Author: TSO

Since our traffic today is roughly what one would expect if this were a Heart concert wherein the musicians played in the nude, allow me a short digression from our regularly scheduled program to continue bashing New York. The City itself, the horrible sports teams, the loathesome and nefarious creatures who populate those teams, and the belligerant and belicose pedarasts who root for them.

In that vein, I would like to congratulate noted Republican, World of Warcraft player, and Demigod of all Bostonians, Curt Schilling for winning the vaunted title of “The Big Apple’s Most Hated Opponents.” I can’t even imagine how excited Curt must be today. Nor how much disappointment must live in the hearts of sports fans from that execrable state. (Like my friend Bellavia.)

Other notables on the list include my boy Papelbon, the dreamy Tom F’n Brady, Jason Veritek (pictured below with the delicious Soxette Heidi Watney who he may or may not be competing in the olympic bedathalon with) and evil puppet master (a higher sith lord than even Darth Cheney) Bill Belichick. I suspect that they hate Belichick more because he keeps stealing New York women to add to his stable than anything else.

Congrats to the good guys for being despised by New York!

This story kinda pisses me off.

Look, if I thought Obama deserved it, I would jump all over this like Oprah on a Christmas Ham, but damn people. It is the White House, if they tell you to be there at 9:30 am, you should be there by 7:30. It’s not the polaroid shack at the mall. When I went to the oval office on my birthday a few years ago, I got to the gate 2 hours early, even though my office is precisely 700 meters from the White House. All those kids crying should go and kick the teacher in the kneecap, because if you don’t plan on traffic tie ups in DC then you really need your head examined.

And anyone that thinks Obama had any control over this is ridiculous. You want to bash Obama, I give you Rolling Thunder not expecting Obama greeting.

And I don’t care if these booger eaters were 7 seconds late, I wouldn’t let them in. On time means 5 minutes early, standing in formation. Your right foot is not to move.

Sort of an interesting and insightful discussion going on with regards to my other post about the New Yorker and the author Dan Baum. I wasn’t particularly clear about my hostility there, but it was that the editors at the New Yorker, who are undoubtably very intellectual guys, aren’t well versed in military stuff. Not a slam on them, and not on Dan Baum either, who from the comments on his website actually seemed to be engaging in an altruistic endeavor to get our word out. It was more a indictment of the New Yorker as a whole that they haven’t hired a guy like Alex Horton or someone else who knows the language if the military, and wants a career in that field. I have NO DESIRE WHATSOEVER to be an actual journalist. One comment of Mr. Baum’s in particularly has me somewhat philosophical about our overall goal, to wit:

Christ almighty, listen to you children calling each other names. And you’re the guys you want us reporters calling up to check facts?

Although I’m not entirely sure that calling people names precludes one from knowing facts, I take more issue with him suggesting I want reporters to call me up for facts. Actually, I even feel bad arguing at all with him, since again, he seems largely blameless in this whole affair.

I was interviewed yesterday at the National Press Club in my official capacity with my day job, and that showed up in several news items today. (Albeit not big ones, so don’t bother looking.) I wanted the reporters there to get the facts about what I said, but I didn’t want them to rely on what I said about extrinsic facts to write their article. I’m an advocate, not a universal fact-checker and truth relayer. If I said the Earth is located 10 miles from the Sun, I expect them to verify that I said that by asking me. But also, they should verify that the Earth is IN FACT 10 miles from the sun with someone who has a clue what he is talking about. Don’t take my word on it, shit, I don’t know nothin ’bout no ‘stronomy.

So, what is a blog for in my opinion? 3 things to me. 1) It offers me some catharsis on stuff that bugs me, phony vets etc. 2) We get to tell stories that the media won’t be covering, and/or provide some context if anything is missing, like Colonel Evan, or more on Rick Duncan, or talking about the WLF. As for the third….

This is how I envision Jonn, COB and me with regards to print and televised media….

OK, so I just talked to Jonn. Or rather, Doped up Jonn, who is in the recovery room at Walter Reed and he said I should throw this up. It is from Christopher Raissi, who I don’t know much about except that he was a Marine, and served in Iraq. He’s also incredibly humorous from his facebook comments. I believe I heard at one time he is a libertarian who lives in Atlanta, but I may be making that up. Anyway, as a service to all IVAW members scrambling for the nearest life rafts, we once again offer you a place to vent your frustrations. Chris, welcome my friend, and hope you start commenting here. We might not agree with you, and the readers may be rough from time to time, but you are always welcome here.

