PrairiePundit

Just the Facts: Retired four-star military officers who lambasted President Trump could be recalled to active duty and prosecuted for violating the U.S. Code, military law experts told Just the News. “Retired officers can't make contemptuous remarks of the commander-in-chief,” said John Dowd, a former Marine Corps Judge Advocate and former Trump legal advisor. “They’re all subject to recall. They’re subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice until they die.” The pertinent law is Title 10 of the U.S. Code, Section 888, the experts said. “As part of the UCMJ, governing military law, you cannot use contemptuous words against certain officials, including the president,” one active duty Army Judge Advocate General Corps officer said. “That is a court-martial offense, and yes, you can be recalled to active duty to be court-martialed.” The outspoken retired officers know they could be held to account, the JAG officer said. “I don't know who the hell they think they ar...

Breitbart: Award-winning journalist and war correspondent Lara Logan discussed how retired generals who are speaking out against President Trump are either “complicit” with or waging an information warfare campaign against him, in an interview with Sirius XM’s Breitbart News Daily on Wednesday. Logan reminded listeners of the Russian collusion narrative, and how many officials from the Justice Department, Director of National Intelligence, Central Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency, and other agencies worked together to push the idea that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia during the 2016 election. “Think about how many people it took who had to be complicit to push that narrative. Think about the secretaries of defense and the national security advisers that served at that time, who all had access to the intelligence. They all knew it wasn’t true,” Logan told show host Breitbart News Editor-in-Chief Alex Marlow. “General [Jim] Mattis, he knew. General [H.R.] Mc...

Victor Davis Hanson: Sometimes retired generals are deified. Ulysses S. Grant and Dwight D. Eisenhower won two presidential terms in landslide elections. At other moments, war heroes such Generals Douglas MacArthur and Curtis LeMay were vilified as near insurrectionaries for their blistering attacks on sitting presidents. In such a climate, the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which became effective law in May 1951, prohibits active generals from disparaging their commander in chief — in the way perhaps MacArthur had bitterly pilloried then-president Harry Truman over the Korean War. Article 88 of the UCMJ makes it a crime to voice “contemptuous words against the President, the Vice President, Congress, the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of a military department, the Secretary of Homeland Security, or the Governor or legislature of any State.” But no one quite knows, and debate continues over, whether such codified prohibitions on free expression apply to retired generals...

David Goldman: The accusation that President Trump in some way threatens the Constitution is the most disgusting expression of hypocrisy that I have heard in nearly half a century of journalism–no exceptions. It is so monstrously false that it is shocking to hear it from the likes of Gen. James Mattis and Gen. Colin Powell. A conspiracy to drive Donald Trump from office through lies, leaks and larceny began before he took office and continues to the present day. Alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia was an outrageous hoax. The spurious charges against Gen. Mike Flynn have been exposed as a concoction of FBI officials working for the Hillary Clinton camp. The entire disgusting business has been a lie of whole cloth from the outset. And it constitutes the most grievous threat to the US Constitution in our lifetimes–in fact, since the Confederate insurrection of 1861. A clique of bureaucrats and politicians conspired with the major media to frame the president of the...

This letter was published in the Daily Wire after being released by President Trump: ... Jim: I slept on your statement and woke up appalled and upset. You lost me. Never dreamed you would let a bunch of hack politicians use your good name and reputation earned with the blood and guts of young Marines. You did what you said you would — engage in this discourse. Marines keep their word. The phony protesters near Lafayette park were not peaceful and are not real. They are terrorists using idle hate filled students to burn and destroy. They were abusing and disrespecting the police when the police were preparing the area for the 1900 curfew. Jim, this is the new nihilism. See Dan Henniger in WSJ today . Marines support the police in harm’s way. Did you forget that President Bush used active duty Marines to quell the riots in LA? President Trump has countless cities and some snowflake governors and mayors wetting themselves in the use of force to protect innocent lives and prope...

Jamie McIntyre: Legendary military commander retired Marine Corps Gen. Jim Mattis is on a whirlwind publicity tour promoting his book  Call Sign Chaos: Learning to Lead , which he co-authored with Bing West.  Washington Examiner  senior writer Jamie McIntyre covered Mattis both when he was in uniform and during his stint as President Trump’s first defense secretary. The two spoke by phone last week, after McIntyre promised in an email that he wouldn’t ask the same dumb questions as everyone else, but instead would ask entirely new dumb questions. That apparently appealed to Mattis, who immediately called. The following interview has been lightly edited for clarity and space. Washington Examiner:  I'm wondering about some of your judgments. You seem pretty confident after you've made a decision that you've made the right one. For instance, the account you give of how you were certain that you could've captured or killed Osama bin Laden in the mountains of Tora ...

