American war hero and possible Pentagon chief, Scott O’Grady, says Trump needs to impose “Martial Law to secure a fair election” overseen by the US military

December 8, 2020 John de Nugent English 7

President Clinton applauds as Air Force pilot Scott O'Grady gestures during a welcome home ceremony for O'Grady, Monday June 12, 1995, at the Pentagon. Before going to the Pentagon, the president met privately with O'Grady at the White House. (AP Photo/J.Scott Applewhite)
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by Johndenugent.com contributing editor, François Arouet
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If you like the following article (a story I doubt you will read anywhere else) by Francois, and others that we publish on a daily basis – that John is paying for while he develops his new spiritual organization – then please write to John at john_denugent@yahoo.com to learn how you can help us. John would genuinely love to hear from you so that you can set up a private SKYPE conversation where he can explain his vision, and you can help him achieve his goals. We are this close to a new noble age. Our people need you NOW more than ever.
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I don’t know if we should read TOO much into this but….CNN (I typically go to CNN for news to know the official position of our enemy) last night reported that
“President Donald Trump’s nominee to become a senior Pentagon official, Scott O’Grady [pictured above with Slick Willy Clinton], spread debunked conspiracies on Twitter, calling Trump’s election loss to Joe Biden a ‘coup’ attempt and sharing tweets that suggest Trump should declare martial law.”
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Scott O’Grady, a former fighter pilot and vociferous Trump loyalist, and part of Trump’s new Pentagon team, has repeatedly retweeted tweets that rightfully state that our President won the November election in ‘landslide fashion’ and that tens of millions of votes were stolen from the American people and President Trump.
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The first time Scott O’Grady made headlines was way back in 1995 when, as a United States Air Force pilot, he was shot down by a 2K12 Kub mobile SAM launcher, while on a reconnaissance mission over Bosnia and Herzegovina.
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O’Grady, who headed the group “Veterans for Trump” during the run-up to the election, heroically survived in the woods by eating leaves, grass and bugs for a week while hiding from the enemy before being rescued. He returned to a hero’s welcome, was paraded around the capital – even welcomed by President Bill Clinton to the White House – as well as appeared on the cover of Time magazine.
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According to a 1995 US News and World Report, 
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“On the ground, a Bosnian-Serb army 2K12 Kub surface-to-air missile battery near Mrkonjić Grad was readying to fire its missiles on NATO aircraft. The Serbs had moved the mobile, tracked missile battery and laid a trap. They switched on their missile radars sparingly, giving F-16 fighters little warning. Waiting until a plane was directly overhead, where the aircraft’s warning and countermeasures would be at their weakest, they fired two missiles.

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In the cockpit, O’Grady’s instruments alerted him that a missile was coming, but, because he was flying through an overcast sky, he could not see it. The first missile exploded between the two aircraft. The second struck the F-16 piloted by O’Grady.[9]
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His flight lead, Captain Robert Gordon “Wilbur” Wright, saw O’Grady’s plane burst into flames and break in two. Wright did not see a parachute, but O’Grady survived by ejecting from the aircraft.
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O’Grady landed among a Bosnian-Serb population he was briefed would be unfriendly. He quickly secured a 29-pound (13 kg) survival bag, ran, and hid. Rubbing dirt on his face, he hid face-down as Bosnian-Serb forces came upon his parachute, half a dozen times shooting their rifles only feet from where he was hidden in an effort to flush him out or kill him.

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F-16C of the 555th Fighter Squadron based at Aviano Air Base, Italy


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During the next six days, he put to use the lessons learned during a 17-day Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE) training session he had undertaken near his hometown of Spokane, Washington. He ate leaves, grass and bugs, and stored the little rainwater he could collect with a sponge in plastic bags….”

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I will include a detailed article discussing O’Grady’s ordeal and rescue below my piece.
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Since, after being shot down, he survived nearly a week in enemy territory where he faced constant mortal threats, O’Grady has made quite the name for himself in patriotic circles.
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Over the past two-plus decades, O’Grady has been active in Tea Party circles and running for public office on several occasions. In the  autumn of 2011, O’Grady announced he was entering his name “for the 2012 Republican nomination for Texas State Senate District 8, held at the time by Republican Florence Shapiro.” It was rumored O’Grady targeted Shapiro due to Shapiro being about as “Texan” as Hillary Clinton was a New Yorker!

