#i cried at the 2016 elections and stayed up late as if I WERE AMERICAN i aint going back to that lvl of brainrot no siree

[limetameta]

I posted a crime and punishment meme on instagram stories and this girl legit commented in my dm like kamala/trump?? like broo the usamerican brainrot is strong with this one shes balkan what are u doingg its not 2016 anymore we arent beholden to their politics focus on our own shitstarters in our own country like damnn.

[fapangel]

SO what do you what will happen now with the whole fake Bomer guy supposedly be a trump supporter? Do you think the blue wave will restart or is it too little to late?

The most significantrevelation of the mail-bomber incident was that the Republicanmainstream – not the usual fringe kooks, but the levelheaded,respected commentators – immediately suspected it to be amanufactured “October Surprise.”

Some of those knee-jerktweets have since been deleted, likelyfor the same reason that I was more alarmed that I could entertain a“false flag” theory in the first place than I was by the possible“false flag” itself. Embracing asinine conspiracy theoriesis, to me, a hallmark of left-wing agitprop, an indelible impressionfrom my formative Bush-era youth when ~Halliburton~ and~Bush’s cabinet of puppeteers who have Jewish last names~was unceasingly invoked in anypolitical argument. And yet, despite knowing theoverwhelming odds of a lone lunatic being the perp (as indeed theywere) and my own decades-old biases against conspiracy theories, Istill found myselfmuttering dubiously.

Iwasn’t alone in that impression – the NewYork Times picked up on it too, and as is their wont managed todisclose their unique myopia as well. In their effort to equate allright-wing media to Alex “Lizardman Chemtrails” Jones’s usualconspiracytainment bullshit, theydrop this revealing paragraph:

Mr.Jones has been largely pushed tothe fringes of the internet — kicked off Twitter, Facebook and adozen other services — and his cries for attention now seem mostlypitiful. (This week, he was filmed yellingat a pile of manure outsidea rally for President Trump in Texas.) Buthis spirit lives on in the larger universe of pro-Trump media, whichhas fused the conspiratorial grandeur of Infowars with an unshakablefaith in Mr. Trump’s righteousness.

Theyautomatically equate media exposure of an idea with how manyviewers believe the idea. The thesis of the article lies inthese two sentences; Alex Jones has been silenced, but the moremainstream right-wing media has picked up his ideas, and that’s whythey’re still alive.

Thisalone speaks volumes about the media’s worldview, but to reallydrive it home see thisarticle wherein the reporter blames Trump’s attacks on themedia for their plummeting popularity, as if the Great PresidentialPumpkin can sway millions of Americans into hating themainstream media via his eldritch mind-control rays. This is why theyspeak of “an unshakable faith in Mr. Trump’s righteousness-”leftists view the world in terms of stupid mobs and the influentialdemagogues that sway and lead them. They simply cannot comprehendthat their own actions have shattered the public’s trust in them,despite the problem long predating Trump (one of my Journalism 101professors cited trust polling that consistently put Journalistsbelow used car salesmen back in 2007!) They find it easier tobelieve that their vast media empires’ combined megaphone is beingdrowned out by RumpleTrumpskien pied piping on his magical racistdogwhistle than to admit that people might think for themselves longenough to call them out on their egregious lies.

Thisdovetails nicely with recent revelations thatthe FBI leaked information to the press, then cited said “reporting”to the Justice Dept. as justification for further investigations,including FISA wiretapping warrants. Whilethe media’s lunacy is frequently amusing – reporters leaningdramatically into nonexistent wind, CNN’sfit over a panel truck blocking their stalker peephole in the hedge,or going bugfuck insane because Trumphad dinner without informing the media – nobody’s laughinganymore. And it’s precisely because of the growing understandingamong the populace of how the media has wantonly abused its power toaid the abuse of Federal power to nullify the results of a democraticelection.As Ian Miles Cheong said; “if the media can lie about somethingas insignificant as a koipond feeding ceremony, what else are they lying about?”

Well,now we know – and the people don’t seem amused.

I’vecovered the media’s worldview and demonstrable myopia before; Iaddress it in this instance to show thatthe media simply cannot adapt their message. Indeed,the NYT article on fringe-to-mainstream cites the mocking/pol/ “suspicious devices” meme without apparentunderstanding of how it undermines their implicit assumptions mereparagraphs prior of deplatforming speakers equalingthe silencing of their ideas. Theleft-wing “mobs and demagogues” is more than theory to them; it’show they organize – which is why John Oliver’s sick Friday nightburns are being repeated ad nauseam on Facebook by early Saturdaymorning. Theleft truly cannotmeme;it’s simply how they function. So when RumpleTrumpskien needles themedia into talking All About Themselves instead of the issues at handyetagain, iteffectively makes the mediathe issue at hand – and given that pollingconsistently shows that many Democrats are coming to distrust themedia of late, that’s not a strong issue for the DNC.Conversely, right-wingers will be shitposting the latest dank memeswith or without Alex Jones’s Twitterfeed, comehellor Maxine Waters.

Thusly,I conclude the mail bomber incident won’t have a significant impacton the electoral map – notjust because of widespread cynicism engendered by constant mediafalsehoods, but also because the structural problems that producedsuch alsocripple the media’s ability to exploit such incidents. In fact, themedia’s incredible blindness makes them likely to harmthe left-wing’s cause by doubling down on narratives that wereasinine the first time around. There is no bad news for the DNC thatthe media’s mental illness cannot make worse. Takethe latest example of thesynagogue shooter thatturnedout to be a Trump-hater who thought POTUSwas controlled Jews. Theusual hate-mongeringWaPo crowd actuallydug up the “star-shapedbackground graphic in a campaign ad” gem that was laughablelunacy beforeTrumpmoved the US embassy to Jerusalem and made defending Israel in the UNa cornerstone of US foreign policy. Thisis placed at the topofthe article, as if it’s a powerful and convincing lead-in to thelong-winded paranoid rambling of “troll armies” motivated by theusual mystic ~coded signals~ mentioned later on. Eventhe more sober-sounding takes likethis NYT hit-piece must open by blaming Trump for the crimes ofTrump-supporters andTrump-haters,which obliges the author to afascinating attempt in pissing up a rope without getting wet.

Itnaturally follows, then, that breathless media polling reports citing85% and upwards chances of a “blue wave” retaking the House areabout as trustworthy as similar polling in 2016. Even Nate Silver’smuch-vaunted “538” polling agency has come under prettypointed criticism for the number of times they’ve shrugged offsimilar “80%” predictions that haven’t come to pass – froma Harvard professor, no less. Furthermore,midterm elections are different in many ways – local issues oftenhave people more fired up (read, pissed off,) especially regardinggubernatorial elections. Since midterms are traditionally very lowturnout, a popular gubernatorial candidate can have a huge impact on“down-ballot” races – i.e. people show up to vote for thegovernor, and vote straight party ticket for alltheother candidates, US House included. In short, the polls mean jackdiddly squat, soeveryone’s simply reporting what they want (if you don’t believeme, look no further than Fox News’s reportinga nail-biting dead heat currently, then thisSeptember 22ndarticle on how dismissing “blue wave” rhetoric as the bullshit itis could suppress the Republican vote via overconfidence.A “dead heat” narrative is the safest way to turn out votes; norisk of overconfidence or hopelessness keeping people away from thepolls.) Soto evaluate the potentials, we must turn to the murkiest of allpolitical-forecastingcrystal balls - “energy levels.”

There’sbeen multiple media-exacerbated own-goals for the left in thatregard, most notably the mind-blowingly vicious smear campaignagainstJustice Kavanaugh that only managed to rile the right wing via sheeroutrage even more than the left. I could roll this one around fora while – talking about the surprising pluralities (note therelatively high numbers of Democrats and low numbers of Republicans“Very Angry” over Kavanaugh’s suffering; a surprisinglycenter-right plurality,) or how big the Republican benefit really was(Republicans being moderately more outraged than Democrats amounts toa low gain if Democrats enteredthe fray with high outrage already; but it’s likely that manyRepublicans who didn’t care at all before are outraged now).Butthere’s a larger factor to contend with – the historical realitythat the party controlling the Executive usually loses seats in theHouse in midterm elections. It happens with regularity for the samereason PoliSci101 shows you a “standardized plot” of Presidential approvalratings over time – human nature. Whoever’s in charge gets blamedfor everything bad, simply enough – so even popular Presidents willshed a few seats in the mid-terms. Combine this with the importanceof turnout in midterm elections and the oft-lamented anti-Trumpobsession on the left, and everything seems to point to Democratsbeing more motivated.

However,I’m not so sure they are.

Youtuber“Aydin Paladin,” an advanced psych student who usually talksabout psychology in a political context, did a video 11 months agotitled “LeftistLethargy and Low Energy,” specifically addressing how aconstant state of horror and outrage at every single damn Trump tweethas the inevitable consequence of emotional burnout. One cannot stayoutraged forever. At some point, you simply stop caring. Onecould debate Ayadin’s point that the left was demonstrablyhittingthis point a year ago, or posit that they’ve had time to recover –but I personally believe the lethargy lingers. Myevidence? A quick jaunt through the New York Times’ editorial page:

*A Halloween op-ed about Trump literally being worse than the fuckingbogeyman (“WhenNightmares Are Real” by Jennifer Finney Boylan,)

*An article begging Democrats not to take a usually-safe votingdemographic for granted, Native Americans

*An article on “how to turn people into voters,” featuring a modelspecific to “black Southerners,” who are a safe Democraticdemographic – but only when they actually turn up to vote,

*Andmost tellingly, an article titled“You’redisillusioned. That’sfine. Vote anyway.”

Blindand narcissistic they may be, but I trust the media to know their owntribe – and theiroutlookon the base’s revolutionary fervor looks rather dim. Once again themedia’s endless talent for own-goals is apparent. The continuingdemonizingof Trump as theworst nightmare ever onlyensures that a choir that tired of the preaching a year ago willremain so. The struggle to get black voters to actually turn out isan old and ongoing one, but pissed-off Native Americans isn’t justElizabethWarren’s fault – it was mostly the media that accepted her DNAtest showing some squillionth of a percent of native DNA asvindication,andthen gallopedover to Trump to triumphantly flaunt it at him, giving him a goldenopportunity to mock it on national TV – on their own live networkbroadcasts, even.

You’llnote that the point regarding the media’s self-sabotage of theleft-wing movement was made many paragraphs ago, but it continues torear its awful head as a salient factor in almost every exampleillustrating any otherpoint in this article – this is how pervasive it is.

There’smore to Democratic lethargy than the media pissing off key left-wingDemographics in western states with important House races, however –there’s also the overall lack of a message. Instead of coalescingon a single one, Democrats appear to be taking a local-issuesapproach, which is rather awkward given they – and the media –have spent the last two years making absolutelyeverything aboutTrump. They’re stillmaking everything about Trump (e.g.synagogue shooter) even now,inthe eleventh hour. Thenthere’s the notable and growing strain between old-schoolblue-collar union Democrats and the “progressive wing” (viz.privileged wealthy white socialists) whichdivides their messaging on the economy – especially tellingconsidering the record-low unemployment and rapidlyrising wages. (It’s hard to tell people they’re living inObama’s economy whenyou were telling them it was Trump’s climate a few months ago.)

Andof course, the cherry on this shitstorm sundae is the latest greatestmigrant caravan advancing through Mexico – seven thousandstrong, originally – which took Trump’s single greatest electionissue and slam-dunked it in the middle of the debate again. Thecaravan is significant because it tangiblyprovesTrump’s long-standing point regarding immigration problems, and isexactly the kind of thing a big wall would hinder – awall Trump can’t build if he can’t get a funding bill through theHouse.

Insum, the left still lacks a coherent message, is still desensitizingtheir electorate with constant panicked screeching, is frequentlypissing off their own key constituencies with their ham-handedagitprop, and are helping to suppress their own vote by portraying anelection that’s all but won. Meanwhile the Republicans have aPresident who’s actually delivered on many of his promises, has agreat recent event to showcase how delivering on the rest rides onthis next election, and, in general, have optimism.Somethingabout Kanye West’s recent visit to the White House stood out to me– he saidhe had nothing against Hillary’s campaign slogan, but when he puton a MAGA hat, he “felt like Superman.”

“Feltlike Superman.” That’s a sentiment of empowerment.Obamaunderstood the power of positive messaging – it’show “Hope and Change” swept him into office in his first term.Democratsthis year simply don’t.

Ican’t call it either way. But I cantell you that anyone who thinks this election is all over but for thecounting isnuts. The battle lines of 2016 have only been dug deeper, and thesimple truths of human nature make for an uphill fight – but by thesame token, Democrats have badly misplayed the hands they have, arecompletely incapable of real self-reflection on any significantscale, and Trump’s been President for two years with realsuccesses, with the much-ballyhooed Trumpocolypse yet to descend.

Insofaras I can call anything, I’d say this election is going to be close.I’d tell you to go out and vote, especiallyif you don’t want to see the party encouraging mob intimidation andstoking racial hatred controlling the House – which they’ll useto launch endless sham investigations of Trump long after Mueller’scharade finally gives up the ghost, in addition to impeaching himjust for the hell of it. If Trump loses the House he- and his agenda- will be a lame-duck for the next two years, because any seriousbill needs to be passed by both House and Senate.

Onceagain, everything is on the line.

I’mnot sick of winning yet.

[socialjusticeartshare]

Unraveling of Trump policies a distant hope for separated immigrant families

Now, many immigrants are in a new phase of uncertainty, waiting to see who will win the November presidential election - Trump, or his Democratic opponent Joe Biden. Trump plans to expand and solidify his changes to the immigration system in a second term, while Biden has vowed to undo many of them if he wins.

LOS ANGELES/NEW YORK (Reuters) - A Venezuelan father waiting in Mexico to plead his U.S. asylum case who has yet to meet his newborn daughter. An Iraqi refugee stuck in Jordan despite his past helping U.S. soldiers. A mother sent back to Honduras after being separated at the U.S.-Mexico border from her two young children. A Malian package courier deported after three decades in the United States. And an Iranian couple kept apart for years under a U.S. travel ban.

They have all experienced first-hand the effects of Republican President Donald Trump's signature domestic policy goal in his nearly four years in office - the overhaul of the U.S. immigration system. A multitude of new bureaucratic hurdles to entering or staying in the United States have upended the lives of hundreds of thousands of people around the world.

Trump says the changes were necessary to fix an immigration system he has characterized as broken and riddled with loopholes. As he campaigns for a second term, immigration is once again a key plank of his platform.

While immigrants have faced hurdles settling in the United States for generations and illegal immigration has bedeviled both Republican and Democratic administrations, critics contend no recent administration has moved faster and more aggressively to carry out a restrictive immigration agenda.

Now, many immigrants are in a new phase of uncertainty, waiting to see who will win the November presidential election - Trump, or his Democratic opponent Joe Biden. Trump plans to expand and solidify his changes to the immigration system in a second term, while Biden has vowed to undo many of them if he wins.

But the sheer number of new policies mean that many people waiting in limbo are affected by not only one new Trump measure but several layered on top of each other. Many families have been waiting years to resolve their immigration cases, and regardless of what happens in the election those waits are likely to drag out further.

"A lot of people have it in their mind that a Biden administration would come in and reverse everything," said Sarah Pierce, a policy analyst with the Migration Policy Institute, a Washington-based think tank, but "a lot of the policy changes were layered with the intent of making them difficult to walk back."

"It would be impossible for a new administration to undo everything because there is so much to do," Pierce said. "People's lives have already been altered."

Here are the stories of some of them.

DREAMS FADE AFTER TRAVEL BAN

Masoud Abdi hasn't seen his wife Shima Montakhabi since Feb. 1, 2017.

Days earlier, in one of his first acts as president, Donald Trump barred most people from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen from coming to the United States, citing the need to protect the country from "terrorist activities by foreign nationals."

The couple, who met and married in Iran, were living in Tehran and waiting for Montakhabi's visa to be approved when the ban was announced. Abdi, who is a U.S. permanent resident, had a permit that allowed him to spend up to two years outside the United States without losing that status.

But when he saw the news about the ban he panicked. While permanent residents were eventually declared unaffected, in the fog of those first few days Abdi was taking no chances.

He returned to the United States and has not left since, fearing further restrictions that could put his green card and pending U.S. naturalization application at risk. Montakhabi, a pharmaceutical researcher, remained in Iran, her visa application pending.

A physician in Iran, Abdi first came to the United States in 2010 after winning a green card through the diversity lottery. That program - which Trump has criticized - aims to accept immigrants from countries that are not normally awarded many visas.

When he and Montakhabi applied for her visa in late 2015, they had hoped to be starting a family in Champaign, Illinois within a couple of years at most. Now, they are both in their forties and that dream is beginning to fade.

The couple try to speak every few hours, Abdi said. But sometimes the internet doesn't work in Iran and they can't communicate for several days. When this happens, Abdi said, his depression worsens. "Talking to her is all that gives me motivation for living," he said.

The U.S. Supreme Court allowed a revised version of the travel ban to take effect in December 2017. It has since been expanded to additional countries.

Through August 2020, more than 41,000 people seeking immigrant and non-immigrant visas have been affected by the ban, according to the State Department. The issuance of immigrant visas to Iranians dropped almost 80% from fiscal year 2016 to 2019, State Department data shows.

Biden has said he would lift the travel ban if he is elected. But Abdi and Montakhabi are affected by other policy changes, too.

As he waits in Illinois, Abdi says he cannot afford to reduce his hours as a clinical researcher. A more stringent wealth requirement for people sponsoring their relatives to join them in the United States and a separate proclamation requiring new immigrants to have sufficient funds to cover healthcare costs worry Abdi, who fears Montakhabi may be barred if his earnings were to drop. Those measures are being challenged in court, but in the meantime, Abdi has less time to pursue his U.S. medical license.

Another new ban also affects the couple. The administration stopped issuing almost all new family-based green cards in April 2020 until the end of the year, saying the move would protect American jobs amid the pandemic. Spouses of U.S. citizens are exempt, but Abdi is still waiting for naturalization. Under Trump, naturalization processing times have nearly doubled, according to data from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS).

"This is not the America of my childhood, the land of opportunity," he said. "It's not a land of opportunity for me. I'm stuck here and my wife is stuck in Iran."

The State Department said it could not comment on individual visa cases.

SEPARATED, NEVER REUNITED

Maynor tries to keep everyone's spirits up. He is good at it - a skill he has honed as a street vendor hustling to sell oranges in California to make enough money to feed himself and his two young sisters. But it's hard when his mother, Maria, who lives in Honduras, calls to talk to her children and just cries.

"I tell her she has to try to motivate them," Maynor, 32, said of his sisters. "But they start crying when they hear her cry."

The last time the sisters saw their mother was almost three years ago, when Michelle was 8 years old and Nicole just 3 and still breastfeeding. The family is not being identified with their last name because the girls are minors and their attorney is concerned about hurting their ongoing U.S. immigration case.

Maria and her daughters were caught crossing the U.S.-Mexico border near San Luis, Arizona, in December 2017, at a time when the Trump administration was rolling out what would become one of its most controversial policies - a crackdown on illegal crossings that led to thousands of migrant family separations.

After a few days in detention, a border agent came to take the girls away, Maria said. The 3-year-old grabbed on tight to her mother and they all sobbed, she recalled. Maria was bussed to an adult detention center and didn't know where her daughters were for nearly two weeks.

"That whole time period is just a blank," Maria said. "I didn't want to bathe, or do anything. I wanted to die."

