patrick.net

Another drill sergeant has been found dead at the Fort Jackson U.S. Army base in South Carolina.

The U.S. Army revealed the death in a statement Monday.

The tragedy is the second such death in just over a week.

30-year-old Staff Sgt. Zachary L. Melton was found unresponsive on Saturday, the Army revealed.

The U.S. Army Garrison Fort Jackson said in a news release that Melton was found inside his vehicle on the base.

Melton was a drill sergeant with the 1st Battalion, 34th Infantry Regiment.

His body was found by unit personnel.

He was located after he failed to report for work. ...

Less than two weeks before Melton’s death, 34-year-old Staff Sgt. Allen Burtram was also found dead on the base.

Burtram had also failed to report to work, the Columbia Post and Courier reported.

Apparently, I’m not the only one wondering where exactly is the man who currently is the single most important member of Biden’s Cabinet? Question asked, by Newsmax’s John Bachman:



Nope. In yesterday’s scraps of Lloyd Austin news, Real Clear Defense ran a revolting op-ed titled “Secretary Austin’s Unauthorized Absence,” written by a U.S. Navy SEAL discharged in 2020 for being unreachable for only five hours. (Ironically, he was unreachable because he’d been wrongly arrested by local Hawaiian authorities for violating Covid lockdowns during the first month of the pandemic).

But … is the Secretary almost back? Also yesterday, Reuters ran a tantalizing Lloyd Austin story headlined, “US Defense Secretary to Attend Virtual Meeting on Ukraine From Home.” Still recovering from his elective prostate cancer surgery, Austin reportedly will attend a meeting later today with U.S. and Ukraine generals, probably to cry about how awfully the Proxy War is going and agree that if they could only get a few more hundred billion, this thing would be all over.

Austin will be the only participant attending remotely since he’s not up to scratch. The article was silent about whether Austin would be visible on a screen or would just be listening on the phone, but Pentagon spokesmen did say the top military leader will uncharacteristically skip the post-meeting press conference. So, we don’t get to see him.

So much for the stalemate. Independent media and milbloggers are widely reporting the Russians are pushing all along the disputed border in what looks like a wide-scale, coordinated attack, that Ukrainian defenses are collapsing, that Russian planes appear to control the skies, all amidst rumors swirling about potential ‘leadership changes’ in Kiev. Corporate media mentioned none of that yesterday, not even to “fact check,” but it did allow that Ukraine is wearing down. ...

Meanwhile, to help the poor Ukrainians defend their border, Joe Biden steadfastly refuses to agree to commonsense demands from Republicans to help defend our border security. Apparently, two of Biden’s most important goals are now in conflict: his goal of keeping the U.S.’s border wide open versus his goal of keeping Ukraine’s border closed.