Someone sends this video from France24 of Andre Shepherd, our favorite refugee awaiting the decision of the German government on his status. The French are probably just glad he didn’t seek refugee status with them.
A former Pacific reserve police officer was sentenced Tuesday to probation and morality counseling for false claims of military honors.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Brian A. Tsuchida in Seattle told 57-year-old Steve A. Bennest of Sumner that his actions were demeaning to veterans.
Documents filed in court show Bennest repeatedly claimed orally and in writing that he had been awarded the Purple Heart and Bronze Star for military heroism. Records show he served in the Army in 1969-72 but was not awarded those medals.
They need to turn Bennest over to a group of veterans for his “counseling”. Some of those guys from the Patriot Guard Riders would probably take the job.
Parliamentarians Olivia Chow and Borys Wrzesnewskyj traveled to the Naval Consolidated Brig Miramar in San Diego, where Long was serving a 15-month sentence after pleading guilty last August to a reduced charge of desertion.
During the 45-minute meeting, the government officials were not allowed to take notes or record the interview. Chow said Long appeared in good spirits and did not complain, but told them that he missed his young son in Canada.
“My heart sank, it was very heavy,” Chow said after the meeting. “I was angry that Canada deported him.”
I’m angry that you deported the loser, too. You should have kept him and tried to get him to work off the money he cost the Canadian tax payers. Now he’s down here suckin’ off our wallets.
I only sat through about an hour of it all so far, but the peace-nazis are working overtime to get the blather from yesterday of Winter Soldier Europe on the internet. They’ve already posted some of the testimony. And it’s pretty much like their Silver Spring horsedung. They make excuses for their childish behavior and they really have nothing to add to the discussion about the war except their own personal feelings. I’ve put the “testimony” of Shepherd and Baddorf below the jump. (more…)
I’ve seen Robert Ward Reilly at several IVAW events including the Winter Soldier hearings last March (a year ago today, as a matter of fact). He looks pretty scraggly in that picture, but believe me, he looks worse in person. Notice the cammie jungle fatigues cut into short-sleeves and the boonie hat so that he looks like a real Hollywood version of a Vietnam veteran. Yeah, well, he’s not a Vietnam veteran. He was in Germany for his whole tour – that’s not news, actually. About four years ago Tim Blair blew his cover. Reilly said he never claimed to be a Vietnam veteran;
I served, proudly, for 32 months in Germany in the 1st & 16th(Rangers) as a mortar gunner, starting in 1971, when I volunteered for the infantry at age 17.(With 2 full years left in the ground war in Viet Nam)
I went where the army sent me…that what soldiers do. I could have just as easily been sent to Viet Nam, but I got lucky.
Well, that part about “two full years left in the ground war” isn’t exactly true. Reilly joined in October 1971 – ground forces in Vietnam were being reduced and by August 1972 all combat forces had been withdrawn.
That “(Rangers)” in Reilly’s statement jumped out at me when I first read it, so I did a little research and found that the 16th Infantry Regiment call themselves “Iron Rangers” and that’s why Reilly added it to his bio – hoping to scare every one into thinking he was a Ranger.
It’s like the 7th Infantry putting (Cottonbalers) on their unit designation because that’s their nickname (from the Battle of New Orleans when they fought the British from behind cotton bales). Could we assume that they’re actually qualified to bale cotton?
The actual ranger battalions used to be part of the 75th Infantry regiment (before they became the 75th Ranger Regiment) and did use the “(Ranger)” in their official designation. Reilly seems to be manipulating that fact.
Just to make sure, I requested a FOIA on Reilly;
No Jump school, no Ranger school – just Reilly’s manipulation of the language for the ignorant civvies.
By the way, I did Reilly a favor before I posted this FOIA. The Records Center left his social security number on the form and I blackened it out. We’re not in the business of screwing people – just publishing the truth about the more disingenuous ones.
In his AAR of last year’s Winter Soldier in Silver Spring, MD, Robert Ward Reilly writes that he can identify with the IVAW folks, because he’s “been there”, too;
I knew that the WSIA would be a success. I knew how important it would be historically, because I have “been here” before, when I was a GI Resister in the infantry from 1971 to 1974, the last time a GI Resistance was necessary, and I payed [sic] dearly for my stand. It is extremely hard to resist inside the military. But we did, and Vietnam can now be used as the model for those that say “we will never leave Iraq.” The same people said that about Vietnam, and today there isn’t a single US soldier stationed in Vietnam, in spite of the plans to never leave there.
See, if you didn’t already know that Reilly wasn’t a Vietnam Vet, from reading that paragraph, you’d get the impression that he did serve in Vietnam. Also, in that paragraph, he said that he “payed [sic] dearly for [his] stand” against the Vietnam War. I wondered about that, too. His “stand” was actually four weeks of being AWOL and being declared a deserter for a few weeks in May and June of 1973 (Spring time in Bavaria). The war in Vietnam was essentially over, US combat troops were all withdrawn in August of 1972 – so why’d he desert? Oh, yeah, here’s the Form 2-1;
Robert Ward Reilly left the military as a corporal after three years in the drawn-down military after a stint on the desertion roster. I don’t know how he figured he “payed” for any stand.