She was eventually told by U.S. officials that her daughters had been sent to a shelter in California near where their brother Maynor lived.

Maria had been deported previously after trying to cross into the United States years earlier. During her three months in detention, Maria says she was told by an attorney her only option was deportation: either with her children or alone.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) confirmed the dates of her deportation in 2009 and the separation from her children and subsequent deportation in 2018. The Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Refugee Resettlement, which houses migrant children, said it could not comment on the cases of her daughters due to privacy concerns.

Maria said she fled Honduras after gang members threatened Michelle, and the idea of her daughters returning to one of the most violent countries in Central America made her panic.

"They gave me no real choice," she said in a telephone interview from Honduras. "I went back totally destroyed."

More than 2,700 families were separated between when Trump officially announced a 'zero tolerance' policy to prosecute all illegal border crossers in May 2018 and its abrupt reversal months later in the face of an international outcry.

But the Department of Health and Human Services inspector general said thousands of children were separated both before and after that period. Some parents were separated from their children because they were being criminally charged for illegally crossing the border, others over questions about their identities or previous records, according to court filings.

The girls went to stay with Maynor, who was living with his girlfriend and his newborn at the time. But his girlfriend told him she didn't want the extra burden of caring for his sisters, so kicked Maynor and the girls out, he said.

"There was a time when Nicole would close herself in her room, she wouldn't eat or come out. The babysitter would call me and I would have to leave work to console her. That would happen almost every day," said Maynor.

Now the girls may try to apply for asylum or a form of relief known as Special Immigrant Juvenile status, or SIJ. But a series of changes put in place by the Trump administration has made that process more difficult. Trump's attorneys general have issued rulings to narrow who is eligible for asylum based on claims of gang violence, for example, and increased their scrutiny of SIJ cases.

Maria works cleaning houses and still sees the gang members who she said threatened her daughter. She breaks down every time she talks about being apart from her children.

"Even if they told me I could see them once a year, on a particular date, I would go and leave again," Maria said. "I would do anything, just to see them again."

A FATHER TRAPPED, YET TO MEET HIS BABY

In May, Landys Aguirre's 2-month-old daughter was admitted to an intensive care unit in Chicago with a high fever. He could see, in photos and grainy videos his wife Karla Anez sent him, that the baby's face, arms and legs were swollen.

Aguirre, alone 1,500 miles (2,400 km) away in a hotel room in Mexico under a signature Trump administration program meant to deter migration, began to sob, wishing he could be there to comfort Anez and their daughter, whom he had yet to meet.

The couple fled Venezuela in 2019 to seek political asylum as supporters of an opposition party. Aguirre said he had been kidnapped and tortured by pro-government groups. The pair presented themselves at a U.S. port of entry with copies of a forensic exam and photographic evidence of Aguirre's torture. Reuters reviewed the documents but could not independently confirm Aguirre's claims of persecution.

Aguirre said he never got a chance to present the documents to an asylum officer.

Instead, he was ordered to wait in Mexico for a U.S. court hearing under the Trump administration program known as Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) put in place in January 2019, which has sent tens of thousands of asylum seekers to wait in Mexican border towns. The administration said the program discourages "false asylum claims."

U.S. border officials make case-by-case determinations of who is placed in the program. Anez, five months pregnant at the time, was allowed in to fight her asylum case. She headed to Chicago to join her mother, who had arrived two years earlier.

She sent Aguirre pictures as she grew more heavily pregnant and when she gave birth in March. In May, when his daughter fell ill and he feared she might die, he considered swimming across the Rio Grande - the river that marks the border between the United States and Mexico - but decided against it.

He felt his asylum case was strong and he did not want to jeopardize it. After more than a week in hospital, the baby recovered.

"It's maddening, cruel, harsh and painful to be here in Mexico alone, with no help, in danger and missing my wife and my daughter, who I haven't met," Aguirre said.

"I presented myself voluntarily at a port of entry to ask for asylum, not so they could send me to Mexico like a criminal when I am a professional with two degrees fleeing political persecution."

U.S. Customs and Border Protection said it could not comment on individual cases due to privacy concerns.

Biden has pledged to end the program if he wins in November. But it is not clear what the fate of those now stuck in the program would be. Many are living in tent camps, shelters and rented rooms in dangerous neighborhoods in Mexico, risking kidnappings and extortion.

Anez and Aguirre's chances for U.S. protection also hinge on the fate of another Trump rule, one that barred asylum for almost anyone who transited through a third country and did not seek refuge elsewhere first. It was struck down in federal court and is now on hold, but that ruling could still be overturned by the Supreme Court.

And Anez, applying for asylum, could face new barriers to the issuance of a work permit and other limits proposed in new rules.

Aguirre remains in a hotel in Reynosa - one of the most violent cities in Mexico - as he waits for his asylum hearing date. Originally set for April 6, it has been delayed four times due to the pandemic.

It is now scheduled for November.

DEPORTED AFTER THREE DECADES

Ibrahima Keita was walking to his car ahead of his morning school run in the suburbs of Cincinnati on May 22, 2018, when two immigration agents pulled up and arrested him for being in the country illegally.

Keita asked if he could take his sons to school first, since his wife, Neissa Kone, did not have a driver's license. The agents told him that was not possible. They did, however, knock on the door to tell his wife and sons what was happening.

His sons, Abdul, then 5 years old, and Solomon, then 7, burst into tears. Kone fell to her knees, pleading with the ICE agents not to take her husband, she said.

Keita, 61, originally from Mali, had been in the United States since 1990.

Fleeing a dictatorship, he crossed illegally into the United States from Canada and applied for asylum. Seven years later, at a court date to plead his case, his lawyer never arrived, he said. Not knowing he was allowed to attend the hearing alone, he waited outside the courthouse for hours. The judge ordered him deported from the United States for not showing up, according to court documents seen by Reuters.

Mali would not issue Keita travel documents, so he stayed. In 2008, ICE put Keita, who has no criminal record, on an 'order of supervision,' which allowed him to work in the United States as long as he regularly checked in. ICE confirmed the dates of Keita's removal order and his subsequent supervision order.

During his later years in office, former Democratic President Barack Obama focused on deporting immigrants with criminal records, but Trump shifted that focus in an executive order on Jan. 25, 2017 so that no immigration violators would be spared automatically from enforcement.

ICE said in a statement that the implementation memo that accompanied the executive order made clear that the agency would no longer exempt "classes or categories" of immigrants from enforcement and anyone "in violation of the immigration laws may be subject to immigration arrest, detention and, if found removable by final order, removal from the United States."

The administration also said it would ramp up pressure on countries that had been uncooperative in accepting deportees.

In fiscal year 2016, the last of the Obama administration, around 14% of immigrants arrested by ICE had no criminal convictions. That percentage rose to more than 35% of all ICE arrests in 2019, according to government data.

After a year in detention, ICE chartered a plane in May 2019 and sent Keita to Bamako, Mali's capital. ICE said Keita failed to cooperate with a removal via commercial aircraft in 2018. Keita said he was doing everything he could to try to fight his deportation.

For the family, following him was not an option because Solomon, the oldest boy, has sickle cell anemia, a rare blood disorder that requires specialized care, not easily available in Mali.

After their father's deportation, Solomon internalized his grief while his younger brother Abdul "let it all out," Kone, 48, said. He cried in a way she had never heard him cry before "as if someone had died." He started cutting himself.

Keita calls them three to four times a day, Kone said, and tells them to stay hopeful. He lives in a small apartment near his parents, aged 88 and 92, in Bamako. Kone reads the news and worries: Mali's president was recently ousted in a military coup, potentially further destabilizing the West African nation.

Keita was the family's breadwinner when he worked as a package courier in Ohio. Kone, who is also from Mali and overstayed a tourist visa 20 years ago, does not have permission to work and after their savings ran out could no longer afford to pay rent. She and the boys moved to accommodation provided by a church, then to a hotel under a local effort to house homeless people in hotel rooms to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.

She said she hopes that a Biden win will make "everything normal" again. But seeking the repatriation of someone who has already been deported would require an order from a judge to reopen the case, a complicated legal process, immigration attorneys said.

"We never asked for help. We had a good life, a nice house in the suburbs, he worked so hard," Kone said. "Now everything is upside down."

LEFT STRANDED AFTER HELPING U.S. SOLDIERS

In Iraq, Amer Hamdani worked for U.S. military contractors, providing security support for American installations. Now, he often struggles to feed his family as he waits in Jordan to gain entry to the United States as a refugee.

The 44-year-old's former job made him a high priority for resettlement under a special program for Iraqis at risk because of their association with the U.S. government since the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq.

He said he fled with his wife and three children in 2014 after friends told him that his name was on an assassination list of people who had worked with U.S. companies, compiled by followers of populist cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.

While he awaits a decision on his application for refugee status in the United States, he does not have permission to work in Jordan. He has relied on money that his brother has sent from Texas.

"The situation is miserable," he said. He lives on the outskirts of the capital Amman. "I didn't think the U.S. would abandon us like this," he said.

Due to the U.S. involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan, demand for the special program Hamdani applied for dramatically expanded, leading to backlogs under previous administrations, refugee experts said.

Hamdani had already submitted his application when Trump won the presidency. But after Trump took office in January 2017 the administration began dramatically slashing the size of the refugee program.

In the 2020 fiscal year, the United States said just 18,000 refugees would be allowed in, the lowest level since the modern refugee resettlement program began in 1980. While 4,000 of those spots were carved out for Iraqis who supported U.S. interests, only 118 people in that category had been admitted as of mid-September.

In addition, 11 countries, including Iraq, faced new, extra levels of vetting. Admissions for those countries slowed to a trickle.

Now U.S. officials are weighing whether to postpone or further cut refugee admissions in the coming year, throwing Hamdani's application, which had been cleared for travel in early 2020, further into doubt.

Resettlement organizations say that while refugee applications can take many years, the delays faced by refugees from the countries selected for extra vetting have grown significantly.

In fiscal year 2016, before Trump was elected, the United States admitted 9,880 refugees from Iraq. That dropped to 144 just two years later in 2018 and 465 in the 2019 fiscal year, according to government data.

The State Department said it could not comment on specific cases but that the "steep decline" and increased processing times for Iraqis who helped U.S. forces is "due to ongoing security conditions in Iraq and travel limitations due to COVID-19."

As the number of refugees overall has dropped, the proportion of Muslim refugees compared to Christians has also declined, according to an analysis of government data shared with Reuters. In fiscal year 2017, 43% of the 53,716 admitted refugees were Muslim while 44% were Christian. In fiscal year 2020 through mid-August, 71% of the 8,310 refugees allowed were Christian and just 21% were Muslim, the data showed.

Biden's campaign has pledged to admit 125,000 refugees a year if he is elected. But the dramatic downsizing of the program could lead to longer-term backlogs even if the cap is quickly lifted.

With fewer people coming in each year under Trump, offices run by nonprofits and funded by the government that help arriving refugees have closed around the country.

Reopening them may not always be possible, resettlement organizations say, leaving new refugees with fewer services.

The Trump administration also signed an executive order mandating that local governments would have to consent to resettlement in their communities.

The measure was challenged and blocked by a court but Texas' Republican Governor Greg Abbott was the first statewide elected official to say he did not want to welcome refugees before the judge's ruling.

Hamdani is waiting to join his brother near Dallas, Texas.

(Reporting by Kristina Cooke in Los Angeles and Mica Rosenberg in New York; Additional reporting by Suleiman al-Khalidi in Amman and Katie Paul in San Francisco; Editing by Ross Colvin and Rosalba O'Brien)

Article Source

[theconservativebrief]

Concern over private email use while in public office is still a thing. Just swap out Hillary Clinton for Ivanka Trump.

President Donald Trump’s daughter and an adviser to the president has found herself at the center of a controversy over her digital communication habits.

The firestorm kicked off in mid-November, when Carol Leonnig and Josh Dawsey at the Washington Post reported that Ivanka Trump sent hundreds of emails to aides, Cabinet officials, and her assistant using a private email account she shares with her husband, Jared Kushner. It was reported last year that Kushner had used a private account to conduct government business as well.

Revelations about Trump’s email use immediately drew comparisons to Clinton, who during her 2016 presidential campaign was dogged by questions about her use of a private server for emails as secretary of state. Donald Trump’s supporters on the campaign trail and to this day often chant, “Lock her up!” in reference to Clinton’s emails.

Ivanka Trump says her case has nothing to do with Clinton and that concerns about her email use are unwarranted. In an interview with ABC News’s Deborah Roberts aired on Good Morning America on Wednesday, Trump said there was “no equivalency” between her actions and Clinton’s.

It may well be true that Trump’s email use wasn’t some nefarious plot to skirt government record-keeping and instead an oversight as she got adjusted to life in government. The chatter about it now may be overblown — but the same goes for Clinton.

Given all the focus on Clinton’s emails, it’s hard to imagine Trump might not have had some sense her actions were a bad idea. Trump’s email use — and her excuse — exemplify the flip-flopping role she tries to play in public life: She’s a shrewd political adviser when convenient, and a political novice and dutiful daughter when not.

According to the Post, aides to President Trump were alarmed by the volume and nature of Ivanka Trump’s email use when she joined the White House in 2017, fearing that her practices were similar to Clinton’s.

When asked about the matter, Trump told aides she wasn’t familiar with federal records rules barring such practices. That’s what her representatives told the Post as well.

Peter Mirijanian, a spokesperson for Trump’s attorney and ethics counsel, Abbe Lowell, told the publication that while transitioning into government — but after she was given a White House email account — Trump “sometimes used her personal account, almost always for logistics and scheduling concerning her family.” That took place, he said, “until the White House provided her the same guidance they had given others.”

Mirijanian said Trump has turned over all of her government-related emails already so they can be stored with White House records.

Trump told ABC’s Roberts something similar in the interview aired on Wednesday.

“All of my emails that relate to any form of government work, which was mainly scheduling and logistics and managing the fact that I have a home life and a work life, are all part of the public record,” she said. “They’re all stored on the White House system.”

When Roberts pushed back, so did Trump. “The fact is that we all have private emails and personal emails to coordinate with our family, we all receive content to those emails, and there’s no prohibition from using private email as long as it’s archived and as long as there’s nothing in it that’s classified,” she said.

Trump also took some indirect hits at Clinton, saying that she had no “intent to circumvent” the White House email system and that she didn’t engage in “mass deletions” after a subpoena was issued.

As PolitiFact explains, an employee for a company managing Clinton’s email server deleted 33,000 of her emails in 2015, a few weeks after the Benghazi committee issued a subpoena requesting her emails related to the 2012 attack in Libya, after realizing he had been requested to do so in 2014 and didn’t. The FBI found no evidence that the emails were deliberately deleted to circumvent the subpoena.

House Democrats have signaled they plan to investigate Trump’s email use when they take over the majority in Congress next year. As the New York Times notes, members of Congress last year engaged in a bipartisan inquiry into the use of private email by multiple White House officials, including Kushner. But they didn’t get very far.

Many observers have cried foul over Ivanka Trump’s email use and noted the hypocrisy of the situation: President Trump and his allies to this day claim Clinton committed criminal activity by using a private server (despite the FBI’s conclusion that she did not), but when it comes to Ivanka Trump, they say it’s no big deal.

President Trump said last week his daughter “did some emails” in a timeframe he described as “early on and for a little period of time.”

“It’s all in the presidential records. Everything is there. There was no deleting. There was no nothing,” Trump continued. “What it is is a false story.”

Clinton’s email use was a huge point of focus during the 2016 election, even after the FBI said there would be no charges brought against her, though the bureau also deemed her actions “extremely careless.” The matter often dominated the news cycle and is still often featured on Fox News and invoked by the president.

One study earlier this year focusing on the New York Times’s election coverage found that in the span of just six days during the final leg of the 2016 campaign, the Times ran as many cover stories about Clinton’s emails they did about all policy issues combined in the 69 days leading up to the election.

Ivanka Trump apparently didn’t learn the lesson of Clinton’s email use and apply it to her own actions. She’s not the only one in the Trump administration to have fallen short on that front — the Times last year reported that multiple others, including Steve Bannon, Reince Priebus, Gary Cohn, and Stephen Miller also occasionally used private email addresses for government business.

If Clinton’s emails mattered so much, why shouldn’t Ivanka’s? Or, conversely, if we’re now recognizing that Ivanka’s emails aren’t that big of a deal, doesn’t that shed light on the possibility that Clinton’s probably weren’t, either?

Late night hosts were quick to point out the hypocrisy when the emails story first broke.

“This is really damaging — if anything mattered anymore,” the Late Show’s Stephen Colbert quipped.

“Hillary, meanwhile, is having a good laugh today,” Jimmy Kimmel at Live! said.

Colbert’s team also put together a segment comparison Fox News’ breathless coverage of Clinton’s email with its silence on Ivanka Trump.

[embedded content]

Ivanka Trump has sought to cast herself as a reluctant member of the Trump administration, as a figure who has been swept up in her father’s surprise political ascendance and is just there to lend a hand.

She took an official role at the White House in March 2017 and over the summer closed her eponymous fashion brand, signaling she’s moving more in the direction of politics. Still, she tries to play the other side when convenient.

In June 2017, months after joining the White House in an official capacity, Trump said in an interview with Fox & Friends that she really tries to “stay out of politics” and that she’s not a “political savant.”

In September of that year, Trump told the Financial Times that people have “unrealistic expectations” of her as a moderating force for her father. “That my presence in and of itself would carry so much weight with my father that he would abandon his core values and the agenda that the American people voted for when they elected him,” she said.

In a February interview with NBC News’s Peter Alexander, she scolded the interviewer for asking about the multiple women who have accused her father of sexual harassment and assault. She said it was a “pretty inappropriate question to ask a daughter.”

Trump has positioned herself as a fierce advocate of families and women, but during the family separation crisis, she was publicly silent, speaking out only after the president said he would put an end to it.

But at other times, Trump acts as though she knows exactly what she’s doing.

She sat in for her father at the G20 summit last year, and this year, there were rumblings she might replace Nikki Haley as US ambassador to the United Nations (Trump shot down those rumors). In the same interview where Trump chided Alexander for asking her about the allegations against her father, she discussed US-North Korea relations.

In November, Trump appeared at a campaign rally with her father in Cleveland. When he mentioned Clinton, the crowd chanted, predictably, “Lock her up.”

Roberts in the ABC interview asked Ivanka Trump whether the “lock her up” mantra applies to her, given her email use.

“No,” Trump replied, laughing.

Original Source -> The Ivanka Trump email controversy, explained

via The Conservative Brief

[newsintodays-blog]

The Rohingya lists: refugees compile their own record of those killed in Myanmar

New Post has been published on http://newsintoday.info/2018/08/17/the-rohingya-lists-refugees-compile-their-own-record-of-those-killed-in-myanmar/

The Rohingya lists: refugees compile their own record of those killed in Myanmar

KUTUPALONG REFUGEE CAMP, Bangladesh (Reuters) – Mohib Bullah is not your typical human rights investigator. He chews betel and he lives in a rickety hut made of plastic and bamboo. Sometimes, he can be found standing in a line for rations at the Rohingya refugee camp where he lives in Bangladesh.

Mohib Bullah, a member of Arakan Rohingya Society for Peace and Human Rights, writes after collecting data about victims of a military crackdown in Myanmar, at Kutupalong camp in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, April 21, 2018. REUTERS/Mohammad Ponir Hossain

Yet Mohib Bullah is among a group of refugees who have achieved something that aid groups, foreign governments and journalists have not. They have painstakingly pieced together, name-by-name, the only record of Rohingya Muslims who were allegedly killed in a brutal crackdown by Myanmar’s military.

