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

Category: Antiwar crowd

  • Military recruiting adolescents?

    I’ll tell you, this is the stupidest video ever created. Mostly, it’s about military recruiting through the use of the Junior ROTC program.

    The intro on the YouTube video reads;

    14-year-olds are recruited into the Army through the JROTC with the hopes of college money and a career. But when our soldiers come back from war, they face a back-logged Veterans Affairs Department, and can’t get the health care and other help they need. This documentary take a look at the U.S. war machine through the eyes of Veterans and JROTC cadets. It also looks at how veterans of past wars are forced to compete for services with veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan.

    So the military is recruiting 14-year-olds now? Just like Nazi Germany in the final months, I suppose. I’m pretty sure the military is only recruiting 18-year-olds. But let’s look at all of the pretzel logic you have to believe before you can believe that recruiters are evil.

    One expert they interview is a homeless “veteran” who advises youngsters that his service didn’t advance his own goals in life – on Veterans Day he “earned” only about $15 from panhandling. “They don’t care if you’re a veteran”, he tells the interviewer.

    Since most of us veterans are homeless panhandlers, we can probably give youngsters the same advice. He does make the point that cops do give him a break when they’re clearing the streets of hobos, though – so you see, there’s a veteran benefit right there.

    Another group of “experts” are the IVAW members who testified at Winter Soldier II that socialized healthcare provided by the military and the VA sucks – their solution is to throw more money at it, of course. Yet the entire Left thinks the answer to our national “healthcare crisis” is to force the system on the entire country. I’ll never be able to figure that one out.

    Another interviewee, a high school-aged student described how recruiters “pressured” him by offering him job opportunities. Since he didn’t join, I guess they couldn’t have pressured him too much.

    A teacher makes the claim that recruiters offer illegal green cards to “undocumented” students. Now, why would they do that? I mean, honestly. Why would a careerist jeopardize his future by offering a youngster, a youngster who has already broken faith by illegally occupying a space in a classroom funded by taxpayers, an illegal document just to make numbers for a month?

    Other experts they interview are young teenagers who seem eager to advance their lives through the benefits the military offer inner city kids. The youngsters also seem anxious to defend their country, and they have unrealistic expectations of the glory of going to war. How uncharacteristic of teenagers to not understand the gravity of war.

    They also show a clip of Phil Donahue, the king of sleazy television, advocating for the stream of flag draped coffins across out TV screens nightly. The same guy who an hour interviewing a former guy who went through a sex change operation only to discover he was a lesbian. Yeah, he knows what makes good TV.

    Seein’s how, by the video’s producers’ own admission, only 30-50% of JROTC students go on to join the military, I guess the military isn’t doing a good job of brainwashing and arm-twisting.

  • Mountains from molehills

    The other day I wrote about Brandon Neeley, a former guard at Guantanamo and currently the President of the Houston chapter of the Iraq Veterans Against the War (probably because he ate the previous president) who has come out to tell us how he’s ashamed of his conduct and what he was forced to do at the tropical resort we built for terrorists in retirement.

    Like I wrote before, nothing in his testimony rises to the level of an atrocity in any shape of form. But that didn’t stop Rachel Maddow from interviewing him on her absolute waste of a cable show. I found a video of that show but I have to warn you – out of a nine minute video, you have to sit through 3 minutes of MadCow’s blather and BDS. The six minutes that follow are of Neeley describing two events at Guantanamo. One story was of him slamming a prisoner to the concrete floor when he tried to resist when Neeley removed his cuffs. The story leaves the viewer wondering what the problem was.

    The second story is of a medic trying to force feed a can of Ensure to a detainee and then punching him in the face. I can’t imagine any medic doing that, but even if it did happen, so what? And why didn’t Neeley report the incident when it happened instead of half-a-decade later when the cameras are turned on?

    MadCow then tries to get Neeley to blame the Bush Administration for not giving the troops in Guantanamo adequate training and Neeley agrees with her. I’m pretty sure some of our commenters who were there will dispute that.

