Spec Ops Delta seal
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rep is american hero, but go pvt kill indigenous land protectors?
automatic cred w/ right?
related to israeli spec ops in pvt intel/sec
AM SNIPER MOVIE // ACTION HERO?
HEGSETH WARRIOR ETHOS BS
see gallagher
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newsmax carl higbie seal 2 iraq tours, post hill press no corrob capt butcher of fallujah
; use nukes b/c my pal died; boost/defend bannon
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mma closeted
January 7, 2025, edition of The Benny Show, streamed on YouTube
BENNY JOHNSON (HOST): We have some clips, some, like, really cool stuff. I wanna play you this clip of Donald Trump witnessing a exfiltration by Delta Force that happened at Fort Bragg because we were part of the Seal team operation here, and it's something that is kind of remarkable.
I had no idea that I was witnessing history when we were actually riding on the back of these Humvees. Here's President Trump watching these military black op helicopters come rolling in at Fort Bragg. And I'm no hero here. We were simply filming in the back of one of the Humvees, but we got a chance to chill out with the Army Rangers and the Delta Force operators that were running this operation. This happened in the summer.
And as you can see here, the exact same helicopter platforms, the exact same special operators that raided Maduro and his compound — that looks actually eerily like what you have here in Fort Bragg. That's me in the back of the Humvee. You can see that — so we're in the back of that vehicle right there.
And this is the operation. This was happening in July, and I was witnessing from the back of that car right there. Yeah. I just had my camera. Right? Like, they'd let me tag along. President Trump was way over here.
But I witnessed what was about to happen in Venezuela. This was the dry run. It's epic. The details of that raid was remarkable.
Little did I know that I was watching the prep for what was about to happen to Nicolás Maduro, the most famous communist dictator in all of the world, most famous and powerful communist dictator in all the world because he sits ashore America.
Venezuela is not a real place. I want to just, like, talk through really quickly how important this Venezuelan raid was for us, our hemisphere, and the future of America. Something that's near and dear to my heart.
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AN 3 25
Back in 1962, when John F. Kennedy was president, an elite group of military outfits known as the U.S. Navy Sea, Air, and Land (SEAL) Teams was established. The roots of the Navy SEALs can be traced back to World War 2, but they were formally established under JFK's watch. And along the way, SEALs became known for taking on difficult, challenging operations.
On May 1, 2011, for example, Navy SEALs on orders from then-President Barack Obama successfully infiltrated an al-Qaeda compound in Pakistan and killed terrorist leader Osama bin Laden.
In 2025, former U.S. Navy SEALs have an increased presence on Capitol Hill — where, according to Politico's Ian Ward, they are serving as President Donald Trump's political "shock troops."
READ MORE: ‘A bullhorn to destroy people’: Accused fire back at Nancy Mace
Ward, in an article published on March 10, explains, "Since their founding in the early 1960s, the Navy SEALs have made their presence felt in every corner of the globe, executing some of the most dangerous and celebrated missions in U.S. military history. But now…. the elite unit has infiltrated a different kind of hostile territory: Congress. When the 119th Congress was gaveled into session in January, (Rep. Ryan) Zinke counted six former SEALs as his colleagues, the most ever: Reps. Eli Crane of Arizona, Morgan Luttrell and Dan Crenshaw of Texas, Derrick Van Orden of Wisconsin, John McGuire of Virginia and freshman Sen. Tim Sheehy of Montana."
Ward adds, "All are Republicans who have aligned themselves, in varying fashions, with Donald Trump and the MAGA movement."
According to Ward, the influence of these former Navy SEALs who now serve in Congress has been "quiet but significant" — and their approach is much different from GOP military veterans of the past.
"In the second half of the 20th Century," Ward notes, "the generation of Republican lawmakers who entered politics after serving in World War 2, Korea and Vietnam helped define a style of consensus-based conservatism that flourished until the Republican Revolution of the 1990s. By contrast, the current generation of ex-SEALs, who mostly came of fighting age during the Gulf War and the war on terror, have eagerly embraced a more combative style of politics — one that favors partisan warfare, legislative brinksmanship, and an open embrace of Trump."
READ MORE:'Hail Mary mode': Industries brace for 'consequences' of Trump tariffs
Ward continues, "This style takes its cues in part from the MAGA movement more broadly, but it draws on the combativeness at the heart of what several of the members called the SEALs' 'warrior mentality': the sense the SEALs will do whatever it takes — short of opposing Trump outright — to achieve their objective, even if it means bucking Republican leadership or breaking congressional norms. This background, several of the former SEALs told me, has made them particularly effective proponents of the new style of Republican politics ushered in by the Trump revolution. As the MAGA revolution has remade Washington in its own image, the former Navy SEALs have dutifully served as its shock troops on Capitol Hill."
:{READ MORE:'A blank check to Elon Musk': New Republican spending bill slammed by critics
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mma 1 24
on January 29, Newsweek published an article titled “Biden Military Draft Rumors Swirl After Iran Attacks” despite providing just four social media posts as evidence supporting this alarmist headline.
The article quotes posts to X (formerly Twitter) from former U.S. Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell (who played a key role in Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in Nevada and has spread misinformation online in the past) and from Robert J. O’Neill, a former U.S. Navy SEAL. Both of their posts speculate about the possibility of Biden reinstating the draft.
“Biden means more wars and a possible draft for young U.S. men and women,” wrote Grenell, “Trump means peace deals.”
:{While the piece finally notes in its 11th paragraph (of 13 in total) that “there has been no confirmation that Biden is interested in a military draft,” :{it goes on to claim that “a number of other social media users speculated on the idea.”}: As evidence for this, Newsweek cites two X users whose claims include that “Joe Biden wants a WW3 so the democrats can stay in power” and that “Biden's draft had better include men, women, and all of those letters Biden's America has dreamed up.” (These two posts have garnered a combined 27 likes as of Tuesday afternoon.)[twt]
the article was also shared by Arizona state House candidate Nick Kupper in a post to X. He wrote: “I’ve been saying it for a long time now. Biden will start a war & institute a draft this year before the election.”}:
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==
claims capt
mma 12 22
EMILY GRACE RAINEY (GUEST): Let me lay the scene out for you. You have a very quaint downtown of a southern conservative Christian area, and a drag show event coming from Raleigh, called the House of Coxx with the chief performer, Naomi Dix, decides they're going to do an all-ages drag show in our historic downtown theater. So, like you mentioned, we countered – we mobilized the community, got enough pressure to the point where they finally relented and changed the age from all ages to 18 and up, so our first objective was achieved and we are very happy about that, but we still wanted to protest and pray, because it was inappropriate that such a red light district show was right in a family friendly downtown, and it was within a thousand feet of a church and school, so these were breaking basic ordinances.
So, we gathered, and for two hours, from 5-7 PM, a group of Christians and myself, we prayed over – out front of the theater and read scriptures, Holy Scripture, and prayed, while no less than what was equivalent to an exorcism was happening on the other side of the police tape and the, you know, relentless Christophobic, anti-Christian hate speech being spewed from a group of LGBTQ aggressive activists was, you know, incredibly disturbing, theblasphemies were really just unspeakable, and we were, we – as much as theseaggressive leftistswant there to be an attack on a drag show, they just can't seem to get the Christians to attack. Well, maybe it's just because that's not what Christian conservatives do. And so, if they can't have us attack them, they will invent an attack. And that's what happened next.
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// cawthorne stolen honor, going for seal team 6 macho?
Cotton has claimed he was an 'Army Ranger.' That's just not true
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ex-Navy SEAL who bragged about 'breaching the Capitol' now claims he's 'not a traitor' after FBI questions him
January 13, 2021
A retired Navy SEAL is facing trouble from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) after posting a video to Facebook detailing his involvement in the U.S. Capitol breach...
