SECRECY & THE SECURITY STATE - page 29

The Pentagon’s inspector general told a lawmaker one of his constituents was ill-treated by Army investigators after alleging she was sexually assaulted by a reservist officer. The revelation came a week after the Government Accountability Office said the military fails to identify factors that breed a unique rape culture in the services. In a report initiated by Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) published last week, the Pentagon Inspector general said the Virginia resident’s charges were not sufficiently investigated and rebuked the US Army Criminal Investigation Command…

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Some Congressional Republicans on Monday responded to Friday’s Islamic State (ISIL) terrorist attacks in Paris by taking aim at the Obama administration’s plans to admit refugees fleeing the brutal ongoing civil war in Syria. Describing the sanctuary proposals as a threat to Americans, House Judiciary Committee chair Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) and Senate judiciary immigration subcommittee chair Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.)–both prior critics of the plans–called on the White House to but the brakes on its humanitarian initiative. “When will President Obama take [ISIL] threats seriously, as…

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President Obama said Monday that the deployment of a large ground force to combat the Islamic State (ISIL) would be “a mistake” in response to the group’s wave of shocking terrorist attacks in Paris. “If you have a handful of people who don’t mind dying, they can kill a lot of people,” he said. “What happens when there’s a terrorist attack generated from Yemen? Do we then send troops into there? A strategy has to be one that can be sustained,” he added. The President…

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Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) threatened to sue the Obama administration if it unilaterally attempts to shutdown the military prison at Guantanamo Bay. Speaking to The Hill this week, the Senate Armed Services Committee chair said he “would want to go to court,” should President Obama move to close the notorious facility without Congressional approval. The White House could claim that under Article 2 of the Constitution, the president is Commander in Chief in charge of both troop movements and military prisoner movements, and thus has…

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During Tuesday’s night GOP presidential debate Carly Fiorina accused a government agency that polices banks of conducting a dragnet on financial consumers. She declined to mention, however, that she once abetted the government in conducting illegal surveillance more than a decade ago. In a screed reminiscent of Ronald Reagan’s 1961 vinyl recording, in which he spoke out against “Socialized Medicine,” a.k.a. Medicare, Fiorina claimed that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is engaged in mass domestic espionage and part of a plot to enact totalitarianism in the US.…

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In one of the most heated exchanges during the Republican Presidential Primary debate in Wisconsin Tuesday night, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) attacked Sen. Marco Rubio’s (R-Fla.) plan to significantly increase defense spending. The pair went toe-to-toe over what Sen. Paul called an unpaid for “trillion dollar military expenditure,” prompting another conservative lawmaker to jump into the fray on social media. Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich), a member of the House Freedom Caucus, took to Twitter to knock the Florida Senator’s war mongering. “For @marcorubio to lecture on foreign…

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Executive department policies that prohibit staff from reading the Senate Intelligence Committee’s torture report released last year have drawn the ire of lawmakers. According to the New York Times on Tuesday, the Justice Department, the State Department, and the Pentagon are all in receipt of the 6,700-page classified report on the CIA’s post 9/11 enhanced interrogation program, but all have declined to even open it. The dismissal of the findings runs counter to the urging of Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), the author of the report,…

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Doctors Without Borders (MSF) President Joanne Liu asked if its hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan had “lost its protected status” in the view of US policymakers, after the organization conducted an inquiry into the American airstrikes that leveled the facility, killing over two dozen people. MSF concluded in a report published Thursday that the hospital had been treating wounded combatants from all sides, and that its neutrality had been respected prior to the Oct. 3 attack. “What we know is that we were running a hospital…

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The Defense Department dished out $7 million over the last few years paying professional sports teams for public tributes to the military, according to a report released Wednesday by US Senators. Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) turned up that the “paid patriotism” contracts were awarded, starting in 2012, to organizations within the National Football League, Major League Baseball, the National Hockey League, and Major League Soccer. The Senators noted that most of the contracts involved the Army National Guard, and stipulated “on-field color…

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