Shinzo Abe, James Mattis Reaffirm U.S. Commitment on Senkakus
Posted: February 3, 2017 Filed under: Asia, Breaking News, China, Diplomacy, Foreign Policy, Global, Japan, Mediasphere, White House | Tags: Bell Boeing V-22 Osprey, Donald Trump, Executive order, Fighter aircraft, Immigration policy, Ivanka Trump, Japan, Japanese people, Kadena Air Base, Marine Corps Air Station Futenma, Nago, Okinawa Prefecture, President of the United States, United States Armed Forces, United States Marine Corps Leave a commentVisiting U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis clearly said during talks with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Friday afternoon that the Senkaku Islands in Okinawa Prefecture are within the scope of Article 5 of the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty, which obliges the United States to defend Japan, according to a senior government official who attended the meeting.
At the opening of the meeting, Abe said he hopes and is certain the two countries “can demonstrate in our country and abroad that the Japan-U.S. alliance is unshakable.” In response, Mattis said that he intended to make clear during the meeting that Article 5 of the security treaty will be important five years or 10 years from now, just as it was a year ago or five years ago.
Mattis arrived in Tokyo on the day to hold talks with the prime minister, Defense Minister Tomomi Inada and other members of Abe’s Cabinet to exchange views on the security environment in East Asia and to address mutual security concerns. The new U.S. defense chief’s visit to Japan marks the first by a U.S. Cabinet member under the administration of President Donald Trump. The ministerial meeting with Inada is scheduled for Saturday, after which they will hold a joint press conference.
During these talks, the two sides are also expected to confirm that the United States will firmly uphold the “nuclear umbrella” (see below) over Japan in its defense.
During his presidential election campaign last year, Trump was ambiguous about defending the Senkakus and also suggested that if Japan doesn’t contribute its due share to shouldering the burden of stationing U.S. forces in Japan, it would be acceptable for Japan to possess its own nuclear weapons to confront North Korea’s nuclear threat. These remarks caused apprehension on the Japanese side.
[VIDEO] Marine Corps Aviation: Today’s Military Readiness Crisis, Tomorrow’s Capabilities
Posted: July 29, 2016 Filed under: Global, Guns and Gadgets, Self Defense, Space & Aviation, War Room | Tags: Eglin Air Force Base, Farnborough Airshow, Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II, Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort, McDonnell Douglas KC-10 Extender, RAF Fairford, Royal Air Force, Royal International Air Tattoo, United Kingdom, United States Marine Corps 1 Comment
Years of flat budgets amid an increasing operational tempo has thrown Marine aviation into a readiness crisis, forcing pilots to scrounge museum aircraft for parts simply to keep their aircraft flightworthy. Nevertheless, Marine aviators must prepare for high-intensity warfare against increasingly sophisticated foreign adversaries.
Can the Marine Corps triage aircraft readiness if sequestration continues? How will the Marines integrate next-generation technology as diverse as autonomous vehicles, the revolutionary F-35B Joint Strike Fighter, and a new heavy-lift helicopter into future operational concepts? Read the rest of this entry »
The Top-Secret Flights that Ended the War
Posted: August 1, 2015 Filed under: History, Japan, War Room | Tags: Air Force Reserve Command, Al Udeid Air Base, Boeing, Boeing C-17 Globemaster III, Boeing F/A-18E/F Super Hornet, Carter Ham, Cloud computing, Enola Gay, Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II, United States Air Force, United States Department of Defense, United States Marine Corps, United States Navy, World War II 2 Comments70 years after the atomic bombings, time stands still on the island of Tinian
Mark Schreiber writes:Imagine disembarking on the shore of a remote tropical island. Walking cautiously past swaying palm trees into the heavy undergrowth, you soon encounter what appears to be the fossilized bones of an enormous prehistoric creature. The thick parallel lines might have been ribs, and the long straight stretches its spine or appendages. Naturally you’re moved to wonder how it appeared when alive, how it moved about and what it ate.
