Pentagon deploying 2.5K more Marines to Middle East
Source: One America News Network · Bias: Far Right
Summary
The Pentagon is reportedly deploying about 2,500 more California-based Marines to Iran as President Donald Trump attempts to open the Strait of Hormuz to international shipping during the ongoing Middle East conflict.
Pentagon deploying 2.5K more Marines to Middle East
Far Right
The Pentagon is reportedly deploying about 2,500 more California-based Marines to Iran as President Donald Trump attempts to open the Strait of Hormuz to international shipping during the ongoing Middle East conflict.
A former Texas middle school teacher was sentenced to more than three decades in prison after being convicted of sexually abusing a 13-year-old student.
China warned two Japanese Coast Guard survey vessels to stop operating in the East China Sea in recent days, Japan’s top government spokesman said, unusual moves that highlight elevated tensions over sea border claims in the area and worsening diplomatic ties between Beijing and Tokyo.
Michael Cadenazzi, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Industrial Base Policy, says the U.S. defense industrial base has suffered from decades of insufficient attention to capacity, leaving the country with bottlenecks, single-source risks and dependence on foreign suppliers. He says the Pentagon is focused on reindustrialization, critical minerals, and skilled trades as it works to meet future warfighter needs. He speaks with Kailey Leinz and Joe Mathieu on the late edition of Bloomberg's "Balance of Power." (Source: Bloomberg)
Ultraconservative lawmakers refused to back a critical procedural measure as they pressed for action on voting legislation championed by President Trump.
On June 26, 2026, the United States, Israel, and Lebanon signed the Trilateral Framework Agreement in Washington, the first directly negotiated Israel-Lebanon peace framework since 1983, driven by a shared determination to end Iranian interference in both countries.
The post Disarming Hezbollah Crucial to Middle East Peace and Lebanon’s Sovereignty appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth just hijacked more promotions of high-ranking service members, this time blocking career professionals with exemplary records who were on track to become one-star generals and admirals. Not only is Hegseth’s behavior unusual, there is no clear legal authority for what he is doing. Congress entrusted military promotions largely to the respective promotion boards and Secretaries of the Military Departments, not the Secretary of Defense. Although 10 U.S.C. § 629 empowers the President with removal authority, a longstanding executive order limits the Secretary of Defense’s removal authority to grades below colonel or captain, not the general or admiral promotions Hegseth has blocked. The Pentagon’s own regulations restrict grounds for removing an officer from a promotions list to specific circumstances like moral, mental, or professional deficiencies, none of which were present in Hegseth’s removals.It’s obvious that a disproportionate number of Hegseth’s blocked, delayed, or demoted officers are women and people of color. However, while mainstream headlines suggest Hegseth is motivated by race and gender animus, an even worse—and more dangerous— likelihood is that he is weeding out those he deems “ideologically incompatible” with how he and Trump plan to use the military.Hegseth likes to emphasize that “every officer serves at the pleasure of the president,” arguing that Trump’s policy goals require removing commanders “tied to the culture” of previous administrations. He argues that past promotions were based on race and gender instead of qualifications, but military records dispute those claims, and there is no evidence that any promotions he blocked were attributable to anything other than merit.An unqualified hack defends his ownHegseth, a former Fox News bobble head, is notoriously unqualified to serve as Secretary of Defense, which seems to have been Trump’s point in naming him. He was a mid-level National Guard officer, had no senior leadership role in the military, and had no experience anywhere that qualified him to oversee three million personnel and an annual budget of $800 billion. More dangerous than his lack of qualifications is his bloodlust. As a media commentator, he lobbied aggressively for presidential pardons for service members convicted or accused of notorious war crimes, including Army Lt. Clint Lorance, convicted of murdering two Afghan civilians, and Maj. Matt Golsteyn, who admitted during an interview for the CIA that he and another soldier took an alleged Taliban bomb-maker off base in 2010, shot him, and buried his remains. Trump granted full pardons to both.In Iraq, Hegseth’s own unit was nicknamed “Kill Company” and he kept a ‘kill board’ that tallied kills, including dead civilians, expressing daring contempt for the military's strict rules of engagement. It’s anyone’s guess what gruesome deeds he got up to. Today, he barks a constant mantra about “war fighters” and “lethality” and sees violence and unrestrained power as a distinct virtue.Ineptitude with a platitude chaserHegseth’s tenure has been marred by a series of high-profile blunders, including the SignalGate security breach, his ‘dirty line’ Pentagon internet setup, and unforced diplomatic errors such as upbraiding NATO allies without understanding the subject matter. Just as Trump governs by spectacle over substance, Hegseth manages by platitude. His attempts to project authority through chest thumping—“Maximum lethality not tepid legality”— like his sophomoric speech to the Generals at Quantico, routinely fall flat and inspire parody. Hegseth’s embrace of violence over circumspection (“Lethality is our calling card”) while rejecting what he calls ‘stupid rules of engagement’ reveals an almost pathological immaturity. While pushing back against operational restraints, i.e., military rules of engagement, and weeding out generals who don’t suit him, he insists that, under him, there will be “No politically correct wars.” What he’s really weeding out are legal protocols in order to elevate ‘maximum lethality’ in pursuit of politically incorrect and illegal wars: Trump’s.History is clear on why the military should never be politicizedThroughout history, authoritarian regimes have tried to put professional militaries under the direct control of their own political movements. Recognizing that an independent officer corps poses an existential threat to one-party rule, in Nazi Germany, Hitler systematically dismantled the autonomy of the traditional Wehrmacht, and required all soldiers to swear a personal oath of loyalty to him rather than to the state or constitution. In the former Soviet Union, Stalin subjected the Red Army to the Communist Party's political commissar system, embedding party officials at every level of command to monitor ideological conformity.
The U.S. military is sending additional resources to Venezuela, as the death toll continues to mount and tens of thousands of people are still believed to be missing following a pair of devastating earthquakes. U.S. South Command (Southcom) announced on Saturday that a specialized rapid response unit was on its way to Venezuela to assist…