Yeah, I’ve watched Ward Reilly marching the IVAW clowns in their protests (I’ve got the video somewhere in my archives) counting cadence like he’s a drill sergeant. He was an Eleven-Charley E-4 deserter who joined at the end of the Vietnam War (when it was essentially over) the year before the draft ended.
Reilly is just another pretender on the VVAW rolls.
Correction: The video I have of Reilly marching the IVAW clowns and VFP geezers actually has Bill Perry counting cadence while Reilly holds the bullhorn for him (because Perry can’t hold the mike, the bullhorn and his bag of LCDs – Little Chocolate Donuts – all at the same time).
Last week, the Washington Post ran a column by their resident socialist Harold Meyerson easing our fears of President Barack Obama’s political persuation by declaring that “he’s not one of us”. Today, they find another socialist to confirm Meyerson’s assessment. Billy Wharton allays our fears with typical misinformation;
A national health insurance system as embodied in the single-payer health plan reintroduced in legislation this year by Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.), makes perfect sense to us. That bill would provide comprehensive coverage, offer a full range of choice of doctors and services and eliminate the primary cause of personal bankruptcy — health-care bills. Obama’s plan would do the opposite.
Never mind that any intrusion by the government into private health care is socialist. Any intrusion by government into any private enterprise is socialist. But here’s the most ludicrous of the evidence he presents us;
Issues of war and peace further weaken the commander in chief’s socialist credentials. Obama announced that all U.S. combat brigades will be removed from Iraq by August 2010, but he still intends to leave as many as 50,000 troops in Iraq and wishes to expand the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan. A socialist foreign policy would call for the immediate removal of all troops. It would seek to follow the proposal made recently by an Afghan parliamentarian, which called for the United States to send 30,000 scholars or engineers instead of more fighting forces.
So a “true socialist” would send scholars and engineers to battle a threat? Like those engineers and scholars Chavez sent to the frontier with Colombia last year? Those engineers and scholars that Cuba sent to Angola, El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras a few decades ago? The engineers and scholars that Vietnam sent into Laos and Cambodia in the late 70s? Please.
I find it somewhat dismaying that the Post is now publishing columns weekly that tell us we’re paranoid bubbleheads if we think Obama is a socialist. More dismaying is the number of WaPo commenters who agree and thank Wharton for trying to educate the paranoid bubbleheads.
Apparently, there was a short notice Winter Soldier hearing in Freiburg, Germany today. The press release was issued on March 12 for a hearing on the 14th. I guess that’ll be their excuse for piss-poor attendance. The press release reads;
Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) invites you to hear the hard truth about what is really on happening on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan, day in and day out, from American, British and German veterans.
Sounds pretty impressive. Until you look at who the speakers are expected to be;
U.S. AWOL soldier and Iraq veteran André Shepherd who seeks asylum in Germany.
Christian Neumann, soldier of the German army and veteran of the war in Afghanistan.
US Navy journalist Zack Baddorf.
US-veteran Chris Capps who deserted before deployment to Afghanistan.
André Shepherd (who I’ve written about before) was a depot helicopter mechanic who never left the hangar. He admits in other interviews that he didn’t know what was going on in Iraq until he returned from his first tour and saw the news broadcasts.
A German soldier? Really?
Zack Baddorf – a Navy journalist who spent a month in Iraq on a ship in the Persian Gulf (It was a six month cruise on the USS Peleliu that left San Diego in February and returned to port in August). What is he going to testify to? Other people’s war stories?
Christopher Capps, the IVAW Chapter president in Germany, who deserted before he was deployed. Is his testimony going to focus on the evils of packing his gear? Well, he did do a tour in Iraq in the 440th Sig Battalion at Camp Victory. But he insists on addressing the Afghanistan campaign;
Afghanistan has been recording record level opium harvests, action on removing land mines from Afghanistan is all talk with very little action, most Afghans surveyed want coalition forces out of Afghanistan, and the Taliban is experiencing a resurgence along the Afghanistan/Pakistan border. The idea that continuing to act as a soldier is bringing peace or stability to Afghanistan anymore is a farce, especially when there is rampant corruption inside the fledgling government you are fighting to support. For every insurgent you kill it creates a martyr which means more recruits for the insurgents.
He hasn’t been there – he deserted before he went, but he knows all of this stuff and he doesn’t need to provide proof. That’s Winter Soldier – so he fits right in. His tale of atrocities in Iraq consists of hooking up a fiber optic cable labeled Abu Ghraib;
I ended up working as a cable dog running communications wire within the camp. At first I was pretty apathetic about the war, but I started to understand my complicity in it. I stared to realize what the infrastructure I was building and maintaining was being used for. One day I was working for the combat engineers. They were telling me how important my work was to the mission. But I didn’t believe in the mission anymore. Later I was asked to reconnect a fiber optic cable that was labeled Abu Ghraib. The reality of it all would slap me in the face repeatedly over the course of the deployment.
