I Thought the CIC Was Supposed to Support Our Troops?

To say that Obama and his Administration are not our Armed Forces’ best friends is an understatement.

Foxnews.com has the story:

A veterans group is vowing to get a handwriting expert to determine if the letters sent to parents of Navy SEALs killed in Afghanistan were signed by President Obama himself or an electronic autopen that can replicate his signature.

Karen and Billy Vaughn, whose son Aaron Vaughn was one of 17 SEALs and 13 other Americans killed in a helicopter crash Aug. 6, 2011, raised the issue at a Tea Party rally in Tampa during the Republican National Convention. Karen Vaughn said she compared the signature on her letter, dated Sept. 23, 2011, with those received by other families of SEALs and determined the signature was mechanical.

“We are going to have nationally recognized handwriting experts review the letters given the strong circumstantial evidence which exists in this case.”

– Joel Arends, Veterans for a Strong America

But the White House insists every letter sent out to the families of fallen service members is signed by the hand of the Commander-in-Chief.

“The President signs every such letter personally,” White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said Friday.

An autopen is a machine that can be programmed to duplicate an individual’s John Hancock. Seen as more personal than a stamp but less than a hand-signature, the device was first used in the White House by President Harry Truman. President Obama made history when he became the first chief executive to use the device to sign a bill, authorizing its use to extend key provisions of the Patriot Act last year while he was in France.

Aaron Vaughn was part of a rescue team that was sent to a mountainous area in the Wardak Providence in August of last year to assist an Army Ranger unit that was under heavy fire. The team had completed their mission but their Chinook helicopter was shot down as they were departing. Nearly 40 people perished, marking it one of the deadliest single incident losses in the decade-long war in Afghanistan.

Veterans for a Strong America, a nonpartisan military watchdog group pledged to get to the bottom of the matter.

“After reviewing letters from several families of fallen Navy SEALs it appears that the letters may have been auto-penned, so we are going to have nationally recognized handwriting experts review the letters given the strong circumstantial evidence which exists in this case,” Joel Arends, chairman of Veterans for a Strong America said in a statement to FoxNews.com.

Arends also complained that the mailings are form letters, with only the names of the recipients changed. The White House conceded that point, but noted sending form letters has long been common practice for presidents, especially when war casualties mount.

In 2003, Newsweek reported that condolence letters from President George W. Bush were also form letters, “With the exception of the salutation and a reference to the fallen soldier in the text.”

However, four years later, the Washington Times ran a story claiming that Bush had sent personal letters to more than 4,000 families of soldiers killed in action and 9/11 victims during his presidency which was largely unnoticed by the public.

In a related story, also found on foxnews.com:

The Pentagon’s top lawyer on Thursday informed the former Navy SEAL who wrote a forthcoming book describing details of the raid that killed Usama bin Laden that he violated agreements to not divulge military secrets and that as a result the Pentagon is considering taking legal action against him.

The general counsel of the Defense Department, Jeh Johnson, wrote in a letter transmitted to the author that he had signed two nondisclosure agreements with the Navy in 2007 that obliged him to “never divulge” classified information.

“This commitment remains in force even after you left the active duty Navy,” Johnson wrote. He said the author, Matt Bissonnette, left active duty “on or about April 20, 2012,” which was nearly one year after the May 2011 raid.

By signing the agreements, Bissonnette acknowledged his awareness, Johnson wrote, that “disclosure of classified information constitutes a violation of federal criminal law.” He said it also obliged the author to submit his manuscript for a security review by the government before it was published. The Pentagon has said the manuscript was not submitted for review, although it obtained a copy last week.

Johnson said that after reviewing a copy of the book, “No Easy Day,” the Pentagon concluded that the author is in “material breach and violation” of the agreements.

The book is to be published next week by Penguin Group (USA)’s Dutton imprint. The Associated Press purchased a copy Tuesday.

First, Obama is “too busy” to actually sign letters to the families of our fallen, and now his administration wants to “take legal action” against a Navy Seal, for “divulging” a raid that happened a year ago, which Obama has been taking credit for. I realize that Bissonette committed a serious breach of protocol, but…

Given the treatment of our Armed Forces by their CIC, it is no wonder a Rasmussen Poll, taken in July, showed that

…military veterans prefer Mitt Romney by a wide margin, 59% to 35%. Another 5% prefer a third party candidate; 2% are undecided. This poll has been echoed by Gallup, which put the two at 58-34 back in May. John McCain won some 54% of the veteran vote against Obama.

Romney’s larger lead is a sign that veterans are dissatisfied with Obama, rather than pleased particularly with Romney – Romney, after all, was not a military man while McCain famously was. The poll did not ask military vets about their feelings on the end of “don’t ask, don’t tell.” Despite Obama’s attempts to pander to veterans by offering them larger benefits and suggesting that we build a country “worthy” of our returning vets, America’s military men and women continue to prefer hawkish foreign policy and fiscal responsibility to appeasement-oriented foreign policy and heavy spending.

Perhaps it’s because our Brightest and Best believe in American Exceptionalism and actually love this country.

As opposed to…well…you-know-who.

2 thoughts on “I Thought the CIC Was Supposed to Support Our Troops?

  1. yoda's avatar yoda

    It doesn’t surprise me that Barry didn’t take time out to sign a letter to the families of these brave men….he had a golf game or a campaign stop to get to.

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  2. Gohawgs's avatar Gohawgs

    The obamanation doesn’t sign letters to the families of fallen soldiers, sailors or airmen he’s too busy demeaning, demoralizing and diminishing America to bother with such a triviality…

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