For dyed-in-the-wool history buffs or those merely looking for an exotic place off the beaten track to relax, Tinian beckons. It’s an easy trip from Japan. If you take a Delta Airlines flight to Saipan during daylight hours, be sure to request a window seat on the right side of the aircraft. On the plane’s approach to neighboring Saipan, you’ll get a fantastic bird’s-eye view of the “ribs” of that prehistoric creature — the four runways of North Field — which in the waning months of World War II was the largest operational U.S. air base in the world.
Home to barely 3,000 people, the 101-sq.-km island of Tinian is one of three inhabited islands of 14 that make up the U.S. Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas. Over a period of half a century — between 1899 and 1944 — Tinian went from being controlled by Spain to Germany, Japan and finally the U.S., which in July 1944 captured the island in an eight-day campaign that was largely overshadowed by the bigger and bloodier battle on Saipan, located just 9 km to the north.
From the late 1930s, Japan had begun to augment its military presence in the Nampo Shoto (groups of islands south of the main archipelago), sending 1,280 convicts from Yokohama Prison to Tinian to expand Hagoi Field, located at the north end of the island, with a 1,450-meter-long runway.
Once in American hands, teams of U.S. Navy construction battalions (known as “CBs” or “Seabees”) swarmed over the island, eventually moving an estimated 11 million tons of coral to build runways, taxiways, buildings and some 145 km of roads. The former Japanese airstrip was extended for use by the U.S. Air Force’s new long-range B-29 bombers, adding three more 2,440-meter runways.
It was from North Field’s runway, “Able,” that a specially modified B-29 christened Enola Gay, took off in the early hours of Aug. 6, 1945, to drop the first atomic bomb ever used in warfare on the city of Hiroshima.
Retracing history
I’d visited Tinian once before in 2007, but left to my own devices failed to find several of the places I’d wanted to see. This time I had much better luck, thanks to an introduction to the island’s resident historian, Don Farrell.
Farrell, who’s married to a native of Tinian, has taken up the story of his new home with gusto. In addition to publishing an illustrated guidebook for visitors in 2012 titled “Tinian: A Brief History,” he’s currently nearing completion of his magnum opus, a detailed history of the atomic bomb project that promises to shed new light on Tinian’s role in the war.
Arriving at the lobby of the Tinian Dynasty Hotel and Casino clad in sandals, Bermuda shorts, aloha shirt and a baseball cap, Farrell appears like a modern-day Robinson Crusoe — if Crusoe had driven a Mazda pickup truck.
“What would you like to see?” he asks me while delivering a firm handshake.
“What do you say we retrace the actual route the bomb parts took from their arrival on the island?” I suggest.
After stopping for bottled water and gasoline, we head north. Our first destination is Tinian’s small port, where the heavy cruiser USS Indianapolis, on a top-secret mission, delivered the housing and key components of the uranium bomb on July 26, 1945. (Four days later a Japanese submarine would sink the ship east of the Philippines, with great loss of life.)
No ships, or people, are in port and there’s little left to see. We turn around and head northward on a bumpy, but still negotiable, road marked “8th Avenue.” (The roads in Tinian, named after streets in Manhattan, also include Broadway, Columbus Avenue and Riverside Drive.)
On our way north, we deviate up an overgrown hillside leading to the ruins of the Rasso Jinja, a Shinto shrine at the top of Mount Lasso, which at 171 meters marks the highest point on Tinian. Little remains of the shrine or the B-29 homing tower that stood close by. What can be seen is the concrete foundation of the old U.S. Army hospital. Read the rest of this entry »
After ISIS execution, Angry King Abdullah Quotes Clint Eastwood to U.S. Lawmakers
Posted: February 4, 2015 Filed under: Mediasphere, War Room | Tags: Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Clint Eastwood, Duncan Hunter, Iraq, Jordan, Republican Party (United States), Unforgiven, United States House Committee on Armed Services, United States Marine Corps 2 CommentsByron York writes: Members of the House Armed Services Committee met with Jordan’s King Abdullah Tuesday not long after news broke that ISIS had burned to death a Jordanian pilot captured in the fight against the terrorist group.
