Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council notes that a US servicemember raised the “rainbow flag” over an American base in Afghanistan, as indicated by the serviceman’s wife’s Facebook post:
The flag is recognizable as the symbol for the homosexual “movement,” though it remains unclear why someone needs a flag to advertise the fact they’re sexually Read more
Fort Bragg’s Rock Beyond Belief passed quietly last Saturday. While organizers had predicted a crowd of 5,000, Richard Dawkins, the main draw of the event whose “sell out” crowds were the justification for the attendance forecast, ultimately spoke to only “a couple hundred” spectators. Photos of the event show Aiden, the musical act originally billed as Dawkins’ lead-in, playing to only a few dozen who had stuck out the day. It also appeared the military base was hosting a largely civilian crowd.
Rain early in the day may have affected attendance, much as the heat affected the Christian Rock the Fort the atheist event was meant to protest. Rock the Fort reportedly drew 3,000 to 4,000 of the forecast 10,000 (and the atheists had been quick to mock the attendance numbers of the Billy Graham Evangelical Association event).
Interestingly, Col Sicinski was on site of the event and indicated the event wasn’t the controversy it may have been made out to be: Read more
Michael Weinstein is taking the US Air Force to task, again, for using the word “chapel” in a course from Squadron Officers’ School (SOS), a junior officer military education course.
The sentence at issue is important in context. Therefore, the surrounding text is included below. Weinstein’s lawyers have declared these words “unconstitutional,” saying the SOS course
mandates that regular chapel attendance is part of the “Spiritual and Ethical Responsibilities” of a commissioned Air Force officer…
That’s an extraordinarily tortured reading of the text. It’s also ignorant, since it is a commentary on leadership, not an Air Force policy document.
The manufactured offense over a single phrase is so stretched Weinstein likely views this as a test case. Will the Air Force knee-jerk and scrub the course for the offensive reference to a chapel? Or will it take a more measured response — or even acknowledge the virtue of the text he is attacking? The Air Force’s reply will be enlightening.
The “again” portion of this is notable. The perpetually offended Weinstein Read more
The primary organizer of Rock Beyond Belief, the atheist festival occurring this weekend at Fort Bragg, has — again — drug Fort Bragg and the US Army through the mud in an apparent bid for publicity.
In a sensationally titled “Fort Bragg wont let us feed homeless vets at the atheist festival,” Justin Griffith says Fort Bragg denied their plan to do a canned food collection. Griffith summarized [emphasis original]:
The ‘pro-starvation’ camp has prevailed…
At issue is Joint Ethics Regulation 3-211, which says the DoD can let non-Federal entities (ie, Rock Beyond Belief) use DoD facilities (ie, Fort Bragg’s resources) except for fundraising events. Apparently, Fort Bragg determined canned food collection was fundraising.
Whether collecting canned food for a charitable cause constitutes non-Federal fundraising is a legitimate question. Rather than take direct issue with that, however, Griffith took a different tack: He said the Christians Read more
Admiral James A. Lyons (Retired) served as the commander of the US Navy’s Pacific fleet when he retired in 1987. Since then, he has frequently spoken on the military and foreign policy issues, mincing few words when he has done so. He is an associate in the production of Sharia: The Threat to America, which includes James Woolsey and LtGen (Ret) Jerry Boykin among its contributors.
Most recently, Adm Lyons took President Obama to task for forcing the US military to submit to Islam:
The recent contrived uproar over the inadvertent burning of the Koran…should be seen for what it is: a power-play tactic to make our military forces more submissive to the dictates of Islam, Read more
The Air Force has issued a “stop work” on the airship known as the Blue Devil, which was to be an “optionally manned surveillance” dirigible. This is interpreted as the lead-in to the demise of the program.
The Blue Devil 2 was considered to be a herald of next-generation persistent intelligence collection with a potential endurance of more than nine days. Depending on the duration of the mission, the airship would have been able to carry 2,500 pounds of surveillance equipment for five days, or 7,500 pounds if the sortie was shortened to three days.
The CEO of Mav6, Blue Devils’ creator, is David Deptula — formerly LtGen Deptula, deputy chief of staff for ISR and an unusually fervent advocate for UAVs. It seems he found his civilian calling. The Navy was also researching similar airships. In an interesting bit of timing, their program just got extended.
The cancellation may render moot Michael Weinstein’s likely offense at the religious reference in the aircraft’s name…
A rebuilt mosque in Afghanistan is now the “centerpiece of the local government” — with the aid of the US Marines.
Marine Capt. Jesse Hills…was the project manager for the refurbishment. He was responsible for finding out what exactly was needed to repair the mosque: the time and resources Read more
“I never attended services in the civilian world. But all that changed when I joined the Army.”
Jake Kohlman thought religious services during basic training would be a good excuse to get away from the military training instructors. He was right. But he was also renewed in his faith. As it turns out, many trainees may have gone just for the doughnuts:
After the service we filed into the parking lot, where some kind, older veterans had set up picnic tables with lemonade and doughnuts. Now I understood why the service was so popular…The doughnut I had that day was the best I’d ever had.
Turns out some other trainees caught on:
Eventually, word leaked out to the rest of the company about the doughnuts and lemonade, and by the end of Basic, 65 soldiers from my company alone were marching to services on Sunday…’
Chris Rodda of Michael Weinstein’s MRFF has previously said Christian Read more