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I know Austin is set to testify within the next two weeks, I hope the same for Milley. I am suspicious when it comes to Woodward these days but if even parts of this are true then by definition didn't we have a partial military coupe in this country? If CJCS makes subordinates swear an oath and instructs them to ignore orders from the president...wow just wow...especially as it relates to nukes. Now if Milley wants to make the argument that Trump was not of sound mind, why didn't he come forward? Also and just as concerning, these reporters have know about this for months and they didn't come forward. The press is supposed to be the 4th estate, the final check and balance for the people. Instead it has morphed into an extension of one party with members that are simply trying to become wealthy themselves. These reporters had a duty to come forward and report. IF what they wrote is true and they certainly must believe it is true, the CJCS attempted a coupe and possibly treason, but they kept quite and wrote a book. Example #69 of how broken the press actually is.

I dunno man. Damage was done for this. He subverted civilian control of the military and betrayed our defense posture to a strategic competitor. This is serious. If anyone else did this, there would definitely be consequences.

Remember that time Flynn communicated with a Russian government official as part of his upcoming duties and it spawned a 3 year investigation into Russian control of the executive branch? That said, I'm skeptical of anything Woodward says these days, but if anything even remotely approximating "I'll tell you if we are going to attack" was said, an example should be made. Prison would suffice.

One possibility: He makes sure his logbook is properly filled out, get his military equivalency instrument and commercial ratings, gets a civilian job, does whatever he wants, marries a hot flight attendant or two, and lives happily ever after.

Maybe I’m just overly sensitive but this is the cherry on top of my subterranean morale in the USMIL lately. Wtf is going on!

Safe - I'll refer you to the CDC, the clinical trials, and the experts in the field of immunology for that definition as they are the ones who come up with the criteria, not me. For it to be considered safe, my understanding is that adverse reactions have to be below a certain statistically significant threshold and below a certain severity threshold, both of which I also did not come up with. Much in the same way, walking out your front door is widely considered safe despite the fact that a chance does exist of you being hit in the face by a meteor. That is because it is not a statistically significant chance. If you have statistical evidence (from a reliable source.. that you interpreted correctly) pointing in a different direction I would love to see it. Until then I will defer to the people who's entire life's work is to make these determinations. Effective - the vaccine reduces your risk of contracting covid and drastically reduces your risk of hospitalization, and death. On booster shots: why is there a new flu shot every year? Because immunity wears off and new variants emerge. As for how many boosters to get and when they will be approved for the general public, I will once again defer to experts. Much like they defer to me on matters pertaining to flying airplanes.

Milley is a fucking disgrace

“Thanks for your service. Here’s your DD-214.”

We've had this discussion before. When you say "a certain statistically significant/severity threshold", it indicates you don't actually know. It may not even be your fault. Perhaps you don't know because those numbers don't exist. Even if we could produce completely objective measurement and defined goals, the CDC and vaccine manufacturers wouldn't want them to exist. If a concrete threshold did exist, it would be a target, and they don't want to hit the target. Do you and I get the freedom to choose whether to walk in or out our front door no matter the associated risks and without government imposed consequences? Who? Names. Who specifically is making the determination of "safe", "effective", how, and why do you personally trust them with your health? Please say Fauci. I'm ready for that one. 😄 If it's someone else, do I also get to produce an opposing argument from a healthcare professional who has made it their life's work? If someone is a nutritionist, do you want them dictating to you what you can and can't eat whether you agree or not? And should you job depend on it? Great! I think you should take it. But, what if I or my doctor assesses my risk of hospitalization and death due to COVID to be low because I am healthy and I have tested for, and possess, natural antibodies? Isn't that what vaccines are for? My body has already done the work. And I can cite studies that show natural immunity is better. There's a new flu shot every year because flu shots do not eradicate the flu. (Although COVID has) So, are you saying that COVID, also, cannot be eliminated? I think you're way too deferential to unnamed experts you've never met and likely know virtually nothing about. That is entirely your choice. When it comes to matters of my own health, I'm not going to be. If I have a health problem, I discuss it with my own personal doctor, whom I know and he knows me. I still get to choose whether to accept his diagnosis and treatment. How many times in history must it be demonstrated that being deferential and submissive to government power is bad for your health?

I'm hoping they get out. I've got a batch of solid cadets...cutting some officers who can't do basic statistics makes room for cadets who are motivated, vaccinated, and desperately want to be Air Force Lts.