“He said there is going to be retribution like ISIS hasn’t seen. He mentioned ‘Unforgiven’ and he mentioned Clint Eastwood, and he actually quoted a part of the movie.”
— Republican Rep. Duncan Hunter Jr., who was in the meeting with the king.
In a private session with lawmakers, the king showed an extraordinary measure of anger — anger which he expressed by citing American movie icon Clint Eastwood.
“He said there is going to be retribution like ISIS hasn’t seen,” said Republican Rep. Duncan Hunter Jr., a Marine Corps veteran of two tours in Iraq and one in Afghanistan, who was in the meeting with the king. “He mentioned ‘Unforgiven’ and he mentioned Clint Eastwood, and he actually quoted a part of the movie.”
“He’s angry. They’re starting more sorties tomorrow than they’ve ever had. They’re starting tomorrow. And he said, ‘The only problem we’re going to have is running out of fuel and bullets.”
Hunter would not say which part of “Unforgiven” the king quoted, but noted it was where Eastwood’s character describes how he is going to deliver his retribution. There is a scene in the picture in which Eastwood’s character, William Munny, says…(read more)
Yemen: ‘When President Obama Declares Something a ‘Success Story,’ You Know It Has ‘TOTAL FAILURE’ Embedded in its DNA’
Posted: January 24, 2015 Filed under: Global, War Room, White House | Tags: Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, Central Intelligence Agency, Iraq, Islam, Islamic state, Sensitivity training, Sharia, Smedley Butler, The Pentagon, The Washington Post, United States Armed Forces, United States Marine Corps, United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence 1 CommentU.S. Halts Some Counterterror Efforts in Yemen
Greg Miller and Craig Whitlock reporting for The Washington Post — The Obama administration has been forced to suspend certain counterterrorism operations with Yemen in the aftermath of the collapse of its government, according to U.S. officials, a move that eases pressure on al-Qaida‘s most dangerous franchise.
Michelle Malkin writes:
Four months ago, America’s King Midas in Reverse crowed about the fruits of his triumphant foreign policy in jihad-infested Yemen. A “light footprint” approach to counterterrorism operations, he claimed, was the most effective path to stability. In addition, Obama has shoveled nearly $1 billion in American tax-subsidized foreign aid to Yemen.
Four months later, Iran-backed Shia rebels seized a Yemeni presidential palace. The president and his entire cabinet tendered their resignations on Thursday, creating a vacuum that al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula is ready and eager to fill. ISIS is gaining its own Sunni foothold in the Muslim terror-breeding ground. And while the JV team at the State Department dithers with hashtag games and selfies, adults at the Pentagon want to evacuate U.S. embassy personnel and other Americans before it’s too late…(read more)
Armed drones operated by the CIA and the U.S. Joint Special Operations Command remain deployed for now over southern Yemen, where al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula is based. But some U.S. officials said that the Yemeni security services that provided much of the intelligence that sustained that U.S. air campaign are now controlled by Shiite rebels, known as Houthis, who have seized control of much of the capital.
“The agencies we worked with… are really under the thumb of the Houthis. Our ability to work with them is not there.”
— Senior U.S. official
Even before the disintegration of the government, officials say, the growing chaos in Yemen had resulted in a steady erosion in intelligence-gathering efforts against AQAP and a de facto suspension in raids by Yemeni units trained, equipped and often flown to targeted al-Qaida compounds by U.S. forces.
