Author: TSO

I don’t even like comics and this one (Prickly Cityby Scott Stantis) cracked me up. 

H/t Siggurdsson

OK peeps, my team has been resting comfortably since the season ended, and by ended, I mean roughly 7 mins into the season when Tom F’n Brady decided to spend more time with Supermodels and allowed his ACL to be busted up.  So, I decided to watch the 2 fight songs, and thus determined who would win.  Here they are.  I’d say they are about equal, what do you think?

BTW- This is the PETA ad you won’t be seeing during the Superbowl. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I am off to buy 3 tons of artichoke hearts and roasted red peppers.

UPDATE: If you need a good laugh to wash this nonsense away, there is an AWESOME, AWESOME, AWESOME video tribute to Joshua.  YOU MUST GO WATCH. It’s like dirty hippie meets A Mighy Wind.  Only they met at special ed schol. 

Ed Note: Dear Grove Press, please include this quote on your next edition of the book.
“Joshua Key and his book are more full of fecal matter than the honey wagon trucks sucking out the port-o-johns at Ft Polk. I’d rather have a suppository applied with a tomahawk missile than read this book again.”

I mentioned a week ago that I had purchase the book The Deserter’s Tale: The Story of an Ordinary Soldier who Walked Away from the War in Iraq, by Joshua Key as told to Lawrence Hill. I owe IVAW a big apology. They are not the phoniest of all phony veterans, this no-talent assclown traitor is.

First off, you should start by reading the excellent work of a milblogger from Korea at ROK Drop who absolute demolishes Key’s story. I am going to avoid rehashing everything that that blogger did, and stick to some other elements that stood out to me. Part I of this post will cover some absolute absurd crap in this book, and errors that no one in the military would ever make unless they were such a shitbag that they really didn’t even know what they were doing. For instance, would a real troop refer to a “gunny sergeant” in the army, or to a “M-16 Grenade Launcher” instead of a M203? Nah, I don’t think so. Some of the quotes are just hilarious. Like the dude allegedly trying to commit suicide by shooting himself in the leg with the grenade launcher. What dipshit doesn’t know that 40mm rounds have an arming distance? And, how about a hospital where needles and fetuses are scattered on the floor? And some Hollywood type pyrotechnics stuff that I believe he saw on Die Hard II.

Part II of this post will detail the lavish tongue bath that this piece of work received from the media, and such literary luminaries as Daily Kos. A future post will go more in depth on the book itself, but anyone with a modicum of military training or common sense would see how much fertilizer this dude is spreading. As I see it, the job of milbloggers is to set these stories right.

As we stabbed the dummies with our bayonets, one of our commanders stood on the podium and shouted into a microphone: “Kill! Kill! Kill the sand niggers!” [Ed Note: According to Key, 1/3 of his basic class at Ft Leonard Wood was African-American, and yet seemingly no one felt that this was inappropriate. Maybe because it never happened. It should be noted that Key is mighty prolific in his use of the SN phraseology.]

My sergeant let loose with his .50 cal Machine Gun. Blasting away with bullets about 6 inches long, he shot the car and brought it to a halt. I saw a trail of gas leaking from the car. The sergeant shifted his gun, aimed at the trail of gas, and shot again. The line of gas caught fire, and flew back toward the truck, and when it hit the gas tank, the truck exploded in a ball of fire.

I shuddered at the thought of needing treatment in such a filthy place. Needles were scattered all over the floors and by toilets, and I spotted blood and fetuses. I imagined that the tiny, half-formed bodies had come from miscrarriages, and I stopped to think about how hard the war had to be on the women of Iraq. Given that the hospital lacked the equipment to properly dispose of needles and fetuses, it gave me the shivers to imagine the conditions in which the living were treated. I wondered to what degree our occupation of the country had caused all these problems in the hospital, and admired Muhammad and the other doctors and nurses for trying to save the lives of diseased and injured children.