    Anyway, here’s the video below the jump;
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  • Geezers for Peace at Daytona 500

    I can’t think of a worse venue for the Veterans for Peace latest protest than the Daytona 500 – yet there they were;

    In the blog post about the event, they raved about the resounding success of their presence. You can tell from these pictures, race fans weren’t much interested in the smelly hippies.

    It might have had something to do with the truther message and the worn out “war for oil” cliche.

    Keep it up, guys, you’re doin’ a bang-up job.

  • Coward Shepherd critiques the surge

    Andre Shepherd, the US deserter who is requesting asylum from persecution in Germany has a blog. In his post from last week, he takes the time to critique the surge from the German refugee detention center where he awaits the decision of the German government;

    I don´t know about the rest of you, but since when does sending in more military personnel equate to LESS war? Please do not talk to me about the “success” of the Iraqi surge, because upon closer inspection you will find that is a fantasy perpetuated by the Pentagon and the Lame Stream Media. An increase in the troops in Afghanistan at this stage is going to trigger more battles and more casualties. I also suspect that the bombing campaign that has increased in recent years will continue unabated, thus creating even more civilian casualties for the Afghanis and Pakistanis.

    This insightful observation is written from hundreds of miles from Iraq by a depot-level helicopter mechanic who hasn’t set foot in Iraq since the surge started, yet he knows it’s a “fantasy” that it’s been successful. I wonder how he arrived at these conclusions, having neither the technical or tactical expertise to make such a judgment.

    He also tells us something we never thought possible;

    Soldiers and Marines will be further killed and maimed as well.

    I wonder how someone can be “further killed” than they might already be killed. but, hey, Shepherd has the power to see through the walls of that detention facility and conduct BDA from hundreds of miles away, so he must know something we don’t know.

  • The return of Darnell Stephen Summers

    A few months back I wrote about some of the more benign stuff about the life of Darnell Stephen Summers when writing about Andre Shepherd. Darnell came around and told me to stop calling him a commie, even though that’s what he is – he even admitted as much in the comments. Well, he’s back and before he beclowns himself more and lies to us all again, let’s take a look at some of the things Darnell has admitted to in the recent past.

    He belongs to “Vietnam Veterans Against the War – Anti-Imperialist”, a group that even the VVAW calls “ultra-Left” and warns its members away;

    How do I know Darnell is in VVAW-AI? Well he gave this speech in which he told the crowd he is in VVAW-AI;

    And he brags about it in this profile he wrote himself;

    And, oh, he keeps linking to a collection of articles about his arrest for murdering a State Trooper;

    His story was that another cop shot the trooper. But a further look into his history puts the killing in a different light. Darnell brags on another web page that he was held in the US Army’s Long Binh jail in Vietnam in 1968;

    A quick check of Wikipedia, tells the tale of what happened in Long Binh jail in 1968 at about the same time Darnell claims he was held there;

    And here’s a screen cap of a video he produced and put on his MySpace page about Amerikkka;

    Anything you want to add, Darnell?

  • Lifting of ban on media gawking considered

    This is one thing I’ve never been able to figure out – the media, since the Persian Gulf War, has wanted to film coffins containing the remains of our military returning to the US at Dover AFB. The ever-vigilant Washington Post ruminates over the issue today;

    President Obama said last week that he is considering lifting the ban on photographs and videos at Dover, in place since the Persian Gulf War in 1991, raising fundamental questions about the impact of such images on the public morale in wartime.

    For Obama, changing the policy would carry some political risk as he ramps up the war effort in Afghanistan with tens of thousands of fresh troops, increasing the likelihood of combat deaths that could produce photographs of numerous coffins arriving at one time at Dover, the sole U.S. port of entry for the remains. At the same time, Obama has advocated transparency in government, and continuing to hide the Dover ritual from public view conflicts with that principle as well as with public opinion on the issue, polls indicate.

    Yeah, well, there is no political risk for Obama – as we’ve seen with every other issue Obama faces, he’s quick to blame the previous administration for forcing him to make unpopular choices, depending on the crowd. Whatever he decides, the media will gaily celebrate his wisdom.

