90 Miles From Tyranny

Monday, October 27, 2014

Girls With Guns

These Blogs Provide Links To Rule 5 Sites:

What is Rule 5?

The Other McCain has: Rule 5 Sunday: Ricochet

Proof Positive has: Best Of Web Link Around

The Woodsterman has: Rule 5 Woodsterman Style

Blackmailers Don't Shoot has: Rule 5 Link Around

The Pirate's Cove has: Sorta Blogless Sunday Pinup

Average Bubba has Rule 5 Friday

There Is A Planet Inhabited Solely By Robots....

NASA Promotes Muslims And The Department Of Defense Promotes Global Warming...

It's like a Dystopian Novel. But way too weird to be possible....right?

Last U.S. Marines, British combat forces end Afghan operations, prepare withdrawal

(Reuters) - The last U.S. Marines unit and final British combat troops in Afghanistan officially ended their operations on Sunday as they packed up to leave the country and transferred a massive military base to the Afghan military.

The American and British flags were lowered and folded up for the final time at the regional headquarters of the international military, 13 years after the toppling of the Taliban’s radical Islamist regime launched America's longest war.

The timing of the troops’ withdrawal from the base in the strategic province of Helmand was not released for security reasons.

Camp Leatherneck is the largest U.S. base to be handed over to Afghan control as the coalition ends its combat mission at the end of the year, leaving most of the fight against a resilient Taliban insurgency to Afghan army and police.

British forces transferred the adjacent Camp Bastion at the same time.

Once a teeming compound of some 40,000 personnel, the coalition's Regional Command (Southwest) combined base on Sunday resembled a dust-swept, well-fortified ghost town.

Concrete blast walls and razor wire were left guarding empty sand lots and barracks. Offices were bare, and bulletin boards stripped of photo tributes of fallen American troops.

"It’s empty now – when I got here, it was still bustling, so there were a lot of services around and people around," said Marine Capt. Ryan Steenberge, whose taskforce was overseeing surveillance and security for the withdrawal and will be among the last troops out.

"It’s weird to see different pieces pull away."

The most recent official estimate of combined international troops at the base was 4,500 – and those last few will be gone soon, officials said.

After the withdrawal, the Afghan National Army’s 215th Corps will be headquartered at the 6,500-acre base, leaving almost no foreign military presence in Helmand.

The province, which produces 80-90 percent of the opium that helps finance the Taliban’s insurgency, has seen fierce fighting this year, with Taliban and allied forces seeking to seize the district of Sangin from Afghan army and police.

The battles have raised concerns about whether Afghan forces are truly able to hold off the Taliban without intelligence and air support from the United States and its allies.

Officials with the U.S.-led coalition say the Afghan forces held their own this summer fighting season and did not lose any significant ground.

"I’m cautiously optimistic they will be able to sustain themselves," said ,,,

President Obama’s trusted senior advisor, Valerie Jarrett, was a key player in the effort to cover up that Attorney General Eric Holder lied to Congress about the Fast and Furious scandal, according to public records obtained by Judicial Watch.

The information is part of a Department of Justice (DOJ) “Vaughn index” detailing records about the gun-running operation known as Fast and Furious. JW had to sue the agency for the records after the Obama administration failed to provide them under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). A federal court ordered the DOJ to provide the records over the agency’s objections. Yesterday JW reported on the broad information in the records, including that Obama asserted executive privilege for Holder’s wife as part of the administration’s efforts to cover up the scandal.

Practically lost in the 1,000-plus pages of records is an index that shows Jarrett was brought in to manage the fact that Holder lied to Congress after the story about the disastrous gun-running operation broke in the media. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco Firearms and Explosives (ATF) ran the once-secret program that allowed guns from the U.S. to be smuggled into Mexico so they could eventually be traced to drug cartels. Instead, federal law enforcement officers lost track of hundreds of weapons which have been used in an unknown number of crimes, including the murder of a U.S. Border Patrol agent in Arizona.

The files received by JW include three electronic mails between Holder and Jarrett and one from former U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke to Jarrett. The e-mails with Holder are all from October 4, 2011, a significant date because ...