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He later suspended his campaign because of uncertainties over the Texas redistricting fight.
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Days after the 2020 election, President Donald Trump stated an official intention “to nominate O’Grady as the next Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs.”
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The nomination was submitted to the United States Senate for confirmation on November 30, 2020. Before, during and since the “controversial” nomination, O’Grady has repeatedly stood by the President and his push to expose malfeasance and widespread electoral fraud – retweeting most of the President’s tweets, pushing the #stopthesteal movement, as well as seconding calls by Michael Flynn for Trump to institute martial law and have the US military hold a fair election.
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We at johndenugent.com AGREE that this is entirely necessary.
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All legal votes MUST count, and NO illegal vote can be counted.
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The White House on Monday of this past week formalized the nomination of O’Grady to be Assistant Secretary of Defense for international security affairs at the Pentagon.
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This has been held up, as during an “internal review” of O’Grady’s public statements, CNN found that O’Grady called former President Barack Obama and some military generals “sworn socialists” in a radio interview.
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The horror!!
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It has also been claimed by CNN that on Twitter,
“he (O’Grady) endorsed a tweet that called former Defense Secretary James Mattis [a never-married man and Russia-hater whom Trump fired] a “traitor.”
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And he has backed multiple conspiracy theories, retweeting the baseless claim that Hillary Clinton and George Soros somehow helped facilitate foreign interference in last month’s election.”

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Although O’Grady’s nomination still requires Senate confirmation, and even if he clears that temporary hurdle, he’s almost certain to be replaced if Biden becomes Commander-In-Thief at the end of January.
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And O’Grady is not alone in his loyal support of President Trump.
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There are literally dozens of former soldiers and retired military officials who are voicing approval for martial law.
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And Trump, although it is a bit too late at this juncture, has in many cases rewarded their loyalty.
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The most well-known figure is, of course, General Michael Flynn, a retired Army lieutenant general who served as President Trump’s first national security advisor. Flynn lasted less than a month in that job in early 2017 and later pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI. Trump pardoned him on Nov. 25.
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Less than a week later on Dec. 1, Flynn tweeted his support for the pro-Trump group, “We The People” (unlike to the Deep-State supporters; call them “We the Sheeple” 😉 , which asked President Trump to
“immediately declare a limited form of Martial Law, and temporarily suspend the Constitution and civilian control of these federal elections, for the sole purpose of having the military oversee a re-vote.”
“We are at the point where we can only trust our military to do this because our corrupt political class and courts have proven their inability to act fairly and within the law,”
….We the People, said in an official statement, circulated around the web via the #stopthesteal movement.
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It is estimated it has reached 50-million-plus Americans!!
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Although the “current” chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Army Gen. Mark Milley, has insisted the U.S. military will not be involved in politics, with the appointment of Kash Patel, whom I featured last week (and will discuss again later in this piece), and now the nomination of O’Grady, who knows?
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In some instances, former and current military brass have accused the Democrats “of treason” and argued that they have a constitutional duty to uphold the Constitution by pushing for Martial Law.
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*** The oath of all US military officers
“I, [name], having been appointed an officer in the [military branch] of the United States[…] do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, […] So help me God.”
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Retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney recently stated that U.S. special-operation forces were killed in Germany when they tried to take over a CIA computer facility in Germany. He alleged that the CIA was concealing information about vote fraud that flipped ballots from Trump to Biden.

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100 years of military service by the McInerney family

