Note to Putin: mercenaries need ammo

Wagner Group founder Yevgeny Prigozhin said he will withdraw his mercenaries from the embattled town of Bakhmut, Ukraine, saying his fighters are “doomed to senseless death” because Russia’s Defense Ministry is depriving them of ammunition.

[...]

Bakhmut, a city in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, has become a major battleground in the war effort as Russia has pounded away at the city for months, making only incremental gains while expending troops and ammunition at a great cost.

The assault has been led by the Wagner Group, which began encircling Ukrainian defenders in the late winter fueled by a new Russian offensive but has since struggled to make any gains.

[...]

Ukraine is looking to exploit the failed Russian offensive and is eyeing a counterattack, which could be coming any day now.

[...]

“By not giving us shells, you are not depriving us of victory, you are depriving the people of Russia of victory,” Prigozhin said in a video released on his Telegram account. “We will lick our wounds, and when the Motherland is in danger, we will rise again to defend it. The Russian people can count on us.”

Prigozhin said Wagner Group would leave Bakhmut on May 10, one day after Victory Day — an important holiday in Russia celebrating Moscow’s triumph over Nazi Germany in World War II.

  The Hill

Or Putin will see that they get what they want by then.*

Or imprison Prigozhin.

Prigozhin heavily criticized Russian defense leaders, directly accusing them of inadequacy and a failure to achieve its goals.

He said the Russian army and mercenary fighters should have seized Bakhmut by May 9, but the “bureaucrats” had cut off artillery ammunition and allegedly lied about the number of Russian troops fighting in the city.

“The named number of troops is very different from the real one, there are a lot of additions: instead of tens of thousands there are tens and rarely hundreds of soldiers,” Prigozhin accused.

[...]

“After a while, there will be clever people who will say that we should have stayed in Bakhmut even longer,” Prigozhin said. “Whoever has critical remarks — come to Bakhmut, welcome, stand with weapons in their hands instead of our killed comrades.”

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

*UPDATE 05/07/2023:  And there it is...

Mercenaries for Russia

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Trump's Army

Because sending mercenaries to Afghanistan wasn't enough, they're now being unleashed on our own citizens.

When Americans worried about their nation veering toward dystopian authoritarianism, no one ever expected those nightmares to involve the Federal Protective Service. That’s in part because, before the post-apocalyptic images of officers in military gear waving flaming cans of smoke and wearing gas masks on the streets of Portland, Ore., few Americans knew the FPS existed at all. Yet the force — which languished for years within the Department of Homeland Security, with depleted ranks and a dwindling budget — has suddenly become central to the Trump administration’s plan to assert federal power in America’s cities, against the wishes of local officials, in a ploy to demonstrate President Trump’s “law and order” credentials and further his reelection campaign.

[...]

DHS, run by Chad Wolf — a onetime Hill staffer turned lobbyist with no law degree, law enforcement experience or military background, who is in his eighth month as acting secretary — has become over the past two years a textbook example of what happens when legal structures built for good governance are hijacked. Now, the Trump administration has transformed federal building guards into an intimidating catchall invading army. [...] “The scandal isn’t what’s illegal,” as the journalist Michael Kinsley once quipped. “The scandal is what’s legal.”

[...]

Most of the key decision-makers at DHS hold their jobs because the administration has thumbed its nose at the Senate’s constitutional advise-and-consent role and has left key vacancies open for so long that officials have had to legally relinquish their “acting” title and are now referred to as “senior officials performing the duties.” Like Wolf, Deputy Secretary Ken Cuccinelli is also a temporary appointment, as is the general counsel, Chad Mizelle. The statutes that allow officials to serve in acting roles were crafted with the expectation that presidents would actually attempt to fill the jobs. But that’s not how Trump uses them.

[...]

Wolf and Cuccinelli, two men never confirmed to lead DHS, turned to a man never confirmed as general counsel to back a dubious legal interpretation that allowed them to order the largest and third-largest federal law enforcement agencies, Customs and Border Protection and ICE, into Portland using powers never intended to turn the Federal Protective Service — an agency overseen by Randolph “Tex” Alles, who was never confirmed to his post, either — into the equivalent of all-purpose federal riot police.

  WaPo

Honestly, I didn't even know there was such an agency as the Federal Protective Service.

Now, after justifying the use of federal forces in Portland, the administration is expanding the model to Chicago and elsewhere. To execute its plan to suppress unrest — and provide striking images for Fox News — it found a statute titled “Law enforcement authority of Secretary of Homeland Security for protection of public property” (40 U.S. Code § 1315), which is normally used to empower and enlist help for the Federal Protective Service. In the course of protecting buildings, the empowered officers are allowed to investigate and make arrests for “any felony cognizable under the laws of the United States.”

[...]

The Obama administration installed the building guards in DHS’s National Protection and Programs Directorate; then the Trump administration moved them again last year when that directorate was reorganized into the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. The FPS’s roughly 1,300 officers are dwarfed by more than 13,000 contractors, who provide most of the security at federal buildings across the country.

Any bets on whether Erik Prince is making money in the deal?

Protests have been unfolding for weeks, and Portland residents have mostly gone about their normal daily lives, but suddenly the White House has decided a federal takeover is essential.

