Note to Congress: Keep America Safe...Impeach Obama Now

Reuters and AP carried the same in-depth reports today - about top US military officers telling the Senate on Thursday that across-the-board sequestration defense budget cuts have seriously eroded the American military's preparedness. Their message was simple : the next round of reductions in 2014 will further reduce American military preparedness. To achieve the cuts that went into force last March, US military chiefs cut big-unit training for soldiers, curbed flying time for pilots and canceled regularly scheduled ship maintenance. "This is the lowest readiness level I've seen within our army since I've been serving for the last 37 years," General Ray Odierno, the Army chief of staff, told a Senate hearing : "I believe our challenge is much greater today than it has been since I've been in the Army." Odierno said only two Army brigade combat teams in the US have received the full training they would need to go to war. Even those in Afghanistan have undergone only the training to advise and assist local forces, rather than training for combined forces combat they might face elsewhere, he said. With the Iraq war over and the Afghanistan conflict winding down, the Pentagon has been told to pare its budget by $487 billion over the next decade. Congress and the White House, struggling to control the massive US deficit, also directed the Pentagon to slash an additional $500 billion in spending over a decade unless lawmakers could agree on alternative budget cuts and revenue increases. No deal was reached in the last negotiations and the first across-the-board reductions went into effect in March. Reuters quotes Lawrence Korb, a defense analyst at the Center for American Progress, as saying that the issue is not Pentagon base funding levels - about $500 billion in the fiscal year that started on October 1 - but the inflexible mechanism "that requires them to cut all items in the budget other than military personnel, by an equal amount." The generals appealed to the Senate Armed Services Committee for more flexibility to deal with the reductions, saying they could cope with the cuts if they had additional time. "Sequestration reduces our capability and capacity over time, but it doesn't break us," said General Mark Welsh, Air Force Chief of Staff. "The mechanism is what breaks us." Admiral Jonathan Greenert, Chief of Naval Operations told lawmakers the Navy always has two aircraft carrier strike groups deployed overseas and a third one in the US fully trained and ready to respond to emergencies. The cuts make that increasingly difficult to do, Greenert said. With a carrier strike group in the Gulf, another in the western Pacific, and the carrier intended for emergency responses in the eastern Mediterranean because of concerns about Syria's chemical weapons use, Greenert told the Senate : "Consequently, because of fiscal limitations and the situation we're in, we don't have another strike group trained and ready to respond on short notice in case of a contingency,...We're tapped out." Further across-the-board cuts will force the Navy to halt the planned purchase of a Virginia-class submarine, a littoral combat ship and a forward staging base ship, he said. The Navy also would have to stop plans to buy 11 tactical aircraft. General Welsh said further cuts in 2014 would force the Air Force to curb flying hours to the point where within three or four months, many units "won't be able to maintain full mission readiness." ~~~~~ Jump to Iran. A top Iranian military leader announced Tuesday that Iran has developed “indigenous” ballistic missile technology, which could eventually allow it to fire a nuclear payload over great distances, estimated to be at least anywhere in the Middle East or Europe - and the American West Coast if launched from North Korea. Brigadier General Hossein Salami, the lieutenant commander of Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), made the announcement just days after Iran and the West signed the nuclear deal. Salami claimed that “Iran is among the only three world countries enjoying an indigenous ballistic missile technology,” according to the state-run Fars News Agency. "Many countries may have access to cruise missiles technology, but when it comes to ballistic missiles, I am confident that only the US and the [former] Soviet Union could master this technology, and now we can announce that we own this technology as well,” Salami told Fars, adding that Iran is quickly developing advanced military know-how. “While we did not have any knowledge about drones, we have developed [N.B. : reverse engineered a downed US drone] and acquired drones that travel 2,000 kilometers, conduct their operations, and then land in our desirable regions,” according to Salami. Experts say Iran’s claim to ballistic missiles would be a major development for a country known to use its military machinery as a means of intimidating its regional neighbors. Former US Ambassador to the UN John Bolton said Iran’s ballistic missile announcement is no surprise : "Iran’s ballistic missile program has always been to provide the delivery vehicles nor nuclear warheads,...The timing of the IRGC announcement is no coincidence.” So, in classic white-hat-black-hat tradition, while Iranian President Rouhani and other officials celebrate the recently announced nuclear accord with the West, Teheran’s military leaders have taken a threatening hard line. Another IRGC leader said on Tuesday that Americans only understand “the language of force....The US has double standards towards social issues of nations and the language that Americans understands is the language of force,” according to General Ramezan Sharif, Head of the IRGC’s Public Relations Department. Sharif noted that US power is growing weaker every year : “The pillars of the US strength have become seriously shaky in the world, especially in the Middle-East.” Other Iranian military officials claim that Teheran no longer needs to import key weapons as they once did. Iranian Deputy Defense Minister Brigadier General Aboutaleb Shafaqat also commented on Tuesday : “Today, we are honored that we have been able to grow needless in the defense equipment sector with the help of our young scientists and thinkers and now we provide all the needs of the Armed Forces with the best quality.” Former Pentagon adviser Michael Rubin said that the US is not paying sufficient attention to Teheran’s military advancements : "Perhaps, [Secretary of State] John Kerry believes that Iran only wants ballistic missiles for peaceful purposes.” Rubin, author of Dancing with the Devil: The Perils of Engaging Rogue Regimes, added : “The fact of the matter is that Kerry and crew left both ballistic missiles and the nuclear warhead trigger experimentation at Parchin [military site] off-the-table” during talks in Geneva,...It’s the diplomatic equivalent of installing a burglar alarm system in your house but leaving the keys in the door.” ~~~~~ Dear readers, President Obama knows that Iran is advancing its ICBM and drone programs - unless the White House has quit giving the President a morning news briefing book. BUT, perhaps no one in the Obama administration knows what's going on in Iran. ITEM : when asked on Tuesday about a Monday report that Iran does not need to freeze its nuclear program until final details of the recently announced nuclear pact are hashed out, State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki said the negotiated six-month nuclear enrichment freeze in the deal will not actually begin until Iran and western powers finalize the deal at a later date : “The next step here is a continuation of technical discussions at a working level so that we can essentially tee up the implementation of the agreement, so that would involve the P-5 plus one - a commission of their experts working with the Iranians and the” International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Psaki said she did not know when the actual deal will be finalized and go into effect : “Obviously, once that’s - those technical discussions are worked through, I guess the clock would start.” Psaki said the US must put its faith in Iran to uphold the spirit of the deal in the interim : “In terms of what the Iranians are or aren’t doing, you know, obviously, our hope would be, given we are respecting the spirit of the agreement in pressing for sanctions not to be put in place and beginning the process of figuring out how to deliver on our end of the bargain, that the same would be coming from their end in the spirit of the - of the agreement." ~~~~~ Obama & Co. are playing fast and loose with America's security. Obama used sequestration as an excuse to curb the US military. Now he's signed a nuclear deal with Iran, listed as a terrorist state by the State Department, without including ICBM delivery programs - and relying on Iran's good faith. Will Congress please impeach this reckless President. While there is still a free-and-prepared America to save from Obama.