

Here’s the link to the CDC’s medical conditions list. Though it isn’t 100% the original list as they appear to have now separated out Type 1 and 2 diabetes into the separate lists.

Here’s the original list of underlying conditions, which are still at the top of the list:

Adults of any age with certain underlying medical conditions are at increased risk for severe illness from the virus that causes COVID-19. Severe illness from COVID-19 is defined as hospitalization, admission to the ICU, intubation or mechanical ventilation, or death.

Adults of any age with the following conditions are at increased risk of severe illness from the virus that causes COVID-19:

And here’s the recently updated and expanded revisions:

COVID-19 is a new disease. Currently there are limited data and information about the impact of many underlying medical conditions on the risk for severe illness from COVID-19. Based on what we know at this time, adults of any age with the following conditions might be at an increased risk for severe illness from the virus that causes COVID-19:

So if you live in a state that is being run according to the DeStupid House Rules and you have one or more of the underlying conditions on the original or revised lists, contact your primary care physician or nurse practitioner and see what you need to do to get them to certify you to get vaccinated as soon as possible.

Open thread!

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Senior Military Leaders – Officers and Senior Enlisted – Have Decided To Very Publicly Smack Tucker Carlson Around

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Like every guy else on this site who has served in a uniform, as a DOD or Service civilian, or in the US intelligence community, we’ve all served with women. And not just in support positions regardless of what the official designators were. In the wars we’ve been fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan for the past 20 and 18 years respectively, no matter where we put the phase lines on the map, there were no defined lines that indicated where the fighting would and wouldn’t be. Women Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, and Marines, despite being designated in combat support roles for almost the entirety of these wars, often saw as much combat as their male counterparts. Every convoy of supplies, every Civil Affairs Team-Alpha mission, every Medical or Veterinary Operation could, at any moment, go from being a support or enabling mission to a combat one.

Similarly, women working within the US intelligence community, as well as in other agencies within the Interagency that deployed forward also often served in harm’s way. And lots of them – those working for the State Department, USAID, USDA, US Department of Energy, etc – went forward despite knowing they, like their male colleagues from these agencies, would NOT be authorized to be armed despite being deployed in a war zone! And yet they went. And the civil service women from the Interagency all went because they volunteered as part of what was referred to as the “civilian surge” to better enable and enhance the US military’s ability to successfully conduct Phase IV Operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I fought hard to have two women on my small team of cultural analysts – one a former student I’d recruited and the other a former Army intelligence NCO. I got my former student and was glad to have one woman on the team*. Why? Because we were deployed in a high context communicating, near-far relationship, honor-shame society that was also Muslim. This meant that women, and being able to talk to them, to have them talk to us and tell us what they needed – as women in general and as mothers, teachers, doctors, lawyers, engineers, etc in specific – was largely impossible without a woman on the team!

I once did a ride along on a MedOps with one of our Civil Affairs Teams-Alpha (CAT-A) and my former student did not come along. And we didn’t have a female medic or interpreter with us either. It took over half the day before anyone without a Y chromosome would come talk to us. Eventually someone sent a five year old girl to ask for something figuring that that was somehow not improper. Once we were able to get her what she needed for her mother, that broke the ice and the Civil Affairs medic was suddenly swamped by women. The first thing that was decided at the post mission after action review was that from now on a female CA Soldier, a female medic, and a female interpreter would be on the list of required personnel for these missions.

In Afghanistan they actually built all women teams – known as Lioness Teams – to go do this type of work with Afghan women. There was some discussion of doing this within our brigade, leading to the cringeworthy suggestion that since we were the Iron Brigade they should be called the Iron Maidens, but it was ultimately decided to simply ensure women were on all the essential missions because we didn’t have any female personnel who had gone through the specialty Lioness Team training. Here’s the link to a great, though infuriatingly sad, documentary on the Lioness Teams done by Frontline at PBS.

So I’m very glad to see a number of senior military leaders – officers and senior enlisted – visibly and vocally push back against Carlson’s offensive stupidity. Here’s a sampling I came across without even looking. If the WordPress formatting isn’t showing you the full, embedded tweet with the video, just click on the links to see and hear for yourselves.

Command Sergeant Major Michael Grinston, the 16th Sergeant Major of the Army:

US Training and Doctrine Command Deputy Commanding General LTG Ted Martin:

US Space Command Senior Enlisted Advisor/Command NCO:

GEN Paul Funk, Jr; Commanding General Training and Doctrine Command (who has also been using his social media feed to retweet and amplify other’s similar statements):

Major General Pat Donahoe, Commanding General Maneuver Center of Excellent and Ft. Benning:

MG John R. Evans, Commanding General US Army Cadet Command:

MG Dennis LeMaster, Commanding General US Army Medical Center of Excellence:

 

Statement made by GEN James McConville, US Army Chief of Staff:

I found these without really looking and I’m sure there are more out there. The US military is not perfect when it comes to dealing with women who are Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, or Marines, but the responses of the senior leadership to Carlson’s stupid agitprop is encouraging and reassuring. I would also suggest that this open support is possible because of who is president. The senior uniformed leadership knows that if they publicly push back on Carlson’s stupidity that they won’t be called out on it by any of the political loyalty officers that Trump had appointed to senior positions in the White House, at the DOD, and at the Services.

Open thread!

* Of the women who served in the US Army Human Terrain System, two lost their lives during their deployments as a result of enemy action. Both of these were peers of mine – they were also the field social scientists, read research and analytical directors and technical leads, for their teams. Nicole Suveges was blown up in Sadr City in Iraq in late June 2008, we had been emailing just the day before about an HR issue of all things. Paula Lloyd, who I did not know, died in early January 2009. She had served through the rank of Staff Sergeant in the US Army before going on to get her advanced degrees. Paula was attacked in early November 2008 by an Afghan local who doused her with gasoline that had been concealed in a container used for cooking oil and lit on fire while accompanying and assisting an Army patrol in Afghanistan. She ultimately died of her burn wounds two months later.

My former student, one of the best ones I ever had, came through her deployment successfully.

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