Resignation letter after the jump. (I haven’t even read it yet, so this is a breaking story.)
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I’ve beat on Senator Warner in the past, and would rather no one do it here in the comments if you please, because he has graciously invited readers of TAH and other military supporters to a viewing of the movie “Bedford: The Town They Left Behind” which will be shown at the Capitol on Tuesday, June 2, at 7:00 pm, with a reception at 6:00 pm. I have a few things to say about this, but hope you will first watch this trailer:

OK, first off, I’m guessing the elderly man in this video is Elisha Ray Nance, whose passing I lamented a month ago, and who was further eulogized by The Sniper in two separate posts. I hope he got a chance to see it before he reported for muster in the heavenly legions.

Secondly, I know SFC Holt, and he’s a hell of a guy. He’s about what you’d expect from the valley, just a down to earth country guy. One hell of a sense of humor. Didn’t know he’d outkicked his coverage on a wife, but good for him. The helicopter crash she refers to in the trailer was really bad. She actually has some facts wrong, the crash was in Ghazni, where our unit was, and the bird was enroute to Baghram. I flew that bird probably 10-12 times, short hop. But, a sand storm hit, the bird went Tango Uniform, and 16 men and women of the 25th lost their lives. There were no 29th Personnel on board, but the families didn’t know that back in Virginia. The phones were locked down, pending military notification, and the families on the 3rd Batt, 116th were going nuts at home worrying. Just bad juju all around.  I assume the movie will talk about the guys we did lose (RIP: SSG Cherry and SGT Beasley), and they are who I will be thinking about this weekend.

Anyway, I’m going, and taking my battle buddy SGT Owens with me. Southern Dem is cheerleading so he can’t make it, but if there are any other folks out there in the DC area who would like to go, I think we could have a good time, and I would like to pack the place, so that the men and women of Bedford know that we appreciate what they did then, and support them now.

You can RSVP over at Senator Warner’s website.

Postcard invite:

On Edit: Here is your humble TAH blogger displaying his yingus yangus patch (“One weekend a month, 52 weeks a year”) while in the ‘stan.

Background is over at Blackfive, but from Dan Baum’s New Yorker article entitled The Casualty I give you…..

His score on the Army entrance exam wasn’t high enough to get him into electronics, but it qualified him to be an “eightyeight mike”—a truck driver.

And….

Two decorations hold particular fascination for soldiers who are shipping out. The Combat Infantryman Badge, or C.I.B., is awarded for spending at least sixty days under fire. The Purple Heart goes to soldiers wounded by enemy action. Together, they mean that a soldier has experienced the essence of warfare. What soldiers want when they envision the Purple Heart is to get shot, patched up, and returned to their platoons in one piece. When Cain left for Iraq, he knew he’d get his C.I.B. But he also boasted to his mother that he’d win a Purple Heart.

Oh yeah? The 88M got a CIB? Guaranteed eh? Man, I wasted a shitload of time going 11B when I could have gone 88M just to get the CIB, eh? Can a cook get it? How about a LTC/MSG Nurse?

Vigorously factchecked no doubt by this dude:

As usual, a great internal philosophical debate within IVAW is taking place on Facebook. The intricacies (and idiocies) of it are not important, but one of our natural enemies, Chris Capps Schubert did manage to insert a funny, and by comparing internal struggles in VVAW and IVAW to this scene from The Life of Brian:

I’ll further it along by stating that IVAW as a whole is rather like the troublesome villager from whom poor Arthur sought some INTEL in vain:

Anyone else have any IVAW appropriate Monty Python clips?

Go read it all.

It’s become far too easy to make accusations like these [of Seymour Hersh and the Dick Cheney Death Squads], far too easy to casually slander members of the armed forces and far too easy for those doing so to back-pedal, or claim they’re blaming the leaders of these troops – that these murderous thugs are as much victims of those leaders as are the corpses they’ve left in their wake.

It’s far too easy to merely shake your head in disgust at the entire state of affairs, shrug and wander away. It’s harder to fight back – it always is. The miscalculation made by those who’d continue their attacks time after time after time was to assume veterans wouldn’t notice they were being branded, or that they would welcome that “victim” status, or simply choose the easy shrug and walk away.

They guessed wrong.