Ombudsman column: The Pentagon is trying to silence me
stripes.com212 points by petethomas 6 hours ago
212 points by petethomas 6 hours ago
> The House and Senate Armed Services committees have long had an interest in ensuring that unfiltered news went to the troops who are fighting for our country and deserved to read the truth, not propaganda. In the late 1980s Congress was alarmed at attempts of military personnel to “suppress unfavorable news” of the Iran-Contra affair and other issues. Congress mandated that Stars and Stripes be editorially independent and created the position of ombudsman in 1991 to monitor the situation and report to Congress at least once a year.
Funny how the same situations of recent history keep resurfacing. Not only "Iran", but we should recall the details of Iran-Contra: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Contra_affair
> further funding of the Contras by legislative appropriations was prohibited by Congress, but the Reagan administration continued funding them secretly using non-appropriated funds
Oh look, it's presidential power contradicting Congress again!
> "what began as a strategic opening to Iran deteriorated, in its implementation, into trading arms for hostages."
US attempts to deal with Iran, has incoherent strategy, gets rolled, lies about it.
> Eleven convictions resulted, some of which were vacated on appeal. The rest of those indicted or convicted were all pardoned in the final days of the presidency of George H. W. Bush
Misuse of the presidential pardon power, again, which enables the president to direct people to commit crimes in the sure knowledge that they will not be held accountable to the law or other branches of government (Americans call this "checks and balances" for some reason).
One of those people was Oliver North, who turned his experience providing arms illegally to enemies of the United States into a long career at propaganda organizations the NRA and Fox news.
And so here you are again.
Favouriting this for the next time someone on here tells me we don't have free speech in Europe, only in the US
People who say there is no free speech in Europe have never lived in an authoritarian country.
Why? The police aren't at his door and he's not been arrested it's not a good thing but we are still miles away from Europe.
She is a woman.
There are so many shades of gray in freedom of speech. In free European countries the police are also not at the door of outspoken government critics.
If you are alluding to dictatorial European countries like Russia and Belarus, the US is miles away and moving in their direction. Compared to Western Europe, there is no difference.
Where is there a problem in Europe?
I if want to go to the US on the other hand, I need to give them my social media accounts. That doesn't sound like free speech to me
Writing an op-ed can get the police on you here. The first amendment isn't supposed to only apply to citizens.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2026/feb/...
A photo of seashells gets you indicted:
https://edition.cnn.com/2026/04/28/politics/justice-departme...
Who's still claiming the US has free speech?
Freedom House. But then again, most of their funding comes from the US state department.
People who frame UK as oppressive hellhole, but somehow like former Hungarian leader and know all the talking points of the American conservative right.
Moreover, the repeating talking points of these people seemed to exclusively be around some cases where police intervened for certain comments on transgender issues (and imo indeed police shouldn't). It was a big issue back then, but when police intervenes now (mostly UK/germany) for certain comments on the palestinean issues, or when bank accounts are blocked for this reason (under cross-border requests from the US no less), they no longer seem to care. Makes you think whether they did not really care as much about free speech itself, actually.
JD Vance has to save all of Europe because of checks notes lack of free speech. /s
Well, he did a good job of freeing Hungary from Orban. So, cut him some slack.
/s
Paradoxically they are so stupid they thought they are actually helping Orban not realizing Europeans consider them idiots.
Historically the codified office of the Ombudsman came to Sweden after the Swedish King had to search refuge in Turkey and observed a similar position there.
I love that story, shows you that the world always was quite small and that what we perceive as progressive and backward countries is just a matter of time.
Can you give some more context? I looked into Wikipedia and the relevant text there is giving different vibe:
> Charles XII was in exile in Turkey and needed a representative in Sweden to ensure that judges and civil servants acted in accordance with the laws and with their duties. If they did not do so, the Supreme Ombudsman had the right to prosecute them for negligence.
Did not know this was a thing, kudos to her for speaking out!
You don't get that job without being the type of person who will only ever respond to coercion attempts with an equal amount of indigance. The sole reason for the position to exist is to act as a canary in a coalmine so to speak
She even admits she was due to stand down at the end of the year, they could have just waited her out. Instead it seems her calling a spade a spade was just too intolerable for them to bare
If that's all it takes to provoke the desired reaction from them it doesn't bode well at all. It's no wonder they were so easily led into a war with Iran on a leash
"they could have just waited her out. "
Well, they need the troops willingness to do whatever Trump tells them now, not next year. So they want propaganda for the troops and stars now and Stripes should be the medium, not annoy the administration by providing the troops with uncomfortable truth or facts.
Despite my other post I find it grimly amusing in a sort of Eastern European fatalist way that people expect the military to be anything other than a total propaganda-and-secrecy argument. You're the people who will kill who you're told to, guys.
This is deeply disturbing. The terrible, incoherent messaging and strategy around the Iran war (unapproved by Congress) is connected. This is an administration that is seeking less freedom, not more. What entity would sue on behalf of the ombudsman?
