D-Day: ‘Total Chaos’ of Beach Landings

Posted on June 6, 2017June 6, 2017 by Denise Simon

On June 6, 1944, nearly 160,000 Allied troops landed along a heavily fortified, 50-mile stretch of French coastline in the historic operation known as D-Day. More than 9,000 Allied soldiers were killed or wounded on the beaches of Normandy, but by day’s end, the Allies had gained a foothold to begin liberating Europe.

DoD: When the ramp to his World War II landing craft slammed down onto Utah Beach, Army Cpl. Herman Zeitchik jumped out and dashed across the sand as deadly rounds were shot out from fortified bunkers.

With the amphibious assault underway in the early morning of June 6, 1944, Zeitchik and other 4th Infantry Division soldiers — who were part of the first wave to land — desperately tried to find safe passage through the German-occupied beach.

“When the front of these landing crafts went down, we just took off,” said Zeitchik, now 93 years old. “We couldn’t see where to fire. We just had to get off the beach and try to find the rest of the unit.”

Along a 50-mile stretch of coastline in northern France, more than 160,000 Allied troops stormed Utah Beach and four other beaches that day to gain a foothold in continental Europe. By the end of the D-Day invasion, more than 9,000 of those Allied troops were either dead or wounded — the majority of them Americans.

While several in his unit were casualties, Zeitchik and others survived to push on into enemy territory and liberate Paris.

“There were so many of us coming ashore. I was just lucky,” he said today before attending a remembrance ceremony at the National World War II Memorial here that commemorated the 73rd anniversary of D-Day.

More than 5,000 ships and 13,000 aircraft were used in what is known as the largest-ever seaborne invasion. The massive operation would turn the tide against Nazi Germany forces entrenched across Europe.

“I don’t know that we could have ever done a better job of recreating what happened on this historic day back in 1944,” said Lt. Gen. Gary Cheek, director of the Army Staff. Speaking at the ceremony, Cheek said the heroics witnessed on D-Day helped to pave the way to an Allied victory in Europe while also giving Americans freedom for years to come.

“They stormed these beaches so we might stand here free and prosperous,” he said. “They were steadfast and loyal to the mission at hand and met their rendezvous with destiny head-on and they were successful.”

Total Chaos

Army Pvt. Arnald Gabriel recalled wading through the cold ocean water after his landing craft failed to make it all the way to Omaha Beach. “The water, believe it or not, in June was awfully cold, and that with the combination of fear, it was quite an experience,” he said. A machine gunner with the 29th Infantry Division, Gabriel described a how the chaotic scene unfolded.

“With the Air Force overheard, the Navy shelling [enemy positions], the enemy firing at you and we’re firing at them, it was just total chaos,” he said. “Nobody landed where they were supposed to. I landed way over to the left flank and ended up with the 1st [Infantry] Division. It took me a day to get back and find the 29th Division. It was that kind of chaos.”

After storming Omaha Beach, helping to liberate parts of France and earning two Bronze Stars with the Army, Gabriel later joined the Air Force as a band director. Before the war, he was in his high school band, and he always wanted to get back into music, he said. Music provided him comfort and kept his mind from dwelling too long on the memories of D-Day and other combat missions.

“The way I overcame my post-traumatic stress was to keep so busy that I had no time to look back,” he said before the ceremony.

Shortly after the war, he said, a lieutenant gave him the advice about keeping busy. It came at a time when he was struggling to deal with his thoughts of what happened that fateful day, he added.

“It’s OK to look back, but just don’t stare,” said Gabriel, who retired as an Air Force colonel after serving 36 years. “What great advice that was. By keeping busy, you don’t have time to look back.”

Gabriel, who celebrated his 92nd birthday last week, stood at a podium today and led a band of high school musicians who played patriotic songs during the ceremony.

As a veteran, Gabriel still works 25 musical performances each year, and has vowed to return to the memorial to conduct a band again. “I’m going to do the 75th, and the 80th [D-Day anniversary], when I’m 100 years old,” he said, smiling. “I love it. It’s great therapy; it really is.”