They absolutely should be repealed or at the very least renewed but they won't be. Right now Congress gets to have their cake and eat it too. They can argue either for or against the use of military force without having to actually go on record to vote for or against sending their constituents and said constituents' sons and daughters to war. A good majority of them rail against federal overreach and the expanding powers of the Executive branch but are unwilling to put their money where their mouth is when it comes to voting to go to war.

No treason. Admin doesn’t consider China an enemy.

Wing him? Forgetabout it!.... they won't wing him. It'll be the ultimate sacrifice and they will have no problems throwing all of that money away to make an example out of him.

According to the 19th AF/CC guidance we got in an email last week, said individual WILL be put on administrative hold pending a determination of his/her future in the service. Whether the Bobs ultimately decide to wing him/her since according to the source he/she is syllabus complete I honestly couldn't say.

Seems like there's no end to the dysfunction. A quote from your link: "All calls from the Chairman to his counterparts, including those reported, are staffed, coordinated and communicated with the Department of Defense and the interagency," Butler said. And now this: EXCLUSIVE: Former acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller, who led the Pentagon from the period after the 2020 election through Inauguration Day, said that he "did not and would not ever authorize" Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley to have "secret" calls with his Chinese counterpart, describing the allegations as a "disgraceful and unprecedented act of insubordination," and calling on him to resign "immediately." In a statement to Fox News, Miller said that the United States Armed Forces, from its inception, has "operated under the inviolable principle of civilian control of the military." https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-acting-defense-sec-miller-says-he-did-not-authorize-milley-china-calls-says-he-should-resign

And then get to the airlines and find that the airlines are requiring the vaccine as well. Very refreshing to see that when Air Force leaders put their minds to it they can actually cover all their bases when it comes to strong-arming people into doing something. I just wish they'd use those talents in other places.

Spot on especially with regard to innocent until proven guilty and Woodward's books. If only the system has taken the same approach to General Flynn... I hope Cotton and others can peal back the onion and I think there should be something even more formal with the DOD IG...perhaps a special counsel. Even if completely innocent and explainable the system and the people need absolute transparency. Since the beginning we have held civilian rule as a basic tenant and the mere perception of improper military influence over power, nuclear weapons or the rule of law is something that needs a microscope. Others have commented on Woodward and his books, obviously he has a halo from the Watergate days but he has indeed become more partisan and INHO sloppy in his older years. He does seem to find "sources" on the periphery and mainstreams their outlandish claims. Milley is clearly a political animal and it is my personal belief that he has leaked some of these and other details. For the good of the country I hope the rest of the accusations are false, if they are not then it certainly adds even more fuel to the deep state argument and potentially undermines our entire way of life.

If you could do me the favor of not quoting that Martian I'd appreciate it; it keeps the threads more coherent and you're quoting him complicates my blocking the garbage he posts.

You should define "safe" and "effective". Safe - Are you saying there are no adverse reactions or deaths? The statistics clearly show that there have been. Are you saying there are some, but not enough? What is the threshold? If they are safe, why can't anyone sue the manufacturer, even if batch is somehow contaminated? Effective - Do breakthrough infections exist? Why? Why do we have boosters? Do you support mandatory boosters? How many? All of them? How would you like to see that tracked? When you have the 4th booster and someone else only has 3, are you going to attack them?

What goalposts exactly? Throughout all of these discussions I have maintained the same exact points. 1. the vaccine is safe and effective and no one so far has provided convincing evidence to the contrary. To include your and @torqued's statistically illiterate flailing. 2. While I think it's a very bad plan to pass on the vaccine, getting the shot should be entirely your choice unless you voluntarily surrendered some of your medical autonomy by joining the military. My suggestion, stick to what you're good at and keep posting your tangential Alex Jones-esque rants with a healthy side of racial slurs.

With a Dem as POTUS? Even if he was charged with anything, Biden would pardon him.

Fair enough, as a mobility guy I can't say I directly understand your struggles; I have helped carry an unfortunate amount of dead American SOF off the back of my airplane over the years and I'd be lying if I said that the last three weeks of events in Afghanistan have been easy for me to process either. If you ever need someone to vent to please feel free to DM, I sincerely wish you the best wherever you land. Unsolicited advice that you're free to disregard/ignore; don't end your time in the AF on a General or other than honorable discharge. I think you'd regret it in the long run.

Chang was annoying, but at least he was coherent.