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intercept 820
Coronavirus CrisisSEAL Who Shot Bin Laden Banned From Delta Air Lines for Not Wearing Coronavirus Mask
Matthew Cole
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aha/yikes: john wayne green beret movie seal team 6 bin laden kill (zero dark 30? am sniper] hyper macho so rev door sell cachet; several grifter trump groups? but
scary qanon 2 egs?!:
https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/qanon-functions-like-a-video-game-to-hook-converts-and-some-of-them-include-former-navy-seals-reports/
more than likely, a full-fledged supporter of the QAnon conspiracy cult will be sworn into the U.S. House of Representatives in January 2021: Marjorie Taylor Greene, on August 11, won a GOP primary in Georgia’s 14th Congressional District — and given how overwhelmingly Republican that district is, she is going into the general election with a major advantage. QAnon is showing no signs of slowing down, and according to the Daily Beast’s Kelly Weill, the cult is attracting some well-trained military veterans.
QAnon believes that President Donald Trump was sent to the White House to combat an international pedophile ring that has infiltrated the United States’ federal government and practices Satanism. Cult members also believe that an anonymous figure named “Q” is giving them updates on Trump’s battle against the satanic pedophiles.
FBI agents have warned that QAnon followers are quite capable of violence. And Weill, in an article published in the Beast on August 18, warns that some well-trained military veterans are embracing the cult.
“In particular, some ex-(U.S. Navy) SEALs are promoting belief in QAnon or related theories that falsely accuse many of President Donald Trump’s opponents of being involved in satanic pedophilia and cannibalism,” Weill reports. And according to Marc-André Argentino of the Global Network on Extremism & Technology, the potential for QAnon-related violence should not be ignored.
argentino told the Beast, “The violence we’ve seen has been by people without acumen and physical training. Where it could get scary is with people who do have training.”
Weill cites Louis Garrick Fernbaugh, a former Navy SEAL, as an example of someone who has been promoting far-right conspiracy theories — and he isobsessed with billionaire George Soros and Antifa. Another former SEAL Weill discusses is Stephen Ralston: on Instagram, according to Weill, Ralston “frequently uses QAnon hashtags, promotes Q videos, and posts about his interest in killing pedophiles. Although opposition to pedophilia is an overwhelmingly popular sentiment across political parties, QAnon turns the concern into a bogus call to arms against Trump’s foes.”
According to Argentino, “QAnon is rooted in this war narrative, in the sense that they’re in aninformation war against the ‘Deep State.’ Information wars are typically combined with a more physical element…. (Veterans) may want to be called upon to free the children from the pedophiles.”
One of the things that QAnon is doing to attract converts, Kyle Daly reports in Axios, is “working like a video game.”
“Game designer Adrian Hon has argued that QAnon is a lot like an alternate-reality game, in which players follow a trail of clues online and off, to solve mysteries or just discover more clues to chase,” Daly explains. “But QAnon also echoes other game genres, mashing them together to become an all-encompassing, highly addictive experience. Intentionally or not, it has rolled up gameplay components from the past several decades of game design.”
QAnon, according to Daly, also has elements of an “adventure game.”
“Adventure games are built around puzzle solving, with players using exploration and trial and error to discover secrets and backstory and progress through the game,” Daly notes. “Many classics of the genre have the player unravel a sinister conspiracy. At the center of QAnon are cryptic messages posted online by ‘Q,’ who claims to be a Trump Administration official with high-level clearance. QAnon adherents pore over these posts, often written in phony spy jargon, to divine clues and secret messages and make fresh links in the grand conspiracy aligned against Trump.”
==
ref
https://www.thedailybeast.com/what-happens-when-ex-navy-seals-go-full-qanon?ref=home
no lnx many
a man filmed leaving the area of an attempted pipe bomb attack on protesters in Portland, Oregon, was a former Navy SEAL who writes conspiracy theory-heavy social media posts decrying the left, Portland activists and news media recently reported.
But the man is just one of an eclectic mix of former SEALs apparently taken in by conspiracy theories online or citing those theories in violent writings. If acted on by highly trained ex-military elite, those paranoias have deadly potential.
Witnesses in Portland say two men threw three homemade explosives at protesters early on the morning of Aug. 8. Although no one was harmed and the men do not appear to have been filmed, citizen journalist Scott Keeler pursued a man spotted in the area and filmed his face. Activists and Oregon Public Broadcasting identified the man as Louis Garrick Fernbaugh, a former SEAL and CIA contractor. Fernbaugh, 52, has been named by police as a person of interest, but not charged with a crime.
Online, Fernbaugh has an extensive history of writing about conspiracy theories, particularly where they implicated the left. In this respect, he is part of a broader pattern of ex-SEALs, many of them with large digital followings, espousing conspiratorial ideas. They’re armed, suspicious, and in some cases, write in detail about potential plans to kill people they view as evildoers.
“People who are ex-military say, ‘I’m going to go liberate the kids.’ Is it bravado or is it a legitimate call to action?”
— Marc-André Argentino]
In particular, some ex-SEALs are promoting belief in QAnon or related theories that falsely accuse many of President Donald Trump’s opponents of being involved in Satanic pedophilia and cannibalism.
Marc-André Argentino, an associate fellow at the Global Network on Extremism & Technology,who monitors the QAnon conspiracy theory, said that theory—which has become one of the foremost in U.S. politics—has inspired an uptick in criminal acts by believers. (The Navy did not return a request for comment.)
“The violence we’ve seen has been by people without acumen and physical training,” Argentino told The Daily Beast. “Where it could get scary is with people who do have training.”
[QAnon Pushes Pedo-Ring Plots. Now They’re Stealing Kids.
RAMPING UP THE CRAZY
Will Sommer]
SEALs like Fernbaugh, who could not be reached for comment for this story, have extensive military training, and might be better equipped than the average person to build an explosive device or take up weapons. A grizzled ex-special operative with a graying beard, Fernbaugh has spent years dabbling in false conspiracy theories, some of them anti-Semitic and many targeting anti-fascists, who have been highly visible at Portland protests. (The Daily Beast did not review any posts in which he expressed affinity for QAnon.)
“George Soros is known to have paid ANTIFA to instigate rioting and create chaos that has caused millions in damage across numerous cities, but especially Portland, OR,” he wrote on Facebook in 2018, citing a conspiracy theory that falsely accuses a Jewish philanthropist of paying off protesters.
In the caption of a video on the same topic, Fernbaugh mused that “I’m surprised no one has slaughtered these sheep that have grown horns (ANTIFA),” and recent posts boasted of “infiltrating” groups of Portland anti-fascists during ongoing racial justice protests.
Fernbaugh appears to wear the same jacket in one of the videos as the man identified as him did in the footage from the aftermath of the Portland attack.He currently works selling shooting targets, including one made to look like a person dressed as a Portland anti-fascist.
Multiple people who know Fernbaugh, including a former colleague, told OPB that he was the man featured in Keeler’s video from near the scene of the explosive devices. A former law enforcement official told the publication that, based on the voice of the man in the video, they were comfortable enough in his identity that they were calling the FBI.
Meanwhile, the larger online conspiracy community is sprawling—the top QAnon groups on Facebook, alone, count more than 3 million combined members, according to an internal Facebook investigation, NBC News reported last week. These theories sometimes overlap in membership, and encompass millions of other people, spanning a range of false claims like that vaccines cause autism to the idea that the world is flat. In a group that large, some will almost inevitably be military or veterans.
But QAnon and related conspiracy theories like Pizzagate (both of which baselessly accuse Democrats of child abuse) seem to have an unusually high incidence among ex-SEALs. And some retired SEALs have been vocal in more explicit support for QAnon in particular, even if they have not been tied to the scene of alleged protest-related violence.
“If these people aren’t brought to justice, there’s gonna be some fuckin’ street justice doled out.”
