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

Author: Sporkmaster

  • Shooting at Fort Gillem. One Soldier dead.

    A very recent story coming from the US Army Times reports that a reserve soldier died after being shot by another reserve soldier.

    An Army reservist was shot to death and another was in custody Thursday at a post south of Atlanta that is a gathering place for area reserve units.

    Army spokesman Col. Dan Baggio said the victim died at the Army Reserve Center located on Fort Gillem. He could not offer specifics about the shooting that happened between 4:30 and 5 p.m.

    Authorities said they were withholding the names of the soldiers until they can notify family members, but did say both were men.

    There does not seem to be any known motive at this time.

  • Logic Fail

    Logic Fail

    Yea, found this on Face-book and could not resist commenting on it. So this post is a full reply to a response that I got back. This is insulting beyond words. I am not sure about the rest of those that went but I made sure that I helped the people there when I could. Also it does not take into account that there are many photos like the one below.

    But we are the one’s without humanity because we are on guard due to the fact that the Taliban, Hamas, Hezbollah, Al Qaeda sending women, children and the infeasible to the slaughter as human bombs/shields?

  • Worthy of note.

    Well I am back from EFMB, I got a no go on the land nav so I plan on going again in 2011 when it comes to Fort Richardson. But before I start talking about someone before anything else.

    I would like to introduce to you then PV2 Philip Canafax a medic for the 1st Armored Division 1st Infantry Division. I found out about him from his Sgt Romano(sp?) his immediate supervisor.

    I would talk about the fact that when Canafax arrived at the unit there was not enough time to train him as he would have liked. So he gave him three medical books to study in the two weeks before they where going to Iraq. Every time he saw Canafax he would demand him to show the books and prove that he was actually reading them.

    Also he drove a point to never let anyone go without medical treatment. The results of his actions should be proof enough that he took it to heart. Another medic that was there said that they had to restrain him because he wanted to drive the injured to the base even though he was also wounded.

    EDIT
    Philip Canafax : “I’d say restrain was a strong word, strongly convince maybe.”

    So after December 2008, he was at a WTB unit for about six months recovering, during that time Sgt Romano said that he was getting worried about him getting too thin. He even thought about breaking him out of WTU. But he found out that he was working at the hospital and was being well fed. He said that Canafax was loving life and just recently purchased a Harley-Davidson bike.

    So I promised Sgt Romano that I would write about him when I got a chance.

    I will write about how the EFMB went shortly.

    EDIT

    I wrote to him and got a reply

    Cool, I haven’t talked to Sgt Romano for a bit. I ended up being in the WTU at BAMC for a year unfortunately but now I have returned to full duty and work at the hospital full time. No Harley for me though, people drive too crazy in San Antonio, rather not temp fate another time.

  • The goal for the next two weeks.

    I will be going on TDY for the EFMB at Fort Wainwright for my first attempt at it. We shall see how it goes.

  • But we knew that already.

    We just need you to say it yourself.

    First meet Greta Berlin Seems like your standard Professor with many different credentials in various academic subjects and teaching it on to the next generation.

    Well seems that she was a major player in organizing the ships to try to run past the Blockade. But it gets interesting with this quote from her about why the ships did not dock in Egypt.

    “This mission is not about delivering humanitarian supplies, it’s about breaking Israel’s siege on 1.5 million Palestinians,” she said.

    So it was never about getting aid into Gaza but “helping” the Palestine People Hamas from the blockade.

    Of course Hamas is all in support of these suppliers of blank market crayons.

    “The occupation’s threat to prevent the Freedom Flotilla from arriving in the besieged Gaza Strip is Zionist piracy and a violation of international law,” senior Hamas leader Ismail Radwan said in a statement.

    “The occupation is concerned about these ships… because they grant legitimacy to engagement with the Palestinian government and confirm that the attempts to isolate Hamas have failed,” he added.

    So in the end it is all about politics and nothing more.

  • Your imagination is bad for you.

    Considering that it is Memorial Weekend, that one of the things that is a emotional high is coming home on leave. Even getting back home from the tour does not have the same feeling. So even though that this story is a few months old it it worth bringing up.

    Long story short a Solider on leave from Afghanistan managed to ruin that day before he even left the airport.

    SEATTLE – An Army specialist from Fort Lewis is apologizing to his family and community for lying about being injured in Afghanistan, lying about his rank and wearing military honors that he hadn’t earned.

    Spc. Jordan Olson, 22, arrived at Outagamie County Regional Airport in Wisconsin to a hero’s welcome Saturday. Along with Olson’s family, members of the American Legion, VFW and Patriot Guard were waiting to greet him.

    What did he fake exactly?

    According to the Army, Olson:
    # Is a specialist assigned to the 5th Battalion, 3rd Field Artillery Regiment, 17th Fires Brigades, not a sergeant as he told The P-C on Saturday. Also, there is no promotion in the works for Olson that would allow him to claim that rank.
    # Was deployed to Afghanistan with his unit last October. His field artillery battery is attached to an engineering unit near Kandahar, where it is conducting route clearance operations.
    # Was not injured in combat.
    # Returned briefly to Joint Base Lewis-McChord before heading to Wisconsin for his leave.
    # Has no reason to wear an 82nd Airborne Division patch. His battalion is not attached to the division.
    # Has not been awarded the Parachutist Badge, according to his military records. Additionally, there is no mention in his records that he attended U.S. Army Airborne School.
    # Has not been authorized to wear the Combat Action Badge.