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The claim was swiftly “debunked” – code for “yo sheeple, this shit ain’t true cuz we say it ain’t” – by the mainstream media but McInerney has not backed down.
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And McInerney is no clown. The good man flew more than 400 combat missions in Vietnam and served at the Pentagon as the Air Force assistant vice chief of staff in the 1990s.
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And unlike traitor, John McCain, who McInerney reviled, he didn’t get captured, turn on his country (by singing like a canary) or attack President Trump.
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After retiring, McInerney became a military analyst for Fox News, unfortunately advocating hawkish positions. McInerney was dropped by Fox in 2018 after he said that Vietcong torture had “worked” on the late Arizona Senator John McCain, due to the fact he sang for his “Zip” masters, when he was held prisoner for more than five years. But since then he has pledged his loyalty to President Trump.
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In a recent email that was subsequently published by the “Military Times”
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The Military Times group comprises Army Times, Navy Times, Air Force Times and Marine Corps Times,  and was established in 1940.
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McInerney wrote that “Trump won in a landslide and the Dems left so many footprints that this TREASON must be stopped!!!” He added: “This will be the last free election we have and I predicted it on 2 Nov on the Steve Bannon Show!”
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CNN also reported that “In August, Trump appointed retired Army Brig. Gen. Anthony Tata as the acting undersecretary of defense for policy. Tata did not require Senate confirmation because he’s serving in an acting capacity. Tata hasn’t been involved in controversies during his brief time in the position, but his appointment has come under sharp criticism for previous remarks.”
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Tata, who also supports the proposal that President Trump impose martial law, referred to former President Obama as a “terrorist leader” who has “Islamic roots” back in a series of 2018 tweets. He is sadly pro-Israel, but still is a relatively loyal ally of President Trump.
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Then there’s the aforementioned Kash Patel whom we also covered last week.
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You might recall it was Patel who helped produce the so-called “Nunes Memo” that accused senior Justice Department and partisan Democrat scum – his attack on pig-faced Deep State op, Alexander Vindeman, might refresh your memory – of numerous ethics violations as well as unfair “bias” against Trump during the Ukraine-related Trump impeachment proceedings.
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NSC senior director for European and Russian affairs Dr. Fiona Hill testified before that hearing that President Trump, who listened to Patel over the likes of the crook Vindeman, believed that Patel, not Vindeman – who is about as Ukrainian as Holodomor architect Lazar Moiseyevich Kagonavich was – was the NSC’s top Ukraine expert (something Trump himself claimed) much to the chagrin of Congressional Democrats – as it offered Trump a way out.
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According to the report, Vindeman also said that Patel had been intentionally bypassing NSC protocol in order to “convince” President Trump that corruption was endemic in the Ukrainian government as well as with the American agencies, firms and NGOs working directly with Ukraine (think Hunter and daddy Biden) – feeding him materials that reaffirmed his belief the country interfered in the 2016 election.
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All FACTS that have since been substantiated by the seized Hunter Biden “porntop”.
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Democrat shill, “Law and Crime Quarterly” founder Dan Abrams wrote that, “Patel, a former counterterrorism prosecutor in the Justice Department’s National Security Division and senior aide to Nunes, had joined the the National Security Council staff in February with no apparent experience in Ukraine or Ukrainian politics” in an attempt by Abrams to discredit him before the House.
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No apparent experience? Or you don’t like what he’s saying, Abrams? (Ever notice that most of the names behind the attack on our democracy and President Trump in particular share quite a conspicuous commonality with “Abrams””. Sure hope Trump regrets being so damn supportive of Israel! Talk about naïve!!!
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Back to Patel….
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Prior to joining the Trump administration, Patel saw his political stock rise drastically within the Trump-wing of the Republican Party.
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The NY Times wrote that “Patel, who had previously served as senior counsel for counter-terrorism at the House Permanent Select Committee, has been lionized by conservatives for authoring the infamous 2018 ‘Nunes Memo,’ which alleged that the FBI intentionally misled a FISA court judge regarding the origins of the “Steele Dossier” in an effort to unlawfully surveil the Trump campaign and help Hillary Clinton win the 2016 presidential election.”
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The Times also stated that Patel, who is of Indian origin but hails from Uganda [whence Indians were expelled by the insane African dictator Idi Amin] is seen as a “Trump loyalist who will stop at nothing to see Trump remain in power.”
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Let’s hope so.
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I just wish President Trump had made decisions like these SOONER! Instead he tried to appease the Deep State by surrounding himself with bloodthirsty scum like “Mad Dog” Mattis and John Bolton. To quote the sage of our age, Joe “I can’t find my mask Biden” –
“Come on, man!”
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That segués nicely into how I anticipated I would conclude this article.
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A warning to you all about just what is at stake here.
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With Biden installed in the White House, the Deep State and their Statist allies on the authoritarian-Left can control the policies that they are itching to get implemented….policies that empower the evil elite and the very worst of America’s poor and non-white demographic.
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To do so they will strip us of both our First and Second Amendments – so can we neither fight back with our words or our arms.
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And make no mistake, the Democrats ARE now the party of both the very rich and of their slaves, the very poor  – and of blacks and Hispanics in particular.
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They are also the party of the authoritarian, the billionaire censor, the online executioner of careers, the anarchist, the Marxist, the domestic terrorist and the evil-doer.
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For sure, Biden is just a stepping stone in the elite’s plan to have Kamala Harris take over the White House – a woman that embodies the very worst of what America has become. Harris is both evil but at the same time weak. She is driven by her lust for power.
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She is vulgar, crass, rude, low-class, and worst of all, can be easily manipulated from behind the scenes by the very worst of the warmongering Deep State.
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One need only look at her repugnant husband and her pandering to AIPAC to know which way a Kamala regime will go when Deep State orders reach the White House.
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Before the election, we saw Nancy Pelosi already talking about putting a 25th Amendment in place to remove an unfit President. It was purposely done at the time President Trump was hospitalised with Covid 19 to make the unsuspecting public think she intended to have Trump removed from office.
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By comparison, President Trump, derided by the Left but beloved by the American people, has successfully brokered two Middle East Peace Accords, something that 71 years of political intervention and endless wars failed to accomplish – and brought North and South Korea together for the first time in decades. He has also truly reset relations with Russia and protected the world from mankind’s greatest threat, China.