— Stephen Ralston, ex-Navy SEAL
Stephen Ralston is a veteran who served on SEAL Delivery Vehicle Team One from 1990 to 1994, and SEAL Team Three from 1994 to 1998. Currently, he works as a private military contractor, according to his online bio, and has a podcast about special operations forces. On the Instagram for that podcast, and on his own Instagram feed, Ralston frequently uses QAnon hashtags, promotes Q videos, and posts about his interest in killing pedophiles. (Although opposition to pedophilia is an overwhelmingly popular sentiment across political parties, QAnon turns the concern into a bogus call to arms against Trump’s foes.)
Some of the Instagram memes specifically frame elite military as a force for “Q,” the anonymous forum poster behind the conspiracy theory. One typical example, a picture that calls special operatives “the teeth of the light,” promises that thousands of specially trained veterans are willing to use their skills if QAnon’s claims are validated. “If any of the claims prove accurate, justice will be served one way or the other,” the caption reads, in part. “We don’t forgive. We don’t forget.”
Ralston’s special forces podcast has also devoted at least one recent episode to QAnon.
“If these people aren’t brought to justice, there’s gonna be some fuckin’ street justice doled out,” he says while petting a dachshund in a teaser trailer for the episode, uploaded to Instagram.
Ralston, who has not been accused of any conspiracy-related violence, told The Daily Beast he was unsure of QAnon’s popularity with former SEALs or any other group, and declined to otherwise comment for this story.
Attacks by conspiratorial veterans have long been lethal. The 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, which killed 168 people, was carried out by veteran Tim McVeigh, who was steeped in anti-government theories and reportedly told people the Army had implanted him with a microchip. McVeigh’s own failure to join the Army’s special ops forces was reportedly a major factor in his anger, and he viewed himself as a kind of one-man operator. (“In his mind, much of his life has been one of thinking that he is in a kind of Special Forces of his own,” a law enforcement source told The Washington Post after the attack.)
Several recent violent plots associated with the anti-government Boogaloo movement have also allegedly been carried out by veterans or active service members. In May, two veterans and a current Army Reserve soldier were arrested in an alleged plot to throw explosives at a Black Lives Matter rally. That same month, a current Air Force staff sergeant was arrested for allegedly killing a federal security officer and attempting to kill another, in an apparent plot to kick off a new civil war that Boogaloo adherents believe is imminent.
QAnon has inspired its own wave of crimes, with the FBI labeling the movement as a terror threat. Some prominent QAnon personalities are not veterans, but pose as elite Defense Department operatives, including one man linked to several recent Q-inspired kidnappings, who poses as the head of the fictional Pentagon Pedophile Task Force, The Daily Beast reported.
QAnon support extends to at least one SEAL-founded company.Project Warpath is a clothing line owned by Tej Gill, a former member of SEAL Team Five who made headlines for selling “Hillary Clinton Killed My Friends” T-shirts after the deadly 2012 attack on a U.S. compound in Benghazi, Libya. Project Warpath also posts QAnon content to Instagram, including a recent post falsely linking the debunked Wayfair conspiracy (a QAnon-adjacent theory that falsely claimed children were being sold inside furniture on the home decor site) to Soros and the Clintons. Gill, who has not been accused of any conspiracy-related violence, could not be reached for comment for this story.
Argentino said QAnon’s popularity with special ops veterans might initially seem perplexing. Believers claim Q is a high-level military official. But as veterans of military intelligence circles should know, Q’s muddled posts do not operate anything like military work. (One former QAnon believer whose father had worked for the CIA previously told The Daily Beast she’d abandoned the theory when she realized Q was artlessly aping military language, in a way no service member would.)
A gray-bearded SEAL Team Five veteran, [Clark] Impastato served until recently as a police officer in Phoenix, Arizona, where he fatally shot a 15-year-old accused of making a drug deal.]
Yet elements of QAnon might be alluring to veterans, Argentino noted.
“QAnon is rooted in this war narrative, in the sense that they’re in an information war against the ‘Deep State,’” he said. “Information wars are typically combined with a more physical element ... [Veterans] may want to be called upon to free the children from the pedophiles.”
Some conspiratorial ex-SEAL content is compatible with QAnon, but it’s unclear whether those former SEALs are aware of its full connotations.
One former member of the elite SEAL Team Six recently shared a post falsely linking Black Lives Matter to the Palestinian militant movement Hamas. The ex-SEAL appears to have copy-pasted the post’s caption, which was full of Q hashtags, although he did not write them himself. “Thoughts on this? I am only sharing, so don’t start throwing a tantrum,” he asked his followers.
[The Disturbing Appeal of Boogaloo Violence to Military Men
OUTSIDE AGITATORS
Kelly Weill]
Mitch Aguiar, another former member of SEAL Team Five, has since left the military and gone on to build a name for himself as an MMA fighter and a salesman of military-themed apparel. Like some of his fellow brothers-in-arms,he’s also shared conspiratorial content on his 133,000-follower Instagram, including a post about the death of a QAnon supporter, but used a “PizzaGate” hashtag.(The Pizzagate conspiracy theory, which falsely claimed prominent Democrats were engaging in sex trafficking in a D.C. pizzeria, was a predecessor to QAnon, but fell out of favor after a Pizzagater shot up the restaurant. Another man set fire to the restaurant two years later, in January 2019.)
Aguiar also commented “he’s a pedo” on a fellow ex-SEAL’s meme that falsely claimed actorTom Hanks was wearing an ankle monitor, presumably because a secret court had found him guilty of child sex-trafficking. (This did not happen.)
The fellow ex-SEAL, podcaster Clark Impastato, regularly shares QAnon-flavored conspiracy memes on his Instagram, where he has more than 87,000 followers. A gray-bearded SEAL Team Five veteran, Impastato served until recently as a police officer in Phoenix, Arizona, where he fatally shot a 15-year-old accused of making a drug deal. Although the teen was unarmed, Impastato’s use of force was found to be justified, because the teen rushed Impastato, “pulling his previously concealed hand from his waistband and forming it into a fist with a single, hooked finger extended,” as if to imply holding a gun, according to court records.
Impastato voluntarily relinquished his police certification in January 2016, after racking up multiple misconduct complaints, state records show. Among them are two civil rights misconduct complaints, which state records describe as excessive force, one of them for allegedly punching a suspect. Another misconduct complaint against Impastato is for alleged “dishonesty/false statements” during the hiring process because he “did not disclose past sales of marijuana.” It was not immediately apparent from police records whether the complaints had been substantiated by police, and Phoenix Police did not return multiple requests for comment. In an interview with a military-themed energy drink company, Impastato said he left the force to become an entrepreneur on his own beard-care line.
As protests broke out over the death of George Floyd in police custody in Minneapolis in late May, Impastato posted a picture of himself carrying a gun with the caption, “The current chaos makes me wish I was still in to help out. ???????? I’m with you in spirit BROTHERS and SISTERS..” He also posted several memes about killing anti-fascists, including one about the movement coming to the suburbs “so I can get a stateside kill.”
Neither Aguiar nor Impastato have been accused of conspiracy-related violence, and neither returned requests for comment for this story.
The extent of these ex-SEALs’ commitment to the QAnon cause, even when they flirt with it, isn’t always clear.
Increasingly, QAnon belief exists on a spectrum. Where once the theory appealed mostly to a core group of diehards who waited for the next “Q drop” (posts on a forum by an anonymous person claiming to be military intelligence), a diluted version of the conspiracy has reached a broader audience with less absurd claims about pedophilia.
As The New York Times noted last week, QAnon content has recently surged in popularity with a broader crowd, including those who are unaware of its core claims, because it attached itself to a campaign to “save the children.”