The bloody assault in the western state of Rakhine drove more than 700,000 of the minority Rohingya people across the border into Bangladesh, and left thousands of dead behind.

Aid agency M��decins Sans Frontières, working in Cox’s Bazar at the southern tip of Bangladesh, estimated in the first month of violence, beginning at the end of August 2017, that at least 6,700 Rohingya were killed. But the survey, in what is now the largest refugee camp in the world, was limited to the one month and didn’t identify individuals.

The Rohingya list makers pressed on and their final tally put the number killed at more than 10,000. Their lists, which include the toll from a previous bout of violence in October 2016, catalog victims by name, age, father’s name, address in Myanmar, and how they were killed.

“When I became a refugee I felt I had to do something,” says Mohib Bullah, 43, who believes that the lists will be historical evidence of atrocities that could otherwise be forgotten.

Myanmar government officials did not answer phone calls seeking comment on the Rohingya lists. Late last year, Myanmar’s military said that 13 members of the security forces had been killed. It also said it recovered the bodies of 376 Rohingya militants between Aug. 25 and Sept. 5, which is the day the army says its offensive against the militants officially ended.

Rohingya regard themselves as native to Rakhine State. But a 1982 law restricts citizenship for the Rohingya and other minorities not considered members of one of Myanmar’s “national races”. Rohingya were excluded from Myanmar’s last nationwide census in 2014, and many have had their identity documents stripped from them or nullified, blocking them from voting in the landmark 2015 elections. The government refuses even to use the word “Rohingya,” instead calling them “Bengali” or “Muslim.”

Now in Bangladesh and able to organize without being closely monitored by Myanmar’s security forces, the Rohingya have armed themselves with lists of the dead and pictures and video of atrocities recorded on their mobile phones, in a struggle against attempts to erase their history in Myanmar.

The Rohingya accuse the Myanmar army of rapes and killings across northern Rakhine, where scores of villages were burnt to the ground and bulldozed after attacks on security forces by Rohingya insurgents. The United Nations has said Myanmar’s military may have committed genocide.

Myanmar says what it calls a “clearance operation” in the state was a legitimate response to terrorist attacks.

Mohib Bullah, a member of Arakan Rohingya Society for Peace and Human Rights, helps a boy during data entry on a laptop given by Human Rights Watch in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, April 21, 2018. REUTERS/Mohammad Ponir Hossain

“NAME BY NAME”

Clad in longyis, traditional Burmese wrap-arounds tied at the waist, and calling themselves the Arakan Rohingya Society for Peace & Human Rights, the list makers say they are all too aware of accusations by the Myanmar authorities and some foreigners that Rohingya refugees invent stories of tragedy to win global support.

But they insist that when listing the dead they err on the side of under-estimation.

Mohib Bullah, who was previously an aid worker, gives as an example the riverside village of Tula Toli in Maungdaw district, where – according to Rohingya who fled – more than 1,000 were killed. “We could only get 750 names, so we went with 750,” he said.

“We went family by family, name by name,” he added. “Most information came from the affected family, a few dozen cases came from a neighbor, and a few came from people from other villages when we couldn’t find the relatives.”

In their former lives, the Rohingya list makers were aid workers, teachers and religious scholars. Now after escaping to become refugees, they say they are best placed to chronicle the events that took place in northern Rakhine, which is out-of-bounds for foreign media, except on government-organized trips.

“Our people are uneducated and some people may be confused during the interviews and investigations,” said Mohammed Rafee, a former administrator in the village of Kyauk Pan Du who has worked on the lists. But taken as a whole, he said, the information collected was “very reliable and credible.”

SPRAWLING PROJECT

Getting the full picture is difficult in the teeming dirt lanes of the refugee camps. Crowds of people gather to listen – and add their comments – amid booming calls to prayer from makeshift mosques and deafening downpours of rain. Even something as simple as a date can prompt an argument.

What began tentatively in the courtyard of a mosque after Friday prayers one day last November became a sprawling project that drew in dozens of people and lasted months.

The project has its flaws. The handwritten lists were compiled by volunteers, photocopied, and passed from person to person. The list makers asked questions in Rohingya about villages whose official names were Burmese, and then recorded the information in English. The result was a jumble of names: for example, there were about 30 different spellings for the village of Tula Toli.

Wrapped in newspaper pages and stored on a shelf in the backroom of a clinic, the lists that Reuters reviewed were labeled as beginning in October 2016, the date of a previous exodus of Rohingya from Rakhine. There were also a handful of entries dated 2015 and 2012. And while most of the dates were European-style, with the day first and then the month, some were American-style, the other way around. So it wasn’t possible to be sure if an entry was, say, May 9 or September 5.

It is also unclear how many versions of the lists there are. During interviews with Reuters, Rohingya refugees sometimes produced crumpled, handwritten or photocopied papers from shirt pockets or folds of their longyis.

The list makers say they have given summaries of their findings, along with repatriation demands, to most foreign delegations, including those from the United Nations Fact-Finding Mission, who have visited the refugee camps.

Slideshow (3 Images)

A LEGACY FOR SURVIVORS

The list makers became more organized as weeks of labor rolled into months. They took over three huts and held meetings, bringing in a table, plastic chairs, a laptop and a large banner carrying the group’s name.

The MSF survey was carried out to determine how many people might need medical care, so the number of people killed and injured mattered, and the identity of those killed was not the focus. It is nothing like the mini-genealogy with many individual details that was produced by the Rohingya.

Mohib Bullah and some of his friends say they drew up the lists as evidence of crimes against humanity they hope will eventually be used by the International Criminal Court, but others simply hope that the endeavor will return them to the homes they lost in Myanmar.

“If I stay here a long time my children will wear jeans. I want them to wear longyi. I do not want to lose my traditions. I do not want to lose my culture,” said Mohammed Zubair, one of the list makers. “We made the documents to give to the U.N. We want justice so we can go back to Myanmar.”

Matt Wells, a senior crisis advisor for Amnesty International, said he has seen refugees in some conflict-ridden African countries make similar lists of the dead and arrested but the Rohingya undertaking was more systematic. “I think that’s explained by the fact that basically the entire displaced population is in one confined location,” he said.

Wells said he believes the lists will have value for investigators into possible crimes against humanity.

“In villages where we’ve documented military attacks in detail, the lists we’ve seen line up with witness testimonies and other information,” he said.

Spokespeople at the ICC’s registry and prosecutors’ offices, which are closed for summer recess, did not immediately provide comment in response to phone calls and emails from Reuters.

The U.S. State Department also documented alleged atrocities against Rohingya in an investigation that could be used to prosecute Myanmar’s military for crimes against humanity, U.S. officials have told Reuters. For that and the MSF survey only a small number of the refugees were interviewed, according to a person who worked on the State Department survey and based on published MSF methodology.

MSF did not respond to requests for comment on the Rohingya lists. The U.S. State Department declined to share details of its survey and said it wouldn’t speculate on how findings from any organization might be used.

For Mohammed Suleman, a shopkeeper from Tula Toli, the Rohingya lists are a legacy for his five-year-old daughter. He collapsed, sobbing, as he described how she cries every day for her mother, who was killed along with four other daughters.

“One day she will grow up. She may be educated and want to know what happened and when. At that time I may also have died,” he said. “If it is written in a document, and kept safely, she will know what happened to her family.”

Additional reporting by Shoon Naing and Poppy Elena McPherson in YANGON and Toby Sterling in AMSTERDAM; Editing by John Chalmers and Martin Howell

Our Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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[citizentruth-blog]

Time to #WalkAway: The Exodus of Blacks and Free Thinkers from the Democrat Party - PEER NEWS

New Post has been published on https://citizentruth.org/time-to-walkaway-the-exodus-of-blacks-and-free-thinkers-from-the-democrat-party/

Time to #WalkAway: The Exodus of Blacks and Free Thinkers from the Democrat Party

African Americans and free thinkers are finally leaving the left in droves.

Candace Owens, director of Turning Point USA, has been the victim of vicious liberal attacks because she is a black woman who supports President Trump.

On a recent Fox News interview, she said, “I think the black vote is going to become the most relevant by 2020” and “we’re already seeing a major shift,” referring to the exodus of African Americans from the Democrat Party. The conversation is changing. The black voters of America are no longer remaining stuck in that victim mentality courtesy of the Democrats and are opening up to the choice they have between a party that holds them back and a party that was initiated to put a stop to slavery.

Digital media has allowed for all of this to happen. Social media has given everyday people and insightful influencers alike a voice. We no longer have to stay trapped in the fake reality that CNN and others portray to us. Today, we are hearing different voices and convincing ideas from all kinds of people. And because of this, people like Owens and Kanye West are speaking out about how the Democrats have betrayed them and left them behind in their pursuit of illegal immigration, uninspiring anti-Trumpism, and open borders.

“There is going to be a major black exit from the Democrat Party, and they are going to have to actually compete for their votes in 2020,” Owens stated.  

Fox News’ Laura Ingraham had Brandon Straka on her show recently. Straka is the founder of the #WalkAway Campaign freeing disgusted Democrats to leave their party and join the winning side. He had a red pill experience in 2017 after the Donald was elected which was after he cried when Hillary Clinton lost two Novembers ago. And he decided to walk away from the Democrats because of their nasty rhetoric, incessant intolerance, name-calling and hypocritical judgment. Now, he’s not only worried about all that, but he also now fears outright violence from his former party.

“Their party has no future. It’s over,” Straka said. “People are leaving the left by tens of thousands.” He receives thousands of authentic testimonials from former Democrats regarding how the left has become intolerable to them. They don’t recognize their party anymore. What do they stand for? They hate Trump and love illegal immigrants. Anything else? Please email me or comment below and let me know!

“I want gay people, I want all people, but particularly minorities, in America to note that you have a choice. You don’t have to vote Democrat just because you’re a gay person. You don’t have to vote Democrat because you’re a black person. If you’re a minority, you have a choice, and that’s what this campaign’s about,” Straka finished.

Rob Smith is a black, gay former Democrat. He is also an author who has become one of the many strong voices online decrying what the left has become. He calls this the “I Don’t Have to be a Democrat Just Because I’m Black Movement,” which embraces traditional values as Democrats move farther left, defending illegal aliens while taking African Americans for granted and leaving them stranded in poverty and perpetual victimhood.

“There is a movement right now of black people standing up because we are always expected to be Democrats,” Smith said. “And there is a movement right now of younger black conservatives, which I am becoming a part of, that is saying, ‘No, you don’t define who we are, you don’t define how we think; you don’t get to control and own our voices.’” As I mentioned in an article in late April, free thinking is on the rise, and many African Americans are getting red pilled with Trump in the White House and Democrats becoming the party of MS-13 and illegal aliens.  

Democrats are not looking to better America in any way. As they proved by their lack of patriotism over July 4th, they despise our country and would welcome a second civil war as they did the first one. Instead of devising a winning strategy and an optimistic message to counter Trump’s rising America First voting bloc, they are attempting to legalize a swath of illegal immigrants to ensure another reliable group of Democrat voters for decades to come, just like they did with African Americans in the second half of the 20th century.  

The summer of 2018 has been inspirational in many ways. In the face of liberals melting down over every Trump win and Supreme Court nominee, we have also witnessed a rise of black influencers coming out of their closet of shame in support of Donald Trump. The Democrats’ stranglehold of blacks voting unanimously for their party of hate is finally coming to an end.

This has been a long time coming.

It all started in the spring with Kanye’s internet-breaking tweet stating that he loved the way Candace Owens thinks. In another tweet on April 25th, West said, “You don’t have to agree with Trump, but the mob can’t make me not love him. We are both dragon energy. He is my brother. I love everyone. I don’t agree with everything anyone does. That’s what makes us individuals. And we have the right to independent thought.” The color of your skin does not mean you have to vote for one party or another. We need to be a country of individuals and free thinkers. If we all do what’s best for ourselves and our families, we will all be better off for it. Black people are not owned by the Democrats. They are no longer slaves to their lies.

The Democrats keep pushing 'Resist" so that America will no longer "Exist" Don't Wait until Later; Do It Now#WalkAway #RunLikeHell #DitchandSwitchNow Vote Them All Out!

— Diamond and Silk® (@DiamondandSilk) July 9, 2018

“I think there was a tripling in Trump’s approval rating when Kanye came out,” declared Ali Alexander, a 32-year-old political consultant born to an African-American mother and Arab father who saw the beginnings of this movement back in 2012 when the largest sub-demographic of blacks who voted for Romney were black men in their 20s and early 30s. According to a Pew Research exit poll, Romney achieved double-digits in the black vote against a black president. A cultural and demographic shift is underway that cannot be undone if the Democrats continue on their divisive path.  

“So I knew that something bad was coming for the Democrats, and Kanye, I think, is the ball that’s bursting,” Alexander said. “It’s like, wait, when this economic pie is growing, are black people gonna have a piece of that? These demographics have been happening for decades.” To Alexander, West’s tweet was a wonderful moment that caused blacks to wonder what the welfare state does for them if they don’t plan to be on welfare. “And I think that Kanye dived on a grenade for the rest of the black community, to have them start flirting with the idea of that.”

While black unemployment is at an all-time low and jobs are available to anyone who wants to work, we are being barraged with how Trump is the new Hitler and a racist dictator who is in league with Russia. But how can Trump be a racist when he kisses black babies, and black women hug him and black men praise him for his pro-job policies? How can more and more blacks be coming around in support of Trump if he is a racist trying to keep minorities down?

Yep, #trump is a racist…. #LiberalSickness#LiberalLogic#MAGA #WalkAway #TrumpTrain pic.twitter.com/pzvLxxlhaU

— Tim Tim (@timnexis) July 9, 2018

“It has all been a lie,” said conservative black YouTuber “Uncle Hotep,” a father of two from Pennsylvania. “It’s unfortunate because a lot of us believed it blindly.” He points to the simple fact that each paycheck he gets is $100 higher than it was before the tax cut. Trump is helping not just African Americans, but all Americans. “He’s put money in my pocket.”

“I voted for Barack Obama his second term,” began conservative “Uncle Hotep,” who went on to say, “The Democrats, in my honest opinion, based on my research, I believe the Democrats have historically hated black people. And I think they still hate black people today.” It is historically accurate that Democrats defended slavery as long as possible and lamented integration of white and black society in the 1960s. They voted against not only women’s suffrage but also black citizenship. The Democrats in Congress were also mostly against the Civil Rights Act of 1964 despite the Kennedy administration’s push for it. The Republican Party was started in the mid-19th century to demolish slavery and defend individual rights for all Americans. Abraham Lincoln was the first Republican president, and he promised to free the slaves and even went to war against a slavery-loving south run by Democrats. Don’t let revisionist history fool you!

“Hotep Jesus” is a black conservative comedian and author who became an internet sensation when he went into a Starbucks and demanded a free cup of coffee, as “reparations” for slavery, since he “heard y’all was racist.” The clip is hilarious and so poignant for these politically correct times.

The African American Pastor Darrell Scott put it best during his 2016 Republican National Convention speech endorsing Trump when he said: “The truth is, the Democratic Party has failed us. America is a melting pot. We’re a country of diversity. And we stand poised to make history by standing together as Americans.” Diversity is our greatest strength not because we are all different but because we are all individuals who mostly love America and have the right to think and choose for ourselves.

As Owens recently told Fox, “I really do believe we are seeing the end of the Democratic Party as we know it.” I think there is ample evidence to prove this is surely the case.

Despite almost a month of continuous Trump is Hitler incarnate and our racist in chief coverage from the mainstream media following the separation of illegal immigrant children at the border, the president’s job approval rating has remained well above 43 percent, according to the Real Clear Politics average.

Prepare for another Trump landslide in 2020 my liberal friends.

  Follow me @BobShanahanMan

  FBI Jailed Black Activist 6 Months over Anti-Police Brutality Facebook Posts

[ethelbertpaul444-blog]