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And he is not a warmonger.  Mr Trump is also the first President that has not involved you in a horrible foreign war since Eisenhower (1953-61).
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This tower-of-strength President has had the greatest impact on the economy, bringing jobs and lowering unemployment to the Black and Latino population than ANY other President. Ever.
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In order to drain the swamp, he has exposed the deep, widespread and long-standing corruption in the FBI, the CIA, the NSA and the Republican and Democratic parties.
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President Trump declared from the outset that NATO needed to be reformed, and that America was tired of contributing more than any other country. He turned it around and made other countries start paying their dues.
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He also shredded NAFTA, replacing it with something that actually protects America’s workers and manufacturing!
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With his America First agenda and unique brand of diplomacy, he neutralized the North Koreans, stopping them from developing a further nuclear capability and sending missiles toward Japan or threatening the West Coast of the US.
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He brought hundreds of businesses back to the US from China, thus reviving the economy.
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Recognizing the necessity to have more conservative judges, the president successfully appointed three Supreme Court Justices and close to 300 federal judges – some of whom have sadly already betrayed him.
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I will conclude by leaving you with an excerpt from a letter that was sent to us last week from a caring British grandmother expressing her admiration for our leader, the 45th President of the United States, President Donald John Trump.
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“Beloved by the people, this man whom they love to hate lowered your taxes, increased the standard deduction on your IRS return from $12,500 for Married Filing Joint to $24,400, and was instrumental in making your stock market move to record levels over 100 times, positively impacting the retirements of tens of millions of citizens.
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Because he cared about the nation’s health, the president fast-tracked the development of a COVID Vaccine – it will be available within weeks – while we still don’t have a vaccine for SARS, Bird Flu, Ebola, or a host of diseases that occurred during previous administrations.
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To increase the security of the citizens of the country, he rebuilt our military – something the Obama administration had crippled, having fired 214 key generals and admirals in his first year of office. (Let’s hope these men will now back Donald Trump in his darkest hour)
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With the welfare and safety of the people in mind, he uncovered widespread pedophilia in the government and in Hollywood, also exposing worldwide sex-trafficking of minors and bringing children home to their families.
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This president works for free and has lost well over two billion dollars of his own money in serving his beloved America.
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And he has done all of this and much more in the face of relentless undermining and demeaning opposition from people who feel threatened because they know they are going to be exposed as the criminals they are, if he is re-elected.”
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I couldn’t have said it better myself.
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And this is why every last one of us MUST do ALL we can to see that Mr Trump remains in office.
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Our lives and beloved nation depend on it!
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Stay strong friends and keep fighting.
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End article by F.M. Arouet
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***
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Bonus piece from the Military Times, originally published WAY back in 1995. (I quoted from part of it above.)
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One Amazing Kid – Capt. Scott O’ Grady escapes from Bosnia-Herzegovina
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By Bjorn Claes
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Even before he had rolled out of his narrow bunk aboard the USS Kearsarge, Col. Marty Berndt knew this was the real thing; four-star admirals don’t phone at 2:30 in the morning just to chat. Adm. Leighton “Snuffy” Smith, the commander of all of NATO’s southern forces, was on the line from London and he wanted to know if Colonel Berndt’s Marines, the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, were ready.
