News Roundup: Iranians use U.S. sailor tears in propaganda video, VA whistleblower, the perils of unsolicited pics

Iranian Humiliation of U.S. Navy Continues:

Images of a U.S. sailor crying in custody are being broadcast on Iran’s state television as the latest propaganda salvo from the Iranian government in the wake of its provocative January arrest of 10 American sailors in their waters. The latest move prompted a condemnation from the U.S. Navy, calling the sailors’ treatment “outrageous and unacceptable.”

Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting has been playing images of the arrest and detention of the sailors, riverines transiting from Bahrain to Kuwait in riverine command boats, since shortly after their Jan. 12 arrest.

When this story first came out, and Secretary of State John Kerry and President Obama were lubing each other up on just how “civilized” the whole episode turned out to be, I saw it for what it was. In a blistering tirade against the incompetence and poor training of the U.S. Navy, I wrote the following for that week’s Roundup:

But Iran sure as hell ain’t our buddies, either. Friendly nations do not have a sizable contingent of their power players in government who would love nothing more than to see us wiped off the map. Friendly nations do not have Americans being held against their will (now released). Friendly nations are not responsible for training our enemies or for manufacturing munitions that have killed and maimed thousands of American troops in Iraq. Friendly nations do not make propaganda videos.

That’s what that was. Anyone who doesn’t see that this was huge propaganda victory for Iran is putting their head in the sand.

Now how is it possible that I, a lowly, crotchety, barrel-chested former action guy could immediately see what this was as it was occurring, but not our sonorous Frankenstein of a SecState? Or, for that matter, the U.S. Navy, who, having received their proper talking points, fell all over themselves praising the Iranians for their “hospitality?” Well, looks like this latest provocation proved too much even for our gelded Navy:

The new images sparked a fierce response from the Navy.

“As Secretary [of State John] Kerry has said, we are disgusted by the exploitation of our Sailors in Iranian propaganda,” said Cmdr. Kevin Stephens, spokesman for Naval Forces Central Command, in a statement. “The detention of our personnel was outrageous and unacceptable.”…

Welcome to the party, pal.

…“It’s outrageous and unacceptable that our Sailors were held at gunpoint and detained. We are grateful diplomacy worked at the end of the day, but it would never have come to that had the Iranian maritime forces involved behaved professionally and responsibly.”

Indeed. This was a disgrace from the beginning to the end. No matter how much Valerie Jarrett and Barack Obama try to deny the obvious, the Iranian government is not our friend. And what’s up with the crying? I don’t really want to beat the men up more than I already have, but damn, bro…Admiral James Stockdale was beaten and tortured every day by the NVA for seven freaking years. You think you could have made it a whole 48 hours without blubbering on camera. That was bad. Unless the Iranians admit that they were giving you the cattle prod off-camera, that was bad.

I’m dying to know the status of riverine boat commander Lt. David Nartker at this point. I wonder which Ice Station Zebra he’s been reassigned to since making that propaganda video for the Iranian state media, glowing about the hospitality. That is, if he’s facing any punitive action at all, which he should be. One, for screwing up the mission in the first place, when he decided to “take a shortcut” in one of the most precarious bodies of water on the planet Earth, and two, for blabbing all over the TV about the goddamn delicious kebabs. Not a good look, swabs.

Two Maryland Sheriff Deputies KIA:

The two sheriff’s deputies who died Wednesday after a shooting in a crowded shopping center in Abingdon, Maryland, were longtime police officers who served in the U.S. Army and U.S. Marine Corps, police say.

Senior Deputy Patrick Dailey and Senior Deputy Mark Logsdon were shot and killed by David Evans, who opened fire at lunchtime in a Panera Bread restaurant and then in an shootout outside, Harford County Sheriff Jeffrey Gahler said Thursday afternoon.

Dailey was 52 and Logsdon was 43, The Baltimore Sun reported.
Dailey served in the Marines and was a 30-year veteran of the police department, Gahler said. He is survived by two sons, his girlfriend and his mother.

Logsdon had been on the force for 16 years and served in the Army, the sheriff said. Records show he served in Iraq. He is survived by three children, his wife and his parents. He was an avid golfer who had planned multiple golf tournaments for charity.

David Evans, who had warrants for his arrest, fatally shot Dailey in the Panera and then shot Logsdon before he was killed himself.

Dailey went to the Panera on Wednesday looking for David Evans, 68, and had just begun speaking with him, when Evans pulled out a gun and shot him in the head, Gahler said.

Very sad. And you wonder why sometimes cops can be suspicious? Because they never know what they are walking into. Imagine that you could just be talking with a guy you see on a sidewalk and suddenly he puts a gun to your head and executes you in broad daylight. What a nightmare.