    When confronted about this his reply was:

    “Just wanted my family to be proud of me and … overstepped some boundaries I shouldn’t have overstepped,” said Olson.

    Olson says he is going to personally apologize to the VFW, American Legion and Patriot Guard. He says he also plans to seek some help.

    “It’s a self-esteem issue. I think I should go see what I can do about getting taken care of myself and having better self-esteem for myself,” said Olson.

    Olson could be prosecuted under the Stolen Valor Act of 2005, which prohibits claiming military honors that were not earned.

    Yea I would like how it would explain this one.

    The local newspaper in his hometown, the Appleton Wisconsin Post Crescent, published some photos from Olson’s return showing him with his mom and a young woman identified as his fiancee.

    Trouble is – he’s got a wife at Fort Lewis.

    Once again major thanks to POW.Network for the story.

  • Rethink Afghanistan really needs to get a clue.

    I mean ever since I found out about the group from Derrick Crowe I have disagreed with most everything that they have put out. But more and more the statements seem to be more about wanting money for their own projects rather then any concern for Afghanistan. (Also I do not know why DC still is a member the IVAW on Facebook with links to “notyourSolider” on his Word Press page”)

    But stories like these really show where the priorities are for these groups.

    A trillion dollars is a baffling amount of money. If you write it out, use twelve zeros. Even after serving in Congress for over a decade, I, like most Americans, still have a hard time wrapping my head around sums like this. (Yet the Stimulus Bill was passed this year and she does not seemed as phased by it)

    This month, we mark the seventh anniversary of President Bush’s declaration of “mission accomplished” in Iraq, yet five American soldiers have been killed there in May alone. Iraqis went to the polls nearly three months ago, but the political system remains so fractured that no party has been able to piece together a coalition. There are some indications that sectarian violence is again on the rise.

    Or another one with the same theme.

    What could we have purchased with this $1 trillion? Today, we might be enjoying the fruits of a green economy, spurred by New Deal-like investments in wind and solar. Perhaps we would have created a single-payer health care system and used this $1 trillion to provide health security to every man, woman, and child in the United States for an entire year. Or, we might have made the smart investments in our domestic law enforcement capabilities and homeland security apparatus to provide true protection from Al Qaeda and others who would wish us harm. Sadly, we’ll never know, because our political leadership never explored alternative means of achieving peace, such as emphasizing rigorous regional diplomacy, and instead overextended our military forces abroad.

    If sacrificing progress at home wasn’t bad enough, it is now clear that the injection of our troops into a 35 year civil war is actually fueling the insurgency in Afghanistan and further destabilizing the region.

    Because in all of it it comes down not on if our efforts are helping, not on what will happen to the population when we leave, but how “cost effective” it is. I mean it is really all about the money.

    I know that I will still have disagreements on what should be done with DC and Our Journey to Smile who is working over there right now. But at least they seem to care about the Afghanistan people there. But these are the people that are going to be left high and dry to the Taliban. That is one of the reasons that I stopped watching OJS videos of the people of Afghanistan because I have a bad feeling that these people are going the be killed or worse.

    In the end if we leave this issue unfinished we will be dealing with it again in twenty years from now. Oh and the reason we will have lost it because “We” did not care because they were brown people.

  • BP Coast Guard?

    I got a link off of FaceBook that makes a claim that the US Coast Guard is running interference for those that are trying to report on the BP spill and the oil that is being left on the Gulf. “This is BP’s rules, it’s not ours,”Except that there is more to the story.

    Because I was following this on my phone I could not watch the video and it had trouble going to a second link. So I was on the assumption that the reporters where trying to get too close to the original oil platform and the Coast Guard was preventing them from entering the area. But it seems that the Coast Guard was preventing the reports entry into a undetermined gulf coast location. Well maybe it was the Coast Guard.

    When CBS tried to film a beach with heavy oil on the shore in South Pass, Louisiana, a boat of BP contractors, and two Coast Guard officers, told them to turn around, or be arrested.

    “This is BP’s rules, it’s not ours,” someone aboard the boat said. Coast Guard officials told CBS that they’re looking into it.


    Watch CBS News Videos Online

    So the entire story that claims that the that the US Coast Guard is trying run interference for BP is based on the claim that two people on the boat were USCG Officers. Yep that’s it. We also know that people never lie about military or government service.

    But that is not stopping people from accepting that as gospel.

    This is wrong in so many ways I hardly know where to start. What happened to laws about free access to navigable waters? Since when does BP get to arbitrarily impose LAW on free U.S. citizens? Why are the Coast Guard, a branch of our Armed Forces taking orders from a FOREIGN company?

    Also considering that BP made public a video of the underground oil pipe break almost a full week before this story came out. What did people think BP was trying to hide. I mean really.