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They were, Colonel Berndt assured the admiral; he would need just one hour’s notice to get the first of his hulking CH-53 helicopters off the Kearsarge’s [photo] flight deck and on its way across the Adriatic Sea.
***JdN: Amphibious assault ships like the Kearsarge launch helicopters into the air and landing craft with Marines into the sea to storm the beaches. I served on a similar ship, the USS Inchon.
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The destination: western Bosnia. The mission: rescue Capt. Scott O’Grady, the downed F-16 pilot missing for six nights, who had been located in the hilly, Serb-held countryside not far from Banja Luka. Smith put the Marines on alert. At 3 o’clock, Berndt replaced the phone’s receiver and hurried along the ship’s narrow, red-lit passageway to the war room.
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In the pine forest where he had hidden, Scott O’Grady waited. It had been less than an hour since he had finally contacted an American F-16 pilot from his own unit, the 555th fighter squadron based at Aviano AB, Italy, who was patrolling overhead.
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Wary of betraying his location and anxious to conserve battery power, he had used his radio sparingly; but at 2:08 that morning, 52 minutes earlier, O’Grady was heard for the first time radioing “Basher 52,” his call sign on the mission that had landed him in this mess.
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Twelve minutes later, the American fliers overhead were convinced that the voice on the radio was truly Captain O’Grady. A pilot who knew him from the barracks at Aviano recognized O’Grady’s voice; that made perfunctory the ritual quizzing for the secret code words that only O’Grady and his rescuers would know.
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Bad omens. It was like hearing a voice from the grave. Only in the past 24 hours had O’Grady’s mates begun to hope again that he might still be alive. After all, the 29-year-old pilot had been missing in Serb-held territory for five days with meager rations of food and water. His wingman hadn’t seen a parachute emerge from the wreckage of the crippled F-16 after a Serb SA-6 surface-to-air missile had split the fighter in two in the clouds 26,000 feet up.
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The missile attack had surprised the F-16 pilots. Never before had the Serbs positioned the Soviet-made SA-6s–a type of missile first used in combat during the 1973 Yom Kippur War but upgraded since–in the area south of the Bosnian city of Banja Luka. O’Grady and his wingman, Capt. Bob Wright, were flying alone on June 2, without specially equipped electronic jamming aircraft or the Wild Weasel jets armed with HARM anti-radiation missiles, which home in on a missile battery’s radar.
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It is an unanswered question whether the F-16s should have been allowed to fly alone. The days before the shootdown had hardly been uneventful. NATO commanders had issued a pair of ultimatums against the Bosnian Serbs; when the Serbs ignored them, NATO attack planes struck ammunition bunkers at a depot in Pale, headquarters of the Serb military. American satellites overhead detected enormous secondary explosions after the 1,000- and 2,000-pound “smart” bombs hit–proof that large stores of Serb weapons had been destroyed. The furious Serbs retaliated by taking some 400 United Nations troops hostage, throwing the international peacekeeping effort in the former Yugoslavia into disarray.
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It was into that maelstrom that O’Grady and Wright flew. But at the morning ready-room briefing that June 2, when the young pilots gathered in their flight gear to study the latest information about weather and enemy positions, no one worried about Serb surface-to-air missiles.
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The Serbs, however, had secretly moved a missile battery south and laid a trap. They switched on their missile radars sparingly, giving the F-16 pilots little warning; in a flash, they fired two missiles skyward. In the cockpit, O’Grady’s instruments alerted him that a missile was coming; but, flying in clouds, he could not see it. The first missile exploded between the two aircraft. The second caught O’Grady’s plane in the belly. As the plane broke apart and tumbled toward Earth, he reached between his legs and with both hands pulled the lanyard that blew the canopy and ejected him from the plane.
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After landing, O’Grady abandoned his parachute and plunged into the woods. He lay face down, cupping his camouflaged flight gloves over his head and ears so he could not be spotted in the brush. Within minutes a teenage boy and a man wandered past; then he saw armed men nearby. He heard gunfire and was sure he would be caught as the Serbs continued their search into the night. “Thank God there were no dogs there,” he told military de-briefers.