Wrong again. You aren't controlling for the total number of people in the vaccinated and unvaccinated sub groups. Your continuing arrogance in the face of being so objectively wrong is getting pretty obnoxious. When you calculate a death rate you divide deaths in a particular sub group by total number of people in that sub group. You do not divide a death number by another death number. That results in a unit-less proportion that has no context. We will now spell this out so there's no more confusion. When you want to find the total covid death rate you do this: Number of covid deaths / number of people So if you want the elderly vaccinated covid death rate you do this: number of vaxxed old people deaths / number of vaxxed old people And if you want unvaxxed old people death rate you do this: number of unvaxxed old people deaths / number of unvaxxed old people Hopefully by now you have caught on that there are two different denominators and one is much larger than the other. And that is why the death rate can be much lower for vaxxed old people despite their numerator being larger. The only thing your mis-analysis allows you to say is that approximately two thirds of the UK elderly covid deaths are among vaccinated and one third are the unvaccinated. But without the correct denominators that number does not tell you anything useful about death rates and relative risk level between the two groups. Quick thought experiment. If everyone had the shot, vaccinated people would account for 100% of the deaths! My goodness! The vaccine must be pointless! It's almost like having the correct denominator actually matters.

Found General Chang

Yea, don’t use that phrase. UPT IPs require 100 hours of AC time or a waiver. White jet tours are sometimes referred to ALFA. Air Liaison Officer (ALO), Lead In Fighter Training (IFF), Forward Air Controller-Airborne (FAC-A), Air Training Command (AETC UPT, UCT, URT IP)

The 2020 Trump-Taliban "Peace Agreement"—Time to End the War on Terror | Nebraska Law Review | Nebraska (unl.edu)

I believe there are two books with the same title, and very different story lines. Likely an ordering mistake, and some mom blowing it way out of proportion. Are you like some Chinese guy half way across the world trying to incite division and fracture america? Just curious. If not, I'll take this "faggot" covering my ass any day over you dude.

Straight from the CJCS Website: Today, the Joint Chiefs of Staff have no executive authority to command combatant forces. The issue of executive authority was clearly resolved by the Goldwater-Nichols DOD Reorganization Act of 1986: "The Secretaries of the Military Departments shall assign all forces under their jurisdiction to unified and specified combatant commands to perform missions assigned to those commands..."; the chain of command "runs from the President to the Secretary of Defense; and from the Secretary of Defense to the commander of the combatant command." Sent from my iPhone using Baseops Network mobile app

Also, I have to ask, do you 100% believe (you said these are facts) all the reporting in that book? I generally take insider reports I see on sites like Fox and CNN with a grain of salt. Woodward’s last two books on the Trump presidency were pretty heavily denied up and down the Trump administration. And if you do believe the parts about Milley, do you also believe everything written about the Trump administration in those books?

That's fair, and to be honest, will probably never be known with certainty; his mood at the time was most likely due to a number of factors (obviously Watergate and the impending resignation played heavily). My previous post was not intended to state that Nixon's mood in Jul-Aug '74 was based solely on Vietnam, apologies if it came off that way. Lotta interesting things/claims came out in the early 2000s about Nixon regarding the amount of alcohol he was consuming and reported claims that he was taking Dilantin. Since he's long dead and different aides have made completely contradictory claims the truth probably never be know for certain. Apologies for the minor thread derail.

You would think, but who will do the firing? At this point, I think we should consider the facts: - He usurped the sacrosanct authority our civilian government should always have over our military - He sidestepped the chain of command and contacted a strategic enemy's military leadership directly to cconspire in relaying information regarding our national defense and DEFCON status. There should be at the very minimum, a nationally televised joint congressional hearing followed by an indictment and trial. But that's likely not going to happen.

Actually there is missing data there. I'm going to use extremes to make the point, but you'll almost certainly find that it applies here. Those numbers don't show the cohorts of the overall population and vaccine status. So, simplified, 1500 deaths, 1000 vaccinated and 500 unvaccinated. But that's out of a population of 15000, where 1500 are unvaccinated and 13500 are vaccinated. 500/1500 = 33% mortality amongst the unvaccinated, 1000/13500 = 7% mortality amongst the vaccinated. And the follow-up to that would be that if the entire cohort were unvaccinated, you would have 5,000 deaths instead of 1500. Again, the percentages are simplified and exaggerated, but I believe you will find they apply to the data set.

