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Have we really reached the point where National Guard soldiers in their third month of protecting the Capitol are poisoned with rotten food, worms and metal shavings and no one cares?
The contempt shown to these soldiers by their Washington, DC, masters is as sickening as the rancid slop they’ve been served.
Barstool Sports last week was the first to publish stomach-churning photos of raw chicken and beef, moldy bread rolls and rotten fruit, along with firsthand complaints from anonymous soldiers.
At least 50 soldiers were struck ill with “gastrointestinal complaints” after eating the meals and several required hospital treatment.
It’s not as if the troops are in a hardship posting like Afghanistan. Where is the respect?
It was bad enough when they were thrown out of the Capitol into a freezing garage in January.
These soldiers have left jobs and families to protect lawmakers in their nation’s capital, however politicized that duty is.
Do any lawmakers care about them? Sure a few members of Congress have huffed and puffed.
But no one will explain why they still are there, guarding a Capitol walled off by razor wire, other than as human props in a narrative concocted by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Dems to traduce their political opponents.
That is the very same Pelosi who slimed federal law enforcement as “storm troopers” last July when they tried to get control of Portland, Ore., and who vilified then-Attorney General Bill Barr as a “blob” and a “henchman” who “should be answering for what he did at Lafayette Square, a disgrace.”
Yes, the violent BLM-antifa riots at Lafayette Square, outside the White House, in late May were a disgrace. More than 50 Secret Service officers were injured when they were pelted with bricks, rocks, Molotov cocktails and bottles of urine.
The historic St. John’s Church across the street from the White House was set on fire. The night turned so dangerous that then-President Donald Trump had to be rushed to an underground bunker.
But that wasn’t the disgrace to which Pelosi was referring. After all, she and the Dems had been condoning left-wing violence all summer.
No, to Pelosi, the “disgrace” was when federal law enforcement used pepper balls and smoke canisters to clear protesters, including her daughter, from Lafayette Square on June 1.
To Pelosi, the “disgrace” was that Trump called out the National Guard in June to protect the Lincoln Memorial from rioters.
She called a news conference to denounce the comparatively light National Guard presence in DC back then as “scary,” and wrote to Trump slamming the “militarization” of the capital and demanding to know “by what authority is the National Guard from other states operating in the capital.”
Hah.
She kicked up such a stink that, from then on, everyone in Washington and at the Pentagon became ultra-cautious and would resolve to change the way they protected the capital.
Even ex-generals were caught up in Pelosi’s media-assisted hyperbole, slamming the clearing of Lafayette Square and likening Trump to a fascist dictator.
The end result was that, on Jan. 6, when the Capitol was stormed, it was woefully underprotected.
We see why from the Senate testimony last week of Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund. He requested National Guard backup before the riot, but was turned down by Pelosi’s House Sergeant-at-Arms Paul Irving, who was above him in the chain of command.
Sund testified that Irving was concerned about “optics.”
Wednesday, DC National Guard chief William Walker bolstered Sund’s account, telling the Senate he faced “unusual” restrictions on the deployment of troops on Jan. 6, because the Pentagon also was concerned about “optics.”
In a phone call with the Pentagon that day, he and Sund pleaded for troops but “the army senior leaders did not think it would look good, that it would be a good optic. They further stated it could incite the crowd [and] that it would not be their best military advice to have uniformed Guardsmen on the Capitol.”
As well, Irving has told the House Administration Committee that Pelosi’s office had “previously impressed” upon him that the National Guard was to remain off Capitol grounds, according to the Daily Caller.
The discussions, which also centered around “optics,” allegedly occurred months before the Jan. 6 riot, “during a time when deployment of federal resources for civil unrest was unpopular with Democrats.”
We also know, after Trump said so in his CPAC speech Sunday, that he requested that 10,000 troops be deployed. Christopher Miller, then acting defense secretary, in an interview with Vanity Fair confirmed that Trump personally asked him for 10,000 troops the night before his rally.
And we know that DC Mayor Muriel Bowser explicitly rejected National Guard troops in a letter on Jan. 5.
So, really the word “optics” is code for Pelosi’s temper. She had been so affronted by Trump’s demonstration of force in June, in what she considers to be her domain, that she put the fear of God into anyone with any power to deploy troops.
Having been instrumental, even if her fingerprints are absent, in the Capitol’s vulnerability that day, she then threw Sund under the bus. Now she oversees the maltreatment of National Guard soldiers, who should be home with their families.
‘Armed’ with fake news
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) managed to puncture one poisonous myth about the Capitol riot, during a Senate hearing Wednesday.
“How many firearms were confiscated in the Capitol or on Capitol grounds” Jan. 6, he asked FBI counterterrorism chief Jill Sanborn.
“To my knowledge, none,” she replied.
“Nobody has been charged with [having] an actual firearm weapon in the Capitol or on Capitol grounds?” asked Johnson.
“Correct,” said Sanborn.
He pressed on: “How many shots were fired, that we know of?”
Sanborn replied: “I believe the only shots that were fired were the ones that resulted in the death of the one lady [Ashli Babbitt, shot by a Capitol officer].”
So much for the “armed insurrection.”
Cuomo is pathetic
Gov. Cuomo cried pitifully yesterday.
He’s so sorry if women got the wrong idea when he touched them, planted an unwanted kiss on the lips, asked about their sex lives and made penis jokes.
His tears were for himself and his shattered ambition. No tears, no apology for the elderly he consigned to early deaths when he forced nursing homes to accept COVID-infected patients.
It’s satisfying to see him humbled, but it’s too little too late.
Where were Cuomo’s detractors when it counted?
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