PJ Media: After the surprise resignation of Secretary of Defense James Mattis last December, Democrats were quick to politicize the news, and have certainly been hoping ever since that Mattis would provide them with new information they could use to attack Donald Trump. He does have a memoir coming out, Call Sign Chaos: Learning to Lead , but it looks like it’s Barack Obama and Joe Biden who get the bulk of the criticism. Prior be being Secretary of Defense under Trump, Mattis served as commander of U.S. Central Command under Obama and Biden. Mattis had predicted that Iran would continue to provoke the United States. Mattis’s warning went ignored, and when Iran committed an act of war on American soil, he was not told about it, and the United States never responded to it . The duty officer at his Tampa, Florida, headquarters on Oct. 11, 2011 told him that the attorney general and FBI director had held a press conference to announce the arrest of two Iranians who had planned a bo...

This is the real world that the media mostly ignores.

Becket Adams: Democratic lawmakers and their allies in the press are getting more than they bargained for this week with the release of former Secretary of Defense James Mattis’ memoir, Call Sign Chaos. White House critics have salivated for weeks over the possibility that the book would be a White House tell-all, overflowing with delicious gossip about President Trump and his inner circle. The book provides no such juicy tidbits for the #Resistance, according to the Washington Examiner’s Kelly Jane Torrance. The memoir does, however, include an awfully unflattering glimpse into Obama-era foreign policy and the former president's strategy (or the lack thereof) for defeating the Islamic State. Those who still adore former President Barack Obama will likely consider Mattis’ memoir a deeply unwelcome surprise. And those who have pinned their hopes of recapturing the White House on former Vice President Joe Biden, well, they are not going to like the book at all. In 2011, Mat...

Washington Examiner: Jim Mattis, the former Marine Corps general and Pentagon chief, has lashed 2020 Democratic front-runner Joe Biden for fueling the rise of ISIS by insisting on the total withdrawal of U.S. troops in Iraq. "You may want a war over. You may declare it over. You may even try to walk away from it. But the bottom line is the enemy gets a vote, as we say in the military, and we simply have got to understand that terrorism is going to be an ambient threat," he said in an NPR interview. As vice president, Biden was tasked by President Barack Obama with overseeing Iraq policy. In his new book, Mattis, 68, argues that Biden, 76, was "indifferent" to the consequences of complete withdrawal - consequences that included "tens of thousands of casualties, plus untold misery for millions of innocents," as well as the kidnapping and beheading of westerners, and horrific terrorist attacks across the world. "He wanted our forces out of Iraq,...

The Hill: Defense Secretary James Mattis announced Thursday that he would resign in February, sending a letter to President Trump stating that he deserved a general "whose views are better aligned with yours." The announcement came shortly after the White House said the U.S. would be withdrawing its troops from Syria, as well as reports it was considering a drawdown in Afghanistan. Both moves have been met with opposition by Pentagon officials and members of the foreign policy establishment. ... The withdrawal certainly increases the risk of the situation spiraling out of control as it did when Obama made the mistake of retreating from Iraq.  I think the President has been poorly advised by Turkey's Egodan who would like the US to leave so he can have an easier time making war against the Kurds who supported the US war against ISIS.

The Mattis statement about his order of annihilation comes toward the end of the video as he responds to a Senator's questions about the "deconfliction" process in Syria in dealing with the Russians.  The Russian irregular forces were trying to capture Syrian oil fields with the hopes of getting a percentage of the production from the fields as payment from the Assad regime.

Making fun of the Democrats' attack on Bolton was an interesting icebreaker and Bolton took it with good humor.

Eli Lake: ... When reporters asked U.S. Secretary of Defense James Mattis about the incident, he called the whole thing perplexing. "I have no idea why they would attack there, the forces were known to be there, obviously the Russians knew," he said. "We have always known that there are elements in this very complex battle space that the Russians did not have, I would call it, control of." Now, it should be said that Mattis, a retired four-star Marine Corps General, is a very smart man. His perplexity in this case is probably what Plato called a "noble lie," a falsehood spoken by a leader to achieve a greater social good. If Mattis acknowledges the obvious -- that the Kremlin authorized a direct assault on a U.S.-sponsored base by non-uniformed personnel -- he risks an escalation spiral in Syria. Better to express bewilderment and give Russian President Vladimir Putin a chance to back down and deny culpability, which he ended up doing despite the heav...

