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

Category: Antiwar crowd

  • Matthis Chiroux wannabe pops up

    We’ve got a new one who has refused his call-up from the Individual Ready Reserve, Benji Lewis who was discharged from active duty to the IRR in 2007. He was recalled earlier this year and he’s refused to report to complete his legal obligation to the Marines. He served honorably for two tours in Iraq and now he’s decided to make some kind of statement by potentially wiping out that honorable service.

    Let me explain the discharge thing before I have a deja vu moment with Army Sergeant all over again.

    A member of the military signs up for an eight year commitment, four or six years is usually on active duty, then they receive a DD 214 discharge certificate and they’re moved to the IRR for the remainder of their commitment. Servicemembers are made aware of this at the beginning of their service before they sign. The purpose of the two-year IRR service is in the case that the military might need their skills in the event manpower falls short the military has a pool of trained people from which to draw.

    When the two years of IRR is completed, they receive a final discharge. The first discharge is from active duty, not from further military responsibility. Like Matthis Chiroux, Lewis claims to be discharged, but it’s dishonest. Just like last year when Adam Kokesh tried to tell the world he’d been discharged but caught flak from the Marines when he wore his uniform in a protest while still under obligation to the military. His final discharge was a General Discharge even though he’d gotten an Honorable Discharge from active duty.

    You’d think that point would be clear by now, but apparently, it’s not.

    Anyway, Lewis writes this idiot screed about how he was misled by the Marines into thinking they were some sort of humanitarian organization and in his words;

    I joined because I wanted to help people. At the time I didn’t understand that the sole function of the military is the utter destruction of the individual. Furthermore, the fact that one is more likely to be punished than rewarded is a thick woolen blanket of oppression that stifles all humanitarianism, all creativity, and all individual thought.

    Tearing up yet? He describes boot camp;

    Boot Camp is full of this unwavering devotion to Flag, God, and Corps. Often we would start boot camp classes by watching footage of Iraqi buildings and people being destroyed to the tune of Drowning Pool’s ‘Let the Bodies hit the Floor.’

    Immediately after the longest basic training of all the military branches, where drill instructors broke me down in order to build me back up, the Marine Corps way, I found myself in Camp Pendleton, CA, at the School of Infantry (SOI). Here sleep was rare, though at least we weren’t ordered to put all our tent stakes into the squad bay’s running laundry dryers and sleep at attention on top of our blankets. Order was still strictly enforced. Inspections of all our personal belongings were common, and reprimands were more severe under the citation that our disobedience would not get us killed in Iraq, but by the persons to our right and to our left.

    Now, see I’ve heard plenty of times about this videos of war set to popular music stuff, but, having been a military instructor, I see no use for the practice. It would eat up more training time than it’s worth, so I call bullshit.

    And who knew that basic training was going to be so uncomfortable, huh? I thought it was like Summer Camp, but Lewis makes it sound hard. Why would it be so hard? Poor guy.

    How about this story from his time in Iraq;

    After a short time operating as a provisional rifle squad in Haditha, where we accomplished nothing but getting hit by an IED on our first patrol injuring a couple marines and reservists, we received orders to break out our mortars and head to Falluja in retaliation for the hanging of four U.S. contractors. This was it, we were mortar men and this was going to be what we were trained for!

    Few were excited, save for some officers and higher-ranking enlisted. Most looked at this as just another way we were getting screwed over by the “green weenie” as we affectionately referred to our beloved corps.

    What we were not told was that the four U.S. contractors were hung in retaliation for an assassination of a quadriplegic Cleric named Ahmed Yassin by Israel utilizing an American attack helicopter in the Gaza Strip. The Marine Corps does not find this information pertinent to disseminate to us lowly grunts.

    By some sort of circular logic, Lewis thinks it’s OK for terrorists to kill American citizens for the retribution of an act that didn’t involve anyone on either side of the actual retribution, didn’t happen within hundreds of miles of the dead cleric (who Lewis fails to mention was a co-founder of Hamas and was personally involved in directing suicide attacks against Israel despite his disabilities) and even though Lewis calls it an American helicopter that killed Yassin, he  was killed by an Israeli helicopter.

    So Lewis tries to blame the Marines for giving him incomplete and unnecessary information while he himself gives us false and incomplete information for his own purposes.

    I hope the military starts rounding these sociopaths up before they do more damage to our national security than they’ve already done. And I hope they toss them in the hoosegow before January, when I expect that they’ll be awarded medals for their “bravery”.

  • The battle over Murtha’s seat

    I mentioned earlier today that Uncle Jimbo is leading a contingent of Blackfivers and VFFers into Pennsylvania to knock on doors for William Russell in Murth’a District this weekend. Well the National Republican Committee is making an $84,000 ad buy in that district, too;

    The National Republican Congressional Committee will spend $84,000 on an ad that quotes Murtha’s recent remarks calling his district racist – as well as past statements about U.S. military personnel killing innocent civilians in Iraq – and ends with the word, “Enough.”

    The GOP spot, which is to begin airing later this week, is on behalf of Murtha’s Republican opponent William Russell, a retired Army lieutenant colonel.

    Here’s that video;

    Well, Jeff Emanuel writes this evening that my congressman Chris VanHollen’s DCCC is also making an $84,000 ad buy to save Murtha;

    The ad isn’t up on the DCCC’s YouTube channel yet, but here’s the text, courtesy of Roll Call:

    What do we really know about William Russell?

    William Russell supports George Bush’s failed economic policies. He supports George Bush’s plan to privatize Social Security, cutting guaranteed benefits. He supports raising the Social Security retirement age, too. And William Russell supports more tax breaks for corporations that ship jobs overseas.