Well-intentioned fears can have counterproductive results. Sensationalized fears about Wayfair can obscure the reality that many (nearly half, per one study) of trafficked children are exploited by relatives. And the sudden popularity of sex-trafficking conspiracy theories has overwhelmed legitimate anti-trafficking organizations with bogus complaints. In late July, the National Human Trafficking Hotline released a statement saying “the extreme volume of these contacts has made it more difficult for the Trafficking Hotline to provide support and attention to others who are in need of help.”
Some ex-SEALs operate in the murky area of Q-ish talk about sex-trafficking, conflating real cases with bogus statistics and linking their theories to high-profile celebrities and politicians, usually on the left.
Craig Sawyer, a Texas-based former SEAL Team Six member, runs an anti-trafficking group, and produced a documentary about child sex-trafficking. The group is distinct from theories like QAnon. Some QAnon believers, including the person pretending to be a member of the fictional Pentagon Pedophile Task Force, have targeted Sawyer, falsely accusing him of trafficking. Sawyer has even been openly critical of Q on Twitter, although not of all its claims.
“I’m not big on q, mainly due to how scary some of the followers are in their cult follower tendencies of an entity they can’t vet,” he tweeted in June. “But as long as the q narrative is ‘Do your own research’ & the info is accurate, that’s a good thing.”
Nevertheless, Sawyer frequently interacts with pro-Q personalities, and shares a wealth of Q-adjacent material, including a conspiracy meme about figures like Bill Gates and George Soros pursuing a number of fantastical aims like population control and “one world government.” (He shared the meme, asking followers’ opinion on it, without explicitly endorsing it.) Sawyer, who has not been accused of conspiracy-related violence and declined to comment, shared a picture last Tuesday night of Sen. Kamala Harris posing with Soros’s son.
[Navy SEAL Promoted After Choking Green Beret to Death
WTFO
Kevin Maurer]
The post, about Harris being named Joe Biden’s vice-presidential pick, referred to a sexist conspiracy theory about her. “We now know who’s on team New World Order / Global Marxism,” Sawyer wrote. “Literally GOOD vs EVIL.”
Argentino, who recently authored a scholarly article about QAnon’s potential as a national security threat, said while most violent incidents carried out in the theory’s name were done so by people in a state of crisis, calls by military types are acting as a steady drumbeat.
“People who are ex-military say, ‘I’m going to go liberate the kids,’” he said. “Is it bravado or is it a legitimate call to action?”
For his part, Garrick Fernbaugh’s primary preoccupation has appeared to be theories about anti-fascists. But after years of posting about his interest in hurting them, someone appears to have attempted just that in Portland—while Fernbaugh was very nearby.
Approximately three weeks before the pipe bomb incident, Fernbaugh contacted Sawyer about his interest in anti-fascists. On LinkedIn, Sawyer had authored a post defending the federal agents who notoriously pulled Portland protesters into unmarked vans earlier this summer.
“I think this is actually a very calm & gracious response in the face of such destructive terrorism funded by our nation’s subversive enemies,” Sawyer wrote. “Law & order must prevail??”
Fernbaugh replied in the comments. “I infiltrated ANTIFA in downtown PDX 3 nights ago,” he wrote. “(Dudes in camo) Hit me up, I’ll throw on my Cryes [a brand of combat apparel] and give you a hand restoring law and order, then we’ll go grab a well deserved beer!”
With reporting by Adam Rawnsley
Kelly Weill
Reporter
kelly.weill@thedailybeast.com
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https://www.alternet.org/2020/06/retired-us-navy-seal-who-oversaw-raid-that-killed-bin-laden-believes-the-us-must-move-forward-without-trump-and-he-isnt-alone/
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~ trump bk reminds us that when brennan? security clearance stripped in early retaliation, head spec ops on bin laden raid said take mine too
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why Trump’s embrace of Eddie Gallagher is so dangerous
an 1219
no lnx
Why Trump’s embrace of Eddie Gallagher is so dangerous
Written by Heather Digby Parton / SalonDecember 30, 2019
Judging by his Twitter feed and a few appearances before the cameras, President Trump doesn’t seem to be enjoying his holiday break down at Mar-a-Lago. In fact, his tweeting is so obsessive and downright strange it even has some of his staunchest allies telling him he should put the phone down for a while. It’s obvious that the standoff between House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is driving him to distraction. If that was part of Pelosi’s plan, it’s working.
Nonetheless, as I noted last week, this hasn’t stopped the merriment at Trump’s commercial resort property. Despite his assertion during the annual Christmas Day phone call to the troops that he works constantly when he’s at “the winter White House,” he’s been playing golf, hosting parties and hobnobbing with pals and paying guests.Among those honored guests was Eddie Gallagher, the former Navy SEAL who was accused of war crimes. The Daily Mail reported on the festivities in detail, including pictures of Gallagher and his wife with the president and first lady as well as Donald Trump Jr. Mrs. Gallagher reportedly gushed, “God bless the Trump family and all they are doing for this country!”
As you probably know, Gallagher was acquitted of murdering an injured ISIS fighter in a controversial military trial. After hearing about the case from Fox News commentator Pete Hegseth and former New York police commissioner Bernard Kerik — a convicted felon and buddy of Rudy Giuliani — Trump took the nearly unprecedented step of interfering in the military justice system and ordering Gallagher released from pre-trial confinement. Despite Gallagher’s conviction on a lesser charge, Trump countermanded Navy commanders and restored him to his previous rank, allowing him to keep his SEAL pin, which resulted in the dismissal of Navy Secretary Richard Spencer.
Trump has also pardoned two other members of the military accused or convicted of war crimes, even bringing them up on stage with him at a recent fundraiser. He has reportedly told allies he wants those men to campaign with him next year. We will almost certainly see them at the Republican convention. They are MAGA heroes.
Although Trump campaigned in 2016 by endorsing torture, atrocities and mass executions, even going so far as to proclaim that it was important to “take out the families,” it’s still shocking that he’s openly embracing accused war criminals, calling Gallagher “one of the ultimate fighters” and a “very tough guy.”
After the New York Times’ explosive story on Gallagher last Friday, in which we saw the original testimony of his fellow SEALs and footage of the moments before the killing of the sedated ISIS fighter, it’s almost impossible to wrap your mind around the idea that this man was feted at the “winter White House” just last week.
As the Times reported, this was “the first opportunity outside the courtroom to hear directly from the men of Alpha platoon, SEAL Team 7,”
whose blistering testimony about their platoon chief was dismissed by President Trump when he upended the military code of justice to protect Chief Gallagher from the punishment. “The guy is freaking evil,” Special Operator Miller told investigators. “The guy was toxic,” Special Operator First Class Joshua Vriens, a sniper, said in a separate interview. “You could tell he was perfectly O.K. with killing anybody that was moving,” Special Operator First Class Corey Scott, a medic in the platoon, told the investigators.
The culture of the special forces requires a deep sense of loyalty and code of silence. It’s clear that the decision to come forward was very difficult, but what they had witnessed had obviously caused them great anguish. Gallagher says these SEALs accused him of all these crimes because they are cowards who were failing in their duties, and he has instructed his lawyer to sue the New York Times reporter who wrote the story. (You can see why he and Trump have formed such a bond.)
These anecdotes are overwhelming and disturbing. Seeing the text messages and the video of the witnesses makes it even more disturbing that Gallagher is still walking the streets, particularly since there is no dispute that he stabbed the sedated teenager:
Gallagher initially tended to the boy. Then according to seven members of the platoon, he stabbed him. One of them, Craig Miller, said he saw blood gush from the boy’s jugular, a stream of liquid like the kind that one sees when a baby is “throwing up.” Gallagher later texted his friends a photo of the dead boy: “Good story behind this,” he wrote. “Got him with my hunting knife.”
He was acquitted when one of the accusers, a medic who had been given immunity, explained that he was the one who had actually killed the stabbed teenager by cutting off his air-supply to end his suffering.