Performing at these events in front of audiences isn’t just about him, though. It’s for those who never made it home, he said.

“I remember them every day of my life,” he said. “They’re at the podium with me. I’m up there because of them.”

Tillerson Ordered to Repair Relations with Russia

Posted on June 6, 2017June 6, 2017 by Denise Simon

How about this question? Democracies worldwide should be demanding Russia become a better global actor, right? Read on for undeniable facts.

Russia dispatched a Sukhoi Su-27 fighter to intercept a U.S. B-52 strategic bomber on mission in the Baltic Sea. Russia keeps a Baltic flight operation for its Baltic Fleet air defense based out of Kaliningrad. Further, on the same day, Tuesday, Russian scrambled at MiG-31 jet fighter to intercept a Norwegian patrol plane of the Barents Sea. Russia has a large inventory of missiles stored in Kaliningrad.

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This comes the day after NSA documents were stolen and released to media on the investigation of Russian phishing operations into the U.S. election voting software from 2016.

As Secretary of State Tillerson is traveling to once again assure allies of America’s commitment to NATO, respective partnerships and cooperation, he has also been told to eliminate the turmoil between the United States and Russia. Tillerson is presently in New Zealand where he was barraged with questions regarding countless Russian investigations and tweets from President Trump.

Meanwhile, Putin continues to deny any evidence presented with regard to not only hacking into United States agencies including the election software, but has also denied all evidence of the Assad regime using chemical weapons on civilians in Syria.

Many will think that President Trump has a plan to normalized relations with the Kremlin and continuing to overlook past aggressive events against the West by Russia is a good plan. Decades of history proves otherwise.

Russia has not only annexed Crimea and continues at the military conflict with Ukraine, Putin is also deepening the threat against the United States when it comes to Cuba, Venezuela, Latin America but most especially the Arctic. All of this without so much as any kind of rebuke from the White House.

Image result for russian arctic BusinessInsider

Russian spies and diplomats have been involved in a nearly decade-long effort to spread propaganda and provoke discord in Macedonia as part of a region-wide endeavor to stop Balkan countries from joining NATO. This conclusion comes from a tranche of intelligence documents obtained by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) and partners NOVA TV and the Crime and Corruption Reporting Network (KRIK).

Russia has been giving financial aide to Cuba and other Caribbean Islands and has forgiven $32 billion in Cuban debt. In Nicaragua, Russia has expanded military ties and uses Nicaraguan ports for Russian warships.

As today, the Department of Defense announced to start of the offensive in Raqqa, Syria to rid the city finally of Islamic State, Russia will continue to prop up the Assad regime via the Syrian Express.

Since Moscow’s military intervention in the Syrian civil war began in September 2015, a key element of Russian logistical support for its forces has been a maritime supply route deployed from southern Russian Black Sea ports via the Turkish Straits to Syria. This supply train, nicknamed the “Syrian Express” by the media, has now apparently attracted the attention of Syrian extremist groups.

On May 16, Turkey’s Gazete Habertürk stated that Turkish intelligence had collected information about the Islamic State preparing a possible attack on Russian warships transiting the Bosporus. This, in turn, reportedly pushed Istanbul’s security services to step up protective measures and begin monitoring 146 possible points along the shoreline from where the attacks could be carried out (Gazete Habertürk, May 16). But later the same day, Istanbul authorities denied the reports. Nonetheless, the denials failed to take into account the Islamic State’s current de facto presence in Istanbul; as the aforementioned media account was being dismissed, the paper Milliyet reported that police had arrested Khasan Gulomov (a.k.a. Abu Khaliq) in Istanbul’s Başakşehir district. Gulomov is allegedly connected to the Reina nightclub attack in Istanbul on January 1, in which 39 people were killed. Police confiscated 12 Kalashnikovs, $4,378 and 3,000 Swedish krona ($345) during the raid (Milliyet, May 17). Every Russian ship currently navigating the Bosporus is escorted by a police helicopter and two Turkish Coast Guard boats. Russian Navy vessels, primarily from the Black Sea Fleet, regularly transit the Turkish Straits in order to deliver military equipment to Russian forces in Syria or carry out combat operations in the Eastern Mediterranean (Akşam, May 16). At the same time, Russia’s use of the Turkish Straits to resupply its military operations in Syria is but one aspect of its utilization of these waterways as a transit route. Notably, Russian-flagged tankers use them on a regular basis to ship oil to European markets. Turkey is constrained in what it can do to control commercial or maritime traffic through the Straits, as ship passage via this route is regulated by the 1936 Montreux Convention.