The Untold Story of Robert Mueller’s Time in Combat

One day in the summer of 1969, a young Marine lieutenant listed Bob Mueller arrived in Hawaii for a rendezvous with his wife, Ann. She was hovering in from the Eastern coast with the couple’s babe daughter, Cynthia, a child Mueller had never fulfilled. Mueller had made a plane from Vietnam. After nine months at war, he was finally due for a few short daylights of R& R outside the battle zone. Mueller had seen intense action since he last replied goodbye to his wife. He’d received the Bronze Star with a distinction for spirit for his actions in one combat, and he’d been airlifted out of the jungle during another firefight after being killed in the thigh. He and Ann had told only twice since he’d left for South Vietnam. Despite all that, Mueller admitted to her in Hawaii that he was thinking of increasing his deployment for another six months, and maybe even making a career in the Marines. Ann was understandably ill at ease about the prospect. But as it turned out, she wouldn’t has become a Marine wife for much longer. It was standard practice for Marines to be rotated out of duel, and later that time Mueller determined himself to be given to a table undertaking at Marine headquarters in Arlington, Virginia. There he discovered something about himself: “I didn’t relish the US Marine Corps absent combat.” So he headed to law institution with the goal of dishing his country as a prosecutor. He went on to hold high positions in five presidential administrations. He produced the Criminal Division of the Justice Department, overseeing the US investigation of the Lockerbie bombing and the federal prosecution of the Gambino crime family boss John Gotti. He became director of the FBI one week before September 11, 2001, and stayed on to become the bureau’s longest-serving administrator since J. Edgar Hoover. And yet, throughout his five-decade vocation, that time of duel experience with the Marines has tower huge in Mueller’s mind. “I’m most proud the Marines Corps deemed me are worth heading other Navals, ” he told me in a 2009 interview. June 2018. Subscribe to WIRED. Illustration by Jules Julien; Source Photo: Gerald Herbert/ AP Today, the face-off between Special Counsel Robert Mueller and President Donald Trump stands out, amid the pitch-black humor of Trump’s Washington, as an epic fiction of differing American nobilities: a fib of two men–born really two years apart, raised in similar affluent backgrounds in Northeastern cities, both deeply influenced by their leaders, both wizard prep school players, both Ivy League educated–who now find themselves frisking most varied roles in a riveting national theatre about political corrupt practices and Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. The two men have lived their lives in pursuit of virtually diametrically opposed goals–Mueller a life of patrician public service, Trump a life of private profit. Those diverging routes beginning with Vietnam, the conflict that cried the country apart just as both men graduated from college in the 1960 s. Despite having been developed at an nobility private armed academy, Donald Trump famously attracted five sketch deferments, including information for bone stimulant in his paws. He would later joke, frequently, that his success at forestalling genital herpes while dating several women in the 1980 s was “my personal Vietnam. I feel like a great and very brave soldier.” Mueller, for his part , is not simply volunteered for the Marines, he spent a year waiting for an injured knee to regenerate so he could act. And he has said little about his time in Vietnam over the years. When he was preceding the FBI through the disasters of 9/11 and its aftermath, he would brush off the crush stress, pronouncing, “I’m getting a lot more sleep now than I ever did in Vietnam.” One of the only other periods his staff at the FBI ever heard him mention his Marine service was on a flight residence from an official international junket. They were watching We Were Soldiers , a 2002 film starring Mel Gibson about some of the early clashes in Vietnam. Mueller gazed at the screen and saw, “Pretty accurate.” His reticence is not rare for the generation that served on the front line of a campaign that the two countries never actually embraced. Many of the veterans I spoke with for this story said they’d evaded speak about Vietnam until very recently. Joel Burgos, who served as a corporal with Mueller, told me at the end of our hour-long speech, “I’ve never told anyone most of this.” Yet for almost all of them–Mueller included–Vietnam observed the primary formative experience of their lives. Practically 50 year later, countless Marine ex-servicemen who served in Mueller’s unit have email addresses that reference their time in Southeast Asia: gunnysgt, 2-4marine, semperfi, PltCorpsman, Grunt. One Marine’s email handle even references Mutter’s Ridge, the area where Mueller firstly fronted large-scale combat in December 1968. The Marines and Vietnam instilled in Mueller a sense of restraint and a relentlessness that have driven him ever since. He once told me that one of the things the Marine taught him was to determine his plot every day. I’d written a work about his time at the FBI and was by then very well known his severe, straitlaced demeanor, so I giggled at the time and pronounced, “That’s the least surprising situation I’ve ever learned about you.” But Mueller persisted: It was an important small-time daily gesture epitomizing follow-through and hanging. “Once you think about it–do it, ” he told me. “I’ve ever became my bunk and I’ve ever scraped, even in Vietnam in the jungle. You’ve positioned money in the bank in terms of discipline.” Mueller’s onetime Princeton classmate and FBI chief of staff W. Lee Rawls withdrew how Mueller’s Marine leadership style carried through to the FBI, where he had little perseverance for subjects who interviewed his decisions. He expected his line-ups to be executed in the Hoover building just as they had been on the battleground. In finds with subjects, Mueller had a dres of quoting Gene Hackman’s gruff Navy submarine captain in the 1995 Cold War thriller Crimson Tide : “We’re now to perpetuate republic , not to practice it.” Related Stories Andy Greenberg The White House Warns on Russian Router Hacking, But Muddles the Message Garrett M. Graff A Guide to Russia’s High Tech Tool Box for Subverting US Democracy Garrett M. Graff Robert Mueller Likely Knows How This All Ends Discipline must really been a defining aspect of Mueller’s Russia investigation. In a government era of extreme TMI–marked by rampant White House seeps, Twitter outbursts, and an administration that disgorges jilted cabinet-level officials as rapidly as it can appoint new ones–the special counsel’s part has been a fastened entrance. Mueller has remained an serene cypher: the stoic, speechless representation at the centre of America’s government gyre. Not once has he expressed publicly about the Russia investigation since he took the job in May 2017, and his carefully picked squad of prosecutors and FBI negotiators has proved leakproof, even under the most intense of media spotlights. Mueller’s spokesperson, Peter Carr, on lend from the Justice Department, has generally had one thing to tell a media horde devouring for informed of the Russia investigation: “No comment.” If Mueller’s discipline is reflected in the silence of his team, his relentlessness has been abundantly evident in the gait of indictments, stoppages, and law tactics coming out of his office. His investigation is proceeding on several breasts. He is excavating into Russian report functionings carried out on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and other social media platforms. In February his office impeached 13 people and three entities connected to the Internet Research Agency, the Russian organization that allegedly masterminded awareness-raising campaigns. He’s too following those responsible for cyber interferences, includes the hacking of the email system at the Democratic National Committee. At the same time, Mueller’s researchers are probing the business dealings of Trump and his associates, great efforts that has furnished arraignments for tax fraud and plot against Trump’s former safarus chair, Paul Manafort, and a guilty plea on business fraud and lying to researchers by Manafort’s deputy, Rick Gates. The squad is also looking into the countless bilateral relations between Trump’s people and Kremlin-connected chassis. And Mueller is questioning evidences in an effort to establish whether Trump has inhibited justice by actually attempting to squelch the investigation itself. Almost each week wreaks a amaze developed as police investigations. But until the next accusation or seize, it’s difficult to say what Mueller knows, or what he thinks. Before he grew special admonish, Mueller freely and repeatedly told me that his attires of brain and person is very much influenced by his time in Vietnam, a interval “hes also” the least explored section of his biography. This first in-depth history of his time at war is based on several interviews with Mueller about his time in combat–conducted before he became special counsel–as well as hundreds of pages of once-classified Marine combat accounts, official notes of Marine involvements, and the first-ever interrogations with eight Navals who served alongside Mueller in 1968 and 1969. They cater the best new window we have into the mind of the man conducting the Russia investigation. Mueller volunteered for the Marine in 1966, right after move away from Princeton. By late 1968 he was a lieutenant passing a action squad in Vietnam. Dan Winters; Archival Photo Courtesy of National Archives Robert Swan Mueller III, the first of five children and the only son, grew up in a stately stone house in a wealthy Philadelphia suburb. His father was a DuPont executive who had commanded a Navy submarine-chaser in World War II; he expected his children to abide by a strict moral code. “A lie was the worst blasphemy, ” Mueller remarks. “The one thing you didn’t do was to give anything less than the truth to my mother and father.” He accompanied St. Paul’s prep school in Concord, New Hampshire, where the all-boys classifies accentuated Episcopal principles of modesty and manliness. He was a ace on the lacrosse force and played hockey with future US senator John Kerry on the school unit. For college he choice his father’s alma mater, Princeton, and entered the class of 1966. The expanding war in Vietnam was a frequent topic of discussion among the elite students, who spoke of the war–echoing earlier generations���in terms of duty and service. “Princeton from ’6 2 to ’6 6 was a completely different life than ’6 7 onwards, ” supposed Rawls, a lifelong friend of Mueller’s. “The anti-Vietnam push was not on us yet. A year or two subsequently, the campus was transformed.” On the lacrosse province, Mueller matched David Hackett, a classmate and jock who would profoundly affect Mueller’s life. Hackett had already enlisted in the Marines’ version of ROTC, expending his Princeton times training for the escalating campaign. “I had one of the finest role model I could have asked for in an upperclassman by the epithet of David Hackett, ” Mueller recalled in a 2013 pronunciation as FBI director. “David was on our 1965 lacrosse team. He was not undoubtedly the best on the team, but he was a identified and a natural leader.” After he graduated in 1965, Hackett embarked training to be a Marine, giving top reputations in his officer nominee class. After that he carried out to Vietnam. In Mueller’s seeings, Hackett was a shining example. Mueller “ve decided that” when he graduated the subsequent year, he too would recruit in the Marines. On April 30, 1967, shortly after Hackett had signed up for his second tour in Vietnam, his unit was ambushed by more than 75 camouflaged North Vietnamese armies “whos” burning down from bunkers with weapons that included a. 50 -caliber machine gun. According to a Marine history, “dozens of Marines were killed or wounded within minutes.” Hackett set the source of the incoming burn and charged 30 grounds across open soil to an American machine gun team to tell them where to shoot. Times later, as he was moving to facilitate direct a neighboring team whose captain had been wounded, he was killed by a sniper. Posthumously apportioned the Silver Star, Hackett’s commendation explained that he died “while pressing the abuse and encouraging his Marines.” By the time word of Hackett’s death filtered back to the US, Mueller was already making good on his pledge to follow him into military service. The information merely enhanced his resolve to become an infantry policeman. “One would have thought that the life of a Marine, and David’s death in Vietnam, would argue strongly against following in his footsteps, ” Mueller said in that 2013 speech. “But many of us attended in him the person or persons we wanted to be, even before his death. He was a lead and a role model on their areas of Princeton. He was a ruler and a role model on the fields of engagement as well. And a number of his pals and teammates joined the Marine Corps because of him, as did I.” In mid-1 966, Mueller underwent his armed physical at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard; this was before the preparation of the proposed programme gamble began and before Vietnam became a divisive cultural watershed. He echoes sitting in the waiting room as another nominee, a buckling 6-foot, 280 -pound lineman for the Philadelphia Eagles, was regulated 4-F–medically unfit for military service. After that this organization is Mueller’s turn to be rejected: His years of intense sportings, including hockey and lacrosse, had left him with an injured knee. The military announced that it had a duty to heal before he would be allowed to deploy. In the meantime, he married Ann Cabell Standish–a graduate of Miss Porter’s School and Sarah Lawrence–over Labor Day weekend 1966, and they moved to New York, where he gave a master’s degree in international relations at New York University. Once his knee had regenerated, Mueller went back to the military physicians. In 1967 — just before Donald Trump received his own medical deferment for heel spurs–Mueller started Officer Candidate School at Quantico, Virginia. For high school, Mueller attended St. Paul’s School in Concord, New Hampshire. As a senior in 1962, Mueller (# 12) dallied on the hockey team with future US senator John Kerry (# 18 ). Dan Winters; Archival Photo by Rick Friedman/ Getty Images Like Hackett before him, Mueller was a star in his Officer Candidate School discipline class. “He was a cut above, ” recollects Phil Kellogg, who had followed one of his frat friends into the Navals after graduating from the College of Santa Fe in New Mexico. Kellogg, who went through schooling with Mueller, recollects Mueller scooting another campaigner on an obstacle course–and suffer. It’s the only period he can remember Mueller being bested. “He was a natural jock and natural student, ” Kellogg does. “I don’t think he had a hard date at OCS, to be honest.” There was, it turned out, exclusively one thing he was bad at–and it was a flunking that would become familiar to legions of his subordinates in the decades to succeed: He received a D in delegation. During the time Mueller spent in training, from November 1967 through July 1968, the context of the Vietnam War changed significantly. The vicious Tet Offensive–a series of arranged, widespread, surprise attack across South Vietnam by the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese in January 1968 — stupefied America, and with public opinion souring on existing conflicts, Lyndon Johnson said he wouldn’t run for reelection. As Mueller’s improving class graduated, Walter Cronkite proclaimed on the CBS Evening News that the fighting could not be earned. “For it seems now more particular than ever, ” Cronkite told his billions of onlookers on February 27, 1968, “that the vicious ordeal of Vietnam is to end in a stalemate.” The country seemed to be descending into chaos; as the spring unfolded, both Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy were assassinated. Municipalities erupted in rampages. Antiwar dissents feelings. But the shifting tide of public opinion and civil unrest just registered with the patrolman campaigners in Mueller’s class. “I don’t retain anyone having anxieties about where we were or what we were doing, ” Kellogg says. That spring, as Donald J. Trump graduated from the University of Pennsylvania and began working for his father’s real estate company, Mueller finished up Officer Candidate School and received his next duty: He was to attend the US Army’s Ranger School. Arriving in Vietnam, Mueller was well trained, but he was also afraid. “You were scared to death of the unknown, ” he mentions. “More afraid in some ways of omission than death.” Mueller knew that simply the best young men went on to Ranger training, a strenuous eight-week advanced the competences and lead planned for the military’s society at Fort Benning, Georgia. He would be spend weeks practising patrol tactics, homicide goals, assault approaches, and attacks staged in submerges. But the aftermath of the duty were also sobering to the newly minted detective: Many Marines who progressed such courses were designated as “recon Marines” in Vietnam, a chore that are typically moved with a life expectancy measured in weeks. Mueller approvals the training he received at Ranger School for his existence in Vietnam. The coaches there had been through forest combat themselves, and their fibs from the front line schooled the candidates how to avoid several mistakes. Ranger trainees often had to function on time two hours of respite a nighttime and a single daily banquet. “Ranger School more than anything learns you about how you react with no sleep and nothing to gobble, ” Mueller told me. “You hear who you require on spot, and who you don’t want anywhere near point.” After Ranger School, he also accompanied Airborne School, aka jumping clas, where he learned to be a parachutist. By the autumn of 1968, he was on his action to Asia. He boarded a flight from Travis Air Force Base in California to an embarkation item in Okinawa, Japan, where there was an approximately tangible current of dread among the distributing troops. From Okinawa, Mueller headed to Dong Ha Combat Base near the so-called demilitarized zone–the dividing line between North and South Vietnam, launched after the collapse of the French colonial regiman in 1954. Mueller was determined and well trained, but he was also afraid. “You were scared to death of the unknown, ” he articulates. “More afraid in some ways of default than extinction, more afraid of being found wanting.” That kind of nervousnes, he announces “animates your unconscious.” For American corps, 1 968 was the deadliest time of the crusade, as they beat back the Tet Offensive and opposed the combat of Hue. All told, 16,592 Americans were killed that year–roughly 30 percent of total US fatalities in the fighting. Over the course of the conflict, more than 58,000 Americans succumbed, 300,000 were wounded, and some two million South and North Vietnamese died. Just 18 months after David Hackett was felled by a sniper, Mueller was being sent to the same part as his officer-training classmate Kellogg, who had arrived in Vietnam three months earlier. Mueller was assigned to H Company–Hotel Company in Marine parlance–part of the 2nd Battalion of the 4th Marine Regiment, a storied infantry contingent that traced its parentages back to the 1930 s. The regiment had been fighting almost nonstop in Vietnam since May 1965, making the nickname the Magnificent Bastards. The grueling action made its fee. In the precipitate of 1967, six weeks of duel reduced the battalion’s 952 Marine to just 300 is suitable for duty. During the Tet Offensive, the 2nd Battalion had received acrimonious and bloody battle that never let up. In April 1968, it campaigned in the fight of Dai Do, a days-long booking that killed virtually 600 North Vietnamese soldiers. Eighty members of the 2nd Battalion died in the fight, and 256 were wounded. David Harris, who arrived in Vietnam in May, affiliated the depleted legion just after Dai Do. “Hotel Company and all of 2/4 was devastated, ” he reads. “They were a skeleton gang. They were haggard, they were pummel to fatality. It was just pitiful.” By the time Mueller was set to arrive 6 months later, the human rights unit had rehabilitated its grades as its wounded Marines recovered and filtered back into the field; they had been experimented and surfaced stronger. By co-occurrence, Mueller was to inherit leadership of a Hotel Company platoon from his acquaintance Kellogg. “Those kids that I had and Bob had, half of them were ex-servicemen of Dai Do, ” Kellogg speaks. “They were field-sharp.” A corpsman of Company H facilitates a wounded Leatherneck of 2nd Battalion, 4th Marines, during Operation Saline II in the Quang Tri Province of Vietnam in 1968. Dan Winters; Archival Photo Courtesy of National Archives Second Lieutenant Mueller, 2 4 years and 3 months old, joined the regiment in November 1968, one of 10 brand-new officers assigned to the unit that month. He knew he was arriving at the so-called pointy mission of the American impale. Some 2.7 million US troops served in Vietnam, but the great majority of fatalities were suffered by those who defended in “maneuver battalions” like Mueller’s. The conflict along the demilitarized zone was far different than “its been” elsewhere in Vietnam; the primary antagonist was the North Vietnamese army , not the infamous Viet Cong guerrillas. North Vietnamese armies generally operated in bigger units, become better studied, and were more likely to engage in maintained fighting rather than melting apart after placing an waylay. “We pushed regular, hard-core army, ” Joel Burgos says. “There were so many of them–and they were really good.” William Sparks, a private first class in Hotel Company, recalls that Mueller get off apache helicopters in the midst of a rainstorm, wearing a raincoat–a telltale sign that he was new to the crusade. “You figured out somewhat fast it didn’t help to wear a raincoat in Vietnam, ” Sparks answers. “The humidity time compressed for the purposes of the raincoat–you were just as humid as you were without it.” As Mueller marched up from the operations zone, Kellogg–who had no idea Mueller would be inheriting his platoon–recognized his OCS classmate’s gait. “When he came marching up the hill, I chortled, ” Kellogg alleges. “We started joking.” On Mueller’s first night in the field, his brand-new tent was destroyed by the wind. “That thing evaporated into thin breeze, ” Sparks suggests. He didn’t even get at spend one night.” Over the coming days, Kellogg progressed along some of his wise from the field and interpreted the procedures for calling in artillery and air strikes. “Don’t be John Wayne, ” he said. “It’s not a movie. Navals tell you something’s up, listen to them.” “The lieutenants who didn’t rely their Marines went to early deaths, ” Kellogg says. And with that, Kellogg told their commander that Mueller was ready, and he hopped aboard the next helicopter out. Today, military units usually teach together in the US, deploys together for a placed sum of term, and return home together. But in Vietnam, rotations began–and ended–piecemeal, driven by the vagaries of harms, illness, and individual action tours. That made Mueller acquired a legion that mingled combat-experienced ex-servicemen and relative newbies. A platoon consisted of approximately 40 Navals, generally led by a lieutenant and divided into three crews, each was presided over by a sergeant, which were then divided into three four-man “fire teams” led by corporals. While the lieutenants were technically in charge, the sergeants operated the show–and could stimulate or undermine a new patrolman. “You land, and you’re at the pity of your staff sergeant and your radioman, ” Mueller says. Marines in the field knew to be dubious of brand-new young second lieutenants like Mueller. They were scoffed as Gold Brickers, after the single amber saloon that signified their rank. “They might have had a college education, but they sure as hell didn’t have common sense, ” suggests Colin Campbell, who was on Hotel Company’s mortar squad. Mueller knew his guys panicked he might be incompetent or worse. “The platoon was stupefied, ” he remembers. “They wondered whether the brand-new light-green lieutenant was going to jeopardize “peoples lives” to boost his own career.” Mueller himself was evenly terrified of acquiring land command. As he settled in, talk spread about the strange brand-new platoon commander who had gone to both Princeton and Army Ranger School. “Word was out real fast–Ivy League guy from an affluent clas. That set off fears. The affluent chaps didn’t go to Vietnam then–and they certainly didn’t finish up in a rifle team, ” announces VJ Maranto, a corporal in H Company. “There was so much talk about’ Why’s a guy like that out here with us? ’ We weren’t Ivy Leaguers.” Indeed , none of his fellow Hotel Company Marines had written their college thesis on African territory spats before the International Court of Justice, as Mueller had. Most were from rural America, and few had any formal education past senior high school. Maranto spent his youth on a small farm in Louisiana. Carl Rasmussen, a lance corporal, grew up on a farm in Oregon. Burgos was from the Mississippi Delta, where he was raised on a cotton plantation. After graduating from high school, David Harris had gone to work in a General Engine mill in his home mood of Ohio, then attached the Marines when he was set to be drafted in the summer of 