News Roundup Affable Nod to VA Whistleblower Ryan Honl:

MADISON, Wis. – Whistleblower Ryan Honl has often claimed the government union that represents staff at the troubled Tomah Veterans Affairs Medical Center cares more about big labor business and politics than they do veterans.

A story Thursday in The Daily Caller would seem to support Honl’s position.

David Cox, president of the American Federation of Government Employees threatened to “whoop” VA Secretary Robert McDonald’s “ass” during a fever-pitch speech Sunday at a union conference in Washington, D.C….

…The union head also took aim at House Veterans Affairs Committee Chairman Jeff Miller, calling him “a fool,” the Daily Caller reported.

Miller, a Florida Republican, has led the charge to reform the VA, including pushing the VA Accountability Act.

Let us stop here for a minute. Although this is a GREAT story, it’s kind of all over the map. Ryan Honl was a VA psychiatrist and Gulf War veteran who went to the IG over concerns that the Toman (Wisconsin) VA was using shoddy practices and rampantly over-medicating its veterans with opioids and various narcotics. Naturally, instead of going after the culture at the VA that encouraged these practices, the VA went after Honl for having the temerity of caring about veterans, which is anathema to the entire management team, as we here at the News Roundup have extensively, extensively, EXTENSIVELY documented.

Which brings us to blowhard union boss David Cox. David Cox looks exactly like what I think of when I imagine a government union blowhard. That is, fat, bearded, sweaty, and Type 2 adult-onset diabeetus. Here’s Cox in all of his windbag glory:

And what do the politicians have to say about this? The usual. The usual, in this case, being nothing.

Honl recently told Watchdog that he’s been taking calls from Democrat staff members pressuring him to walk back his comments about key lawmakers he says failed to follow-up on his complaints about the Tomah facility.

He said he received an urgent call from an aide to Wisconsin junior U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Madison, last week “reminding him” of all the things the senator has done for veterans, Tomah staff, and for Honl – months after her office was exposed for doing nothing with whistleblower complaints.

How many more times can it be said? THEY DON’T CARE. The people who run for office in our diseased culture are not in it for the public service. They are attracted to the power and controlling people’s lives. Tammy Baldwin’s scummy minions are more concerned with Honl rocking the boat than bored docs jamming fistfuls of pills down some poor bastard’s throat. And, since government unions have deep pockets, the politicians aren’t going to do a goddamn thing to rock that boat. The job of David Cox is protection and promotion of the salaries and benefits of the VA employees. If a few veterans have to OD/get addicted to Oxycontin, oh freaking well.

Oh, I’m sure Tammy Baldwin will take action here. She’ll convene a roundtable. She’ll launch an investigation. She’ll WRITE A LETTER. If it was representative BK, I’d be organizing a march onto the grounds of the VA with hundreds of pissed-off, heavily armed veterans, but that’s just me. It never ends, the VA corruption. And it’s not like I’m asking a lot. I’m just asking for the ability to fire people who steal, and not spend any more money on stupid shit. Apparently, that’s a bridge too far for these government workers.

Nevertheless…outstanding job, Honl. We here at SOFREP appreciate you.

Stop Sending Unsolicited Dick Pics, Men:

The Army has paid $820,000 to settle a lawsuit by a former military police trainee who says she was fired after she filed a sexual harassment complaint against a supervisor, defense lawyers said Wednesday.

An attorney representing Luydmila Starkey said the payment was one of the largest made by a military branch to settle a sexual harassment case. A notice of dismissal of the 2014 lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court in San Jose, California on Wednesday.

Almost a million dollars of your tax money flushed into the shitter because of an idiot. Wait until you hear the details on this one:

Starkey filed suit alleging her then-supervisor, Sgt. Wayne Lord, sent her sexually explicit text messages and nude photos of himself when she was employed at the Presidio of Monterey, an Army installation in Northern California. The suit said she lost her job after she filed a sexual harassment complaint.

In a statement provided by her attorneys, Starkey said she was ostracized at work. She believes she was fired because Lord was popular, and she dared to report him.

Let’s stop here. What the hell is it with guys sending pictures of their penises to women? And, yes, that’s CLEARLY what this was. Every single girl I’ve ever met who talked about online dating confirmed that she received so many unsolicited dick pics, they kept files to show all of their friends. “Unsolicited” being the key word here. And it’s like, right off the bat. A friend told me it was literally as follows:

Her: Hi, how’s it going? My name is xxxxx.

Him: DICK PIC.

I refused to even believe this was a thing for a long, long time. It sounded preposterous to me. First off, why would you want your dick pic floating around on the Internet? Why not just show it to them in person? And, if it’s unsolicited, you have to know that the girl you send it to is going to alert all of her girlfriends, and then she’s going to show it to all of them, and they’re all going to laugh at you.

Hell, I wouldn’t even know the proper procedure. Like, is it considered poor form if the dick pic is sent in a state of non-arousal? What if you haven’t manscaped that month? Is that required before sending the picture? Is video worse or better than still photos? So many questions.