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Lessons learned. O’Grady slept by day, covering himself with camouflage netting, and moved only between midnight and 4 a.m. Armed Serbs were never far away and he often heard gunfire. Once, as he lay hiding, cows grazed at his feet. Equipped with a 121-page survival pamphlet, a radio, a first-aid kit, distress flares and a compass, he put to good use the lessons learned during 17 days of Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE) training he had undertaken near his hometown of Spokane, Wash. He used a sponge to soak up rainwater to fill a container. He ate grass and bugs; the survival pamphlet includes instructions to cook insects as big as grasshoppers and to eat them only after removing the hard, crunchy legs.
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President Clinton, told of O’Grady’s exploits on the ground in Bosnia, called him “one amazing kid.” It was O’Grady’s love of adventure that had gotten him into an F-16 cockpit in the first place. Born in New York in 1965, [the Irish-American] grew up in the mountains near Spokane. He learned to fly while studying at Embry Riddle Aeronautical University in Arizona and was selected for NATO flight school at Sheppard Air Force Base in Texas. O’Grady had flown 781 hours in the F-16 over Korea, Germany and Bosnia.
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O’Grady waited to radio for help; he had been taught that downed pilots are often captured after calling for help too soon, giving away their position. Finally, last Tuesday–O’Grady’s fourth full day on the ground–he signaled his location, using a little more of the small reserve of his radio’s battery power each time he went on the air. The next day, just after 2 a.m., he dared to speak into the radio. An American voice responded, and the rescue was set in motion. At 4:40, Admiral Smith called Colonel Berndt aboard the Kearsarge again–this time with orders to “execute.”
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The 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit is no stranger to risky missions–or tragedy. It was the unit decimated in Beirut in 1983 when a suicide truck bomber destroyed its barracks, killing 241 servicemen.
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Two of their CH-53 helicopters, which would carry a total of 43 Marines–riflemen, assault climbers, medics, a communications team and an interpreter–were already sitting on their assigned take-off spots on the Kearsarge’s 800-foot-long flight deck.
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The Marine TRAP team, shorthand for “Tactical Recovery of Aircraft Personnel,” grabbed its gear and weapons and then assembled in the ship’s hangar bay.
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At five minutes past 5 the first of the big cargo helicopters lifted off, followed by two AH-1W Cobra gunships and two AV-8 Harrier jump jets. In the skies above the Adriatic and Bosnia, an armada of 40 aircraft, jammers and fighters and an AWACS air-traffic-control plane assembled for the mission. But the jets were slow to arrive. Berndt’s helicopter circled for 45 long minutes before the force was ready to head ashore.
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It took little more than 10 minutes for the helicopters to cross the beach–“feet dry” in Marine lingo. The Marines flew head-on into the sunrise; the beauty of the morning was lost on Berndt, who would rather have flown at night, when darkness would have masked his slow-moving choppers from Serb gunners.
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The Marines, 50-mm machine guns peeking from their helicopters, flew through valleys just atop banks of fog, using them for cover.
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As they approached the last ridge line before reaching O’Grady, the two CH-53s began to circle; the two Cobra helicopters continued forward. As the lead Cobra crossed the ridge, it reached O’Grady by radio for the first time. O’Grady spotted the Cobras and guided them to the landing zone he had selected, a clearing big enough for the two sprawling helicopters to land but with covering trees nearby. He “popped a smoke,” a smoke canister that would mark his location. “I see your yellow smoke,” the Cobra commander responded.
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As soon as the first CH-53 landed, more than 20 Marines scrambled down its back ramp to secure the perimeter. The second chopper then set down on the remains of an old fence. Its tail blocked, it had to lift off and land again. Seconds later the pilot burst out of the pines, pistol in hand.
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Hunched low against the rotor-whipped wind, he made for Dash 2, the second helicopter, where Berndt pulled him aboard. “I’m ready to get the hell out of here,” O’Grady said.
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The crew wrapped a blanket around the shivering pilot, who collapsed, relieved and exhausted. The Marine riflemen climbed back aboard. The whole operation had taken perhaps three minutes–“textbook,” it would be called later.
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Aboard Dash 2, O’Grady was hungry. Five minutes into the flight, he was eating real food away, with a week of insects and grass making even the military’s notoriously unappetizing plastic-packed MREs (“Meals Ready to Eat,” [JdN: AKA “Meals Rejected by Ethiopians”;-) ) plenty appealing.