1967. Many of the Marines under Mueller’s command had been wounded at least once; 19 -year-old corporal John C. Liverman had arrived in Vietnam merely four months from a neighbor of his from Silver Spring, Maryland, had been killed at Khe Sanh–and had heard heavy combat much of the year. He’d beset by shrapnel in March 1968 and then again in April, but after recovering in Okinawa, he had agitated to return to combat. Hotel Company quickly came to understand that its new squad chairwoman was no Gold Bricker. “He wanted to know as much as he had been able to as fast as he could about the terrain, what we did, the waylays, everything, ” Maranto says. “He was all about members of the mission, the mission, the mission.” Second Battalion’s mission, as it turned out, was straightforward: Probe and destroy. “We stayed out in the bush, out in the mountains, precisely below DMZ, 24 hours a day, ” David Harris pronounces. “We was exactly enticement. It was the same meeting: They’d touched us, we’d stumbled them, they’d disappear.” Frequent deaths and injuries meant that turnover in the field was constant; when Maranto arrived at Hotel Company, he was issued a flak jacket that had dehydrated blood on it. “We were always low on servicemen, ” Colin Campbell says. Mueller’s unit was constantly on patrol; the battalion’s preserves described it as “nomadic.” Its undertaking was to keep the foe off-kilter and disrupt their supplying words. “You’d march all day, then you’d burrow a foxhole and devote all night altering going on watch, ” announces Bill White, a Hotel Company ex-serviceman. “We were always tired, always starving, always thirsty. There were no showers.” In those first weeks, Mueller &# x27; s confidence as a captain developed as he triumphed his men’s confidence and respect. “You’d felt his nervousness, but you’d never see that in his behaviour, ” Maranto says. “He was such a professional.” The members of the platoon soon got acquainted with a better quality that would be familiar to everyone who is dealing with Mueller later as a prosecutor and FBI director. He asked a great deal and had little fortitude for malingering, but he never asked for more than he was willing to give himself. “He was a no-bullshit kind of chap, ” White recalls. Sgt. Michael Padilla( left) with Cpl. Agustin Rosario( right ), who was killed in action on December 11, 1968, during the operation at Mutter’s Ridge . div> Dan Winters; Archival Photo Courtesy of Michael Padilla Mueller’s unit began December 1968 in related silent, to protect the security for the primary military cornerstone in the field, a glorified campsite known as Vandegrift Combat Base, about 10 miles south of the DMZ. It was one of the only planned outposts nearby for Marines, a region for resupply, a rain, and red-hot food. Lance Corporal Robert W. Cromwell, who had celebrated his 20 th birthday shortly before beginning his tour of duty, entertained his compatriots with stories from his own reporting period R& R: He’d matched his wife and parents in Hawaii to be introduced to his newborn daughter. “He was so happy to have a child and wanted to get home for good, ” Harris says. On December 7 the battalion boarded helicopters for a new operation: to retake control of a mountain in an loathsome neighbourhood known as Mutter’s Ridge. The strategically important piece of ground, which rolled along four mountains on the countries of the south boundary of the DMZ, had been the scene of fighting for more than two years and had been overrun by the North Vietnamese months before. Artillery, air strikes, and cistern strikes had long since denuded the bank of vegetation, but the circumventing hillsides and depressions were a forest of trees and vines. When Hotel Company touched down and fanned out from its landing zones to support a bound, Mueller was arriving to what would be his first full-scale battle. As the American contingents boosted, the North Vietnamese withdrew. “They were all drawing back to this big bunker complex, as it turned out, ” Sparks mentions. The Americans could see the signs of past combats all around them. “You’d view shrapnel openings in the trees, bullet punctures, ” Sparks says. After three days of patrols, isolated firefights with an elusive enemy, and several nighttimes of American shelling, another division in 2nd Battalion, Fox Company, received the lineup to make some high ground on Mutter’s Ridge. Even nearly 50 years later, the date of the operation abides burned into the recollections of those who pushed in it: December 11, 1968. None of Mueller &# x27; s fellow Marines had written their college thesis on African territory conflicts before the International Court of Justice, as Mueller had. That morning, after a darknes of air strikes and cannon blast “ve been meaning to” faded the antagonist, the men of Fox Company moved out at first light. The attack vanished smoothly at first; they confiscated the countries of the western portions of the crest without resistance, evading simply a handful of mortar rounds. Yet as they continued east, heavy small-arms fire started. “As they fought their practice forwards, they came into intensive and deadly fuel from bunkers and at the least three machine guns, ” the regiment later reported. Because the vegetation was so dense, Fox Company didn’t realize that it had stumbled into the centre of a bunker complex. “Having crusaded their nature in, the company ascertained it extremely difficult to maneuver its way out, due both to the fuel of the antagonist and the problem of carrying their wounded.” Hotel Company was on a neighboring mountain, still feeing breakfast, when Fox Company was attacked. Glint remembers that he was drinking a “Mo-Co, ” C-rations coffee with cocoa gunpowder and sugar, heated by igniting a golf-ball-sized segment of C-4 plastic explosive.( “We were ahead of Starbucks on this latte bullshit, ” he jokes .) They could hear the gunfire across the valley. “Lieutenant Mueller called,’ Saddle up, saddle up, ’” Sparks pronounces. “He called for first squad–I was the grenade launcher and had two bags of ammo buckled across my chest. I could just stand up.” Before they could even reach the antagonist, they had to fight their route through the dense cover of the depression. “We had to go down the hill and come up Foxtrot Ridge. It took hours.�� “It was the only locate in the DMZ I remember meeting botany like that, ” Harris reads. “It was thick-skulled and entwining.” When the platoon lastly crested the highest level of the crest, they confronted the repugnance of the battlefield. “There were wounded parties everywhere, ” Sparks recalls. Mueller said everyone to quit their jam-packs and preparations for a fight. “We assaulted right out across the top of the crest, ” he says. It wasn’t long before the unit came under ponderous fervor from small arms, machine guns, and a grenade launcher. “There were three North Vietnamese soldiers right in front of us that rushed right up and scattered us with AK-4 7s, ” Sparks says. They reverted fervor and advanced. At one point, a Navy corpsman with them threw a grenade, only to have it bounce off a tree and explode, wounding one of Hotel Company’s corporals. “It just got worse from there, ” Sparks says. In the next few minutes, several followers went down in Mueller’s unit. Maranto remembers being impressed that his relatively lettuce lieutenant was able to stay calm while under criticize. “He’d been in-country less than a month–most of us had been in-country six, eight months, ” Maranto says. “He had remarkable equanimity, targeting fervor. It was sheer terror. They had RPGs, machine gun, mortars.” Mueller realise rapidly how much hassle the patrol was in. “That daytime was the second heaviest barrage I received in Vietnam, ” Harris mentions. “Lieutenant Mueller was guiding commerce, outlook parties and calling in air strikes. He was standing upright, moving. He probably saved our hide.” Cromwell, the lance corporal who had just become a papa, was shooting in the thigh by a. 50 -caliber bullet. When Harris encountered his wounded sidekick being hustled out of harm’s action, he was funnily relieved at first. “I discovered him and he was alive, ” Harris does. “He was on the stretcher.” Cromwell would ultimately be able to deplete some time with his wife and new child, Harris figured. “You lucky chump, ” he concluded. “You’re going home.” But Harris had miscalculated the seriousness of his friend’s harm. The missile had nicked one of Cromwell’s arteries, and he bled to demise before he reached the field hospital. The death destroyed Harris, who had sold weapons with Cromwell the darknes before–Harris had taken Cromwell’s M-1 4 rifle and Cromwell took Harris’ M-7 9 grenade launcher. “The next day when we punched the crap, they called for him, and he had to go forward, ” Harris remarks. Harris couldn’t shake the be thought that he should have been the one on the stretcher. “I’ve only told two people this story.” The battle atop and around Mutter’s Ridge feelings for hours, with the North Vietnamese barrage received from the smothering jungle. “We got hit with an ambush, plain and simple, ” Harris suggests. “The brush was so thick, you had perturb hacking it with a machete. If you got 15 meters away, you couldn’t consider where you came from.” As the fighting resumed, the Marines atop the crest began to run low on quantities. “Johnny Liverman hurled me a handbag of ammo. He’d been ferrying ammo from one surface of the ridge to the other, ” Sparks withdraws. Liverman was already wounded, but he was still contend; then, during one of his runs, he came here under more shell. “He got hit right through the pate, right when I was looking at him. I get that ammo, I crawled up there and got his M-1 6 and told him I’d be back.” Sparks and the other Marine protected behind a dead tree stump, trying to find any defence amid the firestorm. “Neither of us had any ammo left, ” Sparks remembers. He slithered back to Liverman to try to expel his love. “I get him up on my shoulder, and I got shot, and I went down, ” he does. As he was lying on the dirt, he listened a shout from atop the ridge, “Who’s that down there–are they dead? ” It was Lieutenant Mueller. Sparks called back, “Sparks and Liverman.” “Hold on, ” Mueller answered, “We’re coming down to get you.” A few minutes later, Mueller seemed with another Marine, known as Slick. Mueller and Slick slipped Sparks into a missile crater with Liverman and kept a battle dress on Sparks’ wound. They waited until a helicopter gunship passed overhead, its grease-guns clattering, to amuse the North Vietnamese, and hustled back toward the top of the hill and comparative safety. An OV-1 0 criticize airplane overhead plunged smoke grenades to facilitate shield the Marines atop the ridge. Mueller, Sparks reads, then went back to retrieve the mortally wounded Liverman. The extinctions organized. Corporal Agustin Rosario–a 22 -year-old father and husband from New York City–was shot in the ankle, and then, while he tried to run back to safety, was kill again, this time fatally. Rosario, extremely, lived waiting for a medevac helicopter. Finally, as the hours transferred, the Marines coerced the North Vietnamese to rescind. By 4:30 pm, the battlefield had hushed. As his eulogy for the Bronze Star eventually predicted, “Second Lieutenant Mueller’s courage, vigorous initiative and unwavering devotion to job at great personal gamble is also contributing in the overcome of the enemy force and were in keeping with the highest institutions of the Marine Corps and of the United States Naval Service.” As night precipitated, Hotel and Fox held the anchor, and a third busines, Golf, was brought forward as added buttres. It was a brutal era for both sides; 13 Americans vanished and 31 were wounded. “We framed a pretty good hurt on them, but not without enormous expenditure, ” Sparks suggests. “My closest pals were all killed there on Foxtrot Ridge.” As the Americans searched the field around the ridge, they weighed seven enemy dead left behind, in addition to being able to seven others killed in the course of the clash. Intelligence reports afterward revealed that the duel had killed the commander of the 1st Battalion, 27 th North Vietnamese Army Regiment, “and had practically decimated his staff.” For Mueller, the engagement had proved both to him and his gentlemen that he could lead. “The minute the shit stumbled the fan, he was there, ” Maranto says. “He performed outstandingly. After that night, there were a lot of guys who would’ve sauntered through walls for him.” That first major revelation to combat–and the loss of Marines under his command–affected Mueller deeply. “You’re standing there consider,’ Did I do everything I could? ’” he answers. Afterward, back at camp, while Mueller was still in startle, a major came up and swiped the young lieutenant on the shoulder, saying, “Good job, Mueller.” “That vote of confidence helped me get through, ” Mueller told me. “That gesture pushed me over. I wouldn’t follow out life guilty for fastening up.” The heavy toll of the casualties at Mutter’s Ridge shook up the whole legion. Cromwell’s death reached extremely hard; his laughter and good nature had tied the human rights unit together. “He was happy-go-lucky. He appeared after the new people when they came in, ” Bill White withdraws. For Harris, who had often shared a foxhole with Cromwell, the death of his best friend was devastating. White also took Cromwell’s death hard-bitten; overcome with sorrow, he stopped scraping. Mueller tackled him, telling him to refocus on members of the mission ahead–but eventually accommodated more consolation than punish. “He could’ve applied me punishment hours, ” White announces, “but he never did.” Robert Mueller receives an honor from his regimental officer Col. Martin “Stormy” Sexton in Dong Ha, South Vietnam in 1969. Dan Winters; Archival Photo Courtesy of the place of Robert Mueller Decades later, Mueller would tell me that nothing he ever confronted in his profession was as challenging as conducting workers in duel and watching them be cut down. “You realize a great deal, and every day after is a commendation, ” he told me in 2008. The remembering of Mutter’s Ridge positioned everything, even terror investigations and showdowns with the Bush White House, into view. “A lot is going to come your behavior, but it’s not going to be the same intensity.” When Mueller ultimately did leave the FBI in 2013, he “retired” into a hectic life as a top spouse at the existing legislation house WilmerHale. He learnt some first-class in cybersecurity at Stanford, he investigated the NFL’s handling of the Ray Rice domestic violence case, and he provided as the so-called colonization captain for the Volkswagen Dieselgate scandal. While in the midst of that assignment–which required the kind of delicate give-and-take ill-suited to a hard-driving , no-nonsense Marine–the 72 -year-old Mueller received a final call to public service. It was May 2017, just days into the twirling blizzard start out by the firing of FBI director James Comey, and deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein wanted to know if Mueller would serve as the special counselor in the Russia investigation. The job–overseeing one of the most difficult and sensitive investigations ever undertaken by the Justice Department–may simply graded as the third-hardest of Mueller’s career, after the post-9/ 11 FBI and after resulting those Marine in Vietnam. Having accepted the job as special counselor, he retreated into his prosecutor’s bunker, cut off from the rest of America. In January 1969, after 10 epoches of rain showers and cold weather, the unit got a three-day R& R break-dance at Cua Viet, a nearby brace locate. They listened to Super Bowl III on the radio as Joe Namath and the Jet-blacks defeated the Baltimore Colts. “One touch of actuality was listening to that, ” Mueller says. In the field, they get little information about what was happening at home. In fact, later that time, while Mueller was still deployed, Neil Armstrong made his first step on the moon–an incident that people around the world watched live on Tv. Mueller wouldn’t find out until daylights afterward. “There was this whole segment of autobiography you missed, ” he says. R& R breaks is likewise rare opportunities to imbibe alcohol, though there was never often of it. Campbell says he drink just 15 brews during his 18 months in-country. “I can retain drinking warm beer–Ballantines, ” he pronounces. In tent, the three men traded publications like Playboy and mail-order automotive catalogs, dreaming the cars they are able to soup up when they returned back to Position. They guided the time toy wino or pinochle. For the most part, Mueller bounced such activities, though he was into the era’s music( Creedence Clearwater Revival was–and is–a particular favorite ). “I retain several times strolling into a bunker and feeling him in a corner with a notebook, ” Maranto says. “He read a lot, every opportunity.” Throughout the rest of the month, they patrolled, meeting little linked with the enemy, although abundance of clues of their spirit: Hotel Company often radioed into allegations of concluding descended the organizations and disguised ply caches, and they are usually made incoming mortar rounds from unseen enemies. Command under such conditions wasn’t easy; drug use is an issue, and racial hostilities guided high. “Many of the GIs were draftees; they didn’t want to be there, ” Maranto says. “When new people revolved in, they imparted what happens in the United States with them.” Mueller recalls at times struggling to get Marines to follow orders–they already felt that the beating of serving in the infantry in Vietnam was as bad as it could get. “Screw that, ” they’d reply sharply when was necessary to do something they didn’t wishes to do. “What are you going to do? Route me to Vietnam? ” Yet the Marines were bonded through the constant danger of being subjected to duel. Everyone had close calls. Everyone knew that luck in the combat area was finite, fate hurtful. “If the good Lord diverted over a placard up there, that was it, ” Mueller says. Nights particularly were fitted with horror; the enemy elevated sneak assaults, often in the hours before dawn. Colin Campbell recalls a night in his foxhole when he turned around to find a North Vietnamese soldier, armed with an AK-4 7, right behind him. “He’d get inside our bound. He had our back, ” Campbell suggests. “Why didn’t he kill me and another chap in the foxhole? ” Campbell roared, and the infiltrator bolted. “Another Marine down the line shot him dead.” Mueller was a constant existence in the fields, regularly reviewing the code signals and passwords that marked friendly contingents to each other. “He was quiet and reserved. The plan was meticulous and detailed. He knew at night where every place was, ” Maranto recalls. “It wouldn’t be peculiar for him to come out and make sure the volley crews were correctly placed–and that you two are awake.” The souls I talked to who performed alongside Mueller, adults now in their seventies, largely had strong recollections of the kind of captain Mueller had been. But numerous didn’t know, until I told them, that the man who led their team was now the special guidance probing Russian interference in the election. “I had no idea, ” Burgos told me. “When you’ve been in action that long, you don’t remember appoints. Appearances you recollect, ” he says. Maranto says he only put two and two together recently, although he’d thought for years if that person who was the FBI director had served with him in Vietnam. “The name would ring a bell–you know that’s a familiar name–but you’re so busy with daily life, ” Maranto says. At the makeshift landing zone getting briefed before being airlifted to join the rest of the operation. Mueller is standing on the right with his back to the camera . div> Dan Winters; Archival Photo Courtesy of VJ Maranto April 1969 recognized a stark American milestone: The Vietnam War’s engagement death toll transcended the 33,629 Americans killed while campaigning in Korea. It too drew a brand-new menace to Hotel Company’s region: a laid of powerful. 50 -caliber machine gun nests that the North Vietnamese had set up to harass helicopters and low-flying airliners. Hotel Company–and the battalion’s other units–devoted much of the middle-of-the-road of the month to shooting down the lethal artilleries. Until they were found, resupply helicopters were limited, and flights were vacated when they came under direct flame. One Marine was even killed in the landing zone. Ultimately, on April 15 and 16, Hotel Company overran the enemy firearm and action a departure, uncovering 10 bunkers and three firearm positions. The next day, at around 10 am, Mueller’s platoon was attacked while on patrol. Facing small-arms ardour and grenades, they called for breath assist. An hour later four assault rolls thumped the North Vietnamese position. Five days later, on April 22, one of the 3rd Platoon’s garrisons reached under same attack–and the situation abruptly grew frantic. Glints, who had returned to Hotel Company that winter after healing from his wound at Mutter’s Ridge, was in the waylaid garrison. “We lost the machine gun, jammed up with shrapnel, and the radio, ” he recalls. “We had to pull back.” Nights especially were filled with frightful; the adversary wished sneak onslaughts, often in the hours before dawn. With radio contact lost, Mueller’s platoon was called forward as buttres. American artillery and mortars pounded the North Vietnamese as the team boosted. At one point, Mueller was engaged in a close firefight. The incoming fervour was so intense–the stress of the moment so all-consuming, the adrenaline pumping so hard–that when he was shot, Mueller didn’t instantly notice. Amid the combat, he glanced down and recognized an AK-4 7 round had overtaken clean through his thigh. Mueller prevented fighting. “Although seriously wounded during the course of its firefight, he resolutely maintained his position and, aptly guiding the volley of his squad, was instrumental in demolishing the North Vietnamese Army force, ” reads the Navy Commendation that Mueller received for his action that day. “While approaching the designated area, the team emanated under a heavy loudnes of enemy burn from its right flank. Skillfully soliciting and directing corroborating Marine artillery fire on the opponent outlooks, First Lieutenant Mueller ensured that burn superiority was gained during the hostile unit.” Two other members of Hotel Company were also wounded in the fight. One of them had his leg blown off by a grenade; it was his first day in Vietnam. Mueller’s eras in duel ended with him being lifted out by helicopter in a sling. As the aircraft peeled away, Mueller withdraws reviewing he might at least get a good dinner out of the harm on a infirmary carry, but he was delivered instead to a field hospital near Dong Ha, where “hes spent” three weeks recovering. Maranto, who was on R& R when Mueller was wounded, retains returning to camp and hearing oath that their commandant had been shot. “It could happen to any one of us, ” Maranto says. “When it has come to him, there was a lot of sadness. They experienced his company.” Mueller recovered and returned to active office in May. Since most Marine detectives spent only six months on a combat rotation–and Mueller had been in the combat zone since November–he was sent to serve at bidding headquarters, where he became an aide-de-camp to Major General William K. Jones, the head of the 3rd Marine Division. By the end of 1969, Mueller was back in the US, his engagement tour accomplish, working at the Marine barracks near the Pentagon. Soon thereafter, he cast off an application to the University of Virginia’s law school. “I consider myself extraordinarily lucky to have constructed it out of Vietnam, ” Mueller announced years later in a discussion. “There were many–many–who did not. And perhaps because I did survive Vietnam, I have always experienced compelled to contribute.” Over the years, a few of his former chap Marines from Hotel Company recollected Mueller and have watched his busines unfold on the national theatre over the past two decades. Sparks cancels dining lunch on a July day in 2001 with the story on: “The TV was on behind me.’ We’re going to introduce the new FBI director, Robert … Swan … Mueller . ’ I slowly switched, and I appeared, and I belief,’ Golly, that’s Lieutenant Mueller.’” Sparks, who speaks with a thick Texas accent, says his first thought was the running gag he’d had with his former captain: “I’d always announce him’ Lieutenant Mew-ler , ’ and he’d mention,’ That’s Mul-ler . ’” More lately, his former Marine comrade Maranto says that after devoting six months in fighting with Mueller, he has watched the coverage of the special advise investigation progress and chortled at the news reports. He says he knows Mueller isn’t sweating the pressure. “I watch people on the word talking about the distractions getting to him, ” he alleges. “I don’t think so.” Garrett M. Graff ( @vermontgmg) is a lending writer at WIRED and scribe of The Threat Matrix: Inside Robert Mueller’s FBI and the War on Global Terror . He can be reached at garrett.graff @gmail. com . em> Such articles is displayed in the June issue. Subscribe now . em> Listen to this story, and other WIRED features, on the Audm app . em> More Great WIRED Stories If Trump is laundering Russian fund now &# x27; s how it would work Spot the illegal in these airport baggage x-rays How a DNA transfer virtually imprisoned an innocent being of murder PHOTO ESSAY: Ominous view Read more: https :// www.wired.com/ narration/ robert-mueller-vietnam / http://dailybuzznetwork.com/index.php/2018/07/01/the-untold-story-of-robert-muellers-time-in-combat/

