This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Author: Sporkmaster

  • And you wonder why you are ignored, really?

    So once again Rethink Afghanistan is playing willful ignorance in there newest statement.

    In addition, over the past few years, U.S. forces have killed or captured dozens of significant al Qaeda leaders. Then, on May 2, 2011, American Special Forces acting under your direction located and killed Osama bin Laden. The death of the founder of al Qaeda is a major blow that further weakens the terrorist organization.

    But wait, this is the organization that decried the operations of Special Forces in Afghanistan not long ago. Even coming out and saying that the Special Operations in Afghanistan were the cause of increased civilian deaths. Also claiming that the missions done by the Special Forces like the one that eliminated Osama were not having any effect what so ever and should be done away with.

    Back in March, British Maj. Gen. Richard Barrons, a member of Petraeus’ staff, estimated that there were 900 leaders at all levels and 25-36,000 fighters in the entire Afghan Taliban. Petraeus is claiming that special forces alone have removed from combat 26% of the leadership and roughly 10% of the fighters within just three short months.

    That claim begs a bunch of questions – not least of which is: “how can it possibly be true?” If that level of attrition happened to the US military it would likely be disrupted, unable to continue fighting. Yet even Petraeus admits that spec-ops forces have not yet reversed the Taliban’s momentum.

    But if it were true, we’d have to ask what the hell Generals McChrystal, McKiernan and McNeill had been doing during their times in command of US forces in Afghanistan in the preceding eight years.

    Then we’d have to ask about just how fast the Afghan Taliban can regenerate its leadership and fighting cadre, as well as how large it’s recruiting pool is – i.e. how fast can the Taliban recover its losses.

    And we’d have to ask whether the large number of civilian casualties caused by special forces raids – including the likes of shooting pregnant women – contribute to that regeneration to the extent of rendering any figures Petraeus is touting about Taliban attrition meaningless.

    But the second they have to acknowledge the success of the of the operation to take down Osama it is a complete change as listed above.

    Mr. President, according to our own intelligence officials, al Qaeda no longer has a large presence in Afghanistan, and, as the strike against bin Laden demonstrated, we have the capacity to confront our terrorist enemies with a dramatically smaller footprint. The costs of prolonging the war far outweigh the benefits. It is time for the United States to shift course in Afghanistan.

    Yep considering all the previous above the Death of Obama has caused a instant conversion. You know the same people that they posted a video of here.

    But wait it gets better. Here is a quick summery of there next statement Because of the corruption in Afghanistan any effort to help rebuild Afghanistan will fail. So it is in the interest that this effort should be done by the same people we view as the reason for the corruption. Don’t believe me read further.

    Endemic corruption in Afghanistan diverts resources intended to build roads, schools, and clinics, and some of these funds end up in the hands of the insurgents. Appointments of provincial and local officials on the basis of personal alliances and graft leads to deep mistrust by the Afghan population. While it is a laudable objective to attempt to build new civic institutions in Afghanistan, this goal does not justify the loss of American lives or the investment of hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars. Instead of continuing to be embroiled in ancient local and regional conflicts in Afghanistan, we must accelerate the transfer of responsibility for Afghanistan’s development to the Afghan people and their government.

    Oh and when they say they want all the troops out, they really do not mean that.

    We should maintain our capacity to eliminate any new terrorist threats, continue to train the Afghan National Security Forces, and maintain our diplomatic and humanitarian efforts. However, these objectives do not require the presence of over 100,000 American troops engaged in intensive combat operations.

    So again all does not really equal all. It is like they are intentionally trying to have the events during the fall of Saigon repeated. Also I would really like to know what numbers game they are playing as far as how many troops are needed to perform all of these jobs. Not to mention that the Taliban and al Qaeda can and has infiltrated the Afghan Police and Army. The same people that would be replacing the use troops that are being used for base defense because of the draw down you are demanding.

    Is there anyone here that would you rather trust your safety to a fellow service member or to a local national? Yea thought so, but hey it is easy to go along with that when your not the one that has to stay behind.

    We urge you to follow through on the pledge you made to the American people to begin the redeployment of U.S. forces from Afghanistan this summer, and to do so in a manner that is sizable and sustained, and includes combat troops as well as logistical and support forces.

    Yea because nothings is impossible to the person(s) that does not have to do it. Then they wonder why they are regularly ignored.