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O’Grady was not home yet, though. The Marines and their precious passenger were still flying low over Serb-held Bosnia, the sun at their back rising higher in the East.
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New threats. American jets detected a Serb missile radar along the Croatian coast, scanning for targets. An American plane recommended destroying the Serb radar, code-named Giraffe. The request was denied, partly out of concern that a strike could spark wider conflict.
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Minutes later, the Marines reported they were under fire. Two shoulder-held surface-to-air missiles had been launched at them but missed, as the helicopter pilots–flying 150 feet off the ground at 175 mph–jinked to evade them. Serb small arms pocked both helicopters; the Marines aboard heard the shells hit inside the fuselage. One door gunner returned fire.
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But they were almost safe: At a quarter past 7, 30 minutes after picking up O’Grady, the rescuers reported “feet wet,” meaning they were over water. The Kearsarge was just 15 minutes away.
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In Alexandria, Va., William O’Grady’s phone rang, minutes before 1 o’clock Thursday morning. Since the Friday before, phone calls had brought nothing but bad news: He had been called at work on June 2 and told to contact the Air Force as soon as possible. “I got quite scared,” he says. He dialed the number he had been given, which was answered at nearby Bolling Air Force Base.
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The voice at the other end of the line unnerved O’Grady even more. There was serious news, but it could only be delivered in person. Frantic, O’Grady drove home. A government car drove up and three blue uniforms emerged; one of the officers wore a chaplain’s cross on his collar. “I was pretty well sure they’d say he had died,” O’Grady says.
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This time, it was Captain O’Grady’s wing commander calling from Italy with nothing but good news: The pilot was alive. William O’Grady first saw his son on television, healthy with a week’s growth of beard, as he jumped from the CH-53 onto the Kearsarge’s flight deck. “He looked sensational,” the father said. “He looked like he’d taken a walk in the park and forgotten to shave.” O’Grady was dehydrated and hungry, and his neck had been burned when he had ejected from his plane; otherwise, he was in good health.
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Later, after Clinton called to offer his congratulations, after the TV cameras welcomed him aboard the Kearsarge and at Aviano, Air Force pilot Scott O’Grady thanked the Marines who saved him. “They say they were just doing their job. But they risked their lives to get me out. If you want to find some heroes, that’s where you should look.” The Marines had indeed saved one amazing kid.
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Survival gear for F-16 pilots :
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Capt. Scott O’Grady relied on his survival training and equipment to elude capture for six days. Air Force F-16 aircraft carry these essential items in their seats and in a life vest.
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Survival kit installed in pilot’s seat: Survival radio (with spare battery); Mirror (for signals); First-aid kit; Signal kit, personnel distress flares; Compass; Whistle; Strobe light with flash guard and infrared filter; Raft repair plugs; 5-inch knife; Container with matches; Raft; Water; Blanket (can also be used for signaling); Packet of sea dye; Survival pamphlet; Drinking storage bag; Handgun; Beacon.
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Survival vest components: Survival radio; Global positioning system (GPS) receiver; Distress signals; Mirror; First-aid kit; Compass; Face paint for camouflage; Tourniquet.
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Rescue time line (all times local, June 8):
0208: Downed pilot (code BASHER 52) contacts Deny Flight aircraft 0220: BASHER 52 positively identified as Captain O’Grady 0545: Backup search-and-rescue team launched from a base in Italy 0550: Primary rescue team heads toward Bosnia from USS Kearsarge 0612: Rescuers contact O’Grady 0644: Rescue takes place 0707: Rescue team fired on by surface-to-air missile and small arms on take-off 0715: Rescue team “feet wet” (over water) 0730: Team lands on USS Kearsarge
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Search and rescue. The rescue force, including 40 aircraft and a Special Operations backup force, was spearheaded by the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit.
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Primary rescue team: 2 Marine CH-53 helicopters (carrying about 20 marines each); 2 Marine AH-1W Cobra helicopters; 2 Marine AV-8 Harrier jump jets.
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Note : Capt. O’Grady now flies with the 466th Fighter Squadron “Diamondbacks” (part of the 419th FW) at Hill AFB, Utah.
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Special thanks
Auster, Bruce B.