[sightful-tangents]

december 28, 2017

I turned 24 this year. I think this blog is now 5 years old, because I still remember writing a bio along the lines of "the girl who writes this blog is 19 years old". When I was 19, I couldn't picture myself at 21. I couldn't picture myself at 22 or 23 and now I'm 24. I never saw a future for myself back then, and it excites me that this year, I had mapped out a 5 year plan. Albeit, this plan is literally just "get a cat."

24 isn't a big or important number for me. If anything, I'm looking forward to 30. But it just feels like a nice, round number. I want to feel as if I'm stepping into myself more and more as I go through my twenties.

A lot has happened this year. When December first rolled around, I was worried that my year wasn't good enough. I'll circle back to personal growth, but in terms of 'events', I think a lot of things happened.

Places traveled: Boston, Barcelona, Bogota, Amsterdam, Brussels, Geneva, Vancouver Island, Tobermory.

I met two book blogger friends who were absolutely delightful and I loved chatting with them. I think it's because they have access to my Twitter and in a weird way, Twitter is where I can be more... authentic. Facebook really is for just keeping in touch with friends, Instagram is a curated photo album, this Tumblr is usually more private and personal thoughts, but Twitter is where I write things that I find funny (I get it, I'm self-absorbed) and generally scream about media, books, feminism, current events, and complain about IRL people who don't know about my feed. And my book blogger friends have full access to this extra-authentic self, which is why I think I felt immediately comfortable when I met them. And they're just funny and so great to talk to.

I watched good movies and read good books and listened to many good podcasts. I read a lot of news, and I felt a lot of feelings. This is the year that I felt more. The year that I got choked up more times than I can count while scrolling my way through the internet. More often than not, something Hillary-related can quickly conjure up something in the back of my throat. I still can't watch the Kate McKinnon SNL post-election piano performance without almost tearing up. I cried from happiness for my friends when I heard they were engaged. I cried from relief when (and this feels like ages ago) the muslim travel ban was overturned. I cried when I read books and articles. I cried to movies. I cried to videos.

When I was younger, I tried so hard never to cry, to not react, to not feel. And I think one of the biggest changes these past few years has been giving myself permission to feel. To dig deeper into my emotions rather than trying to stamp them down and move past them. I love feeling. I love it when something makes me want to cry. It reminds me that I'm alive.

The biggest change, of course, was that I left a job and started a new one and moved across the country. I negotiated my salary. I still sometimes can't believe everything unfolded the way it did.

I am NOT equating my experience AT ALL to any of the absolutely horrific harassment allegations that unfolded in recent months, but in a way, I felt like I could have a deeper understanding of how women's careers can be affected by powerful figures. When shit was going with my boss, when he was pissed off and saying things like "I can sue you but I won't", it made me want to get away from him just so this becomes a bridge that I won't even be near. I had two job offers, one in BC, one in Toronto, and I won't lie when I say that the fact that BC would be far away from my boss wasn't a factor in my decision making. I wanted to get out of the entire industry, and I understand that what transpired WAS NOT EVEN THAT BAD. I'm very conflict-adverse, but when an even that is kind of minor (I can't even tell if I'm gaslighting myself these days) makes me want to leave the industry I've worked in for 2 years, I can't even imagine how a more serious transgression can affect a young person just starting out in her career. It makes me angry and sad. Boy, does that sum up 2017.

Anyways, so I'm back in BC. And I'm getting more and more settled in and making friends (bless my amazing roommates, I am so grateful they are awesome) and as I become more comfortable, I'm also a bit nervous because I do want to eventually return to Toronto. In my head, the timeline is sometime in late 2018 or 2019. But I know as I start to build my life here, it'll only make it harder to leave.

Oh, and I had such a lovely Christmas. I got really nice gifts from my mum, and she was telling me about how happy she is, and my heart just swelled. I'm not a great daughter. I know I can be better, and I know how I can be better, but I don't do it. But, it still makes me happy that my mum feels so happy this holiday season.

And now, back to personal growth. I kind of wish I experienced more personal growth this year. Or maybe, it was just that last year was so drastic in terms of what was changing that this year has mellowed out. I mean, things like dating felt too easy and familiar and not risky. I didn’t take on any drastic 30 day challenges, nor did I unearth particularly prickly revelations about myself. I didn’t really strive toward self improvement in a conscious way that I feel like I had in 2016, and especially for the last few months (after moving), I allowed myself to be much more of a passive consumer. Under the guise of “getting settled into a new job”, I wasn’t really chasing knowledge. I was watching pointless hours of Youtube when I got off work (at a stunning 4pm, like omg), which is legitimately a waste of time and I really don’t like that about myself. It just feels like I’ve given myself a pass to be lazy with this job change, when I wish I could be more invigorated and actually do more things with all my free time. Anyways, being more productive will definitely be a goal next year.

I know this is like an extensive preamble, but anyways, I did want to write a bit about my 2017 New Year's Resolutions. I don't stress myself out about meeting all of them, but if I can hit around 50% I'm happy. Let’s go:

FINANCIAL:

1. Hit a savings goal for money.

2. 4 times a month, don’t spend money.

I would say I only missed 2 or 3 months for this goal.  

3. Organize my receipts system.

Solution: take a picture of all my receipts and email them to a dedicated email account.

4. Get rid of ‘invoice guilt’. 

It helps if I’m annoyed so I can channel a “give me my money” feeling…

5. Budget at the beginning of the month.

I didn’t really budget my next month, but I paid all my bills… does that count?  

6. Make 5K from side hustles.

Yay, did this.. mix of extra work and gifts. Yes, I count gifts as a side hustle. Hush.

 RELATIONSHIPS 

7. Continue to call/talk to my mum at least once a week.

I can now see my mum once a week (if I wanted to… I think she secretly hopes I don’t make any friends so I can continue visiting her on my weekends…) 

8. Continue dating people and figuring out what I want/need within a relationship context. 

Kind of, I think. I have an idea. But I dunno…

9. Don’t be so wary of commitment. 

Hmmm. This is weird. In a way, I feel like I’m more ready to commit, but none of the people I dated this year were people I wanted to commit to. I’m gonna cross this off anyways though, since it’s a mindset, right?!

10. Make 3 new friends. 

I did this! I have 3 new roommates! They are all my friends! Plus I made even more friends than that. Big smiles, all around.

11. Be more open with current close friends. 

I think I’ve done this. In any sense, I’m much more honest and happy to talk about anything and everything.

12. Look people in the eye during conversations.

I made a conscious effort to do this. I should carry over this goal to next year too.

13. Become a better storyteller in conversations.

There is still so much room for improvement, but I think this is something that I’ve gotten better at. And I know this sounds so so lame, but I’ll sometimes think ahead of time of how to structure something I want to share, so it makes more sense to the listener and is more entertaining to listen to.

14. Compliment people more.

I kind of want to cross this off, but I don’t think I *seriously* achieved this.

 PERSONAL (TANGIBLE)

15. Read 35 books (of which 30% will be non-fiction, 1 will be a finance book, and over 50% should be adult). 

I think I only read 20. Sigh. Same goal next year.

16. “Fucking Exercise”

Oh…lol… next year.

17. Find something to work toward, whether this is a hobby or a new job or something else. Try and be motivated.

I have a new job? Does that count? I don’t know if I’m more motivated though. Hmm.

18. Buy a plant. Keep it alive.

I did! I bought 3 succulents. I threw them away when I moved because I realized that I am Bad. At. Plants. In all honestly, it just freaks me out that they grow so quickly.

19. Publish or write 3 freelance articles. 

20. Read the news (NYT, Atlantic, WaPo). Read widely, critically, and thoroughly. Stay informed and engaged in what’s going on in the world (which includes Canada!).

Yes. Kind of. This last month was tough though, as the GOP Tax Scam was going through, it just became so hard to not completely disengage. Hell, I’m not even American. I really considered (still consider?) just stop caring. I know I shouldn’t though. (Oh, and I still don’t know what’s going on in Canada.)

21. Take more photos (even phone photos count. Also, get a new phone).

Same goal next year.

22. Watch all the Oscar Best Picture nominees.

Unfortunately not.

23. Go to the doctor!!

I got a Pap test and it was fine. Ladies, go do this.

24. Travel goals for 2017: San Francisco, Eastern Canada, and the far-fetched one: South America. I’d like to take at least 2 weeks off (straight) to travel. 

I went to Europe and South America for work!! And Boston! I have 20 vacation days next year and I plan to make them count.

 PERSONAL (INTANGIBLE)

25. Don’t compare yourself to others.

Yes. I’m glad.

26. Strive to be better, not better than others.

I think so. As said in my preamble, I don’t think I reached this to the degree that I wanted in terms of self-improvement, but I do think I tried to be better.

27. Try harder to be Warm.

I think so. Again, not as much as I wanted to, but I am deliberately and intentionally more generous and loving with my friends.

28. Be more assertive.

I negotiated my salary. I ran business meetings, managed coworkers, and asked for things.

29. Not have the same problems as you had in 2016

I’m gonna say yes. I had VERY DIFFERENT PROBLEMS LOL.

30. Know price, value, and the difference between them. 

I took a lower paying job because I wanted the work life balance. Just saying.

31. And a repeat from the previous years: Be better than I currently am. 

I think so. Always room for improvement.

 32. And because it worked out well last year: Take risks. Of all sorts. Because, why not.

Hello from my desk in Vancouver. Because, why not.

Final Tally: 24 for 32 HELL YEAH (half point for #2 and #24)

[amyashida]

Inauguration day for Trump, a mixed bag for me.

Today is inauguration day. I am sad and hopeful.

2016 was a wild ride of emotions when it came to politics. From excitement about the potential of having our first female president to shock in hearing the comments that came from our soon to be president about everything from veterans to women. The day after the election walking around New York City felt like moving through a funeral. It was a wake up call.

I turned eighteen ten days too late to vote in 2008. It was incredibly frustrating at the time, but it made me more excited and engaged in after that. It started with just the presidential elections, but once I registered in Tennessee I became interested in local politics too. I voted in 2012 for Obama and I have watched him perform the duties of the president on my behalf for eight years. On November 9th, 2016 I realized that I had completely taken that for granted.

Since then I have come to realize that while I am incredibly apprehensive about a Donald Trump presidency (that's an understatement - it makes me nauseous), I am actually thankful for the wake up call. The status quo was moving in the right direction, but I had become comfortable, and that's dangerous. It is so easy to say you believe in causes when other people are doing the dirty work. It's easy to talk about injustice behind closed doors and press "Share Now" on Facebook without any intent of doing anything tangible.

Today may be inauguration day for Trump, but it's a mixed bag for me.

It's one last chance to say thank you, President Obama, for being a source of strength, wisdom, and inspiration for our country for the past eight years. You made the office of the president feel accessible in a way that echoed Abraham Lincoln's office hours. You always handled your job with honor and despite the innumerable challenges always worked to get the important things done. You protected American Dreamers, brought soldiers home, helped us get healthcare coverage so we weren't dependent on our employers or the mercy of insurance companies, championed women, grieved with families who lost loved ones to unnecessary violence, and while you were doing so much more than is listed here you also showed that it could be done while maintaining a loving marriage and being an amazing father. Thank you and thank you to your family.

Over the last eight years I watched as the Obamas showed us how to be public servants. I watched. I talked about it every now and then, but mainly I just watched. That is what I am wrestling with. Now I can't just watch - I have to do something. The problem is I don't know what that means for me yet... and that brings me to marches.

I have never lived in a place where public protest is as prevalent as it is in New York. It seems like the city has been in a constant state of marching since that fateful night in November. I know a lot of people that have marched, I have talked and listened to them and stood on the sidelines and observed them, but I haven't marched myself. I understand the passion behind demonstrating that we are not ok with the actions, words, and misplaced values of the incoming president and vice president. I understand that a wall of people speaks volumes in ways that phone calls and posts on social media never could. I understand the draw of marching arm-in-arm with people who feel the same way, becoming something bigger than yourself.

The first night that I stood and watched one of the marches going up Sixth Avenue I was overcome with emotions. I was proud, I was encouraged, and I was overwhelmed. I cried as I stood there and thought about walking with them but I couldn't move. Perhaps it is because I am five feet tall. Perhaps it is because I am an introvert. Perhaps it was because I was there by myself. Perhaps it is because I was at the bottom of a mosh pit when I was 12. I'm sure there are a number of reasons, but I feel incredibly anxious in crowds of people. That is the number one reason why I haven't marched yet, but I feel like that is a lame excuse.

In the weeks leading up to the inauguration the Women's March has become a major source of inner-conflict for me. I found myself without a good excuse not to go. Getting to DC is easy from New York and I have places to stay, but for some reason it just doesn't feel right, and I'm ok with trusting that. There is also a sister march in NYC happening at the same time. I have even less excuses not to march here, but I'm still really struggling with going. I even have people I could go with, but I still don't feel like I should be marching just because I feel like I should. If I do march, it should be because I want to, right?

I may not want to march, but I do want to get my hands dirty. I do want to get involved in the movement in a real and tangible way. I want to get to know the people who are getting shit done (sorry Mom) and align myself with them. I want to find ways in which I can apply my skill sets to help other people. So maybe that is what I should spend my time doing instead of wasting time feeling guilty about not marching.

The inauguration is an hour away. This is when we will say goodbye to President Obama and, gulp, welcome President Trump. This is the day that I say goodbye to watching on the sidelines and welcome a new era of actively getting involved and being ok with being uncomfortable... and doing that in a way that is my own.

The only way to figure out what that is will be to try different things and trust my gut. So here's to getting messy and to being ok with it.

[ethelbertpaul444-blog]