  • Update on phoney SEAL Salhem Dreasden/Dan L McGrew

    Since the story first came out there as been a collective effort to find who this guy is. Everyone seems to be pitching on on this on. Also this case of stolen valor is has gotten help from the racing community as well as the military one. I added additional information to the original post so I just talk about the newer info.

    We know what his real name is Dan L McGrew. There is a interesting post about him from someone who know him. The more I read, the more it sounds like someone else we know.

    You did the same thing to Marvin. Remember Marvin? You burglarized the local Masonic Temple here, and you stashed a bunch of your stolen property in his shed. Were you planning to recreate yourself a high ranking Mason? Perhaps the son of one?

    Then there’s the issue of the hot checks you wrote. Two thousand. Ten thousand. Somewhere in between.In any case, my house was harrassed for over a year by people from Steve’s Git-n-Go, Carrow’s, Some bowling place (a hot check for a bowling ball, Dan?!), etc., etc., etc. All this because you used my address to open your bank account with Wells Fargo! Your probation officer finally gave me a stack of his business cards so that I could just start referring people to him (which I did).

    Oh and it seems that he is claiming that he has won awards at the HIN Austin.A friend said that he would help out by asking around the to see if anyone has heard of him at any event he attended.

    Also he is pretending to have a Afghanistan deployment on a youtube account that was linked back to him.

    But the best part is this statement made from the post listed above.

    I guess I should probably be indignant, even outraged at your insinuation that I had a hand in destroying your life there.But you know what, Dan (and your name is Dan – not Sahlem), I’m not. I’m only slightly irritated – really more amused than anything. Your current drama seems to be nothing more than one more episode of the same tired sitcom. Your life there was like your life here: a fragile house of cards (ie: lies) you created for yourself. And when it all falls down, Liar Dan the Pathological convinces himself it’s someone else’s fault (again). Take some responsibility, Dan.

    But given your history, I don’t understand your upset. Hasn’t it always been easy for you to simply move on and create yourself a whole new backstory to con people with? It’s like a game to you. You kinda remind me of the character Leonardo DiCaprio played in that movie “Catch Me If You Can”.

    Wow, I swear that sounds like someone we know, but who?

    Oh and as a special treat I am offering a two for one phoney deal today. Saw this on the news last night.

    After fleeing the Navy in 2006, 26-year-old Royce Allen Eagle lived in Alaska under a false identity until last year when authorities tracked down his fingerprints

  • More delusions from Rethink Afghanistan; “War does not work”

    Once again Rethink Afghanistan is putting idealism ahead of reality by claiming that anything short of total pacifism will resolve the problems in Afghanistan and the rest of the world.

    The new numbers released this weekend show that the escalation strategy in Afghanistan continues to be a failure on its own merits and a cruel joke perpetrated on the Afghan population. It’s time to get those troops home.

    Cruel joke? How about this for a cruel joke. Use the plights of the plight of the Afghanistan population for the withdraw of US troops. Then if and when that happens the same people will completely discard them into the waiting hands of the Taliban and friends. Oh but don’t worry they will be getting thoughts of solidarity from people and “there in spirit” songs/poems. That is totality going to happen, I mean this is the change that you can believe in.

    The comments are even better

    You don’t have to be a hero anymore, President Obama. Stop the war now!!!

    Dear Mr President: Your troop increase did NOT “protect the population from insurgent violence”. It increased the death toll of Afghan civilians. Time to pull out!

    War is an inhumane and evil act. Do the right thing and stop the bloody war now!

    War never works. Bring the troops home now!

    Unjust wars like these makes deadly enemies out of friends. When we go under, don’t expect anyone to even get hankee for us. Our leaders are destroying this country. Where are all the protest? Can we as a nation really be so into ourselves that we cannot see the suffering this unjust nation is doing? I can’t buy into all this flag waving when this country is the cause of 99% of opression. We are the most violent nation on earth and we will pay for it very soon.

  • Rethink Afghansatan speaking for the dead.

    It seems that Rethink Afghanistan is now going to use the name of each casualty as a bullet point for leaving Afghanistan.

    What do we say to their families? This war’s not making us safer, it’s not worth the cost, and Osama bin Laden is gone. How many more troop deaths and civilian killings will we tolerate before Washington acts to end this war?