We knew one man who had already done it [committed suicide] and another who had spoken openly of suicide. Shortly before coming to al-Habbaniyah, a Specialist named Love loaded his M-16 Grenade Launcher [Ed Note: No such animal, vegetable or mineral exists, must be referring to an M203] while he was standing on guard duty at our compound. I was changing the oil on our armored personnel carrier at the time, only about 50 yards away when I heard the thump of the grenade and the soldier screaming. Sgt Fadinetz, a few other soldiers, and I ran over to Love. “What happened?” we asked him, but he would not say. We could see that Love had shot himself in the ankle and we called for help. He was taken away for medical care, and we never saw him again. It was a good thing the grenade had not exploded or he could have been killed.

For the rest of my time in Iraq I was not able to forget the scene of the decapitated bodies and the heads being kicked by American soldiers. Sometimes, in my dreams, disembodied heads plagued me with accusations. They told me what I was slowly realizing; that the American military had betrayed the values of my country. We had become a force for evil, and I could not escape the fact that I was part of the machine.

Regarding Timothy McVeigh:

It was an American – a former gunnery sergeant in the 1st Infantry division in the First Gulf War – who had blown up his own people. [Ed Note– The army does not have “gunnery sergeants” which is E7 in the Marine Corps, McVeigh was an E5. You’d have thought a graduate of Basic/AIT would fricken know the rank structure, no?]

________________________________________________

So, on to the Media reaction:

Ultimately, Key and his family made it to Canada, where they are awaiting word on whether they will be legally accepted for asylum. But the questions he raise, coupled with the Washington Post stories about treatment of veterans, will not go away. Why does the flesh-price of war always fall disproportionately on those with lower income? How much ingenuity and promise of these young men and women are being wasted on destruction? How much longer can we sweep the damaged under the rug so the American public doesn’t have to see the consequences of the actions of its leadership? And even for those not wounded, and not officially handed a PTSD diagnosis, how smooth a transition back into civil society can reasonably be expected from those who have been ordered to perpetrate atrocities – or bear silent witness to them? How many lives and souls will we squander as a nation before the madness ends? — Daily Kos [Ed Note: Kos was a cannon cocker in the Army, shouldn’t he be bright enough to know this story is bullshit?]

Keys personal crisis is also the crisis of his nation. – The Age, Australia

An exceptionally clear sighted and brave testimony. – Bokavisen, Norway

Stark and compelling…it caused me to re-assess my notions of duty…The Deserters Tale ought to be required reading for soldiers heading overseas. – The Globe and Mail

Destined to become part of the literature of the Iraq War…a substantial contribution to history. – the LA Times

Scenes of Apocalypse Now insanity [Ed Note: I know I was chanting “The Horror, The Horror” just reading this crap]…Key does the math, as should the reader: if this is what one soldier saw in seven months, imagine the sub total of the inhumanity being perpetrated in Iraq. – The Toronto Star.

Explain to me again why we pay these people to give us their opinions….

The must see Ballad of Joshua Key;

The reactions to this have ranged from REALLY mad, to the just bizarre.  “Curious” seems to think it didn’t even take place, or that it had 100 people.  There was a banquet with a meal, with at least 120 tables, each with 10 folks, and a head table with probably another 30.  So that portion had at a minimum 1230 people.  After that they cleared the hall and the “Ball” portion began, with many more folks.  I don’t know the numbers, I didn’t count.

 

Obama did not show.  I have no real opinion on it as much as everyone else.  Marg Helgerberger from CSI was there, Buzz Aldrin, a bunch of important folks.  All I know was I had dinner with a SGT from the 3ID that had been injured in Iraq.  He was preparing for a potential deployment to A-stan.  I was happier spending my time talking to him than listening to the comely Marg, or Buzz, or the President or anyone else.  I like the MoH guys, and that’s also who I talked to.

 

Now, I think the President should have come.  The tradition I think is a good one.  He didn’t come, so be it.  The event was wonderful, and no finer group of people (excepting me) could be found inside the Beltway.  But look, if Obama follows through on all his promises under his veterans portion of his website, then I will forgive the man for not coming.  I’ll take action over symbolism.  But I totally get people being pissed.  I don’t get the “it never happened” stuff, but I chalk it up to the same mentality as the faked moon landings.  For my part, I just hope Obama comes through.  I’m not bad mouthing him in saying he didn’t come.  He didn’t.  It’s up to you guys to decide what that means to you.  