> What entity would sue on behalf of the ombudsman?
What entity could? Most of the unprecedented madness of the last few years boils down to:
1. The President does something flagrantly illegal.
2. The remedy is Congress impeaching and removing the President from office.
3. Republicans legislators are completely complicit, and have enough votes that #2 doesn't even start to happen.
The crimes will continue until something about #3 changes or until #47 finally succumbs to dementia.
Democratic leadership are also all Zionists who not-so-secretly approved of the war, which is why they stalled the war powers vote until after he attacked.
https://capitalandempire.com/p/top-democrats-try-to-stop-vot...
It cannot be "unapproved by Congress".
A US president does not have authority to start a war, Congress has, according to Constitution. The president only serves as a Commander in Chief.
So at any point Congress can stop any military action issuing an immediate ruling preventing the president doing anything. If our congressmen don't do that it means they approve it.
It's our, USA, war, not Trump's war. Because we elected the congressmen.
> If our congressmen don't do that it means they approve it.
These needs to be repeated everywhere until people understand it. Same situation with tariffs.
Why would they stop something that a huge majority of people voted for and want?
Trump won the popular vote and if we use logic from above all the non-voters are in fact supporters as well.
As far as I understand the US president is not a king that governs by decree, there's a whole other branch of government also elected to represent the will of the people, a branch where negotiations, debates, voting takes place to determine how the country should be.
People voted for Trump which had as one of its key promises during election "no more wars", perhaps it's ok that the another branch of government stop something which people didn't vote for?
Trump had 2,284,967 more votes than Harris. 77,302,580 people voted for him. That's not a huge majority of people.
How come this logic does not apply to democratic politicians? Why is it that them winning election by small margin does not imply that everything they do is good and legit for conservative people like you?
Unfortunately, there seems to be no proof he actually won the popular vote.
Trump has admitted openly that he won due to mass tampering with voting machines, and thanked Elon Musk for his help.
Your analogy falls apart.
Citation needed. You lot elected him before, seems likely you elected him again. Pretended he won by cheating instead of because your democracy is in dire need of a refit will do little but alloallow the next facists to win as well.
Not OP. I believe it is from folks like this. It is compelling but it can also difficult to pin down the exact details. They rely mostly on statistics based oddities.
I do appreciate that they are not interested in over throwing the 2024 election, just ensure that any possible gaps are covered for future elections.
> The Election Truth Alliance is initiating a call for hand counts of paper voting records associated with the 2024 U.S. General Election, and is advocating for full hand counts prior to certification for all future U.S. elections.
They passed a bill saying in 60 days stop without further approval. Admin said days we don’t attack dont count toward the 60…
Congress voted to stop counting days to allow the tariffs to keep going without having to actually act on it! Congress overruled time passing. These people are fundamentally breakers of reality, aren't just unserious: they are anti serious. RFK and all of this is a perpetrated act to be grossly anti reality, to defy all reason. No reality supports any of what's happening, there's no reality where any of that GOP agenda can win, so they have declared war on reality. https://www.ntu.org/publications/detail/congress-should-not-...
This stopped being alternate realities a while ago, as it became a collective project to form anti-realities.
Yes, if this turns into a mass famine/deindustrialization, Americans are going to own it the way Germans owned the holocaust.
The Germans owned the holocaust because they lost WW2 and afterwards became a vassal state of the Allies and later just the US. History is written by the victors.
The Germans "owned" the holocaust because the Nazis (German) started, conducted, and maintained the systematic collection, extermination, and destruction of certain classes of the population under their control.
Who else should have "owned" it?
We've already taken 600,000 lives by being complicit with foreign national Elon Musk's genocide in Africa. Most of them children.
what are you talking about
They are probably talking about claims like this: https://www.doge-impact.org/
Trump also fired the Immigration Detention Ombudsman.[1]
[1] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic...
We are past the point in history where it was hard to tell who the bad guy was.
We're at the point of history where your grandchildren will ask you "Where were you when...?"
This and also, "Wait, so you didn't do anything when ... ?"
It gives you a new found level of empathy or, at least, understanding for the people throughout history who "should have done something". We all (well, most of us) grew up thinking that if we were a workaday German (fill in the conflict) with Jewish neighbors that we'd have obviously hidden them in our attic or whatever. It turns out the reality of taking that class of action is actually a lot more fraught that your 4th grade self thought it was.
Would you harbor a neighbor facing deportation to some far flung prison camp? You have to be willing to face the consequences of losing your home, job, liberty and life. If not, what would change the calculus enough for you to do so? If you know they're in your country legally? If they were pregnant? If the prison was rumored to be executing people?
It was notable that in Minneapolis enough people were doing this kind of thing that ICE were seriously impaired, and had to resort to escalation and shooting Americans in the street.
„Wait, you really had access to fresh air and water, and you didn’t party all day to celebrate it while it lasted before all went to shit?“