Author: TSO

I don’t mean “Duty” or abject sense of “honor” or anything like that, I mean more like what things drove you towards service?

For me it was two things. The first was the book “Ender’s Game” which was largely responsible for landing me in a military school. But the second was the 1987-1990 TV series “Tour of Duty.” To this day when I hear Paint it Black I want to head off into the jungle and hunt Charlie.

Anyone else have some sort of thing that pushed them in this direction? Probably most of you were relatives, but I had none that served except my grandfather and he never even told me he served until I was in.

Gee, if only someone had seen the signs of this coming….

Just as Edward J. Snowden was preparing to leave Geneva and a job as a C.I.A. technician in 2009, his supervisor wrote a derogatory report in his personnel file, noting a distinct change in the young man’s behavior and work habits, as well as a troubling suspicion.

The C.I.A. suspected that Mr. Snowden was trying to break into classified computer files to which he was not authorized to have access, and decided to send him home, according to two senior American officials.

But the red flags went unheeded. Mr. Snowden left the C.I.A. to become a contractor for the National Security Agency, and four years later he leaked thousands of classified documents. The supervisor’s cautionary note and the C.I.A.’s suspicions apparently were not forwarded to the N.S.A. or its contractors, and surfaced only after federal investigators began scrutinizing Mr. Snowden’s record once the documents began spilling out, intelligence and law enforcement officials said.

“It slipped through the cracks,” one veteran law enforcement official said of the report.

Another Hasan, everyone too afraid to speak up.

Sad news from New Jersey:

In death, Nicholas Oresko received a farewell befitting the hero he was in life.

The Bayonne native, the nation’s oldest Medal of Honor recipient when he died Oct. 4 at age 96 at an Englewood hospital, was buried Thursday with military honors reserved for the highest-ranking officers and enlisted soldiers with the highest award for bravery.

His public memorial at Bergen Community College’s Anna Maria Ciccone Theatre in Paramus drew hundreds of mourners, from three-star generals and fellow Medal of Honor recipients to children who attended the elementary school named in his honor in his hometown.

More lined the route that his casket, carried in a “deuce and a half” World War II Army truck, traveled along Paramus Road from an earlier private service to the college auditorium.

The video is outstanding:

His citation reads:

M/Sgt. Oresko was a platoon leader with Company C, in an attack against strong enemy positions. Deadly automatic fire from the flanks pinned down his unit. Realizing that a machinegun in a nearby bunker must be eliminated, he swiftly worked ahead alone, braving bullets which struck about him, until close enough to throw a grenade into the German position. He rushed the bunker and, with pointblank rifle fire, killed all the hostile occupants who survived the grenade blast. Another machinegun opened up on him, knocking him down and seriously wounding him in the hip. Refusing to withdraw from the battle, he placed himself at the head of his platoon to continue the assault. As withering machinegun and rifle fire swept the area, he struck out alone in advance of his men to a second bunker. With a grenade, he crippled the dug-in machinegun defending this position and then wiped out the troops manning it with his rifle, completing his second self-imposed, 1-man attack. Although weak from loss of blood, he refused to be evacuated until assured the mission was successfully accomplished. Through quick thinking, indomitable courage, and unswerving devotion to the attack in the face of bitter resistance and while wounded, M /Sgt. Oresko killed 12 Germans, prevented a delay in the assault, and made it possible for Company C to obtain its objective with minimum casualties.

RIP sir. /salute

Apparently there is an event on Sunday down at the Mall in DC, so if you happen to be in the area, maybe you want to take part.

I want you to circle the date of Sunday, October 13, 2013. And then I want you to help “circle the wagons” on that day to help protect and defend our brave veterans who risked their lives for our freedom – and now are being barred from visiting the memorials erected to honor their deeds. In a mean-spirited fit of selfish anger, Barack Obama has shut down our nation’s war memorials. And he has declared open war on our honored veterans! The World War II memorial … the Vietnam Veterans Memorial … the Korean War Veterans Memorial – Obama has shut them all down to force his will on the House of Representatives and frankly, to get revenge on the American people who oppose Obamacare and his other naked power grabs. – See more at: http://vetmarch.com/#join

I hate when people put “million” in the title because you sort of are dooming yourself from jumpstreet.  I’d think even 50,000 would be a success, but when you say millions, it seems like you have 1/20th of what you said you would.  Either way, should be interesting.

 

I mentioned earlier that I had lost a LT last week.  Technically he wasn’t mine I suppose, but as the company RTO for a while I dealt with him very, very often.  I won’t say we were “friends” but whenever we were together we bonded over our shared New England heritage, and love of literature.  His death hit me hard.  Perhaps a lot harder than even I can admit, since I was awake at 3am last night still just laying there thinking about seeing his goofy smile.

Well, the Sniper didn’t help that today.  What follows is his story about going to the funeral.  CPT Yacubian will be buried at Arlington National  Cemetery  and I look forward to spending time with him in the future.  I don’t understand his death, and haven’t come to grips with it, but I will always remember him for the smile.