    President Obama and his advisers have promised repeatedly that significant troop reductions would begin in July 2011. With that time fast approaching, it’s time for the administration to declare the start of a swift withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan so this list doesn’t continue to grow to no good end. We need our loved ones and our tax dollars (more than $2 billion/week!) home.

    Except that I would like to know how do you know what each person’s view on Afghanistan was. I know that I would be upset if I was a casualty and my name ended up there because even if I knew that I would not made it back that it is something worth doing. It is the same reason that I will never use the names of the fallen as a support for us to stay there. The fallen should be remembered for their sacrifice and service. Not for how you can use their deaths for your views. More so when you id them by name.

  • Rethink Afghanistan: Think of the Children.

    Rethink Afghanistan posting with a duel idealism again. It comes down to the same ideas of veterans from the Vietnam War. That we are ether a victim or a killer of innocents. Something that seems to be surviving the years.

    With Bin Laden dead and al Qaeda driven from Afghanistan, there’s no justification for keeping a massive military campaign going in that country. But the U.S. continues to do so, and more civilians have paid the price. According to Reuters,

    “Foreign troops killed an Afghan child and wounded four others when responding to insurgent fire in volatile eastern Kunar province, the provincial Governor said on Monday, the third accidental killing of young civilians in less than a week.”

    These deaths, like the war itself, are senseless. Help us get the word out that it’s time to end the war and stop putting civilians at risk. Sign our petition at http://rethinkafghanistan.com/ and get the troops home.

    Senseless, given the recent suicide attacks and that fact that the Taliban threat is still real. Oh the Taliban is actively recruiting kids for suicide bombers as a alternative to harsh sharia law for crime such as losing a hand for stealing.

    The Taliban gave Noor Mohammad a simple choice – either they would cut off his hand for stealing or he could redeem himself and bring glory on his family by becoming a suicide bomber.

    Held in Taliban custody in a different village from his parents, after allegedly stealing mobile phones during a wedding party in his village, the 14-year-old boy went for the second option.

    He was soon being given basic lessons in how to use a handgun, which he would use to shoot the guards at a nearby US military base in Ghazni, a province in south-east Afghanistan which is considered the most violent in the country.

    He was also fitted with a suicide vest that covered his torso with explosives. He was told that when inside the base he should touch two trailing wires together, killing himself and as many US and Afghan soldiers as possible.

    The article goes into some of the kids being told that only American would die when the bombs go off. Consider that this is not the first time that information like this has been found, how do you handle in treating children like non-combative s when the enemy only sees them as walking bombs.

    But thinking that the Taliban and similar groups do actions like this and trying to deal with this threat is viewed as senseless. Oh it’s your fault be it directly or indirectly that child soldiers/suicide bombers are killing people.

    But considering the above the message is not getting through.

    if I roast my neighbor’s six year old son with a welding unit, people would be shocked, outraged and angry and call for my execution-but if I organize a drone bombing raid, or drop an incendiary bomb from 30,00 feet and kill the same child, then I’m a loyal and dutiful soldier-from the time I was small( 1940’s), I could never square this circle and after a lifetime of thinking about it, I still can’t. that’s why after four years of guarding Minuteman ICBMs, I became a pacifist for life..

    The profit motive is more important than people. That is the state of humanity, folks. When will we evolve out of this barbaric state? It won’t happen by itself. What will catalyze the paradigm shift? The USA going completely bankrupt? We’re already there, actually. The war profiteers don’t give a shit. We’re all just cannon fodder.

  • Basic washout takes Stolen valor to the next level.

    First I would like you to met Melanie Evalena Gutermuth.

    She claims of being in the Army for four years before moving on to College. Except that was a lie. She never even made it out of basic. But that has not stopped her from wearing the Uniform to events.

    But it does not stop there. She has made people believe that she was a military widow. Has lied to combat injured Veterans about being a Veteran.

    She has been a speaker on student veteran issues on colleges. She says again that she was in the military for four years. What she means is that she was in four Companies at Basic before they discharged her.

    Oh and she tired to get into ROTC and was removed from the program after not passing a PT test after a year. Oh and in the video were she talks about having some challenges, being banned from TSU is the main one.