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[End]

 

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7 Comments

  1. The reality of history should not be ignored when glorifying heroes and US Military interventions which are really Pentagon Wars. These wars are not to protect and defend America, but are very profitable for war mongers. The military forces don’t have any understanding of why they are being called upon to probably kill and die, so their actual commitment is to help each other stay alive together. So this hero probably still doesn’t know why he was there to fight and kill. Very likely he will do so again just because that is his military purpose. Fighting to protect and defend Americans from our own domestic enemies would actually make him a valid oath keeper. This history is what he and the US Marines were so bravely fighting for under Clinton.

    Counterpunch, June 30, 2020
    Bill Clinton’s Serbian War Atrocities Exposed in New Indictment
    by James Bovard
    “President Bill Clinton’s favorite freedom fighter just got indicted for mass murder, torture, kidnapping, and other crimes against humanity. In 1999, the Clinton administration launched a 78-day bombing campaign that killed up to 1500 civilians in Serbia and Kosovo in what the American media proudly portrayed as a crusade against ethnic bias. That war, like most of the pretenses of U.S. foreign policy, was always a sham.”

    “Both the Serbs and ethnic Albanians committed atrocities in the bitter strife in Kosovo. But to sanctify its bombing campaign, the Clinton administration waved a magic wand and made the KLA’s atrocities disappear. British professor Philip Hammond noted that the 78-day bombing campaign “was not a purely military operation: NATO also destroyed what it called ‘dual-use’ targets, such as factories, city bridges, and even the main television building in downtown Belgrade, in an attempt to terrorize the country into surrender.” NATO repeatedly dropped cluster bombs into marketplaces, hospitals, and other civilian areas. Cluster bombs are anti-personnel devices designed to be scattered across enemy troop formations. NATO dropped more than 1,300 cluster bombs on Serbia and Kosovo and each bomb contained 208 separate bomblets that floated to earth by parachute. Bomb experts estimated that more than 10,000 unexploded bomblets were scattered around the landscape when the bombing ended and maimed children long after the ceasefire.”
    https://jimbovard.com/blog/2020/06/30/clintons-serbian-war-atrocities-exposed-anew/

    20 Years Ago: Bill Clinton Bombs Serbia, Killing Hundreds of Civilians
    By James Bovard
    March 27, 2019
    https://www.lewrockwell.com/2019/03/james-bovard/20-years-ago-bill-clinton-bombs-serbia-killing-hundreds-of-civilians/

    Reply

  3. Not related to any current events, but some time ago, I posted this video in a comment here, about the theory that Neanderthals were huge-eyed, nocturnal, hairy, ape-like super predators that evolved for 500,000 years in Ice Age Europe, migrated to the Middle East 100,000 years ago, and hunted and raped early humans there for 70,000 years, until we got smarter and learned how to hunt them to extinction:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZbmywzGAVs

    Now, here is a recent article which confirms much of this theory – note that it says that Neanderthals did in fact, have huge eyes, which can only mean that they were nocturnal hunters, because all nocturnal animals have huge eyes:

    https://getpocket.com/explore/item/war-in-the-time-of-neanderthals-how-our-species-battled-for-supremacy-for-over-100-000-years

    “In battle, their massive, muscular builds must have made them devastating fighters in close-quarters combat. Their huge eyes likely gave Neanderthals superior low-light vision, letting them manoeuvre in the dark for ambushes and dawn raids.”

    Here’s the scientific article linked to in the above article, which also talks about the huge eyes of Neanderthals:

    https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2013.0168

    This also brings up the interesting question of whether pockets of these Neanderthal super predators may still exist in isolated, remote areas. I wonder if those 9 Russian hikers who were killed in 1959 in the mysterious Dyatlov Pass incident were killed not by aliens, but by a pack of surviving Neanderthal super predators who ambushed them at night in their tents:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyatlov_Pass_incident

    The Almas or “Wild Men” of Russia:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Almas_(folklore)

    Capture of a female Neanderthal or Neanderthal-Human hybrid in Russia in 1850?:

    https://exemplore.com/cryptids/Mystery-Files-The-Story-of-Zana-Do-Neanderthals-Still-Walk-Amongst-us

    Perhaps surviving Neanderthals account for some of the many disappearances of human hikers and campers in remote wilderness areas, because to Neanderthals, we would be just another prey animal, just as it was 100,000 years ago.

    Michael Crichton’s novel, “Eaters of the Dead” is about exactly this theory, in which a group of Viking warriors, accompanied by an Arab merchant traveler, battle a surviving tribe of nocturnal Neanderthal super predators wearing bear heads:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eaters_of_the_Dead

    It was later made into a movie called “the 13th Warrior”:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_13th_Warrior

    Reply

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