Michelle Malkin continues…
The Yemen chaos didn’t happen overnight. The White House has allowed jihad to fester there from Day One. Reminder: In late January 2009, the U.S. Embassy in Yemen came under gunfire. American diplomatic staff had been warned of a pending attack. That same month, two former Yemeni Gitmo detainees, Said Ali al-Shihri and Abu Hareth Muhammad al-Awfi, released a video publicly recommitting to “aid the religion,” “establish the rightly guided caliphate” and “fight against our enemies” after undergoing terrorism “rehab” in Saudi Arabia.
Why has Obama so wantonly aided and abetted our enemies? Appeasement of the international human rights crowd and agreement with the soft-on-jihad lawyers infesting his own Justice Department. As I’ve reported previously, Attorney General Eric Holder’s law firm, Covington and Burling, provided dozens of dangerous Yemeni Gitmo detainees pro bono legal representation and sob-story media relations campaigns. At least nine Obama DOJ appointees represented or advocated for Gitmo denizens before taking positions in our government….(more)
[Read more – Obama’s bloody Yemen disaster – Michelle Malkin]
“The agencies we worked with . . . are really under the thumb of the Houthis. Our ability to work with them is not there,” said a senior U.S. official closely involved in monitoring the situation. In a measure of U.S. concern over the crisis, officials also signaled for the first time a willingness to open talks with Houthi leaders, despite their suspected ties to Iran and antipathy toward the United States.
The developments have unraveled a campaign that President Barack Obama described last year as a model for how the United States should fight terrorist groups, and avoid being drawn more directly into overseas conflicts. The turmoil in Yemen has exposed the risks of that strategy, with U.S. officials now voicing concern that the suspension in operations in Yemen could enable AQAP — which has launched a series of plots against the United States and claimed credit for the attacks in Paris this month — to regroup. Read the rest of this entry »
‘Seeing ‘American Sniper‘ Made the State of the Union Speech Pretty Unbearable’
Posted: January 21, 2015 Filed under: Think Tank, War Room, White House | Tags: 2003 invasion of Iraq, Academy Award, al Qaeda, Bradley Cooper, Chris Kyle, Clint Eastwood, Iraq War, Islamic state, Letters from Iwo Jima, Sienna Miller, United States Marine Corps, United States Navy SEALs 2 CommentsObama’s American Sniper
Dan Henninger writes: Barack Obama was 15 minutes into his State of the Union speech when I arrived home to watch it, having just walked back from seeing “American Sniper.”
“Watching a movie about a Navy SEAL who served four tours fighting in Iraq was not the best way to enhance the experience of a Barack Obama speech. As a matter of fact, it was pretty unbearable.”
Because Clint Eastwood directed “American Sniper” the movie is about more than the story of Chris Kyle, the highly skilled rifle marksman from Texas. In 2006, Mr. Eastwood presented two movies about the famous World War II battle of Iwo Jima. “Letters from Iwo Jima” told the story from the perspective of Japanese soldiers, and “Flags of Our Fathers” from the Americans’ side.
“Watching “American Sniper,” it is impossible to separate these catastrophes from seeing what the Marines did and endured to secure northern Iraq. Again, anyone is entitled to hate the Iraq war…”
So “American Sniper” is not a crude paean to “our boys” in the Iraq war. What it does is convey the extraordinary personal, psychological and physical sacrifice of the U.S. Marines who fought al Qaeda i”n Fallujah, Ramadi and the other towns of Iraq’s Anbar province beginning in 2003 and through the period of the Anbar Awakening, which ended with the Marines pacifying the province.
“…But no serious person would want a president to make a decision that would allow so much personal sacrifice to simply evaporate…”
It’s just a movie, so even “American Sniper’s” small slice only hints at the price America paid—some 3,500 combat deaths and another 32,000 wounded—to bring Iraq to a point of relative, if fragile, stability in 2011.
“…Which, in his serene self-confidence, is what Barack Obama did. That absolute drawdown was a decision of fantastic foolishness.”