    It’s the media’s apparent obsession with it that bothers me;

    Ralph Begleiter, a former CNN correspondent and WTOP radio reporter who teaches journalism and politics at the University of Delaware, has sued the government to obtain the release of some military photographs of honor ceremonies at Dover under the Freedom of Information Act.

    “Dover is the only place in the country where the entire nation can observe the return of these casualties,” Begleiter said. “The most important and dramatic . . . cost of war is the casualties, the troops who make the ultimate sacrifice and come back to their country in a casket draped with an American flag, and to leave that image unobserved seems to be disingenuous.”

    No, what’s disingenuous here is the false impression that there are scads of people who would care about the war if only the media were allowed to take pictures of coffins on an airstrip in Delaware. Like so much other hyperbole we get from the drama queen press, this is just ignorant rantings of self-important idiots.

    There are funerals across the country everyday that we never read about in the media, not because they’re banned from reporting, but because they don’t think it’s news. The only reason the media thinks this particular issue is news is because it’s something they’re not allowed to do.

    Much like the gays-in-the-military issue – there are not millions of gays waiting for the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy to be lifted for them to join the military, neither are there millions of news readers waiting for the ban at Dover AFB to be lifted before they pick up a newspaper.

    Every year, there’s an hours-long ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier on Memorial Day and Veterans’ Day. The media is there for hours through the whole thing, yet the only thing that makes the evening news is 5 seconds of the President placing the wreath at the Tomb. Every Friday night, wounded soldiers roll up to Walter Reed Army Medical Center from the war – no reporters are ever there to record it.

    If the ban is eventually lifted, there may be a story about the first time the media is allowed to record the event, they’ll make a big deal out of it and thrust their puny fists in the air in victory, one picture might appear in your newspaper, five seconds of video might make a continuous loop every thirty minutes on CNN for a day – and then it will be over.

    In exchange, the solemn event will have lost it’s last shred of dignity so some greasy, vacuous borderline paparazzi photographers can gawk at the flag-draped remains of better people than they’ll ever be.

    ADDED: I guess the American Legion agree with me.

  • Hanoi Jane, the rash that won’t heal

    1stCAVRVN11b and someone else wanted me to tell you about the Jane Fonda re-emergence last week (from NY Post’s Page Six);

    Here’s part of the transcript of a 1995 Wall Street Journal interview from former North Vietnamese General Bui Tan who now lives in Paris because of his dissatisfaction with the Vietnamese government;

    Question: How did Hanoi intend to defeat the Americans?

    Answer: By fighting a long war which would break their will to help South Vietnam. Ho Chi Minh said,
    “We don’t need to win military victories, we only need to hit them until they give up and get out.”

    Q: Was the American antiwar movement important to Hanoi’s victory?
    A: It was essential to our strategy. Support of the war from our rear was completely secure while the American rear was vulnerable. Every day our leadership would listen to world news over the radio at 9 a.m. to follow the growth of the American antiwar movement. Visits to Hanoi by people like Jane Fonda, and former Attorney General Ramsey Clark and ministers gave us confidence that we should hold on in the face of battlefield reverses. We were elated when Jane Fonda, wearing a red Vietnamese dress, said at a press conference that she was ashamed of American actions in the war and that she would struggle along with us.

    Q: Did the Politburo pay attention to these visits?
    A: Keenly.

    Q: Why?
    A: Those people represented the conscience of America. The conscience of America was part of its war-making capability, and we were turning that power in our favor. America lost because of its democracy; through dissent and protest it lost the ability to mobilize a will to win.


    From US Veterans Dispatch;

    In late 1987, when it became known that Fonda planned to film her new movie “Stanley & Iris,” in Waterbury, Conn., there was a huge backlash from local veterans. Veterans held rallies, promising violent demonstrations if the filming began. Many bumper stickers reading “I’M NOT FONDA HANOI JANE,” begin appearing throughout the community. On June 18, 1988, Fonda flew to Waterbury in an attempt to pacify the veterans. She met with them for four hours. Fonda later recalled “I told them my story – why I was antiwar and why I had gone to Vietnam.”