[...]

DHS’s main law enforcement personnel, the Border Patrol agents and customs officers, were meant to be the federal equivalent of street cops, highly limited and narrowly focused. They were expressly denied the designation of “special agent,” which confers detective powers to workers in the FBI, Secret Service, Drug Enforcement Administration, and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. (The line between cop and detective was so jealously guarded that DHS executives and ICE, which does have “special agents,” for years prohibited Customs and Border Protection from even investigating the misconduct of its own employees, instead insisting that such cases be turned over to them for follow-up.)

But it turns out, if you take the otherwise narrowly constrained men and women of CBP and ICE and declare that they’re helping guard statues and federal property, they suddenly become super cops, with broad powers even when off federal property. It’s a legal fig leaf, since no one really believes Trump is all that concerned with the graffiti on Portland’s Mark O. Hatfield U.S. Courthouse. But it’s enough to justify bashing protesters in the streets.

[...]

Our system of government rests on a foundation of trust and respect — trust that the president will, as the Constitution requires, “take care that the laws be faithfully executed.” Congress can’t possibly write legislation and policies if the person executing and interpreting them isn’t fundamentally trustworthy and doesn’t share a commitment to American democracy.

The FBI takes its special-agent trainees to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington to teach that lesson. There, they learn how the Nazi Party used German laws (and orders from national leaders) to carry out crimes against humanity. The message is simple: Just because something is legal doesn’t make it justifiable.

Legal is all that it takes for today's GOP to justify what they do. And sometimes, they don't even bother with that much.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

There were two ex-Navy men at that Portland show-down

This one you've seen (as has the whole world):

That's Chris David.

This one you may not have known about...

Duston Obermeyer.

In a Pokémon hat and Superman T-shirt, and with a cotton mask protecting his face, the 6ft 4in, 275lb man walked up to the officers and asked whether they understood their oath to defend the constitution.

“They are not supposed to be coming and attacking protesters,” Obermeyer told the Guardian. “They didn’t even give any warning, there was no ‘hey you need to move’, ‘hey back up’. There was basically them walking out and assaulting a protester just to prove that they could.”

[...]

“I believe that we both have similar feelings because we come from similar places and we truly believe in the constitution as it’s currently written and as it’s taught in grade school. And this is a violation of constitutional rights.”

[...]

[Obermeyer and David] had never met. But after more than 50 consecutive days of anti-racism and anti-police brutality protests in Portland, following the killing of George Floyd by police officers in Minneapolis, and the recent deployment of militarized federal agents by Donald Trump, both veterans had decided simultaneously now was the time to start asking questions.

[...]

David, who came dressed in a Naval Academy sweatshirt and Navy wrestling hat, told the Guardian he believes they both came out that day because of their time at the naval academy, which instills “a deep level of integrity” in graduates. But also, he said, for perhaps an even simpler reason.

The latest major Trump resignations and firings Read more “We have the ability to see what is right and what is wrong. And what we both saw was wrong and we wanted to go out there and talk to those officers.”

Obermeyer also asked the officers whether they understand what an illegal order is, referencing the fact that military officers are required by law to disobey illegal or unconstitutional orders.

“Assaulting an unarmed protester who is exercising their first amendment rights is illegal, that’s an illegal order,” he said.

That’s when teargas was fired on the two men. When that didn’t deter them, Obermeyer said an officer tried to hit him with a baton, but he caught it and quickly pushed him back. Another officer repeatedly beat David with a baton, breaking his hand in two places, an injury that will require surgery on Monday. He was also sprayed in the face with a white chemical irritant that he said “felt like flaming gasoline.”

[...]

After serving in the marine corps for over a decade, including as an officer, Obermeyer has experienced being gassed many times. In this case, he wasn’t sure what they had used because, he said: “I’ve never felt worse than I did that night after being sprayed in the face.”

His eyes and nose almost immediately closed up, and he started having a difficult time breathing. His clothes were drenched, and he said it felt like his skin was on fire. Others in the crowd guided him a block away and helped him flush out his eyes. It took him three days to recover.

[...]

Meanwhile, inspired by the events last Saturday, “Wall of Vets” groups have formed in Portland and at least five other cities across the country, similar to the walls of moms and dads, who stand in lines to protect the protesters.

[...]

David said the officers’ response Saturday night to a largely peaceful crowd was completely disproportionate. But he said, it was also clear that they were not trained for this type of situation.

“They have no tactical cohesion to what they’re doing,” he said. “Duston and I are vets. We can tell what’s going on with these guys. There was no sort of command. They were running around and they were scared.”

As he watches the protests continue to balloon, Obermeyer believes the federal officers are actually “creating the situation that they are saying they have to be there for”.

  Guardian

Thank you for your continuing service.

WallofVets

UPDATE:

Call answered

In America

Get the fucking feds out of our cities.

Somebody check on Erik Prince's whereabouts.

Did you know you can rent American troops?

UPDATE:

In the Trump administration, all of America is for sale.

UPDATE:

Saudi Arabia and South Korea have to pay to have our troops there, and Iraq will have to pay if they don't have them.  Either way, you're gonna pay.

This is what comes of having a failed businessman as president.