It’s easy to understand why he was so upset at the Big Army machine;
I arrived at Camp Victory in Baghdad on Thanksgiving Day 2005.
They were having a giant turkey that day in the DFAC (cafeteria). Some other things they had in the DFAC were made to order. There were Philly cheese steaks, a good salad bar, a juice bar, Baskin Robbins Ice Cream, and food better then anything I had ever seen before. There was a Pizza Hut, a giant PX store, a Subway, an Arby’s, a Greens Beans, and a Popeye’s Chicken too.
When you’re expecting a combat zone and you walk into something like this you have to wonder “What the hell is going on here?” It was surreal sitting there eating a Subway sandwich, listening to elevator music, and hearing explosions so loud they could knock your drink right off the table, and gunfire in the distance.
Yeah, that’s some real horrifying stuff, Chris.
You know Darnell Stephen Summers will be there, too;
That’s Shepherd on the left and Capps on the right.
I guess since it’s not Bush’s War anymore they don’t need John Murtha’s portly shadow cast over them;
Here’s the link if you want it, but you’ve got to paste it into your browser (http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/3/12/122212/162/186/707656) The really amazing part is that nearly all of the commenters agree. Of course, I recognize it as hypocrisy because they were scrambling to save Murtha a scant few months ago when it looked like he might lose his seat. So now that they control the Congress and the White House, they want to shed themselves of a potential embarassment. Personally, I don’t care – just so long as he’s gone.
I got an email from Bev Pearlson of Band of Mothers who led a group of supporters to an IVAW event. I thought ya’all’d like to her in action;
From the beginning, Joe and I bordered on being thrown out continuously. It was 3 strikes and you’re out and we must have had 15 strikes all night. One fellow made me “pinky promise” to be good (can you believe that) and I made the pinky promise but never kept it. Joe probed and interrupted as these whiners went on, and his probes were appropriate and illuninating. The poor whiners were extremely frustrated because Joe would not allow the lies. Thank you Joe. I think Joe did leave the room finally but he came back in. There wasn’t anyone big enough to remove Joe if Joe didn’t want to go and that really has nothing to do with his size.
When they were done with their sad stories, then there was question and answer. Joe basically told them they were a sorry lot and they never should have joined the military and it was despicable what they were doing to the Gold Star Families. Things got heated and they took the mic from him. Yours truly was up next and I finally got to shove their liberals leaders down their throats, in front of 48 bleeding heart liberals in the audience there soaking up their pity party.
They told me they would call the Police and I told them go right ahead, I’m not leaving they’ll have to take me away. I guess they decided it would not be cool to arrest a Blue Star Mom.
All together, we had a great showing, about 35 folks showed up for us! Thank You Minutemen and Soldiers Guardian Angels!!!!!!!
conan839 on February 23rd, 2009 6:03 pm
I am a member of the IVAW. For obvious reasons, I choose to remain anonymous. For those of you who have questioned the authenticity of Matthis Chiroux, you are absolutely right. I’ve known Matthis for almost a year now. His words and actions behind the scenes speak for themselves. He cheats the public and lies. Hands of applause, please. This should be the next corrupt politician in line.
The facts: Matthis Chiroux’s belief in the illegal war concept does not stem from any goodness, but simple fear of facing his duties. Whereas the rest of our IVAW members have been overseas, this kid dances in the light of being in Afghanistan for one week. Bravo. Nice job. Real war hero. His response to the anti-war cause did not occur anytime before his call to duty. In fact, his initial plan was to run off to Canada or to Europe. But you don’t hear this on TV, do you? Of course not. Because he’s a war hero. Next, as proven by several comments from people who know him, Matthis enlistment in the military had nothing to do with his social status, and much to do with the fact that he’s a royal fuckup. Now this is understandable. I too am a fuckup. But come on dude, fess the fuck up. Chicken shit. And stop making stupid remarks about the people who interview you, you smug fuck. Who do you think you are? God? Now here’s the real kicker, and maybe I’m writing this because I’m fumed. Maybe not. Matthis receives support and endowments from a generous public. Yet most of the time he spends sitting on his bony ass smoking up and talking about political situations that he probably just read about. Ask him any surprise question about a particular subject, and you’ll notice him either scramble for answers or sway from the topic. It’s really pretty fucking fascinating. He has the IQ of Forrest Gump but pulls off looking like he’s the Albert Einstein of world affairs.
I have just one request to the people who fall for these antics: wake the hell up!
That comment there is at the bottom. And it is only a very slight exaggeration to say it nearly gave me incontinence.
I bet we see more of this sort of thing as people realize a retard hijacked the short-bus.