    A few weeks later Fonda appeared on TV with Barbara Walters and apologized saying: “I’m very sorry for some of what I did…I’d like to say something not just to the veterans in Waterbury but to the men in Vietnam who I hurt, or whose pain I caused to deepen because of the things I said or did. I feel I owe them an apology…There were times when I was thoughtless and careless…I’m very sorry that I hurt them.”

    And now she’s fund raising for IVAW.

  • The IVAW placement test

    Like most organizations, the IVAW has a questionnaire so that new members can be placed in the appropriate role within the organization. We here at the This Ain’t Hell Secret Squirrel Operations Center have come into possession of some of the questions from one of our operatives;

    Which best describes your relationship to the war in Iraq;
    a. I served honorably with at least one complete tour in Iraq.
    b. I joined during the war against Iraq hoping to go but I never left my home state.
    c. I joined during the war against Iraq, but as soon as I found out that they actually planned on sending me, I bravely ran like a scalded ape to Canada.
    d. I served in Poland and Korea during the Iraq War – which is almost like combat.
    e. I was within sight of the Pentagon on 9-11-2001 and drew my weapon from the arms room, but then I took leave. I caught PTSD from the pizza guys who used to deliver at the barracks where I pulled CQ runner?
    e. I first heard of Iraq at this recruiting table while filling out this application.

    Which best characterizes your military service;
    a. I was honorably discharged with many real awards.
    b. I have an honorable discharge, but I’m willing to put it in jeopardy by making useless points and engage in mental circle jerks.
    c. I was OTH discharged because I got tired of doing stuff. I stopped by the PX on my way off-post and stocked up on lots of medals that I think I deserve.
    d. I did OK until after Initial Reception Station – I didn’t get any awards for my 43 days of active duty, but I have no problem pretending I was a Ranger and committed many atrocities.

    One of our remote operatives (Codename: Claymore) dug up some more questions;

    When you met with your recruiter, did they promise ________?
    a. you would be drinking beer from a hooker’s bellybutton 4 nights a week, after Madden 2009 tournaments of course.
    b. uniforms were being redesigned by Marc Ekko to better reflect a hip, youthful style.
    c. combat would be limited between 1100hrs to 1400hrs so you could study for your bartender’s degree.
    d. DI’s would let you sleep in if you really needed it.

    What best describes your reasons for enlisting in the service?
    a. I joined hoping to pay for college…oh, and to have casual sex with mannish looking women that have low self-esteem.
    b. I joined after playing a marathon session of Call Of Duty and Red Bull.
    c. I got my girlfriend knocked up and this was the easiest way to escape getting the sh!t beat out of me by her dad.
    d. I consider it an honor to serve my country…nah, just kidding, I heard you could score some good pot over in Europe if you were in the military.

    Describe your military experience.
    a. I barely passed the ASVAB, barely passed basic, barely passed a-school and then when they tried to ship me into Iraq, I decided I was too smart to die in a war for oil.
    b. I have always been a pacifist, despite enlisting as a sniper/grenadier/ninja assassin, so I was deeply disturbed when I was told I would be assigned as a rifleman in a combat unit.
    c. I joined to learn about computers but no one told me that the military used computers on the battlefield. I just wanted a free trip to Germany. My country is full of fascists.
    d. I was a fourth generation military officer with dreams of becoming a US Senator. Since I’m from a near-socialist north-eastern state, I figured my best chance at getting elected was to dishonor myself and pin the blame on the government.

    Describe the various war crimes you were ordered to perform while in the service.
    a. I tortured civilians in a manner reminiscent of Genghis Khan.
    b. I forced little kids to eat un-heated MREs.
    c. I once tripped over an Iraqi’s dog while looking for a hiding place while my buddies were taking fire. The dog didn’t make it.
    d. I heard that our sergeant shot up some guy’s car with the ma-deuce until he hit the fuel tank and it exploded like Rosie O’Donnell after a 3 hr bended at Taco Bell.

    There are hundreds of these questionnaires floating around, so if you find some, please report it in the comments section so we can compile a complete list.