Nobody knows exactly what happened, but what with all the high-profile presidential interference and an apparently mishandled prosecution, Gallagher got off the hook. Perhaps that was the correct outcome. The state — in this case, the military — has to prove the case it brings and apparently failed to bring the right one.
But it’s impossible to see those videos and read those texts and come away believing that justice was done. Perhaps even more importantly, you can’t read that story and believe society is safe with Eddie Gallagher walking free, much less being treated as a hero by the most powerful man on earth.
The military itself has suffered a great wound as well. It would have been bad enough for Gallagher to be acquitted due to poor lawyering. But that’s how the system works, and sometimes guilty people get away with murder. But Trump’s interference has disrupted a delicate constitutional balance, in which the nonpartisan military is commanded by the civilian president and regulated by the U.S. Congress. As law professor Deborah Pearlstein wrote in the Atlantic:
Watching the president of the United States reward the violation of the most fundamental laws of war, inflaming America’s enemies and alienating America’s allies, was bad enough. But the president’s action appeared to be an intervention in otherwise semi-independent legal and disciplinary processes inside the military — an intervention for the purpose of currying favor with his political base. The pardons — driven by Fox News and reinforced by political rallies — added to the appearance, and reality, that the president regards the military as a tool of partisan politics, not as an institution whose unique constitutional position he has a duty to protect.
The military was the last government institution his ignorance and solipsism hadn’t managed to compromise. But he has finally gotten to that as well.
Heather Digby Parton, also known as “Digby,” is a contributing writer to Salon. She was the winner of the 2014 Hillman Prize for Opinion and Analysis Journalism.
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intercept 719
...In response, Tahoe hired International Security and Defense Management, a private security firm run by a U.S. Special Forces veteran, to assemble a security plan. The company hired Golan Group, founded by former Israeli special forces officers, to carry it out.
Muñoz was one of few women who stood front and center at the anti-mine actions. “They realized I was one of the leaders,” she said.
Advocates for land defenders have observed a pattern in the cases of violence they’ve investigated in San Rafael and across Guatemala. “They start to portray human rights defenders as terrorists,” said Maria Reyes, who worked closely with Escobal opponents as an official with Protection International. Extractive industries push the narrative that “thisisn’t a peaceful protest, but rather a blockade that is violating the rights of others.” [THEREFORE VIOLENT?!]
“There’s an escalation that begins with the act of defamation,” Santos explained. “It can reach such a level that it ends in the ‘civil death’ of the human rights defender — when they are captured and brought to prison — or with their physical death, when they are assassinated.”
By the end of 2012, events around the mine were escalating. Protests erupted as Tahoe installed high-voltage lines to power the project.A cement plant and a storage facility were set on fire. Then, in January, two security guards were killed in a confrontation with armed men. The resistance movement denied responsibility for the violence and property damage, suggesting that agents provocateur might have been responsible. The mine’s head of security claimed that surveillance cameras weren’t working at the time, and the identity of the perpetrators never emerged. Two months later, four Xinca leaders, including the president of the Xinca parliament, were kidnapped after participating in a referendum on the mine. One of them was killed.
Meanwhile, Tahoe’s pressure campaign on the Guatemalan government was paying off. The National Security Commission decided that unrest against any mine should be considered a matter ofnational security, according to a report by Plaza Pública, and an opaque interagency group made up of environment, energy, and national security officials was formed to monitor such projects.
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https://www.alternet.org/2019/05/unfathomable-evil-recognizing-unfathomable-evil-trumps-possible-pardons-of-war-criminals-provoke-outrage/
Progressives, human rights advocates, and journalists responded with outrage on Saturday to a New York Timesreport that President Donald Trump “has requested the immediate preparation of paperwork needed to pardon several American military members accused or convicted of war crimes.”
Unnamed U.S. government officials told the Times that on or around Memorial Day, Trump may pardon multiple servicemembers involved with “high-profile cases of murder, attempted murder, and desecration of a corpse.”
As the newspaper reported:
The requests are for Special Operations Chief Edward Gallagher of the Navy SEALs, who is scheduled to stand trial in the coming weeks on charges of shooting unarmed civilians and killing an enemy captive with a knife while deployed in Iraq.
They are also believed to include the case of a former Blackwater security contractor recently found guilty in the deadly 2007 shooting of dozens of unarmed Iraqis; the case of Maj. Mathew L. Golsteyn, the Army Green Beret accused of killing an unarmed Afghan in 2010; and the case of a group of Marine Corps snipers charged with urinating on the corpse of a dead Taliban fighter.
“These are all extremely complicated cases that have gone through a careful system of consideration,” Gary Solis, a retired military judge and armor officer who served in Vietnam, told the Times. “A freewheeling pardon undermines that whole system."
Solis warned that pardoning servicemembers accused or convicted of war crimes “raises the prospect in the minds of the troops that says, ‘Whatever we do, if we can get the folks back home behind us, maybe we can get let off.'”
The news on Saturday came after Trump, earlier this month, pardoned former Army 1st Lt. Michael Behenna, who was convicted of murdering an Iraqi prisoner in 2008. As Common Dreams reported at the time, human rights advocates decried that decision as “a presidential endorsement of a murder that violated the military’s own code of justice.”
The Timesreport—on which the White House and Justice Department declined to comment—was met with similar condemnation.
The Atlantic‘s Adam Serwer, who spoke out against Trump’s pardon of Behenna, tweeted, “This incentivizes the commission of war crimes by our opponents and allies, and in doing so puts U.S. servicemembers at greater risk.”
Human Rights Watch executive director Ken Roth said, “Think of the horrible message that sends to would-be war criminals around the world.”
Murtaza Mohammad Hussain, a reporter at The Intercept, denounced Trump’s expected move as “a huge injustice to those whose lives they destroyed and a message that America will tolerate war crimes.”
Their criticism was echoed by others, including journalist Ryan Devereaux, who suggested that “if you were to make a list of ‘top notorious U.S. war crimes of the post-9/11 era’ it would look a lot like the president’s pardoning plans.”
==
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818 xian, a number of congress runs (domestic violence?)
hyper masculinity; ~ viet nam syndrome, rambo: will they let us win this time?
vets
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https://www.democracynow.org/2018/10/17/investigation_as_us_backed_war_in
shocking new investigation has revealed that the United Arab Emirates hired U.S. mercenaries to carry out assassinations of political and clerical leaders in Yemen. The former elite U.S. special operations fighters were paid to take part in missions to kill those deemed to be “terrorists” by the UAE. The UAE worked with the U.S. company Spear Operations Group, founded by an Israeli-American man named Abraham Golan, who told BuzzFeed, “There was a targeted assassination program in Yemen. I was running it.” The group’s first target in Yemen was a local leader of al-Islah, a political party whose members include Nobel Peace Prize laureate Tawakkul Karman. We speak with journalist Aram Roston of BuzzFeed News, who broke the story. His new piece is titled “A Middle East Monarchy Hired American Ex-Soldiers to Kill Its Political Enemies. This Could Be the Future of War.”
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green beret movie made with hvy mil support, credit scrubbed?
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mma
Stone endorsed New York Republican congressional candidate Dan DeBono on Facebook shortly after his campaign paid to send a sponsored message to the dirty trickster's email list. It’s at least the second time that Stone has supported a Republican candidate after receiving sponsorship money.
Stone is a longtime adviser to President Donald Trump and currently works as a host for conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ Infowars network. Stone is also a vicious racist, misogynist, liar, and conspiracy theorist who is currently caught up in special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe.
On August 7, Stone forwarded a sponsored email to his list on behalf of DeBono, a Navy SEAL veteran and Huntington, NY, committeeman who is the Republican congressional nominee in New York’s 3rd District. A disclosure stated: “We are excited to share with you a special message from one of our sponsoring advertisers, DeBono For Congress. It is also sponsors like them that help fund Stone Cold Truth. Please note that the following message reflects the opinions and representations of our sponsor alone, and not necessarily the opinion of Roger Stone.”
