TheFrontPageCover
~ Featuring ~
Luck and Guts: The Heroes of Midway
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Christopher Steele Willing
to Cooperate With U.S. Investigators
by Chuck Ross .
Rep. Nunes Blows Lid Off Mueller
Investigation: ‘It’s All a Fraud’
by C. Douglas Golden
{westernjournal.com} ~ We’ve had plenty of assessments of the Mueller investigation thus far. So, how about the opinion of the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee?... Well, at least in certain aspects, California Republican Devin Nunes thinks it’s “all a fraud.” In a Twitter post Saturday, Nunes noted the discrepancy between what the Mueller report presented about a phone call involving former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn and what the actual transcript of the call stated.“This is why we need all backup and source documentation for the Mueller dossier released publicly,” Nunes tweeted. So, why is this important? Well, consider what’s in the tweet. The transcript that’s included is a voice mail between Flynn and Trump lawyer John Dowd, according to TheBlaze. But the Mueller report didn’t disclose the full message — namely, exculpatory portions where Dowd told Flynn he wanted information “not only for the president but for the country” and that he didn’t want “any confidential information.” “Hey, Rob, uhm, this is John again. Uh, maybe, I-I-I’m-I’m sympathetic; I understand your situation, but let me see if I can’t … state it in … starker terms. If you have … and it wouldn’t surprise me if you’ve gone on to make a deal with, and, uh, work with the government, uh … I understand that you can’t join the joint defense; so that’s one thing,” Dowd says. “If, on the other hand, we have, there’s information that. .. implicates the president, then we’ve got a national security issue, or maybe a national security issue, I don’t know … some issue, we got to-we got to deal with, not only for the president, but for the country. So … uh … you know, then — then, you know, we need some kind of heads up. Um, just for the sake of … protecting all our interests, if we can, without you having to give up any … confidential information... https://www.westernjournal.com/ct/rep-nunes-blows-lid-off-mueller-investigation-fraud/?utm_source=Email&utm_medium=patriotupdate&utm_campaign=dailyam&utm_content=libertyalliance .
How The Media Covered Up The Real
Collusion, Between Russians And The
scumbag/liar-Hillary Campaign
by L. Brent Bozell III and Tim Graham
{ dailycaller.com } ~ In July 2017, the media exploded over a meeting in June 2016 at Trump Tower between Donald Trump Jr. and Natalia Veselnitskaya... the alleged “Kremlin-backed lawyer” she wasn’t Kremlin-backed at which Russians promised “dirt” on scumbag/liar-Hillary Clinton. But before we get into this coverage, let’s stop and consider: So bloody what? At one stage or another, there were probably a hundred meetings between Team scumbag/liar-Hillary and God only knows who, from the candidate on down, discussing dirt on Donald Trump. It’s what campaigns do. It’s also what journalists do. If the evidence showed that this Russian woman was knowingly an agent of the Russian government offering ammunition to tilt the election and if there was any explicit or even implicit quid pro quo on the part of Team Trump to alter Russia policy in a favorable direction, you had a story, and a big one, too. Indictments and impeachment would follow, and deservedly so. If. But there wasn’t a lick of evidence. Trump administration policy toward Russia was tougher than scumbag/liar-nObama’s! Still the “if” justified the endless speculation that Trump was probably a criminal. America would be faced with the nightmare that it had elected a traitor. Every mini-scoop was inflated into the latest contender in the urgent liberal question “Will this finally get Trump impeached and removed?” The media obsession was palpable. The evidence of their fever could be found on your own smartphone. On the night of July 11, the CNN app was all ablaze with the Trump Junior jeremiads. One after another, the headlines were panicky and tabloidish: The National Enquirer would be proud of CNN’s passion. In the midst of this stream of speculation verging on mindless gossip, down in the fifth spot, was this other piece of news: “Special ops forces among 16 dead in Marine Corps plane crash.” Way down at the number eight spot was this: “Earth’s sixth mass extinction is more severe than we thought.” But Marines dying and alleged mass extinctions are boring and secondary to wild speculation about Russia. The next headline on the CNN phone app was “Tapper to Trump Jr.: Why so many lies?”... https://dailycaller.com/2019/06/04/how-the-media-covered-up-the-real-collusi.
