WELL, ISN’T THAT SPECIAL? According to The Wall Street Journal, Russia’s spy services have cooked up a shadowy new unit called the ‘Department of Special Tasks’, known by its Russian acronym “SSD.” It operates out of military intelligence headquarters and its “special” bag of tricks is said to include assassination, arson, sabotage and putting incendiary devices on airplanes. James Appathurai, NATO’s deputy assistant secretary-general, who is in charge of hybrid warfare, told the WSJ that “Russia believes it is in conflict with what it calls ‘the collective West,’ and is acting accordingly, up to and including threatening us with nuclear attack and building up its military.” Always armed with a denial, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said: “These are, as usual, completely unsubstantiated accusations.” You might note, as we did, that that is NOT a denial. And while the name of the unit may be new – sadly, the tactics are not.
NO QUESTIONS PLEASE: Last week, we mentioned that the military is spending around $137,000 to get government housing at Fort McNair suitable for Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and family to move in. Sounds like a sweet deal for Hegseth and company – but it doesn’t come for free. Military.com says that in keeping with “a 2008 law, a defense secretary who lives in military housing is required to pay rent that is equivalent to 105% of the Basic Allowance for Housing rate for a four-star general with dependents assigned to the same base.” So, that would mean that Hegseth will be writing checks for $4,655.70 each month to his landlord, Uncle Sam. Not exactly a bargain – but considerably better than when Bob Gates was SECDEF for almost five years during the Bush 43 and Obama administrations. He was required to pay the full market rate for comparable civilian housing – setting him back around $78,000 a year – about 40% of his annual salary. Hegseth by the way, is still pretty steamed about Congressional and media questions about the money being spent on his DC fixer-upper though. Responding on X to another post also on X by Fox News reporter Jennifer Griffin that reported on a letter sent from members of the House Appropriations Committee asking about the repairs in the midst of government efficiency layoffs, Hegseth wrote: “Fake News of the Day (not surprising from Democrats & @JenGriffinFNG; same thing) Any/all house repairs were going to happen no matter who was moving in and were all initiated by DoD. But Dems/Jen don’t care about facts; they’re just Trump haters.” All of this leads us to three questions: 1) Did Hegseth and Griffin have an argument over the coffee (or Kool-Aid) machine in the break room at Fox News back when he was an anchor there? 2) Does the SecDef have any better way to spend his time than on stuff like this? (There does seem to be an awful lot going on in the world these days.) 3) Are we now living in a world where anyone who asks a question is a ‘Trump hater’?
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