Stone also posted a link to a fundraising page for DeBono the following day on Facebook, writing: “Please support this Pro-Trump Navy Seal for Congress! #maga.” His post contained no language suggesting it was an advertisement.
[camo fire big gun]
The DeBono campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
Other campaigns have rented Stone’s email list, including Republican Senate candidate Geoff Diehl in Massachusetts. Similar to the DeBono situation, Stone endorsed Diehl in a Facebook post shortly after the rental. In response to Media Matters’ article about the endorsement, Stone said that his “company did rent some lists to Mr. Diehl” and “during that process I examined his campaign and his credentials and frankly I became very impressed.”
Media Mattersdocumented last month that Stone forwarded a July 26 message from Republican Rick Scott’s Senate campaign to his email list, along with the same disclosure statement that the email reflected “the opinions and representations of our sponsor alone, and not necessarily the opinion of Roger Stone.” The Scott campaign subsequently told The Associated Press that the email “was a vendor mistake - they are not advertising with Stone or paying him to send out emails on their behalf.” (Stone has publicly criticized Scott and has not endorsed him.)
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11/16
At least 27 post-9/11 veterans won congressional races on Nov. 8, while the current Congress includes 26 veterans. In addition, as of now, 18 veteran incumbents won reelection and three senators were not up for reelection this year. There are, however, still handful of races that have run-offs as you can see from this chart drawn up by Military Times.
As of now, the following 10 veterans have been newly elected to Congress.
...
scott Taylor was a Navy SEAL for eight years. He served overseas in South and Central America in counternarcotics and foreign internal defense missions. Taylor also deployed to Iraq as a SEAL sniper. A Republican, he ran as a candidate in the 2010 primary election for Virginia’s 2nd congressional district, but lost to Scott Rigell. This was his second attempt, after Rigell stepped down.
...careful wording?
:{:{}:
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In 2003, Panetta commissioned as an Naval intelligence officer in the Reserve. Four years later, he went on active duty with a special operations forces in Afghanistan. He is also the son of former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta. After separating, he took up a career in law, and most recently, served as deputy district attorney in Monterey County.
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Looking to join the ranks of two other former members of the U.S. Navy SEAL Teams to infiltrate the halls of the U.S. Congress, Houston, Texas-based former Naval officer Daniel Crenshaw does not necessarily look the part of a staid, buttoned-down politician. In fact, rarely ever do you see eyepatch-sporting, facial hair sprouting, necktie-less men cruising around the Capitol Building.
And yet, Crenshaw (pictured above, with eyepatch) is looking to be elected to the U.S. House of Representatives seat being vacated by the retirement of Republican congressman Ted Poe in Texas’ second district. According to his campaign website, the former Navy SEAL Lieutenant Commander (O-4) is a sixth generation Texan, speaks fluent Spanish, and received his commission into the U.S. Navy via the Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps (NROTC) at Tufts University.
Crenshaw earned a Bachelor’s degree in International Relations and Affairs, as well as a minor in Physics, while at Tufts. He was interviewed by the Tufts Daily back in 2006 before graduating and shipping off to SEAL training. He told the college newspaper that he had wanted to be in the Navy “for a long time.
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ref
11/16
In an election night that saw Republicans sweep political races in the state of Missouri, all the way up and down the ballot, former Navy SEAL Eric Greitens (pictured above) became became just theTHIRD former Team guy to ascend to the office of chief executive of an American state, following in the footsteps of Jesse Ventura, the former governor of Minnesota, and Bob Kerry, the former Governor of Nebraska.
:{:{}:
}:
Greitens beat his Democratic opponent, Missouri’s Attorney General, Chris Koster, to surprise the Show Me state in a race that favored Koster most of the way through. According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the42-year old Greitens will become the 56th governor of Missouri when he succeeds Democrat Jay Nixon in January. He won with approximately 52 percent of the vote.
Greitens was not the only former SEAL to win an election victory on November 8th, as a former Assault Team Leader at the Naval Special Warfare Development Group (NSWDG), Ryan Zinke, also won re-election as the (only) congressman for Montana in the House of Representatives. He will now serve a second term in that office, as a Republican.
According to the Great Falls Tribune, the 55-year old Zinke, who spent 23 years with the SEALs, is “an ardent supporter of Donald Trump and has gained favor with conservatives through his support of using U.S. ground forces in the war on terrorism and his opposition to allowing Syrian refugees entry into the United States without exhaustive background checks.” Zinke won with approximately 56 percent of the vote.
While in Congress, Zinke criticized the Department of Defense (DOD) Inspector General’s investigation of Rear Admiral (SEAL) Brian Losey for alleged whistle-blower retaliation. Congressman Zinke had also reportedly been considered as a possible running mate for Trump, and the Congressman’s wife, Lolita, was a Trump surrogate, campaigning for the victorious GOP nominee in North Carolina.
In a statement on his re-election victory, Zinke stated that,
“The veteran voice matters in America, and it is needed in congress.” He went on to praise the fact that perhaps national security, military, and veteran policies would “actually be written by people who have been to war.” He also touted veterans’ ability to work across the aisle, and noted how this could benefit America.
“I’m humbled by the continued support of the people of Montana,” said Ryan Zinke. “This election year was particularly negative on a national scale. Neighbors pitted against each other, lifelong friends no longer speak to one another. Rather than remember what we have in common, we are focusing on what divides us. It’s time for a change. This is not a republican or democrat issue, it’s an American issue. We all have a stake in this and need to move together as one nation to right the course.”
Zinke continued, “I spent the past two years working hard in the House to advance important legislation to rebuild our infrastructure, conserve our public land, deliver tax cuts for families, tribes and small businesses, and get our economy going again. But there’s still more work to be done. I look forward to working with our new president and new members of Congress to make a brighter future for our children and grandchildren.”
Meanwhile, another former SEAL, Scott Taylor, was also elected to the U.S. House of Representatives on November 8th, from the 2nd congressional district of Virginia. Taylor served previously as a state delegate in Virginia, and according to his biography on scotttaylor.us, Taylor served with SEAL Team 4, and completed deployments to Latin America and Iraq....
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Texan former Navy SEAL is running for Congress | SOFREP
https://sofrep.com/95196/texan-former-navy-seal-running-congress/
1.
Congressional Candidate & Former Navy SEAL Says ... - Military.com
https://www.military.com/.../congressional-candidate-former-navy-seal-says-prior-serv...
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SAN DIEGO - Former Navy SEAL Josh Butner is under fire for comments he made taking a shot at his Democratic opponent for Congress, saying, "It should be a requirement to have served to even run."
The comment came in an interview with Voice of San Diego.
"When you look at anybody for any political office you should look at their past experiences. I served for 23 years," Butner said in the interview. "It shows dedication and you've been exposed to foreign policy at the tip of the spear. I learned a lot about cultures, in conflict and cooperation. It should be a requirement to have served to even run."
His comment was posted under the heading "shots at each other," indicating he was referring to fellow Democrat Ammar Campa-Najjar, who has not served in the military. Both are challenging Republican Rep. Duncan Hunter, a Marine Corps veteran.
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10 facts about U.S. Special Operations forces - CNNPolitics - CNN.com
https://www.cnn.com/2015/10/05/politics/special-operations-forces-facts/index.html
Oct 5, 2015 - The troops that make up U.S. Special Operations Command include some of the most elite fighters in the U.S. military across all branches. ... military across all branches, including the Army Green Berets and Navy SEALS. ... When candidates first apply to join Special Ops, they are evaluated on their ability ...
Meet The 10 Veterans Newly Elected To Congress - Task & Purpose
https://taskandpurpose.com/meet-7-veterans-newly-elected-congress/
2.