Well, the good news is that this creepy guy won’t be in a position of authority anymore. Surely, this will have followed him around and prevented him from getting into any other sensitive line of work?

Starkey’s lawyers said Lord went to work in a police position for the Department of Defense after the Army was presented with evidence from Starkey’s case.

Lord could not be reached for comment.

Bahahahaha. Ladies of the DoD, watch out. Lord is going to be itching for a new target. I suggest NOT giving him your phone number. Because apparently, Lord isn’t the type of guy to take “no” for an answer when you ask him to stop sending penis pictures:

“I have never seen a stronger case of sexual harassment and wrongful termination,” her attorney Mark Epstein said in a statement. “The text messages were highly sexual and incredibly offensive, not to mention plentiful.”

Plentiful, he said. Like Lord thought, “Hey, just because she used phrases like ‘please stop’ and ‘I’m reporting you’ about the first 57 dong shots, the 58th is going to BLOW her MIND.” Hope you feel good about yourself, Lord, you idiot. Your name is now forever Google-able under the category of “creepy pervs who send dong shots.” I’m sure that won’t get around your office or anything. Ah, but hey…maybe I’m being too hard on the guy. Maybe I’m sounding like An Old here. I mean, maybe this is just what this new generation of crazy, single kids does, and I’m just being a stick in the mud:

Lord’s wife also worked as a lieutenant at the installation, where she was Starkey’s direct supervisor before she was terminated, Epstein said.

WEIRD.

Follow Me on Twitter for Hot Sports Takes:

https://twitter.com/BKactual/status/696507385108500480

It turns out that the only thing I’m good at predicting is jihadi activity. I picked Carolina by two touchdowns. Unfortunately, I didn’t count on Cam Newton turning out to be a giant baby girl who doesn’t feel like going after fumbles.

I really was hoping for Metallica. Will we ever see them perform at the big game in my lifetime? I doubt it now, because if they ever WERE going to, it would have been this one. Super Bowl 50, in San Francisco, where the band came into existence. An American icon; a band that is universally beloved. A trail-blazing, legendary rock group who has songs that entire generations know by heart, in tandem with the hard-hitting, masculine sport of football? Seems like a match made in heaven.

Instead we get…Coldplay. Now, I will admit to liking Coldplay—in a certain context. Like when it’s raining, I’m alone, and I can’t get up the nerve to cut my own wrists. Halftime at the Super Bowl? Get the hell out of here.

Compressible, Cockroach-Inspired Robots Will Kill Us All:

The Army is Still Trying This Dumb Crap:

WASHINGTON — The Army appears to have revived a controversial program that sent social scientists to battlefields and became mired in fraud and sexual harassment, according to documents and interviews.

The Human Terrain System spent at least $727 million to deploy anthropologists and other social scientists to Iraq and Afghanistan between 2007 and 2014. In June, the Army confirmed that the program had been killed because commanders no longer required advice from civilian anthropologists. However, a program with similar components, titled the Global Cultural Knowledge Network, appears to have taken its place within the Army’s Training and Doctrine Command, according documents and emails obtained by USA TODAY.

Amazing. Yet another story we covered when it emerged. It seems like the government can’t help themselves when it comes to recycling stupid, idiotic ideas that waste millions of dollars. Someone at the Pentagon, at one point, literally said, “Hey, I know what will help us finish up this Afghanistan disaster! ANTHROPOLOGISTS, BRO.”

Some HTS members, according to documents obtained by USA TODAY, filled out fake time sheets at the urging of supervisors to pad their paychecks. Some took home $280,000 per year for work that investigators doubt was done. Team members, who worked as federal government employees, were entitled to six months of paid leave when they returned home.

Nice work if you can get it, man. I mean, 280 large for doing jack shit? And six months of paid leave when they returned home? What the shit is that? I think I got like five days off after my first deployment. And the DoD wonders why they can’t manage to retain anyone in the service. Why stay in the mil when you can get out and work as a civilian contractor making mad government cheddar? I include myself in that category, even though I didn’t want to get out. What they pay me as a civilian contractor to do basically nothing is embarrassing. It’s a pretty good amount, considering I try not to work that much. I don’t even like telling young Marines and soldiers when they ask me; it’s too much for them to process. It ain’t 280 big ones, though.

Sexual harassment was also rife, according to a survey of HTS employees. One team member wrote that “sexual harassment is prevalent, and sexist behavior is an everyday occurrence; I was sexually harassed in the field repeatedly; sexual comments and jokes are rampant; nearly every female in the program faces some form of sexual harassment.”

The Army retrained members on filling out time sheets properly, and fired a contractor it found responsible for sexual harassment.