House Democrats Will Use John Dean
As Impeachment Draw
by David Krayden
{ dailycaller.com } ~ The House Judiciary Committee is planning to bring in former White House counsel and Watergate whistleblower John Dean... to testify on the Mueller report, Politico reported Monday. Dean — who worked in the Nixon administration — is best known as the key witness who brought down President Richard Nixon in the Watergate scandal. Democrats hope his presence before Congress will prompt further consideration of President Donald Trump’s potential impeachment, according to Politico. Dean will be the star attraction on a June 10 panel that will examine whether the Mueller report found any evidence of obstruction of justice on behalf p, who has called him a “rat.”...of the president and whether Mueller actually invited the Congress to pursue impeachment measures against him. “These hearings will allow us to examine the findings laid out in Mueller’s report so that we can work to protect the rule of law and protect future elections through consideration of legislative and other remedies,” Democratic New York Rep. scumbag liar-Jerrold Nadler, chairman of the House Judiciary committee, told Politico. Trump has been resisting efforts by the committee to put the Mueller report under a microscope, suggesting it is a fruitless exercise born of partisan politics. The president has told some potential witnesses like former counsel Don McGhan not to p rile Trump, who has called him a “rat.”... https://dailycaller.com/2019/06/04/house-democrats-judiciary-john-dean-mueller-report-hearings/?utm_medium=email
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Luck and Guts: The Heroes of Midway
{ spectator.org } ~ The Battle of Midway began 77 years ago, today. This anniversary if that, indeed, is the right word will be noted but not so lavishly as the one in two days time, in remembrance of D-Day. These were both great and decisive American victories and should be remembered and honored as long as there is a United States of America. Not so much, however, because they saved the nation. The U.S. would almost certainly have survived defeat at Midway and a repulse in Normandy. The “what-if” scenarios around either case — or both, for that matter — make for interesting speculation. But while the world may have looked a lot different if the Japanese had won at Midway and the Germans had pushed Eisenhower’s troops back into the sea in France, there were still two broad oceans protecting the American homeland where the nation could employ its enormous industrial capacity to rearm and reorganize before getting back into the fight.
And, then, there was the bomb. A repulse in France might have meant, more than anything else, that Berlin would have been the first city leveled by a nuclear device.
Still, the victories at Midway and in Normandy were decisive and heroic. Also exceedingly “American” in character. It is impossible to read about them, these generations later, without recognizing that and feeling proud. If, that is, you are a patriot which, sadly, is not true of everyone living in the United States these days.
Still …
Consider Midway, first, and leave D-Day for later, by two days on the calendar:
The U.S. Navy had apparently been decisively crushed by the Japanese surprise attack at Pearl Harbor. Almost every battleship in the fleet had been sunk or catastrophically damaged.
But this defeat had also illuminated a truth and a path to victory. The U.S. battleships had been sunk by bombs and torpedoes dropped from airplanes flown off aircraft carriers. These were now the capital ships of navies. Battleships would, from now on, serve as escorts for the carriers. If at all.
Six months after Pearl Harbor, the U.S. had only three carriers available to counter a Japanese attack on Midway. It might have been just two except for the American way with tools and capacity to improvise. The carrier Yorktown had been badly damaged in the battle of the Coral Sea and was expected to require several months in dry dock before it would be ready to conduct flight operations again.
Admiral Chester Nimitz, who was in command of what was left of the U.S. Navy in the Pacific, told the people in his repair yards, “I want that ship ready to go to sea in 48 hours.” American welders and machinists swarmed over the broken Yorktown, like a pit crew at Daytona. They worked around the clock, sometimes pulling so much electrical power that the lights in Honolulu flickered and went dim. And they got it done.