 

All I know was I got to meet my heroes.  You couldn’t pay me enough to go to the MTV ball, but that floats some peoples boats.  For my part, I was happier spending time with the bus loads of guys that came in from Walter Reed, and the MoH guys that flew in across the country.  The President’s presence or lack thereof didn’t ruin our time in the slightest.  I just hope he won’t forget us when budget time comes.

 

PS: In case anyone gets the wrong story and runs with it (saving you here Curious) this was a different ball that was cancelled.

 

PPS: Oh, and I totally applaud the President for going to the CinC ball.  But, just so everyone knows the difference, that Ball is for active military, this one is for veterans, so they ARE NOT the same bodies.  There is some overlap, since you can be active and a veteran, but largely the bodies are different, with different needs.  Hearken back to the WRAMC debacle, and everyone blaming the VA.  WRAMC is military, not VA.  Same applies here.

And lastly, I saw this comment over at LGF:

a Coyote 1/21/09 1:53:50 pm
Can’t blame him. I’d feel very small in a room full of my superiors. He doesn’t qualify to be a dustball in that room with heroes.

Dude, that’s how I felt sitting there. My buddy Superbowl6Romeo and I even discussed why we weren’t wearing our CIB pins. Having a CIB is great, but when next to the MOH…. It’s like showing up to a monster truck rally in a pimped out Yugo.

I will have more to say about his response, but we have received this email from Camp Delta commissar Chris Arendt:

I just wanted to thank you for your hard working investigative journalism. I like your blog the best. I’d love the opportunity to explain any of the issues you bring up. Maybe I should try, or cower to your absolute superiority. I’ll try. I did say that some of the members of my unit were psychotic. I meant it. I meant it like psychologists mean it. I think they didn’t care about people. I think they liked hurting other people. I think you might be like that too. But I haven’t met you.

Escort Control was definitely a funny post, and I’m glad you appreciate how out of place I was at my pay grade, because it caused me a great deal of stress. If you get those emails from my unit you should ask them about it. Chances are it will not be one of the psychopaths, it definitely won’t be the pedophile who was already apprehended.

And we did plenty of i.r.f.’s to try just about every combination of hairstyles, but you probably think they were just rag headed terrorists so you don’t care about that, do you? I hope your unit hates you. I’m going to make it my goal to get your soldiers into the IVAW.

I do this so that more people don’t die for corporate interests, so if you care about those boys, shut up and let me work.

SPC Arendt

Jonn added: For those of you who’ve forgotten Arendt, here’s his picture. We won’t be disputing his chest full of medal;

The insurgency is not noble. They are not, as some would have you believe, just like the Americans fighting the British for their freedom. This isn’t a popular opinion, because many peace activists fear that by talking about the evils of the insurgency, we’ll arouse sympathy for the war. Some even call it ‘racist’, saying that they don’t have the right to ‘defend themself’.

This is morally disingenuous. The Iraqi insurgency bears little similarity to our revolutionary fighters. Our revolutionary fighters never went around cutting off people’s heads, or killing women for talking to soldiers, or throwing acid in children’s faces. We didn’t target civilians in the revolutionary war. They weren’t full of religious fundamentalists-and since when has the activist community supported religious fundamentalists?

We do not have to beatify evil men in order to say that the war is wrong, or that it hurts America, or our military, or our national defense, or even that it hurts innocents. And any peace activist that mourns and condemns the death of Iraqis while refusing to mourn and condemn the death of soldiers is a hypocrite.

I remember once holding a fellow soldier as he cried about the young kid he had to kill because the kid was aiming a weapon at the soldiers. It’s a terrible thing. Is it the soldier’s fault? No, it’s not. It’s whoever put a weapon of lethal force in the hands of a child and told them to go hunting Americans.

Picture of this neo-facist after the jump.
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