According to Article 2, merchant vessels can pass through the Bosporus and the Dardanelles without hindrance “day and night, regardless of flag and cargo,” while the warships of Black Sea littoral powers enjoy similar passage rights except in times of war (Sam.baskent.edu.tr, accessed May 31). Turkey has repeatedly voiced its concerns to Russia to no avail about the rising volume of the latter’s oil tanker traffic in the Bosporus, the narrowest strait in the world used for international navigation and one that bisects Istanbul—a city of 12 million inhabitants. The waterway is congested with civilian merchantmen: about 45,000 ships from around the world annually pass through the strait (RIA Novosti, May 16). More here from Jamestown.

Russia only teams up with adversarial countries against the West. Having any kind of trusting alliance with the Kremlin is misguided and a fool’s errand. Reagan told us so years ago.

Cutting Ties with Qatar, Not so Fast

Posted on June 5, 2017June 5, 2017 by Denise Simon

Several Gulf countries announced isolating Qatar by recalling diplomatic personnel due to the al Thani dynasty funding and harboring terror organizations.

Media preview

Ah, cool right? But the United States has a large footprint in Qatar least of which is the Al Udeid air base in Doha. The location is rather known as the Centcom of the Middle East with a minimum of 9000 U.S. military personnel and it comes with a swimming pool too.

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The al Thani clan was a good friend of the West, well kinda sorta. The very day that Barack Obama swapped 5 Gitmo detainees for Beau Bergdahl, Obama was attending the West Point graduation ceremony where a son of al Thani himself was graduating. You read that right, a Qartari at West Point.

No, it is no secret that Qatar hosts an embassy for the Taliban. It is no secret that Russia provides weapons, intelligence and funding to the Taliban. Qatar also hosts the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas. So, exactly why is the United States so tolerant of Qatar? Money.

Oh, Trump’s trip to Saudi Arabia and is beginning to have results with regard to Qatar. Not so fast.

Qatar has begun to expel Hamas leaders taking refuge within its borders, the Lebanese Al Mayadeen network reported over the weekend.

The report cited “diplomatic sources” as saying that on Saturday, Qatar gave Hamas a list of names of members required to leave the country. Al Mayadeen did not name the individuals forced to leave.

According to the report, a Qatari envoy met with prominent Hamas figures to deliver the list, which, the sources say, includes mainly those responsible for collaborating with the organization’s leadership in the Judea and Samaria region.

You see, Qatar plays a double game all the time, people are expelled while others rotate in.

It was also just a few days ago Qatar officials called Tehran to congratulate them on the recent elections and expressed continued understanding and alliance with Hezbollah and Hamas. As a result of all this, the Qatar New Agency was hacked and oh yeah, Qatar funds al Jazeera.

The region plays an important role for the US military in the fight against Daesh. Bahrain houses the US Navy’s Fifth fleet, which patrols the seas of the Middle East and Central Asia, while Qatar is home to the Al Udeid Airbase, from where the United States carries out airstrikes against militants in the region.

Tillerson urged the Gulf Cooperation Council nations to sort out their differences and said that the United States was willing to play a role in helping the countries address their differences.

Meanwhile, as President Trump attended the ceremony to open the counter-terrorism center in Saudi Arabia, that center is at least years old, the Saudi for the most part have expelled Qatar from participation in the center’s operations. Hummm, is that really smart given the terror operations being hosted in Qatar and being cut off? Messy isn’t it?

