Paul E. Vallely

Paul E. Vallely is a retired US Army Major General and senior military analyst for Fox News. He served in the Vietnam War and retired in 1993 as Deputy Commanding General, Pacific Command. In 2004, together with retired Air Force Lieutenant General Thomas McInerney, Vallely co-authored the book Endgame: The Blueprint for Victory in the War on Terror. Vallely currently serves as the Military Committee Chairman for the Center for Security Policy and has lent his support to the organization Veteran Defenders of America. In late 2013, he called for a "March on Washington" by "patriots" to force President Obama to resign.

He was born in DuBois, Pennsylvania, on November 29, 1939. He is married to Marian Vallely (married in September 1971). Their son, Private First Class Scott Paul Vallely, died on April 20, 2004 while in his fourth week of Special Forces Qualification Course Special Forces training.

He graduated from West Point and was commissioned into the U.S. Army in 1961. He graduated from Infantry School, Ranger and Airborne Schools, Jumpmaster School, the Command and General Staff School, The Industrial College of the Armed Forces and the Army War College. His combat service in South Vietnam included positions as infantry company commander, intelligence officer, operations officer, military advisor and aide-de-camp. He retired, in 1993, from his position as Deputy Commanding General, Pacific, at the rank of Major General.

Vallely serves as the Military Committee Chairman for the Center for Security Policy in Washington, D.C. and occasionally writes columns and lectures on the War on Terror. Some of his public statements have caused controversy, such as saying "we are not going to permit" a Shiite victory in an Iraqi election, and claiming that the war on terror is a war between Islam and Judeo-Christianity: "That's what's going on. If you don't understand that, then you don't get it."

General Vallely has recently lent his support to an organization called "Veteran Defenders of America". In his letter of support he stated that,"Perhaps the greatest threat to our safety and liberty is the threat of radical Islam. This threat goes well beyond the threat of terrorism. Islamists, both inside and outside of America, are looking for any and every way to infiltrate and subvert our country through what is known as "stealth jihad." He encourages US civilians (veterans) to be "eyes and ears of freedom, because we know freedom isn't free."

According to Vallely captives were only restrained for twenty minutes during their forcefeedings.

Vallely toured the Camp Delta detention camp at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba in 2006 while collecting material for a book he intended to co-write with LTC Gordon Cucullu, entitled The Myths of Gitmo: Torture, Abuse or the Truth. Vallely and Cucullu later participated in an interview with FrontPage Magazine in which he blasted allegations of detainee abuse as "myths of the left-wing press". He also voiced support for the force feeding of detainees attempting to undertake hunger strikes, claiming the detainees were "...simply restrained for 20 minutes so they can be fed Ensure. They get their choice of four flavors of Ensure. It's put in a very unobtrusive feeding tube smaller than a normal straw and it's put in there for 20 minutes, so they get breakfast, lunch, and dinner. They get to go back to their detention facility."

Force feeding of non-psychotic prisoners has been banned by the World Medical Association since 1975, listing it alongside torture as a form of "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment". Vallely later admitted in the same interview that neither he nor Cucullu had actually spoken with any of the detainees to corroborate official reports of their treatment.

When prompted further as to details of abuse, Cucullu stated that at least one prisoner "...may have been roughed up a little bit", but immediately clarified "We're not trying to do an exhaustive history of Gitmo in this thing."

Vallely is also a supporter of the Jerusalem Summit organization and an advocate of the organization's proposal to "relocate"/"resettle" Palestine and the Palestinian people to surrounding Arab countries as a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and to bring about the organization's belief "that one of the objectives of Israel's divinely-inspired rebirth is to make it the center of the new unity of the nations, which will lead to an era of peace and prosperity, foretold by the Prophets."

In 2005, Vallely founded a conservative political organization called Stand Up America US, that promotes the following issues: "First amendment rights, Second amendment rights, strong national defense and secure borders, national sovereignty, support of the armed forces, individual liberties and personal responsibility, fiscally responsible, limited government". The organization endorses the views of Glenn Beck, and publishes fiction and non-fiction books to promote its message.

Vallely made the following statement to World Net Daily on November 5, 2005 regarding the disclosure of Valerie Plame's CIA affiliation:

Maj. Gen. Paul Vallely told WorldNetDaily that Joseph C. Wilson mentioned Plame's status as a CIA employee over the course of at least three, possibly five, conversations in 2002 in the Fox News Channel's "green room" in Washington, D.C., as they waited to appear on air as analysts....Vallely says, according to his recollection, 'Wilson mentioned his wife's job in the spring of 2002' -- more than a year before Robert Novak's July 14, 2003, column identified her, citing senior administration officials, as "an Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction."

Vallely later said that only one such conversation had occurred:

After recalling further over the weekend his contacts with Wilson, Vallely says now it was on just one occasion – the first of several conversations – that the ambassador revealed his wife's employment with the CIA and that it likely occurred some time in the late summer or early fall of 2002.

Joseph C. Wilson denied ever having disclosed his wife's CIA status to Vallely, and his attorney wrote to Vallely and World Net Daily demanding a retraction, as reported in that publication.

Together with Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney, Vallely co-authored a book published in 2004, entitled Endgame: The Blueprint for Victory in the War on Terror.

Vallely also co-authored a 1980 paper with then PSYOP analyst Michael Aquino entitled From PSYOP to MindWar: The Psychology of Victory. MindWar is defined as "the deliberate aggressive convincing of all participants in a war that we will win that war." The paper contrasts a use of psychological operations such as propaganda with a new approach. The paper contains this passage:

Unlike PSYOP, MindWar has nothing to do with deception or even with "selected" - and therefore misleading - truth. Rather it states a whole truth that, if it does not now exist, will be forced into existence by the will of the United States. The examples of Kennedy's ultimatum to Khrushchev during the Cuban Missile Crisis and Hitler's stance at Munich might be cited.

A MindWar message does not have to fit conditions of abstract credibility as do PSYOP there; its source makes it credible. As Livy once said:

The terror of the Roman name will be such that the world shall know that, once a Roman army has laid siege to a city, nothing will move it - not the rigors of winter nor the weariness of the months and years - that it knows no end but victory and is ready, if a swift and sudden stroke will not serve, to preserve until that victory is achieved.

Unlike Ellul's cynical propagandist, the MindWar operative must know that he speaks the truth, and he must be personally committed to it. What he says is only a part of MindWar; the rest - and the test of its effectiveness - lies in the conviction he projects to his audience, in the rapport he establishes with it. [Bold emphasis in original.]

In practice, however, the difference between MindWar and cynical or deceptive propaganda, from the perspective of the audience, is difficult if not impossible to perceive.

In 2010, Vallely was one of three retired general officers who expressed support for US Army Lieutenant Colonel Terrance Lee Lakin in his refusal to deploy to Afghanistan based on Lakin's claim that President Barack Obama had no legitimacy as commander in chief. In an interview, Vallely stated "I think many in the military – and many out of the military – question the natural-birth status of Barack Obama." Following Vallely's announcement, Army Major General (retired) Jerry Curry and Air Force Lieutenant General (retired) Thomas G. McInerney also expressed public support for Lakin. When Lakin refused the orders to deploy, the military initiated a court-martial under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. On September 2, 2010, the presiding judge of the court-martial ruled that Obama's status as a natural-born citizen is irrelevant in the court-martial case against Lakin, as Obama's eligibility is outside the jurisdiction of the military and falls within the jurisdiction of the United States Congress instead. Lakin was convicted on a charge of missing movement, sentenced to six months confinement and dismissed from the Army.