Fox News: Hundreds of ISIS fighters had just been chased out of a northern Syrian city and were fleeing through the desert in long convoys, presenting an easy target to U.S. A-10 "warthogs." But the orders to bomb the black-clad jihadists never came, and the terrorists melted into their caliphate -- living to fight another day. The events came in August 2016 , even as then-Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump was vowing on the campaign trail to let generals in his administration crush the organization that, under President Obama, had grown from the “jayvee team” to the world’s most feared terrorist organization. “I will…quickly and decisively bomb the hell out of ISIS,” Trump, who would name legendary Marine Corps Gen. James Mattis as secretary of defense, promised. “We will not have to listen to the politicians who are losing the war on terrorism." ISIS CURSED, MOCKED IN MOSUL, WHERE OLD CITY REMAINS A HAUNTED WASTELAND Just over a year later, ISIS has been r...

NY Times: Mattis Contradicts Trump on Iran Deal Ahead of Deadline Pressed by lawmakers, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis reiterated his view that the Iran accord is working, a quiet break with President Trump. Mattis seems to be working off a very narrow definition of "working" in answering questions about this awful deal.  Iran is still the biggest state sponsor of terrorism.  Iran is building missile construction facilities for Hezballah to use against Israel.  It is still aiding the Assad regime, and rebels in Yemen.  It is still working on a delivery system for the nukes it has postponed building under the deal.  It is still colluding with North Korea on their shared interest in nuclear weapons and ICBMs.  Iran could use the money Obama gave them to buy a nuke from North Korea which desperately needs money for its program. Fundamentally, Iran is still a regime led by genocidal Islamic religious bigots.  I remain baffled that...

Peggy Noonan: The American Spirit Is Alive in Texas ‘Hold the line,’ Jim Mattis exhorted soldiers. In the face of a disaster, civilians are doing just that. This is a story about people who made us feel good about America as they faced adversity.  Hopefully, the politicians won't screw it up.

Washington Times: U.S. military strategists at the Pentagon have a military solution in place to address the growing threat emanating from North Korea, but they are holding their fire in favor of ongoing diplomatic efforts by Washington and its allies, Defense Secretary James Mattis said Thursday. The Pentagon chief remained largely mum on the details of that military solution, which theoretically would curb Pyongyang’s efforts to develop a nuclear-capable, ballistic missile arsenal, except to say any military option would be a multilateral one involving a number of regional powers in the Pacific. “Do I have military options? Of course, I do. That’s my responsibility, to have those. And we work very closely with allies to ensure that this is not unilateral either … and of course there’s a military solution,” Mr. Mattis told reporters en route to meet with senior leaders in the technology sector in Seattle and California. The former four-star general declined to provide any add...

Fox News: Defense Secretary Jim Mattis wants to overhaul military education and training to “regain” the art of warfighting following complaints by thousands of service members that their time is being wasted by hours of mandatory training, according to a new memo obtained by Fox News. The training that is the subject of complaints covers everything from alcohol use to active shooters to sexual harassment to stress management. Addressing the service secretaries and chiefs of the Armed Forces, Mattis has ordered the formation of a new working group to “determine changes to military personnel policies” to “equip more ready and lethal forces.” The working group will include the second in command of each branch of the U.S. military and report to the deputy secretary of defense and vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The secretary wants each service to examine its military education to “regain a concentration on the art and science of warfighting” and look into the hours of ...

The Islander: FEATURES ,  GLOBAL NEWS Full transcript: Defense Secretary James Mattis’ interview with The Islander After obtaining his contact information through its accidental exposure by the Washington Post, The MIHS Islander contacted Secretary of Defense James Mattis for an interview. Two companion pieces to this article,  a description and reflection on the experience of getting and conducting the interview  as well as  a feature on the connection between education and radicalization according to Mattis , have been published online. This is a remarkable interview by Teddy Fischer.  It is better than most I have seen by more seasoned reporters.   Mattis starts out by stressing the importance of history to endeavors large and small in both the military and other aspects of life.  It is a long piece but well worth your time and would also be great for young people in school. Mattis has a huge collection of history books on warfare that he...