Damn, brother. So sorry to hear this. I don't have much humor for you. I was lacing my boots for an afternoon low-level formation airdrop as an Lt when my pregnant wife called me in to see the TV. I fought back tears after I saw the second plane hit and the towers fall. 20 years went by. Almost the entire middle of my life. Then, I watched the chaos at Kabul as we left. Not to make this about me, but I understand what your friend may have been feeling. It took a lot of mental and emotional effort to remain stoic in the midst of what I was experiencing. Depending on what his individual circumstances may have been, he may have had a more difficult time wrestling with the thoughts of "What was it all for?, Why did something I believed in so much in, seem to fail so badly? What about the people I knew that were wrecked by that place? Why is my country abandoning so many other things I thought I was fighting for? Was I wrong about everything?" How do we prevent someone from having to ask those sorts of questions? Maybe begin here at home. What can we do to fix this foundation, this society, so that none of our future military members ever have and doubts or second thoughts about what they're fighting for. The military needs civilians to fight just as hard back here. There is a different type of war still going on, and I don't think it's hopeless. Go make sure this country is the one you want it to be, not the one he thought it might be becoming. Again, very sorry for the loss of your friend.

Hope everyone who choose to die on this vaccination hill gets some immense satisfaction out of sticking it to big blue. Because that's likely all you're getting. The staunch anti vax dudes I know of are invariably the squadron shitbags, who spend way too much time publicly arguing politics on Facebook, and who will not be missed by anyone.. least of all the commanders who are relishing this excuse to get a complete liability out of their organization. The number of people who discovered their extremely sincerely held religious beliefs on stem cells just this past week is particularly rich. You'd think a supposedly principled person would think twice about faking a religious belief to justify their stubbornness, but I'm sure the crippling case of Dunning-Kruger prevents that level of introspection.

This one was more fun than the last ones. Make sure to pass this message on to whoever sent you the study! Did you know that teenage boys around the age of 15 actually normally have Cardiac Adverse Events (CAEs) at a rate of ~140/million without any shots whatsoever? I didn’t either, but it’s true. If you look at females age 13-15, they’re at just about 25/million (this is higher than the COVID study lol). That puts the study’s incidence rate at… just about normal. TLDR this study does not present any evidence that COVID vaccination has any effect on standard CAE rates for adolescents. https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/JAHA.116.005306 The authors of your quoted study never do what’s actually important: compare CAE rate of unvaccinated boys to CAE rates of those that got vaccines. Instead he compares potatoes to tomatoes and looks at CAE rates of boys with the vaccine compared to the chances they have a reported COVID hospitalization. Those logically are not an actual good scientific comparison. If he actually wrote this study fairly, it would say “CAE rates of vaccinated boys aged 12-15 are roughly similar to the unvaccinated population.” Here’s the graph from the study on baseline CAE rates: Or, the top commenter on your linked study more eloquently said: “Arola et al. show that the incidence of myocarditis is in the vicinity of 140 per year per million boys aged 15 (in girls, and other boys, the incidence is roughly an order of magnitude smaller). By neglecting the prior probability of myocarditis in all persons, not just those being vaccinated, the authors render their conclusions completely untenable. In other words, while the risk of hospitalization from COVID in boys is arguably smaller than the risk from myocarditis, there is no evidence that vaccination status affects the myocarditis risk.“

Based on his latest post, I don't think that's playing dirty. If anything, that's his commander trying to build him an out that doesn't involve a court-martial.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1VuouMqMkDrg57QEHd94nqYLGck8wFKdH/view?fbclid=IwAR1Vm7FonfF500oXe0zLZfnz8bHLB2JAwhlfLmcnDd9eqHBar0v-HOMgPtQ USAF guidance on Covid vaccines. Couple of things stuck out: 1. Your 16+ years of service may not be enough to keep you in until retirement if you refuse the vaccines 2. An established separation or retirement date doesn't exempt you from needing the vaccine 3. There will be no involuntary separation pay if you are separated for refusing the vaccine 4. Refusing the vaccine doesn't automatically get you out of your ADSC 5. If you took the bonus or are still on the hook for TA or other educational benefits, and you get kicked out, the Air Force will likely come after you for the "unearned" portion of the bonus and/or recoup the cost of the educational benefits. 6. The memo does not definitively state the characterization of a discharge for vaccine refusal, leaving that to individual commanders. Edit: related, from a terrible screen grab: You CAN be ordered to take the Pfizer vaccine. No holding out for a label change to Comirnaty.

Yeah it's not a good look for milley for sure. Add this to the laundry list of reasons this guy needs to go. Having said that, I'm glad someone was thinking about how to mitigate the damage a desperate and defeated trump could have attempted to do in his final days. Glad it never came to this but the fact that the CJCS was so worried he thought this was a conversation that needed to happen should tell you all you need to know about trump's mental stability after the election loss.