The Yorktown left Pearl Harbor in time — just barely — to join the battle. Its last.
The two other carriers — Hornet and Enterprise — were already on station, waiting to ambush four Japanese carriers. The Americans knew they were coming, having broken the Japanese codes enough that they could read some radio traffic.
It was a distinct advantage but one that might not have been sufficient to overcome the Japanese superiority in numbers, experience, and, above all, equipment. Their planes were better than those flown by the U.S. Navy.
The American torpedo planes were relics. They were slow, not especially maneuverable, and they could not take much punishment. Other than that …
Still, they launched and they attacked. One squadron of fifteen planes from each of the carriers. Torpedo squadron eight, off the Hornet, found the Japanese fleet when the squadron commander, John Waldren, trusted his instincts over the information he’d been given in briefings on the location of the Japanese fleet. It was borderline insubordination — in a very American sort of way — and Waldren might have been court martialed for it.
If he had survived.
He received, instead, a posthumous Navy Cross for leading his squadron to the Japanese fleet and pressing the attack. The squadron scored no hits and all of its fifteen planes were shot down. One pilot survived. None of the gunners.
Neither of the other torpedo squadrons scored a hit. Of the 45 of the torpedo planes launched from the three American carriers, four survived the battle.
And yet … they had attacked from very low altitude in order to launch their torpedos. The covering Japanese Zeros — which might have been the finest fighter planes in the world at the time — had come down low to engage and slaughter the American torpedo planes.
Leaving the upper sky unguarded and the Japanese carriers vulnerable to American dive bombers.
But it was an opportunity that might have been lost. The dive bomber squadron from the Hornet never found the Japanese fleet. And the squadrons from the Enterprise might not have except for the initiative and decision making of another junior officer.
Lieutenant Commander Wade McClusky had been searching for the Japanese fleet in the area where, according to his briefing, it should have been. But when he looked down from some 20,000 feet, the only thing he saw was empty ocean. He conducted a search, according to doctrine, and succeed only in burning more fuel. To the point where it would soon be either a) head back to the Enterprise or b) ditch.
Meanwhile, the Japanese could launch their own attack, against the three American carriers which might even have been recovering planes at the time and woefully vulnerable. The battle of Midway would, then, have been another Japanese victory. The U.S. would likely have been forced to abandon Hawaii.
It would be months, even years, before it could be retaken. More months and years before the ring of islands defending Japan could be breached. Still more before Japan, itself, could be invaded and conquered.
A lot depended on what one fairly junior naval aviator decided to do with the time and fuel he had left. Wade McClusky had to make a decision. What course would take him to the Japanese fleet? It was all on him.
He made a call and you could say he played a hunch. An informed hunch but still, if it had come up wrong …
He had seen a spotted a single Japanese ship on the wide surface of the Pacific. It was a destroyer and judging by the distinct white wake, it was making speed.
To where and for what? McCluskey thought.
To wherever the Japanese fleet was, in order to rejoin it, he reasoned.
Using the V of the ship’s wake as though it were the point of a compass needle, McCluskey changed course. A few minutes later he and the dive bombers he led were in the wide, unguarded skies over the Japanese fleet.
The dive bomber squadron from the Yorktown arrived at almost exactly this time. The Americans attacked and the Japanese lost three fleet carriers and the initiative in the Pacific in a span of five minutes. There is nothing else like it in the history of warfare.
In the next hours of the battle, the remaining Japanese carrier was sunk as was the Yorktown.
Admiral Raymond Spruance handled his fleet both boldly and steadily. He was aggressive when he needed to be and prudent when he had to be. The workers in the yard who had made it possible for the Yorktown to take part in the fight played a big role in the victory. As, certainly, did the code breakers. And then, there were those bold decisions, made in the moment, by Waldren and McClusky, recalling the way that Chamberlain saved the situation at Little Round Top.
America seems to find people like them when they are most desperately needed.
And, one thinks, it isn’t by accident.
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