Opinions will differ, often bitterly, on the war in Iraq and the reasons for it. In the movie, a painful funeral scene captures that ambivalence. But what is just not possible to choke down is President Obama’s decision in 2011 to reduce the U.S.’s residual military presence to virtually zero. It was a decision to waste what the Marines and Army had done. Read the rest of this entry »
#MarineHeldInMexico: Mexican Jail Holding U.S. Marine Controlled By Drug Lords
Posted: May 28, 2014 Filed under: Crime & Corruption, Diplomacy, Global, U.S. News | Tags: Afghanistan, El Hongo, Fox News Channel, La Mesa Prison, Mexico, Prison, Tahmooressi, Tijuana, Twitter, United States Marine Corps 1 CommentFor Fox News Latino, Andrew O’Reilly reports: The first new state penitentiary in nearly two decades to open in Mexico’s Baja California Norte, El Hongo, was hailed as a model prison when its first inmates were bused into the maximum security facility back in 2002.
[UPDATE: Jailed Marine’s friend claims he was beaten, chained to bed in Mexican custody]
[Participate on Twitter #MarineHeldInMexico]
Located on a windswept, arid plain dotted with creosote and mesquite bushes about 30 miles from downtown Tijuana, the prison houses some of the region’s most dangerous criminals – murderers, rapists and drug cartel hitmen, to name a few.
#JailedMarine‘s fired lawyer: “Andrew is innocent & he shouldn’t be here…I wish him the best.” #MarineHeldInMexico
— Greta Van Susteren (@gretawire) May 28, 2014
And for the last two weeks, the jail has been the home of U.S. Marine Sgt. Andrew Tahmooressi. The active U.S. Marine reservist who served two combat tours in Afghanistan was moved to El Hongo after spending over a month in the notorious La Mesa prison in Tijuana.

Photo: Facebook
Tahmooressi was detained in the early morning hours of April 1st as Mexican officials surrounded his black Ford F-150 pick-up loaded with everything he owned – including three registered firearms – after he made a wrong turn and ended up in Mexico. Read the rest of this entry »
Japan Plans Special Force for Island Defense
Posted: March 6, 2014 Filed under: Asia, Japan, War Room | Tags: China, East China Sea, Itsunori Onodera, Japan, Japan Self-Defense Forces, Sunday, Tokyo, United States Marine Corps Leave a comment
An amphibious assault vehicle lands during the U.S.-Japan military exercise Iron Fist outside Camp Pendleton in California on Feb. 19. Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
TOKYO—Yuka Hayashi reports: Japan plans to establish a 3,000-troop unit specializing in amphibious operations “as swiftly as possible,” the defense minister said, publicly outlining details of the new unit for the first time as tensions with China continue over disputed islands.
“Our nation has numerous remote islands and islands of various sizes, and they give us the basis for our exclusive economic zone that ranks sixth in the world…That makes it important to provide defense for islands over the coming years.”
Japan has undertaken an ambitious project to create a force similar to the U.S. Marine Corps, and Japanese Self-Defense Force Troops have been receiving increasingly frequent training from their U.S. counterparts in the past few years.
A plan to strengthen amphibious capabilities was laid out in Japan’s new defense guidelines released in December. In detailing some of the specifics Sunday, Defense Minister Itsunori Onodera said the new force is expected to include units specializing in handling types of equipment currently unfamiliar to Japanese troops, such as amphibious vehicles and the V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft.
Syrian Electronic Army Hacks US Marines Website
Posted: September 2, 2013 Filed under: War Room | Tags: al Qaeda, Cyberwarfare, International Business Times, marines.com, New York Times, Syria, Syrian Army, Syrian Electronic Army, Twitter, United States, United States Marine, United States Marine Corps Leave a commentThe Syrian Electronic Army (SEA) hacked into and defaced the marines.com website in the early hours of September 2.
by AWR HAWKINS
According to International Business Times, the website was restored to normal shortly after the cyber attack took place. The SEA has been involved in numerous cyber attacks over the past six months, including “attacks on the New York Times and Twitter.”