    Summer 2007, Gutermuth began making complaints to the cadre stating that she thought she was unfairly removed. She had nearly every excuse in the book as to why her performance during the last year was so bad. It included everything from her broken finger, to her classmates all conspiring against her to have her removed, an apparent pregnancy which ended in a supposed miscarriage, and trouble at home with a spouse whom none of us had ever heard of before this point. Her correspondence with the cadre showed increasing signs of delusional thoughts and rational. Eventually, she was permanently banned from the ROTC building due to the cadre’s fear of an incident if she be allowed to return. Not long after this in the fall of 2007, word was received that she was also banned from the Texas State University campus for posing a danger to herself or others.

    Oh did I forget that she is disabled?

    But some of the discrimination is overt. Melanie Gutermuth, a disabled veteran and graduate student from Hanover, Md., travels with a service dog. “Most of the time, this is not a problem,” she said. “However, in recent months, that’s changed. People will say, ‘You look normal to me,’ because I’m not in a wheelchair or blind. Consequently, I have been excluded from some services, and charged pet fees for others.”

    It seems that people suspected but not to the level that it has gone.

    A real classy one this is.

    UPDATE Sporkmaster: Guess who got arrested recently. Looks like she was arrested for trespassing after being warned.

  • Fake CSM McAndreis/Anderson

    Ok I am going to start off with one that just caught my eye. Here we have a poser pretending to be a CSM with high rated awards such as the Silver Star, Soldier’s Medal. The Purple Heart, CIB, Ranger and SF tabs are there too. But I would like to know were he got the idea that any unit in the 3rd ID was airborne.

    It seems he was spotted over at Fake Scots Titles It was originally was due to the fact that this person was also pretending to be a Clan Chief.

    Primarily ‘Fake Scots Titles’ endeavours to expose those using Scots Titles they are not at liberty to use. However, during our investigations into the Fake Chief, Calum McAndreis/Anderson, we became suspicious of his claims of being a Command Sergeant Major with a Distinguished Service Cross & Legion of Merit – “Calum Anderson DSC, LOM

    Also they have asked that anyone in the US military reply to help detail what the errors are and help build a case against him.

    We would now welcome comments from those who know more about such matters than we do here in Scotland. We find it difficult to understand how someone born in 1959 could possibly be entitled to the insignia and medals being worn in this photograph some of with relate to the Vietnam War. Mr McAndreis’ arms also seem to have shrunk since retiring from the US military.

    We have been informed that he also proudly displays in his home signed and personalised certificates relating to the above awards. A search of the internet leads us to believe that such certificates are a great deal easier to obtain than one might have thought possible in such serious and emotive circumstances – http://www.military-certificates.com/ARMY_Awards.htm

    This information has now been made available to the 3rd Infantry Division, US Army, for their investigation and comment. Anyone else wishing to contribute to this enquiry is welcome to submit their insight either in confidence by contacting Fake Scots Titles or publicly on this page.

    Love the comment about the shrinking arms.

    Jonn Added: I blew up the decorations. I don’t know what branch insignia he’s wearing, but it certainly doesn’t justify the blue Infantry cord. And I don’t know how he figures he gets to add his rank and duty status to his name plate. WTF is up w/the Kuwait Liberation Medal on the bottom row all by it’s lonesome?

  • The real thinking behind Rethink Afghanistan.

    With the report from USA Today that the group Rethink Afghanistan was quick to jump on this. But I think that it should be noted that reasoning behind the group Rethink Afghanistan has nothing to do with Afghanistan.

    It should be interesting to know that is from a conversation that started almost two years ago with Derrick Crowe.

    U.S. Military Learning to Get Soldiers to Kill on Reflex, Drop Moral Reasoning

    Sounds like something recently published. But here is the the money shot.

    I reject one of your premises here: that firing a weapon could ever be a “right choice,” for any reason.

    But then it goes deep into religion and ideals. But this is a case of ideals conflicting with reality. Which in this case the field of play being Afghanistan.

    If you want to dispute the idea that Christians should be willing to die rather than kill an insurgent, I feel you have to do one of the following:

    1) Challenge my interpretation of the Good Friday narrative and of the Gospel stories in general and what they tell us about Jesus. If you’re not going to do that, I think you’ll have to

    2a) Challenge whether Jesus intended his followers to base their ethics on his teachings and example, or

    2b) Assert that Jesus was wrong, and that Christians in Iraq and Afghanistan should not be following his teachings or example. (Maybe this is your intent?)

    But it really comes down to the fact that this conflict of ideals will not allow for a military option to be viewed as successful , regardless of if it is or not. That is the purpose of Rethink Afghanistan.