Missing: delta | Must include: delta
Special Operations Speaks
https://specialoperationsspeaks.com/
2.
Missing: delta | Must include: delta
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https://www.alternet.org/did-senior-air-force-general-use-his-power-spread-far-right-christian-nationalism
rosenberg salon
On July 18, Air Force Brig. Gen. John Teichert assumed command of the 412th Test Wing at Edwards Air Force Base. Less than one month later, on Aug. 12,the Military Religious Freedom Foundation filed a22-page complaintagainst him for violating military rules and regulations about religious proselytizing,based on the online record at Teichert's Christian ministry website, “PLUS” (“Prayer at Lunchtime for the United States”), which has been in operation for five years, well before his latest promotion. Within the week, the MRFF, a watchdog group founded in 2005, received word that the Department of Defense was beginning a formal investigation.
According to a press statement from MRFF founder and president Michael L. Weinstein, a former Air Force officer, on Teichert's website he has “denigrated LGBT individuals, slammed American society at large, and, of course, delivered election voting mandate directives" urging that only certain categories of Christians should be elected to public office.
Military officers enjoy the same freedom of religion as everyone else in America, so Teichert's religious faith is not an issue in itself. But military service entails special restrictions on how religion is expressed, particularly if that expression is deemed to undermine military effectiveness, a point that lies at the heart of the MRFF’s complaint.
For example, Air Force Instruction 1-1, Paragraph 2.15.4. states the following:
Airmen who provide commentary and opinions on internet blogs that they host or on others’ internet blogs, may not place comments on those blog sites, which reasonably can be anticipated, or are intended, to degrade morale, good order, and discipline of any members or units in the U.S. Armed Forces, are Service-discrediting, or would degrade the trust and confidence of the public in the United States Air Force.
The complaint was filed on behalf of 41 clients at Teichert’s new command (32 of whom identify as Christian), “many of whom are in mortal fear of retaliation should they be personally identified in this matter, something that MRFF suggests is an equally troublesome issue,” as its text explains. Elsewhere the MRFF complaint argues that Teichert's specific form of zealotry does not “promote diversity, unit cohesion, good order and discipline, religious tolerance and esprit de corps," all considered core values of the 21st-century military.
“Our clients feel as though they been spiritually raped by this general, and he was their commander,” Weinstein told Salon, comparing these circumstances to the Tailhook Scandal, which made sexual harassment in the military a major national issue. This one, he argues, is far more hidden. Complainants didn't feel they could confront Teichert or even speak to him openly, Weinstein said, "because, again, the moment you do that you're done.”
Weinstein summarized the issue this way: “When you tell somebody — and you're a general in the Air Force [speaking] to a subordinate — that you lack integrity, character, honor, honorability, intelligence, courage, etc., because of your chosen religious faith or lack thereof, there is no difference between that and telling that someone they're stupid because of the color of their skin or because they were born without a penis.”
Teichert fervently believes that America was founded as a Christian nation, and has fallen away from its original exalted state. The cultural resonance of these views — although they represent fake history — helps give cover to activity to would otherwise cause outrage.
“Can you imagine what would happen if, instead of Brig. Gen. Ernest John Teichert, we had Brig. Gen. Mohammed Assan, and it turned out that he had Prayers at Lunchtime for the United States and it was completely Islamic?” Weinstein asked. “There would be blood in the streets.”
Prior to his current assignment, Teichert was wing commander at Andrews Air Force Base, home to Air Force One, the president’s plane. So Teichert alone is not the problem. “We want to know who else knows,” Weinstein said. Senior figures in the Defense Department and Air Force "knew what this guy was doing it, and are complicit, but did nothing.”
Weinstein's clients face a situation that is difficult for those outside the military to grasp, he explained. Weinstein himself is an Air Force Academy graduate — one of six in his family — who served for seven years as a military lawyer with the Judge Advocate General (JAG) Corps. His family has served in every major U.S. combat engagement from World War I to the current "war on terror." MRFF, which Weinstein founded, represents more than 57,000 active duty military, reserve members, DOD civilian employees and veterans, 96 percent of whom identify as Christian. So he knows what he’s talking about.
“The military is unbelievably tribal, adversarial, communal and ritualistic,” Weinstein said. “Anyone who outranks you has unbelievable control over you. You can lose liberty, if you even slightly disrespect them. We’ve had, I think, 12 of our clients killed in action. It's been very difficult. We’ve had another dozen who’ve committed suicide.”
Teichert’s defenders (cited in this story from Air Force Times, for example), have tried to claim that he has simply engaged in private religious practice, which everyone agrees is a protected constitutional right. But the fact that 41 complainants have come forward strongly suggests otherwise.
The complaint calls for an investigation into whether Teichert’s conduct interferes with or violates the civil liberties or equal opportunities of service-members and civilians under his command, as well as whether it violates several key provisions of Air Force Instruction 1-1, including the following (in addition to Paragraph 2.15.4. cited above):
Paragraph 2.11: “Every Airman is free to practice the religion of their choice or subscribe to no religious belief at all. You should confidently practice your own beliefs while respecting others whose viewpoints differ from your own.” …
Paragraph 2.12: Leaders at all levels must balance constitutional protections for their own free exercise of religion, including individual expressions of religious beliefs, and the constitutional prohibition against governmental establishment of religion. They must ensure their words and actions cannot reasonably be construed to be officially endorsing or disproving of, or extending preferential treatment for any faith, belief, or absence of belief. …
Paragraph 2.15.5, Use of Social Media [Excerpt]: When you are expressing personal opinions on social media sites and can be identified as an Airman, you should make it clear that you are speaking for yourself and not on behalf of the Air Force. While service members may generally use their rank and service even when acting in their personal capacity, they should not do so in situations where the context may imply official sanction or endorsement of their personal opinions. [Emphasis added.]
In Weinstein's press statement, he argues that “Teichert has inextricably intertwined his USAF position of senior command" with his ministry and proselytizing on the PLUS website. Paragraph 2.12. is violated persistently, as there is no disclaimer making clear that these are Teichert’s personal views, as opposed to official ones. To the contrary, Teichert parades his rank frequently and repeatedly misrepresents American history to echo his views and provide them with ersatz legitimacy and a semblance of official sanction. As Weinstein observes, Teichert has also attacked America in a way that would be inconceivable from a hypothetical general who was Muslim.
In an early post, from April 2013, "Unrecognizable from the Original — Hebrews 13:8," Teichert fumes over the ways America has changed since its founding, which he assumes was well-nigh perfect, slavery and all, because it was supposedly so thoroughly Christian.
"It is clear that American Christians have steadily drifted away from the Lord, following in the footsteps of an aggressively liberalizing society,” Teichert writes. “How did we, both as a people and as a nation, arrive at such a position that is largely unrecognizable from where we began? The answer is a series of small compromises." What compromises is he talking about? The abolition of slavery? Voting rights for women? He doesn’t say.
That's just one of many such posts. In July of that year, Teichert expounded on the theme of “Omission,” writing: “Evil is triumphing in our nation because the good are doing nothing.” He cited a series of 12 earlier posts on how the “sins of omission are evident among us,” and criticized He America with a doggedness that would get anyone to the left of Genghis Khan accused of treason.
This is all justified, it would seem, by the mythology of America’s supposedly pure Christian origins, which supports a multitude of false or distorted historical narratives. This is a subject long studied by Frederick Clarkson, senior research analyst at Political Research Associates, a progressive think tank in Massachusetts.
“Teichert’s blog posts epitomizes a kind of historical revisionism that historian Frank Lambert calls creating a ‘usable past,’” Clarkson told Salon. “This is done by selecting tidbits from history and suggesting that they support contemporary conservative Christian political views and candidates, or more importantly an interpretation of the Constitution. This is how Christian nationalists create a history that they use to justify not only their favored politicians and issues du jour, but often the more profound vision of political dominion we call 'Dominionism.'”