In recent years, evidence has mounted that Turkey under the rule of Erdogan is building a larger Islamist new version of the Ottoman Empire and has even aligned more so with Russia and Iran against the West and the efforts in Syria. So, how about that merging relationship with Qatar and Turkey? Here are some more details on that, which shows the relationship order in the Middle East is changing dramatically.

A Turkish military base to be deployed in Qatar will be headquartered in Doha and lead by Qatari-Turkish generals, top official has said after sessions at parliament’s Foreign Affairs Commission.

“Within the framework of the agreement, it is envisaged that a joint Turkish-Qatar divisional tactical headquarters should be established, that its place should be in Doha, that the commander of the unit is to be a major general and a Qatari, and that the commander assistant is to be a brigadier and Turkish,” said Defense Ministry Deputy Undersecretary Major Ihsan Bülbül.

Stating that the number of troops to be deployed will be 500 to 600, Bülbül said Qatar also requests the sending of units in Turkey with a flexible structure to allow them to be transferred to Qatar if needed. “We are sending troops to Qatar and setting up bases and Qatar pays for it. What is Turkey’s interest in this business? What is Qatar’s interest in it? We need to further investigate Turkey’s relations with Qatar, which we cannot pinpoint the strategic meaning of,” Salıcı said.

“In the introduction of the agreement, it refers to ‘other duties found appropriate.’ This expression within such an agreement is open-ended, as there is a transfer of soldiers and base development that will be paid for by the host country,” he added.

Salıcı also noted that Qatar’s current army presence is made up of 11,800 individuals. More here.

The Other Side of General Flynn

Posted on June 2, 2017June 2, 2017 by Denise Simon

During his time at the Defense Intelligence Agency, Flynn had access to all kinds of covert operations and intelligence and tactics. After being fired by Barack Obama, it appears Flynn applied some of the schemes and plots in civilian life as he maneuvered his way into the Trump campaign orbit. There is much more to all this intrigue with regard to Turkey/Gulen/Flynn Intel Group LLC. Below are some key items.

Kidnapping

WASHINGTON/McClatchy

In part: Days after Donald Trump’s stunning election victory, Michael Flynn phoned former CIA Director James Woolsey about taking another stint as head of the spy agency in the new administration, but then added a condition, Woolsey said.

Woolsey/NBC

Flynn said the CIA director “would be expected to report to him,” not the president, Woolsey told McClatchy in a phone interview. Woolsey, who led the CIA in the first two years of the Clinton administration, said he promptly rejected the offer because there are times that he would need to “call on the president face to face.”

Washington attorney Robert Kelner, who is defending Flynn in the face of FBI, Pentagon and congressional investigations into his ties to Russia and Turkey, said Woolsey’s account is “false.” Kelner did not elaborate.

McClatchy reported May 17 that in the final days of the Obama administration, and without divulging the identity of his Turkish client, Flynn took a step directly benefiting Turkey. He asked the Obama administration to hold off plans to arm Syrian Kurds, a plan to which Turkey objected, for an invasion of Raqqa, the de facto capital of the terrorist group ISIS, short for the Islamic State.

Flynn’s resignation stemmed from misleading comments about whether he discussed U.S. sanctions against Russia during phone conversations with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak on Dec. 29, 2016.

On that day, three weeks before Trump took office, President Barack Obama expelled 35 Russian diplomats and toughened other sanctions on Vladimir Putin’s government as punishment for a Kremlin cyber offensive aimed at interfering with last year’s U.S. elections and helping Trump win the Oval Office.

It’s not clear whether Trump okayed Flynn’s rerouting of the president’s longtime line of authority over the CIA, which provides daily intelligence updates on matters around the globe.

Flynn had listed Woolsey as a member of an advisory board to his company, Flynn Intel Group, but Woolsey said he never received any compensation and had no contract or official role. He did attend one meeting, in September, and said he left deeply troubled.