The Untold Story of Robert Mueller’s Time in Combat

One day in the summer of 1969, a young Marine lieutenant listed Bob Mueller arrived in Hawaii for a rendezvous with his wife, Ann. She was hovering in from the Eastern coast with the couple’s babe daughter, Cynthia, a child Mueller had never fulfilled. Mueller had made a plane from Vietnam. After nine months at war, he was finally due for a few short daylights of R& R outside the battle zone. Mueller had seen intense action since he last replied goodbye to his wife. He’d received the Bronze Star with a distinction for spirit for his actions in one combat, and he’d been airlifted out of the jungle during another firefight after being killed in the thigh. He and Ann had told only twice since he’d left for South Vietnam. Despite all that, Mueller admitted to her in Hawaii that he was thinking of increasing his deployment for another six months, and maybe even making a career in the Marines. Ann was understandably ill at ease about the prospect. But as it turned out, she wouldn’t has become a Marine wife for much longer. It was standard practice for Marines to be rotated out of duel, and later that time Mueller determined himself to be given to a table undertaking at Marine headquarters in Arlington, Virginia. There he discovered something about himself: “I didn’t relish the US Marine Corps absent combat.” So he headed to law institution with the goal of dishing his country as a prosecutor. He went on to hold high positions in five presidential administrations. He produced the Criminal Division of the Justice Department, overseeing the US investigation of the Lockerbie bombing and the federal prosecution of the Gambino crime family boss John Gotti. He became director of the FBI one week before September 11, 2001, and stayed on to become the bureau’s longest-serving administrator since J. Edgar Hoover. And yet, throughout his five-decade vocation, that time of duel experience with the Marines has tower huge in Mueller’s mind. “I’m most proud the Marines Corps deemed me are worth heading other Navals, ” he told me in a 2009 interview. June 2018. Subscribe to WIRED. Illustration by Jules Julien; Source Photo: Gerald Herbert/ AP Today, the face-off between Special Counsel Robert Mueller and President Donald Trump stands out, amid the pitch-black humor of Trump’s Washington, as an epic fiction of differing American nobilities: a fib of two men–born really two years apart, raised in similar affluent backgrounds in Northeastern cities, both deeply influenced by their leaders, both wizard prep school players, both Ivy League educated–who now find themselves frisking most varied roles in a riveting national theatre about political corrupt practices and Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. The two men have lived their lives in pursuit of virtually diametrically opposed goals–Mueller a life of patrician public service, Trump a life of private profit. Those diverging routes beginning with Vietnam, the conflict that cried the country apart just as both men graduated from college in the 1960 s. Despite having been developed at an nobility private armed academy, Donald Trump famously attracted five sketch deferments, including information for bone stimulant in his paws. He would later joke, frequently, that his success at forestalling genital herpes while dating several women in the 1980 s was “my personal Vietnam. I feel like a great and very brave soldier.” Mueller, for his part , is not simply volunteered for the Marines, he spent a year waiting for an injured knee to regenerate so he could act. And he has said little about his time in Vietnam over the years. When he was preceding the FBI through the disasters of 9/11 and its aftermath, he would brush off the crush stress, pronouncing, “I’m getting a lot more sleep now than I ever did in Vietnam.” One of the only other periods his staff at the FBI ever heard him mention his Marine service was on a flight residence from an official international junket. They were watching We Were Soldiers , a 2002 film starring Mel Gibson about some of the early clashes in Vietnam. Mueller gazed at the screen and saw, “Pretty accurate.” His reticence is not rare for the generation that served on the front line of a campaign that the two countries never actually embraced. Many of the veterans I spoke with for this story said they’d evaded speak about Vietnam until very recently. Joel Burgos, who served as a corporal with Mueller, told me at the end of our hour-long speech, “I’ve never told anyone most of this.” Yet for almost all of them–Mueller included–Vietnam observed the primary formative experience of their lives. Practically 50 year later, countless Marine ex-servicemen who served in Mueller’s unit have email addresses that reference their time in Southeast Asia: gunnysgt, 2-4marine, semperfi, PltCorpsman, Grunt. One Marine’s email handle even references Mutter’s Ridge, the area where Mueller firstly fronted large-scale combat in December 1968. The Marines and Vietnam instilled in Mueller a sense of restraint and a relentlessness that have driven him ever since. He once told me that one of the things the Marine taught him was to determine his plot every day. I’d written a work about his time at the FBI and was by then very well known his severe, straitlaced demeanor, so I giggled at the time and pronounced, “That’s the least surprising situation I’ve ever learned about you.” But Mueller persisted: It was an important small-time daily gesture epitomizing follow-through and hanging. “Once you think about it–do it, ” he told me. “I’ve ever became my bunk and I’ve ever scraped, even in Vietnam in the jungle. You’ve positioned money in the bank in terms of discipline.” Mueller’s onetime Princeton classmate and FBI chief of staff W. Lee Rawls withdrew how Mueller’s Marine leadership style carried through to the FBI, where he had little perseverance for subjects who interviewed his decisions. He expected his line-ups to be executed in the Hoover building just as they had been on the battleground. In finds with subjects, Mueller had a dres of quoting Gene Hackman’s gruff Navy submarine captain in the 1995 Cold War thriller Crimson Tide : “We’re now to perpetuate republic , not to practice it.” Related Stories Andy Greenberg The White House Warns on Russian Router Hacking, But Muddles the Message Garrett M. Graff A Guide to Russia’s High Tech Tool Box for Subverting US Democracy Garrett M. Graff Robert Mueller Likely Knows How This All Ends Discipline must really been a defining aspect of Mueller’s Russia investigation. In a government era of extreme TMI–marked by rampant White House seeps, Twitter outbursts, and an administration that disgorges jilted cabinet-level officials as rapidly as it can appoint new ones–the special counsel’s part has been a fastened entrance. Mueller has remained an serene cypher: the stoic, speechless representation at the centre of America’s government gyre. Not once has he expressed publicly about the Russia investigation since he took the job in May 2017, and his carefully picked squad of prosecutors and FBI negotiators has proved leakproof, even under the most intense of media spotlights. Mueller’s spokesperson, Peter Carr, on lend from the Justice Department, has generally had one thing to tell a media horde devouring for informed of the Russia investigation: “No comment.” If Mueller’s discipline is reflected in the silence of his team, his relentlessness has been abundantly evident in the gait of indictments, stoppages, and law tactics coming out of his office. His investigation is proceeding on several breasts. He is excavating into Russian report functionings carried out on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and other social media platforms. In February his office impeached 13 people and three entities connected to the Internet Research Agency, the Russian organization that allegedly masterminded awareness-raising campaigns. He’s too following those responsible for cyber interferences, includes the hacking of the email system at the Democratic National Committee. At the same time, Mueller’s researchers are probing the business dealings of Trump and his associates, great efforts that has furnished arraignments for tax fraud and plot against Trump’s former safarus chair, Paul Manafort, and a guilty plea on business fraud and lying to researchers by Manafort’s deputy, Rick Gates. The squad is also looking into the countless bilateral relations between Trump’s people and Kremlin-connected chassis. And Mueller is questioning evidences in an effort to establish whether Trump has inhibited justice by actually attempting to squelch the investigation itself. Almost each week wreaks a amaze developed as police investigations. But until the next accusation or seize, it’s difficult to say what Mueller knows, or what he thinks. Before he grew special admonish, Mueller freely and repeatedly told me that his attires of brain and person is very much influenced by his time in Vietnam, a interval “hes also” the least explored section of his biography. This first in-depth history of his time at war is based on several interviews with Mueller about his time in combat–conducted before he became special counsel–as well as hundreds of pages of once-classified Marine combat accounts, official notes of Marine involvements, and the first-ever interrogations with eight Navals who served alongside Mueller in 1968 and 1969. They cater the best new window we have into the mind of the man conducting the Russia investigation. Mueller volunteered for the Marine in 1966, right after move away from Princeton. By late 1968 he was a lieutenant passing a action squad in Vietnam. Dan Winters; Archival Photo Courtesy of National Archives Robert Swan Mueller III, the first of five children and the only son, grew up in a stately stone house in a wealthy Philadelphia suburb. His father was a DuPont executive who had commanded a Navy submarine-chaser in World War II; he expected his children to abide by a strict moral code. “A lie was the worst blasphemy, ” Mueller remarks. “The one thing you didn’t do was to give anything less than the truth to my mother and father.” He accompanied St. Paul’s prep school in Concord, New Hampshire, where the all-boys classifies accentuated Episcopal principles of modesty and manliness. He was a ace on the lacrosse force and played hockey with future US senator John Kerry on the school unit. For college he choice his father’s alma mater, Princeton, and entered the class of 1966. The expanding war in Vietnam was a frequent topic of discussion among the elite students, who spoke of the war–echoing earlier generations–in terms of duty and service. “Princeton from ’6 2 to ’6 6 was a completely different life than ’6 7 onwards, ” supposed Rawls, a lifelong friend of Mueller’s. “The anti-Vietnam push was not on us yet. A year or two subsequently, the campus was transformed.” On the lacrosse province, Mueller matched David Hackett, a classmate and jock who would profoundly affect Mueller’s life. Hackett had already enlisted in the Marines’ version of ROTC, expending his Princeton times training for the escalating campaign. “I had one of the finest role model I could have asked for in an upperclassman by the epithet of David Hackett, ” Mueller recalled in a 2013 pronunciation as FBI director. “David was on our 1965 lacrosse team. He was not undoubtedly the best on the team, but he was a identified and a natural leader.” After he graduated in 1965, Hackett embarked training to be a Marine, giving top reputations in his officer nominee class. After that he carried out to Vietnam. In Mueller’s seeings, Hackett was a shining example. Mueller “ve decided that” when he graduated the subsequent year, he too would recruit in the Marines. On April 30, 1967, shortly after Hackett had signed up for his second tour in Vietnam, his unit was ambushed by more than 75 camouflaged North Vietnamese armies “whos” burning down from bunkers with weapons that included a. 50 -caliber machine gun. According to a Marine history, “dozens of Marines were killed or wounded within minutes.” Hackett set the source of the incoming burn and charged 30 grounds across open soil to an American machine gun team to tell them where to shoot. Times later, as he was moving to facilitate direct a neighboring team whose captain had been wounded, he was killed by a sniper. Posthumously apportioned the Silver Star, Hackett’s commendation explained that he died “while pressing the abuse and encouraging his Marines.” By the time word of Hackett’s death filtered back to the US, Mueller was already making good on his pledge to follow him into military service. The information merely enhanced his resolve to become an infantry policeman. “One would have thought that the life of a Marine, and David’s death in Vietnam, would argue strongly against following in his footsteps, ” Mueller said in that 2013 speech. “But many of us attended in him the person or persons we wanted to be, even before his death. He was a lead and a role model on their areas of Princeton. He was a ruler and a role model on the fields of engagement as well. And a number of his pals and teammates joined the Marine Corps because of him, as did I.” In mid-1 966, Mueller underwent his armed physical at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard; this was before the preparation of the proposed programme gamble began and before Vietnam became a divisive cultural watershed. He echoes sitting in the waiting room as another nominee, a buckling 6-foot, 280 -pound lineman for the Philadelphia Eagles, was regulated 4-F–medically unfit for military service. After that this organization is Mueller’s turn to be rejected: His years of intense sportings, including hockey and lacrosse, had left him with an injured knee. The military announced that it had a duty to heal before he would be allowed to deploy. In the meantime, he married Ann Cabell Standish–a graduate of Miss Porter’s School and Sarah Lawrence–over Labor Day weekend 1966, and they moved to New York, where he gave a master’s degree in international relations at New York University. Once his knee had regenerated, Mueller went back to the military physicians. In 1967 — just before Donald Trump received his own medical deferment for heel spurs–Mueller started Officer Candidate School at Quantico, Virginia. For high school, Mueller attended St. Paul’s School in Concord, New Hampshire. As a senior in 1962, Mueller (# 12) dallied on the hockey team with future US senator John Kerry (# 18 ). Dan Winters; Archival Photo by Rick Friedman/ Getty Images Like Hackett before him, Mueller was a star in his Officer Candidate School discipline class. “He was a cut above, ” recollects Phil Kellogg, who had followed one of his frat friends into the Navals after graduating from the College of Santa Fe in New Mexico. Kellogg, who went through schooling with Mueller, recollects Mueller scooting another campaigner on an obstacle course–and suffer. It’s the only period he can remember Mueller being bested. “He was a natural jock and natural student, ” Kellogg does. “I don’t think he had a hard date at OCS, to be honest.” There was, it turned out, exclusively one thing he was bad at–and it was a flunking that would become familiar to legions of his subordinates in the decades to succeed: He received a D in delegation. During the time Mueller spent in training, from November 1967 through July 1968, the context of the Vietnam War changed significantly. The vicious Tet Offensive–a series of arranged, widespread, surprise attack across South Vietnam by the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese in January 1968 — stupefied America, and with public opinion souring on existing conflicts, Lyndon Johnson said he wouldn’t run for reelection. As Mueller’s improving class graduated, Walter Cronkite proclaimed on the CBS Evening News that the fighting could not be earned. “For it seems now more particular than ever, ” Cronkite told his billions of onlookers on February 27, 1968, “that the vicious ordeal of Vietnam is to end in a stalemate.” The country seemed to be descending into chaos; as the spring unfolded, both Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy were assassinated. Municipalities erupted in rampages. Antiwar dissents feelings. But the shifting tide of public opinion and civil unrest just registered with the patrolman campaigners in Mueller’s class. “I don’t retain anyone having anxieties about where we were or what we were doing, ” Kellogg says. That spring, as Donald J. Trump graduated from the University of Pennsylvania and began working for his father’s real estate company, Mueller finished up Officer Candidate School and received his next duty: He was to attend the US Army’s Ranger School. Arriving in Vietnam, Mueller was well trained, but he was also afraid. “You were scared to death of the unknown, ” he mentions. “More afraid in some ways of omission than death.” Mueller knew that simply the best young men went on to Ranger training, a strenuous eight-week advanced the competences and lead planned for the military’s society at Fort Benning, Georgia. He would be spend weeks practising patrol tactics, homicide goals, assault approaches, and attacks staged in submerges. But the aftermath of the duty were also sobering to the newly minted detective: Many Marines who progressed such courses were designated as “recon Marines” in Vietnam, a chore that are typically moved with a life expectancy measured in weeks. Mueller approvals the training he received at Ranger School for his existence in Vietnam. The coaches there had been through forest combat themselves, and their fibs from the front line schooled the candidates how to avoid several mistakes. Ranger trainees often had to function on time two hours of respite a nighttime and a single daily banquet. “Ranger School more than anything learns you about how you react with no sleep and nothing to gobble, ” Mueller told me. “You hear who you require on spot, and who you don’t want anywhere near point.” After Ranger School, he also accompanied Airborne School, aka jumping clas, where he learned to be a parachutist. By the autumn of 1968, he was on his action to Asia. He boarded a flight from Travis Air Force Base in California to an embarkation item in Okinawa, Japan, where there was an approximately tangible current of dread among the distributing troops. From Okinawa, Mueller headed to Dong Ha Combat Base near the so-called demilitarized zone–the dividing line between North and South Vietnam, launched after the collapse of the French colonial regiman in 1954. Mueller was determined and well trained, but he was also afraid. “You were scared to death of the unknown, ” he articulates. “More afraid in some ways of default than extinction, more afraid of being found wanting.” That kind of nervousnes, he announces “animates your unconscious.” For American corps, 1 968 was the deadliest time of the crusade, as they beat back the Tet Offensive and opposed the combat of Hue. All told, 16,592 Americans were killed that year–roughly 30 percent of total US fatalities in the fighting. Over the course of the conflict, more than 58,000 Americans succumbed, 300,000 were wounded, and some two million South and North Vietnamese died. Just 18 months after David Hackett was felled by a sniper, Mueller was being sent to the same part as his officer-training classmate Kellogg, who had arrived in Vietnam three months earlier. Mueller was assigned to H Company–Hotel Company in Marine parlance–part of the 2nd Battalion of the 4th Marine Regiment, a storied infantry contingent that traced its parentages back to the 1930 s. The regiment had been fighting almost nonstop in Vietnam since May 1965, making the nickname the Magnificent Bastards. The grueling action made its fee. In the precipitate of 1967, six weeks of duel reduced the battalion’s 952 Marine to just 300 is suitable for duty. During the Tet Offensive, the 2nd Battalion had received acrimonious and bloody battle that never let up. In April 1968, it campaigned in the fight of Dai Do, a days-long booking that killed virtually 600 North Vietnamese soldiers. Eighty members of the 2nd Battalion died in the fight, and 256 were wounded. David Harris, who arrived in Vietnam in May, affiliated the depleted legion just after Dai Do. “Hotel Company and all of 2/4 was devastated, ” he reads. “They were a skeleton gang. They were haggard, they were pummel to fatality. It was just pitiful.” By the time Mueller was set to arrive 6 months later, the human rights unit had rehabilitated its grades as its wounded Marines recovered and filtered back into the field; they had been experimented and surfaced stronger. By co-occurrence, Mueller was to inherit leadership of a Hotel Company platoon from his acquaintance Kellogg. “Those kids that I had and Bob had, half of them were ex-servicemen of Dai Do, ” Kellogg speaks. “They were field-sharp.” A corpsman of Company H facilitates a wounded Leatherneck of 2nd Battalion, 4th Marines, during Operation Saline II in the Quang Tri Province of Vietnam in 1968. Dan Winters; Archival Photo Courtesy of National Archives Second Lieutenant Mueller, 2 4 years and 3 months old, joined the regiment in November 1968, one of 10 brand-new officers assigned to the unit that month. He knew he was arriving at the so-called pointy mission of the American impale. Some 2.7 million US troops served in Vietnam, but the great majority of fatalities were suffered by those who defended in “maneuver battalions” like Mueller’s. The conflict along the demilitarized zone was far different than “its been” elsewhere in Vietnam; the primary antagonist was the North Vietnamese army , not the infamous Viet Cong guerrillas. North Vietnamese armies generally operated in bigger units, become better studied, and were more likely to engage in maintained fighting rather than melting apart after placing an waylay. “We pushed regular, hard-core army, ” Joel Burgos says. “There were so many of them–and they were really good.” William Sparks, a private first class in Hotel Company, recalls that Mueller get off apache helicopters in the midst of a rainstorm, wearing a raincoat–a telltale sign that he was new to the crusade. “You figured out somewhat fast it didn’t help to wear a raincoat in Vietnam, ” Sparks answers. “The humidity time compressed for the purposes of the raincoat–you were just as humid as you were without it.” As Mueller marched up from the operations zone, Kellogg–who had no idea Mueller would be inheriting his platoon–recognized his OCS classmate’s gait. “When he came marching up the hill, I chortled, ” Kellogg alleges. “We started joking.” On Mueller’s first night in the field, his brand-new tent was destroyed by the wind. “That thing evaporated into thin breeze, ” Sparks suggests. He didn’t even get at spend one night.” Over the coming days, Kellogg progressed along some of his wise from the field and interpreted the procedures for calling in artillery and air strikes. “Don’t be John Wayne, ” he said. “It’s not a movie. Navals tell you something’s up, listen to them.” “The lieutenants who didn’t rely their Marines went to early deaths, ” Kellogg says. And with that, Kellogg told their commander that Mueller was ready, and he hopped aboard the next helicopter out. Today, military units usually teach together in the US, deploys together for a placed sum of term, and return home together. But in Vietnam, rotations began–and ended–piecemeal, driven by the vagaries of harms, illness, and individual action tours. That made Mueller acquired a legion that mingled combat-experienced ex-servicemen and relative newbies. A platoon consisted of approximately 40 Navals, generally led by a lieutenant and divided into three crews, each was presided over by a sergeant, which were then divided into three four-man “fire teams” led by corporals. While the lieutenants were technically in charge, the sergeants operated the show–and could stimulate or undermine a new patrolman. “You land, and you’re at the pity of your staff sergeant and your radioman, ” Mueller says. Marines in the field knew to be dubious of brand-new young second lieutenants like Mueller. They were scoffed as Gold Brickers, after the single amber saloon that signified their rank. “They might have had a college education, but they sure as hell didn’t have common sense, ” suggests Colin Campbell, who was on Hotel Company’s mortar squad. Mueller knew his guys panicked he might be incompetent or worse. “The platoon was stupefied, ” he remembers. “They wondered whether the brand-new light-green lieutenant was going to jeopardize “peoples lives” to boost his own career.” Mueller himself was evenly terrified of acquiring land command. As he settled in, talk spread about the strange brand-new platoon commander who had gone to both Princeton and Army Ranger School. “Word was out real fast–Ivy League guy from an affluent clas. That set off fears. The affluent chaps didn’t go to Vietnam then–and they certainly didn’t finish up in a rifle team, ” announces VJ Maranto, a corporal in H Company. “There was so much talk about’ Why’s a guy like that out here with us? ’ We weren’t Ivy Leaguers.” Indeed , none of his fellow Hotel Company Marines had written their college thesis on African territory spats before the International Court of Justice, as Mueller had. Most were from rural America, and few had any formal education past senior high school. Maranto spent his youth on a small farm in Louisiana. Carl Rasmussen, a lance corporal, grew up on a farm in Oregon. Burgos was from the Mississippi Delta, where he was raised on a cotton plantation. After graduating from high school, David Harris had gone to work in a General Engine mill in his home mood of Ohio, then attached the Marines when he was set to be drafted in the summer of 