Famous World War II General George S. Patton told his troops “Your job is not to die for your country. Your job is to make that other son of a bitch die for his!” I recommend the Secret Service get rid of the mind set that their job is to “take a bullet for the president.” Replace it with “to make the other son of a bitch(es) take a bullet for their ideology.” Patton would be the first to say that nothing was ever won by being on the defensive – whether in battle, on the sports field or in protecting a president.
The men who covered President Trump with their bodies from the stage to the armored car deserve our praise and gratitude. I believe they were working with a fabulously FUBAR protection plan created by a D.E.I. – appointed site leader who didn’t know her tactical ass from a hole in the ground.
There were many tactical security omissions observable by the lowest ranking infantryman. In addition to the poor (and absent) placement of the snipers and outer circle security, among the most glaring was an insufficient number of Secret Service agents in the immediate inner circle of the president.
Compare the video of the attempted assassination of President Reagan with that of President Trump: what’s missing? In the Reagan attempt there were enough Secret Service agents to both shield the president and to provide an immediate outer circle of agents with automatic weapons to protect both the president and the agents covering him with their bodies. In the Reagan video the camera doesn’t show the agents standing outside the limo protecting the president and the agents inside. It does show enough agents smothering the bastard that tried shooting Reagan and enough agents to face outward with semi-automatic weapons (Uzis in that case) protecting the agents tackling the attempted assassin. Many may think (with some justification) they are protecting the slime ball. Meh, not so much. I believe their job is to protect their fellow agents from being interfered with by fellow True Believers attempting to either kill or rescue their fellow assassin or to just increase the fatality rate of a failed mission by killing more agents.
Every commander’s worst nightmare in a kinetic situation is surprise. His staff’s mission is to war game the impending battle / scenario to avoid that surprise. In the military it is the S-2 Intelligence officer’s job to know the tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPS) of the enemy (threat) to anticipate and avoid surprise. Time is rarely taken these last decades to conduct a legitimate wargame exercise between the S-3 Operations officer representing the commander’s chosen Course of Action against the S-2s knowledge of threat TTPs. A majority of commander’s rarely listen to their intelligence officers because they 1. Are bone-headed thinking they’re smarter than the enemy (see: On the Psychology of Military Incompetence by Norman F. Dixon and any book on Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan); and 2. The intel officers are not sufficiently trained in real-world threat TTPs and haven’t been for decades. The vast majority of intel officers military and civilian basically “read the news” to their commanders and political leaders. No one conducts an anticipatory threat assessment anymore, including, apparently, the D.E.I.fied Secret Service who has the most important reason to do so.
That’s how Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda led the U.S., Bush, Jr. and Obama into two disastrous, two decades-long disasters.
This was the reason for the seismic security snafu in Bethel Park, Pennsylvania. Many things can be learned from the attempted assassination of President Trump – and the Threat has learned from it and adapting it’s TTPs accordingly for the next attempt. One lesson is that lone shooters rarely succeed. This requires resorting to multiple shooters. I’m amazed, considering the massive politically/media mandated vitriol, a gaggle of Left and GOP Never-Trumpers haven’t stormed the platform already. Perhaps their fear of guns has prevented them from having the brass appendages to attempt such a brazen attack.
As the appearance of a Trump victory increases (as fatuous or factual as the hype may be), the threat to the domestic Left and foreign enemies increases. It appears there is a substantial pro-Hamas / foreign terrorist support within our country to warrant an analysis of a threat against the president using tactics by organized terrorist sponsors and groups. I’d be surprised if this didn’t already occur to someone inside the weaponized FBI – and been ordered to “stand down.”
Despite salivating media coverage, the real internal threat by foreign terrorists is not on college campuses. It is either by a few hundred illegal aliens who traversed the southern freeway into the United States or a Citizen / Resident Alien who obtained their status under false pretenses – like Ilhan Omar’s alleged brother / husband? That being the case, one of the paradigms of insurgency warfare (which includes terrorism as a stage) is the threat continues using the same TTPs until they prove unsuccessful. If the Secret Service director retains her position and continues her D.E.I. leadership, the lone shooter TTP will eventually become successful with continued poor site assessment and insufficient security of the president (whether intentionally or through gross ignorance). If she is fired (and sentenced to prison for criminal negligence) and replaced with a Director with some real field experience and political testicles then President Trump may have a chance to survive to election.
Either way, the Secret Service must include in their wargaming the TTPs of the foreign threat – from the aerial assault against the Rave concert on August 7th to incoming rockets and car bombs. This requires enough agents to not only protect the president but also the agents protecting the agents protecting the president. Otherwise, the next attempt will be a multiple-shooter attempt resulting in not only a dead president but dead Secret Service agents who will have died in vain. If agents are to die doing their mission, at least give them the resources to die honorably succeeding. The same advice should be given to the Commander-in-Chief (if he ever regains consciousness).
Those can’t be accomplished with Secret Service D.E.I. Director Cheadle – or anyone in the chain of command of like ilk.
Please keep it going. People need to wake up!