Woolsey said he arrived late to the meeting and found Flynn and some Turkish government officials brainstorming a plan to kidnap and fly to Turkey one of the country’s leading dissidents – Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen, whom Ankara has accused of assisting in a failed military coup attempt last summer. Gulen is living in a heavily secured compound in Pennsylvania.

“They were working on the assumption that they could take Gulen,” said Woolsey, who told the Wall Street Journal in March that such a scheme would be illegal.

Woolsey said Flynn began the Nov. 14 phone call, which occurred a couple of days before Flynn was formally named national security adviser, by saying the Trump administration would be “restructuring the intelligence community” and asked if he would “be willing to be director of the CIA.” The full story here.

Fetullah Gulen

Producing a Documentary

Unfinished documentary

In part Reuters: Mueller, who takes over leadership of an FBI investigation that began last July, can present evidence to grand juries and hear testimony from witnesses.

Trump fired Flynn in February after it became clear that he had falsely characterized the nature of phone conversations he had with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak in December, just after the Obama administration imposed new sanctions on Russia for what U.S. intelligence agencies had concluded was a Kremlin-led effort through computer hacking, fake news and propaganda to boost Trump’s chances of winning the White House.

Flynn’s work for Inovo came under scrutiny after he published a commentary on a political news website on Election Day calling Gulen a “radical Islamist” who should be extradited to Turkey.

Along with the editorial, the Flynn Intel Group also produced a 75-page report on Gulen based mainly on news reports and some video footage for a documentary that was never made, according to three people familiar with the project.

Alptekin, who is chairman of the Turkey-U.S. Business Council, told Reuters he was satisfied with Flynn’s research because it had helped him understand how Gulen’s network operates in the United States.

He said the $530,000 payment to Flynn’s firm came “mostly” from his personal funds.

On Nov. 18, the day after Flynn was appointed Trump’s national security adviser, Trump transition team lawyer William McGinley raised concerns on a call with the Flynn Intel Group and others involved in the Inovo project over who had paid for Flynn’s commentary, according to two people with knowledge of the conversation.

Flynn did not participate in that call, they said.

At the time of the call, Flynn had not disclosed that his work for Alptekin meant he was being paid to represent Turkish interests during the election campaign. Flynn Intel Group had said in a September 2016 filing that it was lobbying for Inovo but did not disclose its Turkish links. In March, Flynn retroactively registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

In a letter accompanying the March filing, Flynn’s lawyer, Kelner, said the disclosure was being made because Flynn’s work for Inovo “could be construed to have principally benefited the Republic of Turkey,” which he noted was seeking to extradite Gulen.

The House of Representatives intelligence committee, which is also investigating Russian interference in the election, subpoenaed records from Flynn on Wednesday. The Senate’s intelligence committee, which has a separate probe under way, has also served subpoenas on Flynn and two of his businesses, and earlier this week Flynn indicated that he would start turning over relevant materials.

S. Korea Angered at U.S. over 5 THAAD Systems

Posted on June 1, 2017June 1, 2017 by Denise Simon

Kim Jong Un won’t stop testing nuclear weapons, or the missiles that could carry them to increasingly far-away targets. Bloomberg QuickTake explains where the worldwide standoff with North Korea stands right now. (video by Henry Baker) (Source: Bloomberg)

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June 1 (UPI) — South Korea disputed local press reports claiming a visiting U.S. senator said portions of the U.S. defense budget going toward the deployment of the missile defense system THAAD could be reallocated if deployment is overturned.

A spokesman for Seoul’s presidential Blue House told reporters Thursday he did not recall whether U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., had said if South Korea does not want to continue with THAAD deployment the defense budget could be assigned elsewhere.

“That portion [of Durbin’s statement] did not happen,” the South Korean spokesman said, according to local news service EDaily. “I have not heard it nor do I recall such a statement.”

Reuters: ‘Shocked’ South Korea leader orders probe into U.S. THAAD additions

South Korean President Moon Jae-in has ordered a probe after his Defence Ministry failed to inform him that four more launchers for the controversial U.S. THAAD anti-missile system had been brought into the country, his spokesman said on Tuesday.

The Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system battery was initially deployed in March in the southeastern region of Seongju with just two of its maximum load of six launchers to counter a growing North Korean missile threat.

During his successful campaign for the May 9 presidential election, Moon called for a parliamentary review of the system, the deployment of which infuriated China, North Korea’s lone major ally.

“President Moon said it was very shocking” to hear the four additional launchers had been installed without being reported to the new government or to the public, presidential spokesman Yoon Young-chan told a media briefing.

Moon had campaigned on a more moderate approach to Pyongyang, calling for engagement even as the reclusive state pursues nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs in defiance of U.N. Security Council resolutions and threats of more sanctions.

The Pentagon said it had been “very transparent” with South Korea’s government about THAAD deployment. “We continue to work very closely with the Republic of Korea government and we have been very transparent in all of our actions throughout this process,” Pentagon spokesman Jeff Davis told a news briefing.

Separately on Tuesday, the U.S. military cheered a successful, first-ever missile defense test involving a simulated attack by an intercontinental ballistic missile, a major milestone for a program meant to defend the United States against North Korea.

The Missile Defense Agency said it was the first live-fire test against a simulated ICBM for the Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD), a separate system from THAAD, and called it an “incredible accomplishment.” [L1N1IW1MM]

CHINA TENSIONS EASING

Moon’s order of a probe into the THAAD launchers came amid signs of easing tensions between South Korea and China, a major trading partner.

China has been incensed over the THAAD deployment, fearing it could enable the U.S. military to see into its own missile systems and open the door to wider deployment, possibly in Japan and elsewhere, military analysts say.

South Korean companies have faced product boycotts and bans on Chinese tourists visiting South Korea, although China has denied discrimination against them.

On Tuesday, South Korea’s Jeju Air said China had approved a plan for it to double its flights to the Chinese city of Weihai from June 2.

Also, a Korean-Chinese joint drama production “My Goddess, My Mom” starring South Korean actress Lee Da-hae was told by its Chinese partner recently that it will soon be aired, according to Lee’s agent JS Pictures. Previously its broadcast had been indefinitely delayed.

An official at South Korean tour agency Mode Tour told Reuters it hoped China may lift a ban on selling trips to South Korea, which had been in place since March 15, as early as the second week of June. Although there had been no official orders from the Chinese government to lift the ban, a few Chinese travel agencies have sent inquiries about package tours, he said. However, South Korea’s Lotte Group has yet to reopen any of the 74 retail stores in China it was forced to close in March after the group allowed the installation of the THAAD system on land it owned.

BOMBER DRILL

Also In World News

Putin says U.S. missile systems in Alaska, South Korea challenge Russia

‘Refreshing and strange’: Trump’s demands drive wedge into NATO

The United States, which has 28,500 troops stationed in South Korea, has a mutual defence treaty with Seoul dating back to the end of the 1950-53 Korean War, which ended in a truce that has left the peninsula in a technical state of war.

South Korea’s Defence Ministry said on Tuesday it had conducted a joint drill with a U.S. supersonic B-1B Lancer bomber on Monday, which North Korea’s state media earlier described as “a nuclear bomb-dropping drill”.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe talked to Moon by phone on Tuesday and told him that dialogue for dialogue’s sake with North Korea would be meaningless, and that China’s role in exerting pressure on the North was important, Japan’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

North Korea’s KCNA news agency reported that leader Kim Jong Un supervised the country’s latest missile test on Monday. It said the missile had a new precision guidance system and a new mobile launch vehicle.

Kim said North Korea would develop more powerful weapons to defend against the United States.

“He expressed the conviction that it would make a greater leap forward in this spirit to send a bigger ‘gift package’ to the Yankees” in retaliation for American military provocation, KCNA quoted Kim as saying.

(Additional reporting by Jack Kim, Hyunjoo Jin, Christine Kim and Suyeong Lee in Seoul, Kiyoshi Takenaka in Tokyo and Phil Stewart and David Brunnstrom in Washington; Writing by Bill Tarrant; Editing by Nick Macfie and James Dalgleish)