In its starkest forms, the ideology known asDominionism is clearly anti-democratic and un-American. Laws passed by overwhelming majorities are invalid if they conflict with “God’s law” — separating the races, for example, which was long perceived as a biblical mandate in the pre-civil rights South. So for obvious reasons most American Dominionists of the 21st century shield or shade their beliefs, sometimes even from themselves. But their underlying logic is broadly influential, Clarkson argues:
Once one has arrived at the notion that the United States was founded as a Christian nation, and that this means based on Christian or biblical principles (they are often used interchangeably), one holds a self-issued license to serve as spokesperson for God and the founding fathers. Political opinions take the character of revealed truths.
Teichert has a method in his blogging, in which he quotes a biblical passage, and sometimes a quote from a founding father or other notable person which leads him to say that "Christian citizens" must elect Christian candidates (of the right sort, of course) who are then to craft policies based on Christian principles because that is what God requires of his Christian nation.
Although this is profoundly misleading — and eerily reminiscent of the reasoning behind the al-Qaida or ISIS interpretation of Islamic doctrine —nothing would prevent Teichert from expressing these views as a private citizen. He is not. He is a senior military officer in command of thousands, with a duty to promote unity rather than division. The danger Teichert may pose in that command is rooted in a fundamental historical falsehood captured in an April 2016 blog post in which he claimed that "at the beginning of the Revolutionary War, between 98.4% and 99.8% of Americans were professing Christians," citing a book promoted by Glenn Beck, who has long been obsessed with "proving" that George Washington was an orthodox Christian. (Which would prove nothing if true, and has been meticulously refuted.)
Teichert's alleged statistic is both untrue on its own terms and profoundly deceptive, Clarkson argued by email:
That percentage is silly and not borne out by contemporary scholarship, which shows that only about 17% of the population in the colonies were church members at the time of the Revolution. But whatever the number or percentage, there were also a wide variety of Christians in the colonies, including Congregationalists, Lutherans, Catholics, Baptists, Dutch Reformed, Quakers, Mennonites and Presbyterians. So when one says Christian, it meant different things to different people. The same is true today.
To claim that the U.S. was founded as a Christian nation, one has to ignore such facts as that the founding of the United States set in motion the dismantling of 150 years of mini-colonial theocracies; that there was no mention of God or Christianity in the Constitution or the Bill of Rights; [and] that this was because the framers recognized that the glue that would hold a religiously diverse nation together would be religious equality in the eyes of the law.
In short, America’s strength as a nation — indeed, its very existence — depends on avoiding the kind of exclusionary religious conflict that Teichert is preoccupied with. Our nation's original motto says it all: E pluribus unum. In this same spirit, after quoting from George Washington’s own correspondence on the subject of military chaplains serving religiously diverse troops, the MRFF complain observes that the father of our nation was “worried about even the ‘smallest uneasiness’ over religion and objected to anything that would “compel men to a mode of worship that they didn’t profess.”
Many of the most troubling posts identified by MRFF’s clients identified had to do with Teichert’s divisive religious-warrior mindset. The general frequently writes as if he were at war with America itself, and certainly with anyone who does not share his own form of fundamentalist belief. Here are a few examples:
- In June 2014, he wrote, "We are engaged in a war between fundamentally opposed ideologies."
- In December, 2014, he wrote about "the enemies of Christ."
- In October 2015, he wrote, "God has entrusted us to subdue our own kingdom – 21st century America.”
- Also in October 2015, he wrote, “In 21st century America we may feel like we have landed in enemy controlled territory behind enemy lines.”
- In April 2016, he wrote that "the adversary has taken the first shots of the current battle."
- On July 28th of this year, he wrote, “Far too often, Christians move against other Christians who aren’t much different than themselves, sometimes with great violence and strife. … Each time this happens, it is a dark day for the cause of Christ when there are plenty of real enemies that should be the focus of our forces.” He closed by saying, "PLEASE PRAY FOR UNITY AMONG BIBLE-BELIEVING CHRISTIANS IN AMERICA IN ORDER TO PROPERLY OPPOSE OUR REAL ADVERSARY." [All-caps in the original.]
There’s an important if nearly invisible layer of cultural influence at work here which is likely to influence how this case is perceived, and even how it plays out in the military bureaucracy. This is known as “secularized evangelical discourse” [SED], meaning an ideological orientation derived from evangelical Christian roots but is then expressed in public “in religiously nonparticularistic terms,” as described in a recent paper for the journal Social Forces, "Christian America? Secularized Evangelical Discourse and the Boundaries of National Belonging,” by Jack Delehanty, Penny Edgell and Evan Stewart.
Even as evangelicals decline as a percentage of the electorate, the persistence of SED preserves a powerful influence over the culture, these scholars argue. In practice, this means that Teichert’s deeply divisive Christian proselytizing is instinctively defended by many people who do not share his most extreme beliefs and would no doubt be horrified by a website expressing similar views from an Islamic (or Hindu, or Jewish) viewpoint.
My initial thought was that one could view the set of influences at work in terms of concentric rings of influence: hardcore Dominionist beliefs at the bullseye of a target, surrounded first by Christian nationalism and then by secular evangelical discourse. That metaphor "seems a bit too straightforward to me," study co-author Delehanty told Salon.
"I think that dominionism can also exist separately from Christian nationalism, because it’s a theological position more than a political one," he said. Delehanty pointed to the notorious example of the fanatical extremists at Westboro Baptist Church, who would qualify as Dominionists in most respects, but "believe that the nation and all people in it are 'totally depraved' – so detested and loathed by God that there is literally no point in trying to organize a nation around gaining his favor."
Edgell, another co-author, agrees. “While the bullseye metaphor is very evocative, what is happening out there is more about overlap,” she said. “When do the nationalist and Dominionist strains line up in a way that one reinforces the other?”
Their paper focuses on four particularly important claims drawn from SED, and widely shared among Christians who may not otherwise hold extreme positions or even be especially devout:
- that religious identity is important for good citizenship,
- that religious belief is a criterion for strong political leadership,
- that society’s rules should be based on divine will,
- that public institutions should broadly accommodate religious belief and practice.
The paper found that SED enjoys majority support, extending well beyond the evangelical demographic, but with qualified power. Views generally break down into four groups — ardent opposition, moderate opposition, moderate support and ardent support. There is no “sensible center” equally opposed to “both extremes” in this regard, said co-author Stewart. “Even among the moderates, consensus about religion’s symbolic role is limited. People generally agree about how governments should accommodate religious belief and commitment, but the role of evangelical ideas in symbolic boundary-making remains a source of contention."
One further surprise is that “even strong supporters of SED hesitate to support explicitly Christian prayers in schools and government funding of religious charities," Stewart said. This suggests that "even the most culturally conservative Americans use religious ideas as a source of symbolic boundaries more than as a basis for law and policy."
Edgell made a related point: “The talk about symbolic boundaries can drown out debate on a substantive agenda, and substantive agenda items are hard to talk about on their own terms.” One example would be the way that the MRFF, Weinstein's foundation, has frequently been attacked as "atheistic" or "anti-Christian," although it's clients and members overwhelmingly identify as Christian.
This opens up a whole new range of questions about how religious culture war issues will be framed and reframed in the years ahead. But as far as those under Teichert’s command are concerned, it comes down to this: Their lives are not symbolic playthings for one general's illegitimate exercise of power comes from treating them as such. While many of those who have raised complaints about the general's conduct are just as Christian he is (or arguably more so), that is essentially irrelevant. Those who profess other faiths or none at all wear the same uniform, serve the same flag and swear the same oath of allegiance to a nation whose constitution is utterly silent about God.
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