(Captain Yacubian is on the left, the Captain on the right was my incredibly awesome Company Executive Officer.)

There are numerous things that can be described as bittersweet. Bidding farewell to your children as they leave the nest, parting with good friends after a visit, moving to a new location to start a new life; all of these combine the sadness of loss combined with the hope of something new and exciting filled with opportunity and potential. Some things, however, are ever more bittersweet because they are full of the finality of a life ended early mixed with the fleeting happiness of seeing old comrades, friends, and brothers whose presence is made even sweeter and more precious by the knowledge that they will disappear shortly after you see them. That is what today was.

(more…)

I assume it is run by some menopausal woman who is having a bad day, it’s not entirely clear. But now they are sending people to my email. Which is actually good, because I can explain exactly what “Shooter Jobs” did.

So let’s backtrack, remember this Meme that was written by my friend “The Sniper”:

You’ll notice it has no logo on it. That’s because The Sniper wanted it freely shared, to any and all. But what he found today was something different. See, “Shooter Jobs” took that Meme, and above it in the black area just photoshopped in “www.shooterjobs.com”. (This is actually like the third time this has happened with this meme, everyone else was an adult about it.)

You see the difference of course. Sniper wanted to share it without attribution and let whoever wanted to see it see it. It encompassed all the things that made what we did as infantrymen easily understood. What he DIDN’T want was a for-profit company, “Shooter Jobs” to use it as an advertisement. If someone can’t see the difference between a meme to be shared because it espouses the value of honor among troops, and using someone else’s work to advertise your company, there’s not much I can do about it.

So, Sniper asked me to contact them to take it down. I did. The reason he asked me to do it is he is actually at the memorial service for a lieutenant we served with in Afghanistan who died last week. It’s been weighing heavily on all of us, so when Sniper saw someone appropriating his work, he asked me to get them to take their logo off it.

So now I’ve had a back and forth with the bitchy woman who runs their site, who apparently can’t understand the differences I tried to explain above. Apparently the woman on the other end doesn’t understand the subtle difference between sharing something, and affixing your own logo to it. To wit, I give you what she is selling to her minions:

Warning to other pages. If you post this photo then the lawyer of Michael St. Jacques will write you and say that his client has this meme copyrighted. It’s his meme. He made it and no one else can post it without his permission damn it. His lawyer is Mark Seavey, you can contact him at [my email] and tell him what you think about him and his client. Michael you have been credited for this picture just how you demanded buddy. The credit is all yours.

Here’s the thing, I made it clear no fewer than 3 times to this woman that it wasn’t credit he wanted, what he wanted was for them not to appropriate it as their own.

But then she banned everyone from explaining that, which is what you would expect from real hard chargers with a name like “Shooter Jobs.”

I did time attached to DynCorps. I love the PMFs in general. But it’s asstards like this person who give them a bad name.

 

BRIEF UPDATE:  Shooter Jobs too it down, but I wanted to note something else.  I largely avoided discussing the Copyright aspect here, because in my mind it was complicated.  As is usual, one of our readers is WAY smarter than me, and far more eloquent.  So, I wanted to post “gitarcarver” comment from below that lays it out way better than I could.

NSOM,

You are incorrect. In 1989 the copyright law was changed to where one does not have to affix a copyright or tm symbol to claim ownership of the work.  The copyright is still in place no matter what. By law, the copyright is “birthed” at the time the idea is put to a medium – ie paper, a recording, a disc, etc

People in the Facebook thread claimed that as Sniper had not created the picture, he could not claim a copyright.  That too is false.

Sniper’s attachment of words to to picture substantially “transformed” the work.  It gave the picture a different meaning.  That transformative work is protected under copyright laws.

The company merely adding their name does not transform the work.  They did not create a new work – they merely stole an existing work.

Finally, copyright laws are negative / exclusionary laws.  Copyright laws do not grant who MAY publish or use a work, they say who may not use the work.

Sniper was correct and the company was wrong.  I suspect the removal of the Facebook thread was due to a counselor saying, “are you nuts?  We stole his work!”

People need to understand that just because something is on the net does not mean it is “public domain.

As one of our noted geneaologists has noted of late, I am a mixed breed anglo mongrel of inferior genes. That last part is highly debateable, but I am Scottish and Irish. I tend to embrace the Irish side for some reason I can’t quite figure out except that they have a day of drinking devoted to them, and that always seems good.

Nonetheless, a buddy on Facebook was noting this weekend that he went to some Highland Games in NH this weekend, and saw my favorite Scottish band. As I’ve always said, if you only see one band all year that has four drummers and one bagpiper, make it Albannach. Just how much do they rock?

Anyway, there seem to be a ton of these Highland Games going on right now. My friend The Sniper took part in one a few weeks ago. Here he is throwing a hammer or somesuch thing.

Anyway, he also tossed a caber, and it hurt so much listening to him tell the story that I went home and chewed 3 percosets. Anyway, he was also telling me how the Highland Games are embracing wounded servicemembers. He told me of a double amputee that was tossing around the telephone poles.

That takes some serious stones, no?