I read that all lisp-y, like one of the babies who went there would have. “Thexitht behavior ith an everday occurrenth.” Civilians having a hard time with the ruthless, crude military culture? Shocking. Shocking I tell you. Who would have thought that a bunch of academics thrown into a military setting would experience some sort of cultural disconnect? Maybe they should have spent a few million on studying THAT.

It’s Time to End Height and Weight Standards:

As the Pentagon grapples with how to integrate women into all jobs in combat, the Marine Corps is considering something new: Boosting how heavy it allows women to be so that they are able to bulk up in the gym to carry heavy loads more easily.

Commandant Gen. Robert B. Neller, the service’s top officer, told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday that female Marines have told him recently that they are lifting weights to boost their strength. Doing so, however, has pushed some of them outside the service’s limits for how much they are allowed to weigh, he said.

“Being big, strong, having a certain body mass, gives you an advantage,” Neller testified. “One of the things I’ve heard as I’ve gone around and talked to female Marines is, ‘Hey, I’m out working out. I’m lifting weights. I’m getting bigger. And now I’m outside the height-and-weight standards. Are you going to change the height-and-weight standards?’”

Random picture of the Royal Marines for you SOFREP ladies. Look, if you’re going to have them around, the females have to be stronger. And I’ve long advocated for doing away with arbitrary height and weight standards. You can either do the PT or you can’t. It’s absurd that some pipsqueak in a lab somewhere determines what is “too” big. Going by BMI standards, bodybuilders are out of shape. It’s stupid.

I’ve know fat guys that could PT you into the freaking ground. I’ve mentioned the story before about one of the instructors at the Combat Diver’s Qualification Course. A big, tubby Army SF guy, he came out to lead the run, and I thought, “Phew…this will be easy.”

After about seven miles at a 7:15-7:30 pace while calling cadence and getting dropped repeatedly for push-up torture, I learned a valuable lesson: Don’t judge a book by its cover. Particularly when that book is smoking the shit out of you in PT.

That’s the Wrong Answer, LT:

For the edification of millennial Marines: A “map” is defined as a paper representation of terrain that some say newly minted second lieutenants use to get their troops lost.

While Marines now have high-tech gadgets to help them figure out where they are, future adversaries can jam such devices, said Commandant Gen. Robert Neller.

“Think of all the stuff that we do that requires space-based, satellite-based communications: GPS, munitions, precision,” Neller said. “If you were to lose that, what would that do to the way you thought you were going to fight?”…

..One challenge Neller said he faces is making sure Marines younger than 25 care about maps again. He recalled a visit he made to Afghanistan where he asked a lieutenant to give a briefing using his map.

“He goes, ‘Well, I don’t have a map; I can show you on the Blue Force Tracker,’” Neller said. “I was terrified.

“I said: Yeah, but don’t you have a map in your pocket – like a paper thing with laminate? Don’t you have any grease pencils? He looked at me like: ‘No.’”

We’ve talked about this before when the Navy announced that they were going back to teaching the old ways of celestial navigation, complete with sextant training. According to the article, the DoD is increasingly worried about the sophistication the Russians have shown in jamming GPS and other sensitive electronic devices, so this makes sense. Plus, it’s pretty cool when you can navigate successfully with a map and compass. It’s absolutely a necessary skill. We did it extensively in PJ mountaineering training, but I could definitely use a refresher.

Also…Lt.? When the general asks you if you have a map, you lie and say, “Obvie, sir…it’s in my other war kit at the moment; let me grab it.” You DON’T say “no” like he’s some jagoff homeless guy who just asked you if you have any spare change. Jeez. Get it together, guy.

Mugshot of the Year, So Far:

A 24-year-old Florida woman was charged with child neglect after her father found her naked, drunk and unconscious while she was babysitting a young child.

Whitney Kilcrease told cops that she started swigging Captain Morgan rum after her father left the house to run errands and left the child in her care.

When her dad came home, Kilcrease was lying face down and inexplicably undressed while the kid played beside her, according to NWF Daily News.

It was unclear whether the child was related to them.

Kilcrease’s dad was able to get the child out of the house while the belligerent woman went ballistic and started throwing things after regaining consciousness.

Thank you to my Twitter friend, @hollie9b, for alerting me to this gem. I bet you all thought I was going to go with the guy who crashed his car while jacking it. He was a close second, but I couldn’t get past Whitney’s mugshot.

Look at that face. Look at the sardonic smirk. It’s the face that says, “Yeah, so I passed out drunk. YOU GOTTA PROBLEM WIDDAT?” It’s the kind of face that looks as if she just asked the arresting officer if he wanted to party after she made bail. The kind of face that enjoys dick pics. That kind of face that screams, “Florida.”

Good for you, Whitney. Don’t let The Man or your stupid dad keep you down.

After the previous couple of marathon News Roundups, this week’s is a bit shorter. Hey, it was a quiet week. Send your nudity stories to me @BKactual.