From the diaries, by Erick.

Once again, Barack Obama proves he is not fit to serve as commander-in-chief to our armed forces. In a continuing despicable act, Obama is refusing to honor WWII veterans who fought for our nation in it’s darkest hours.

From the McClatchy News Service:

WASHINGTON — In a strongly worded message to Congress outlining its priorities for a military spending bill, the Obama administration today said it disapproved of including money for pensions for 26 elderly members of the World War II-era Alaska Territorial Guard.

The Guardsmen are among those assigned to protect Alaska from the Japanese during World War II.

….Sen. Lisa Murkowski, who along with Sen. Mark Begich, D-Alaska, sponsored the fix [to the pensions], called the administration move “deeply disappointing, bordering on insensitive.” The legislation honors 26 elderly Native people who are the few remaining survivors of a military unit that served the country with valor, Murkowski said.

“The administration’s justification, which is that the legislation will set the precedent of treating service as a state employee as federal service, defies logic and history,” she said in a statement. “Sixty-two years after the Territorial Guard was disbanded, the Obama administration minimizes the contribution of this gallant unit to America’s success in World War II by calling its service ’state service.’ “

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When one heads north out of Bucharest (by either road or rail), it takes a considerable amount of time for the city to “fall away.” When that finally does happen, you find yourself out on the Wallachian plain – which is very flat, now nearly treeless, and (in summer) very hot. The cityscape and traffic of Bucharest are replaced by scenes of peasant farmers transporting wood, hay, and other agricultural substances in horse-drawn carts – often doing so while chatting on their mobile phones.

But between Bucharest and the Carpathian foothills, just 35 miles north of Bucharest, the transportation corridor runs just by the western edge of the small city of Ploesti. Just to the west of the road and the rail line looms the large and venerable Ploesti oil-refining complex.

Today, Ploesti and its environs are peaceful – and almost bucolic.

But on this day 66 years ago, Ploesti was anything but peaceful. In the short span of 30 minutes, the Ploesti refinery was engulfed in flames, and the cornfields of the Wallachian plain were littered with the burning remains of aircraft – following one of the most unusual and brutally-courageous air attacks in history.

The tale is told below the fold.

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The folks at Powerline realized the implications of an outrageous news clip featuring NBC’s Tom Brokaw conducting an interview with the president. Apparently, this hard news journalist thought he’d get deep and ask a pertinent question about Israel, the Palestinians, and just what it might be that the Jews can learn from Obama’s visit to Buchenwald and how they should treat Palestinians and stuff about Nazis or something.

Seriously, what sort of historical ignorance does it take for someone to ask what Jews can learn about Buchenwald when he has never visited the place before now, never had any intimate or even cultural connection to it, and wasn’t even alive when it was a Nazi terror to the Jewish world? I mean, is Brokaw insinuating that the Jews did not learn anything from their own “visit” to Buchenwald?

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During his incredibly successful [/snark] trip to Europe last week, President Obama rejected an invitation from French president Nicolas Sarkozy to visit Normandy, France — the site of the 1944 D-Day beach landing. The reason given by the Obama administration? They didn’t want to offend the Germans by having the U.S. president visit the site where over 4,400 allied soldiers died in the operation that made victory in Europe against the evil, inhuman Nazi German regime and its allies possible.

They didn’t want to offend the Germans. Amazing. Perhaps we should next cancel all July 4 celebrations out of fear of offending the British? Or perhaps we should cancel Easter out of fear of “offending” the Romans, or cancel all 9/11 remembrances out of fear of “offending” al Qaeda terrorists, or cancel Memorial and Veterans’ days out of fear of “offending” all and sundry who have had the misfortune of throwing themselves on American bayonets over the course of our nearly-223-year history.

Sounds absurd, doesn’t it?  Absolutely — until you push a little further, and learn anew just what absurdity really is, courtesy — again — of the Obama administration:

Mr Sarkozy’s most senior aide said Mr Obama had agreed to come back in June for the 65th anniversary of the June 6th 1944, D-Day landings. A White House spokesman declined to comment on whether Mr Obama would travel to France in June.

So far, innumerable media outlets have reported that Obama will, in fact, be joining Sarkozy in Normandy on the June 6 anniversary of D-Day — but every one is citing Sarkozy and other European sources, because the Obama administration, for whatever reason, is refusing to confirm or deny whether Obama intends to honor those fallen — and those saved — by the historic D-Day operation.

It’s a simple question; the answer should be a no-brainer, and this topic should be a nonissue. Unfortunately, the indecisive and tin-eared Obama White House is, with its usual confusion, discombobulation, and ineptitude, quickly turning what should have been far less than a molehill into one heck of a forbidding mountain.

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