1967. Many of the Marines under Mueller’s command had been wounded at least once; 19 -year-old corporal John C. Liverman had arrived in Vietnam merely four months from a neighbor of his from Silver Spring, Maryland, had been killed at Khe Sanh–and had heard heavy combat much of the year. He’d beset by shrapnel in March 1968 and then again in April, but after recovering in Okinawa, he had agitated to return to combat. Hotel Company quickly came to understand that its new squad chairwoman was no Gold Bricker. “He wanted to know as much as he had been able to as fast as he could about the terrain, what we did, the waylays, everything, ” Maranto says. “He was all about members of the mission, the mission, the mission.” Second Battalion’s mission, as it turned out, was straightforward: Probe and destroy. “We stayed out in the bush, out in the mountains, precisely below DMZ, 24 hours a day, ” David Harris pronounces. “We was exactly enticement. It was the same meeting: They’d touched us, we’d stumbled them, they’d disappear.” Frequent deaths and injuries meant that turnover in the field was constant; when Maranto arrived at Hotel Company, he was issued a flak jacket that had dehydrated blood on it. “We were always low on servicemen, ” Colin Campbell says. Mueller’s unit was constantly on patrol; the battalion’s preserves described it as “nomadic.” Its undertaking was to keep the foe off-kilter and disrupt their supplying words. “You’d march all day, then you’d burrow a foxhole and devote all night altering going on watch, ” announces Bill White, a Hotel Company ex-serviceman. “We were always tired, always starving, always thirsty. There were no showers.” In those first weeks, Mueller &# x27; s confidence as a captain developed as he triumphed his men’s confidence and respect. “You’d felt his nervousness, but you’d never see that in his behaviour, ” Maranto says. “He was such a professional.” The members of the platoon soon got acquainted with a better quality that would be familiar to everyone who is dealing with Mueller later as a prosecutor and FBI director. He asked a great deal and had little fortitude for malingering, but he never asked for more than he was willing to give himself. “He was a no-bullshit kind of chap, ” White recalls. Sgt. Michael Padilla( left) with Cpl. Agustin Rosario( right ), who was killed in action on December 11, 1968, during the operation at Mutter’s Ridge . div> Dan Winters; Archival Photo Courtesy of Michael Padilla Mueller’s unit began December 1968 in related silent, to protect the security for the primary military cornerstone in the field, a glorified campsite known as Vandegrift Combat Base, about 10 miles south of the DMZ. It was one of the only planned outposts nearby for Marines, a region for resupply, a rain, and red-hot food. Lance Corporal Robert W. Cromwell, who had celebrated his 20 th birthday shortly before beginning his tour of duty, entertained his compatriots with stories from his own reporting period R& R: He’d matched his wife and parents in Hawaii to be introduced to his newborn daughter. “He was so happy to have a child and wanted to get home for good, ” Harris says. On December 7 the battalion boarded helicopters for a new operation: to retake control of a mountain in an loathsome neighbourhood known as Mutter’s Ridge. The strategically important piece of ground, which rolled along four mountains on the countries of the south boundary of the DMZ, had been the scene of fighting for more than two years and had been overrun by the North Vietnamese months before. Artillery, air strikes, and cistern strikes had long since denuded the bank of vegetation, but the circumventing hillsides and depressions were a forest of trees and vines. When Hotel Company touched down and fanned out from its landing zones to support a bound, Mueller was arriving to what would be his first full-scale battle. As the American contingents boosted, the North Vietnamese withdrew. “They were all drawing back to this big bunker complex, as it turned out, ” Sparks mentions. The Americans could see the signs of past combats all around them. “You’d view shrapnel openings in the trees, bullet punctures, ” Sparks says. After three days of patrols, isolated firefights with an elusive enemy, and several nighttimes of American shelling, another division in 2nd Battalion, Fox Company, received the lineup to make some high ground on Mutter’s Ridge. Even nearly 50 years later, the date of the operation abides burned into the recollections of those who pushed in it: December 11, 1968. None of Mueller &# x27; s fellow Marines had written their college thesis on African territory conflicts before the International Court of Justice, as Mueller had. That morning, after a darknes of air strikes and cannon blast “ve been meaning to” faded the antagonist, the men of Fox Company moved out at first light. The attack vanished smoothly at first; they confiscated the countries of the western portions of the crest without resistance, evading simply a handful of mortar rounds. Yet as they continued east, heavy small-arms fire started. “As they fought their practice forwards, they came into intensive and deadly fuel from bunkers and at the least three machine guns, ” the regiment later reported. Because the vegetation was so dense, Fox Company didn’t realize that it had stumbled into the centre of a bunker complex. “Having crusaded their nature in, the company ascertained it extremely difficult to maneuver its way out, due both to the fuel of the antagonist and the problem of carrying their wounded.” Hotel Company was on a neighboring mountain, still feeing breakfast, when Fox Company was attacked. Glint remembers that he was drinking a “Mo-Co, ” C-rations coffee with cocoa gunpowder and sugar, heated by igniting a golf-ball-sized segment of C-4 plastic explosive.( “We were ahead of Starbucks on this latte bullshit, ” he jokes .) They could hear the gunfire across the valley. “Lieutenant Mueller called,’ Saddle up, saddle up, ’” Sparks pronounces. “He called for first squad–I was the grenade launcher and had two bags of ammo buckled across my chest. I could just stand up.” Before they could even reach the antagonist, they had to fight their route through the dense cover of the depression. “We had to go down the hill and come up Foxtrot Ridge. It took hours.” “It was the only locate in the DMZ I remember meeting botany like that, ” Harris reads. “It was thick-skulled and entwining.” When the platoon lastly crested the highest level of the crest, they confronted the repugnance of the battlefield. “There were wounded parties everywhere, ” Sparks recalls. Mueller said everyone to quit their jam-packs and preparations for a fight. “We assaulted right out across the top of the crest, ” he says. It wasn’t long before the unit came under ponderous fervor from small arms, machine guns, and a grenade launcher. “There were three North Vietnamese soldiers right in front of us that rushed right up and scattered us with AK-4 7s, ” Sparks says. They reverted fervor and advanced. At one point, a Navy corpsman with them threw a grenade, only to have it bounce off a tree and explode, wounding one of Hotel Company’s corporals. “It just got worse from there, ” Sparks says. In the next few minutes, several followers went down in Mueller’s unit. Maranto remembers being impressed that his relatively lettuce lieutenant was able to stay calm while under criticize. “He’d been in-country less than a month–most of us had been in-country six, eight months, ” Maranto says. “He had remarkable equanimity, targeting fervor. It was sheer terror. They had RPGs, machine gun, mortars.” Mueller realise rapidly how much hassle the patrol was in. “That daytime was the second heaviest barrage I received in Vietnam, ” Harris mentions. “Lieutenant Mueller was guiding commerce, outlook parties and calling in air strikes. He was standing upright, moving. He probably saved our hide.” Cromwell, the lance corporal who had just become a papa, was shooting in the thigh by a. 50 -caliber bullet. When Harris encountered his wounded sidekick being hustled out of harm’s action, he was funnily relieved at first. “I discovered him and he was alive, ” Harris does. “He was on the stretcher.” Cromwell would ultimately be able to deplete some time with his wife and new child, Harris figured. “You lucky chump, ” he concluded. “You’re going home.” But Harris had miscalculated the seriousness of his friend’s harm. The missile had nicked one of Cromwell’s arteries, and he bled to demise before he reached the field hospital. The death destroyed Harris, who had sold weapons with Cromwell the darknes before–Harris had taken Cromwell’s M-1 4 rifle and Cromwell took Harris’ M-7 9 grenade launcher. “The next day when we punched the crap, they called for him, and he had to go forward, ” Harris remarks. Harris couldn’t shake the be thought that he should have been the one on the stretcher. “I’ve only told two people this story.” The battle atop and around Mutter’s Ridge feelings for hours, with the North Vietnamese barrage received from the smothering jungle. “We got hit with an ambush, plain and simple, ” Harris suggests. “The brush was so thick, you had perturb hacking it with a machete. If you got 15 meters away, you couldn’t consider where you came from.” As the fighting resumed, the Marines atop the crest began to run low on quantities. “Johnny Liverman hurled me a handbag of ammo. He’d been ferrying ammo from one surface of the ridge to the other, ” Sparks withdraws. Liverman was already wounded, but he was still contend; then, during one of his runs, he came here under more shell. “He got hit right through the pate, right when I was looking at him. I get that ammo, I crawled up there and got his M-1 6 and told him I’d be back.” Sparks and the other Marine protected behind a dead tree stump, trying to find any defence amid the firestorm. “Neither of us had any ammo left, ” Sparks remembers. He slithered back to Liverman to try to expel his love. “I get him up on my shoulder, and I got shot, and I went down, ” he does. As he was lying on the dirt, he listened a shout from atop the ridge, “Who’s that down there–are they dead? ” It was Lieutenant Mueller. Sparks called back, “Sparks and Liverman.” “Hold on, ” Mueller answered, “We’re coming down to get you.” A few minutes later, Mueller seemed with another Marine, known as Slick. Mueller and Slick slipped Sparks into a missile crater with Liverman and kept a battle dress on Sparks’ wound. They waited until a helicopter gunship passed overhead, its grease-guns clattering, to amuse the North Vietnamese, and hustled back toward the top of the hill and comparative safety. An OV-1 0 criticize airplane overhead plunged smoke grenades to facilitate shield the Marines atop the ridge. Mueller, Sparks reads, then went back to retrieve the mortally wounded Liverman. The extinctions organized. Corporal Agustin Rosario–a 22 -year-old father and husband from New York City–was shot in the ankle, and then, while he tried to run back to safety, was kill again, this time fatally. Rosario, extremely, lived waiting for a medevac helicopter. Finally, as the hours transferred, the Marines coerced the North Vietnamese to rescind. By 4:30 pm, the battlefield had hushed. As his eulogy for the Bronze Star eventually predicted, “Second Lieutenant Mueller’s courage, vigorous initiative and unwavering devotion to job at great personal gamble is also contributing in the overcome of the enemy force and were in keeping with the highest institutions of the Marine Corps and of the United States Naval Service.” As night precipitated, Hotel and Fox held the anchor, and a third busines, Golf, was brought forward as added buttres. It was a brutal era for both sides; 13 Americans vanished and 31 were wounded. “We framed a pretty good hurt on them, but not without enormous expenditure, ” Sparks suggests. “My closest pals were all killed there on Foxtrot Ridge.” As the Americans searched the field around the ridge, they weighed seven enemy dead left behind, in addition to being able to seven others killed in the course of the clash. Intelligence reports afterward revealed that the duel had killed the commander of the 1st Battalion, 27 th North Vietnamese Army Regiment, “and had practically decimated his staff.” For Mueller, the engagement had proved both to him and his gentlemen that he could lead. “The minute the shit stumbled the fan, he was there, ” Maranto says. “He performed outstandingly. After that night, there were a lot of guys who would’ve sauntered through walls for him.” That first major revelation to combat–and the loss of Marines under his command–affected Mueller deeply. “You’re standing there consider,’ Did I do everything I could? ’” he answers. Afterward, back at camp, while Mueller was still in startle, a major came up and swiped the young lieutenant on the shoulder, saying, “Good job, Mueller.” “That vote of confidence helped me get through, ” Mueller told me. “That gesture pushed me over. I wouldn’t follow out life guilty for fastening up.” The heavy toll of the casualties at Mutter’s Ridge shook up the whole legion. Cromwell’s death reached extremely hard; his laughter and good nature had tied the human rights unit together. “He was happy-go-lucky. He appeared after the new people when they came in, ” Bill White withdraws. For Harris, who had often shared a foxhole with Cromwell, the death of his best friend was devastating. White also took Cromwell’s death hard-bitten; overcome with sorrow, he stopped scraping. Mueller tackled him, telling him to refocus on members of the mission ahead–but eventually accommodated more consolation than punish. “He could’ve applied me punishment hours, ” White announces, “but he never did.” Robert Mueller receives an honor from his regimental officer Col. Martin “Stormy” Sexton in Dong Ha, South Vietnam in 1969. Dan Winters; Archival Photo Courtesy of the place of Robert Mueller Decades later, Mueller would tell me that nothing he ever confronted in his profession was as challenging as conducting workers in duel and watching them be cut down. “You realize a great deal, and every day after is a commendation, ” he told me in 2008. The remembering of Mutter’s Ridge positioned everything, even terror investigations and showdowns with the Bush White House, into view. “A lot is going to come your behavior, but it’s not going to be the same intensity.” When Mueller ultimately did leave the FBI in 2013, he “retired” into a hectic life as a top spouse at the existing legislation house WilmerHale. He learnt some first-class in cybersecurity at Stanford, he investigated the NFL’s handling of the Ray Rice domestic violence case, and he provided as the so-called colonization captain for the Volkswagen Dieselgate scandal. While in the midst of that assignment–which required the kind of delicate give-and-take ill-suited to a hard-driving , no-nonsense Marine–the 72 -year-old Mueller received a final call to public service. It was May 2017, just days into the twirling blizzard start out by the firing of FBI director James Comey, and deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein wanted to know if Mueller would serve as the special counselor in the Russia investigation. The job–overseeing one of the most difficult and sensitive investigations ever undertaken by the Justice Department–may simply graded as the third-hardest of Mueller’s career, after the post-9/ 11 FBI and after resulting those Marine in Vietnam. Having accepted the job as special counselor, he retreated into his prosecutor’s bunker, cut off from the rest of America. In January 1969, after 10 epoches of rain showers and cold weather, the unit got a three-day R& R break-dance at Cua Viet, a nearby brace locate. They listened to Super Bowl III on the radio as Joe Namath and the Jet-blacks defeated the Baltimore Colts. “One touch of actuality was listening to that, ” Mueller says. In the field, they get little information about what was happening at home. In fact, later that time, while Mueller was still deployed, Neil Armstrong made his first step on the moon–an incident that people around the world watched live on Tv. Mueller wouldn’t find out until daylights afterward. “There was this whole segment of autobiography you missed, ” he says. R& R breaks is likewise rare opportunities to imbibe alcohol, though there was never often of it. Campbell says he drink just 15 brews during his 18 months in-country. “I can retain drinking warm beer–Ballantines, ” he pronounces. In tent, the three men traded publications like Playboy and mail-order automotive catalogs, dreaming the cars they are able to soup up when they returned back to Position. They guided the time toy wino or pinochle. For the most part, Mueller bounced such activities, though he was into the era’s music( Creedence Clearwater Revival was–and is–a particular favorite ). “I retain several times strolling into a bunker and feeling him in a corner with a notebook, ” Maranto says. “He read a lot, every opportunity.” Throughout the rest of the month, they patrolled, meeting little linked with the enemy, although abundance of clues of their spirit: Hotel Company often radioed into allegations of concluding descended the organizations and disguised ply caches, and they are usually made incoming mortar rounds from unseen enemies. Command under such conditions wasn’t easy; drug use is an issue, and racial hostilities guided high. “Many of the GIs were draftees; they didn’t want to be there, ” Maranto says. “When new people revolved in, they imparted what happens in the United States with them.” Mueller recalls at times struggling to get Marines to follow orders–they already felt that the beating of serving in the infantry in Vietnam was as bad as it could get. “Screw that, ” they’d reply sharply when was necessary to do something they didn’t wishes to do. “What are you going to do? Route me to Vietnam? ” Yet the Marines were bonded through the constant danger of being subjected to duel. Everyone had close calls. Everyone knew that luck in the combat area was finite, fate hurtful. “If the good Lord diverted over a placard up there, that was it, ” Mueller says. Nights particularly were fitted with horror; the enemy elevated sneak assaults, often in the hours before dawn. Colin Campbell recalls a night in his foxhole when he turned around to find a North Vietnamese soldier, armed with an AK-4 7, right behind him. “He’d get inside our bound. He had our back, ” Campbell suggests. “Why didn’t he kill me and another chap in the foxhole? ” Campbell roared, and the infiltrator bolted. “Another Marine down the line shot him dead.” Mueller was a constant existence in the fields, regularly reviewing the code signals and passwords that marked friendly contingents to each other. “He was quiet and reserved. The plan was meticulous and detailed. He knew at night where every place was, ” Maranto recalls. “It wouldn’t be peculiar for him to come out and make sure the volley crews were correctly placed–and that you two are awake.” The souls I talked to who performed alongside Mueller, adults now in their seventies, largely had strong recollections of the kind of captain Mueller had been. But numerous didn’t know, until I told them, that the man who led their team was now the special guidance probing Russian interference in the election. “I had no idea, ” Burgos told me. “When you’ve been in action that long, you don’t remember appoints. Appearances you recollect, ” he says. Maranto says he only put two and two together recently, although he’d thought for years if that person who was the FBI director had served with him in Vietnam. “The name would ring a bell–you know that’s a familiar name–but you’re so busy with daily life, ” Maranto says. At the makeshift landing zone getting briefed before being airlifted to join the rest of the operation. Mueller is standing on the right with his back to the camera . div> Dan Winters; Archival Photo Courtesy of VJ Maranto April 1969 recognized a stark American milestone: The Vietnam War’s engagement death toll transcended the 33,629 Americans killed while campaigning in Korea. It too drew a brand-new menace to Hotel Company’s region: a laid of powerful. 50 -caliber machine gun nests that the North Vietnamese had set up to harass helicopters and low-flying airliners. Hotel Company–and the battalion’s other units–devoted much of the middle-of-the-road of the month to shooting down the lethal artilleries. Until they were found, resupply helicopters were limited, and flights were vacated when they came under direct flame. One Marine was even killed in the landing zone. Ultimately, on April 15 and 16, Hotel Company overran the enemy firearm and action a departure, uncovering 10 bunkers and three firearm positions. The next day, at around 10 am, Mueller’s platoon was attacked while on patrol. Facing small-arms ardour and grenades, they called for breath assist. An hour later four assault rolls thumped the North Vietnamese position. Five days later, on April 22, one of the 3rd Platoon’s garrisons reached under same attack–and the situation abruptly grew frantic. Glints, who had returned to Hotel Company that winter after healing from his wound at Mutter’s Ridge, was in the waylaid garrison. “We lost the machine gun, jammed up with shrapnel, and the radio, ” he recalls. “We had to pull back.” Nights especially were filled with frightful; the adversary wished sneak onslaughts, often in the hours before dawn. With radio contact lost, Mueller’s platoon was called forward as buttres. American artillery and mortars pounded the North Vietnamese as the team boosted. At one point, Mueller was engaged in a close firefight. The incoming fervour was so intense–the stress of the moment so all-consuming, the adrenaline pumping so hard–that when he was shot, Mueller didn’t instantly notice. Amid the combat, he glanced down and recognized an AK-4 7 round had overtaken clean through his thigh. Mueller prevented fighting. “Although seriously wounded during the course of its firefight, he resolutely maintained his position and, aptly guiding the volley of his squad, was instrumental in demolishing the North Vietnamese Army force, ” reads the Navy Commendation that Mueller received for his action that day. “While approaching the designated area, the team emanated under a heavy loudnes of enemy burn from its right flank. Skillfully soliciting and directing corroborating Marine artillery fire on the opponent outlooks, First Lieutenant Mueller ensured that burn superiority was gained during the hostile unit.” Two other members of Hotel Company were also wounded in the fight. One of them had his leg blown off by a grenade; it was his first day in Vietnam. Mueller’s eras in duel ended with him being lifted out by helicopter in a sling. As the aircraft peeled away, Mueller withdraws reviewing he might at least get a good dinner out of the harm on a infirmary carry, but he was delivered instead to a field hospital near Dong Ha, where “hes spent” three weeks recovering. Maranto, who was on R& R when Mueller was wounded, retains returning to camp and hearing oath that their commandant had been shot. “It could happen to any one of us, ” Maranto says. “When it has come to him, there was a lot of sadness. They experienced his company.” Mueller recovered and returned to active office in May. Since most Marine detectives spent only six months on a combat rotation–and Mueller had been in the combat zone since November–he was sent to serve at bidding headquarters, where he became an aide-de-camp to Major General William K. Jones, the head of the 3rd Marine Division. By the end of 1969, Mueller was back in the US, his engagement tour accomplish, working at the Marine barracks near the Pentagon. Soon thereafter, he cast off an application to the University of Virginia’s law school. “I consider myself extraordinarily lucky to have constructed it out of Vietnam, ” Mueller announced years later in a discussion. “There were many–many–who did not. And perhaps because I did survive Vietnam, I have always experienced compelled to contribute.” Over the years, a few of his former chap Marines from Hotel Company recollected Mueller and have watched his busines unfold on the national theatre over the past two decades. Sparks cancels dining lunch on a July day in 2001 with the story on: “The TV was on behind me.’ We’re going to introduce the new FBI director, Robert … Swan … Mueller . ’ I slowly switched, and I appeared, and I belief,’ Golly, that’s Lieutenant Mueller.’” Sparks, who speaks with a thick Texas accent, says his first thought was the running gag he’d had with his former captain: “I’d always announce him’ Lieutenant Mew-ler , ’ and he’d mention,’ That’s Mul-ler . ’” More lately, his former Marine comrade Maranto says that after devoting six months in fighting with Mueller, he has watched the coverage of the special advise investigation progress and chortled at the news reports. He says he knows Mueller isn’t sweating the pressure. “I watch people on the word talking about the distractions getting to him, ” he alleges. “I don’t think so.” Garrett M. Graff ( @vermontgmg) is a lending writer at WIRED and scribe of The Threat Matrix: Inside Robert Mueller’s FBI and the War on Global Terror . He can be reached at garrett.graff @gmail. com . em> Such articles is displayed in the June issue. Subscribe now . em> Listen to this story, and other WIRED features, on the Audm app . em> More Great WIRED Stories If Trump is laundering Russian fund now &# x27; s how it would work Spot the illegal in these airport baggage x-rays How a DNA transfer virtually imprisoned an innocent being of murder PHOTO ESSAY: Ominous view Read more: https :// www.wired.com/ narration/ robert-mueller-vietnam / http://dailybuzznetwork.com/index.php/2018/07/01/the-untold-story-of-robert-muellers-time-in-combat/