    Congressman Jack Murtha served his country in Vietnam, and now he’s fighting for our jobs.

    Nice try, Nancy, Chris, and Rahm. The trouble is, Col. Russell served his country even more recently — and he isn’t calling the people he wants to represent “racist” or “redneck.” I think he wins this exchange.

    And, oh, yeah, there are real veterans riding to the sound of the guns. I guess VanHollen and Pelosi couldn’t find any real veterans to knock on doors for Murtha. There’s something to be said about not burning one’s bridges.

    At least one PA newspaper is warning of Murtha’s upset, while others remind Pennsylvanians to not bite the hand that feeds them;

    Murtha’s comments about Western Pennsylvania being racist and redneck has not set well with a lot of people. However, others said the money he’s brought in to places like Johnstown can’t be ignored.

    Johnstown sees a lot of money from defense contracts and businesses coming to the area. Murtha is responsible for helping companies such as CTC, KDH, JWF and Kuchera Defense Systems.

    Ya know what I think? I think Murtha is sweating bullets right about now. If he loses next week, he won’t have the anti-war crowd running a screen play for him anymore and there are some Federal prosecutors just itching to get him out from under that protection. It isn’t about politics any more it’s about saving his sweaty ass from a jail cell.
    Crossposted at Talon.

  • VFW’s odd scorecard

    First off; I’m a life member of the VFW and I have been since I retired, but this has me a bit confused.

    I’ve been asked a few times to write a bit about the VFW’s 2008 scorecard for voters interested in veterans’ issues. I’ve found it to be a bit odd. Of course, I’m not the only one. Pete Hegseth writes “Someone tell the VFW PAC what VFW stands for” when he discovers that the VFW PAC endorsed John Murtha, a phony veteran who supports only himself, his cronies and his family, over William Russell, a real veteran who supports veterans.

    Now, based on Murtha’s vote on the new GI Bill, that might provide cover for VFW PAC’s choice, since Russell couldn’t vote on that particular issue because he’s not in Congress. However, they support Kiernan Lalor, an Iraq veteran over incumbent John Hall in New York. Hall is a Democrat like Murtha and the chairman of the House Veterans’ Affairs subcommittee on disability assistance who voted like Murtha did on the GI Bill. It seems to be a similar race, with similar votes, but the VFW PAC made the opposite choice in that race – which is fine with me since Lalor is an actual veteran and a Republican, but it makes me wonder why the VFW PAC made either choice which seem to conflict.

    Our newest friend, Carole Shea-Porter from New Hampshire also got the VFW PAC’s endorsement over Jeb Bradley even though Shea-Porter, as Hegseth points out with Murtha, in direct violation of the VFW’s own Resolution 406, voted against funding the war in Iraq. Here’s the text of that VFW resolution;

    In April of this year, the Union Leader, Shea-Porter’s hometown newspaper, reported that Shea-Porter didn’t even wait for General Petraeus to finish his report before she was yapping about withdrawal from Iraq;

    Reps. Paul Hodes and Carol Shea-Porter should have listened to Gen. David Petraeus when he testified before four congressional committees last week, including the House Armed Services Committee, on which Shea-Porter sits. Alas, they did not.

    […]

    Shea-Porter did not even bother issuing a press release. She did tell the Portsmouth Herald, “It sounded like the same tape running again. They try hard, but there’s nothing to report.”

    In light of the revelation that Shea-Porter refused to help a Gold Star mother who reached out to her, as we discovered this weekend, how can VFW PAC support her?

    I’ve got calls into the VFW PAC, but no answers yet. Apparently the scorecard only appears in the VFW Magazine (I can’t find my copy at the moment in my stack of stuff) but my mole in the VFF writes;

    Also, Vets for Freedom PAC is going to be mobilizing in Murtha’s PA-12 and Murphy’s PA-8 this coming weekend, even going door-to-door, to support Bill Russell and Tom Manion.  (And like I said, VFF PAC is already running radio ads for Manion.)

    Although it has nothing to do with VFW PAC’s quixotic decision, if you’ve got some time this weekend, go help the VFF out in Pennsylvania. I understand that Uncle Jimbo at Blackfive is leading a black-ops team into the heart of the Murtha insurgency. Apparently, as always with Jimbo, there will be alcohol involved afterwards.

    I’ll update this as I get more information.

  • The ironic truth of the Hofstra incident

    The video below the jump is from Democracy Now!, one of those so-called independent news services who thinks that  independence means to just be contrary all of the time. The video is of the IVAW protest at Hofstra University nearly two weeks ago.

    You don’t need to watch the whole thing, just from :10 – :15 when Mattis Chiroux says “…this government is not listening to or taking care of it’s veterans as it promised to do when we all enlisted….” First of all, I don’t remember the government ever promising to listen to me when I enlisted. Secondly, isn’t it a little odd that Matthis Chiroux is talking about enlistment promises when he claims he was recalled while still under contract to the Army and broke his promise to fullfil his obligations? Are we just supposed to expect promises to be kept just one way?

    All of this blather about “fully funding the VA” is just that – blather. I watched VA improve exponentially in the last eight years. I’ve watched adjudication waiting lists shrink like never before. The Bush administration has doubled the budget of the VA and the rolls of eligible veterans has grown from among veterans of the Vietnam Era and forward. So please, if you want to lobby for more, go ahead, but don’t say that John McCain and President Bush haven’t done anything for veterans. Because that makes you a liar.

    Now, if you want to see the horse stomping, it happens at about 4:26 into the video. It clearly shows the police asking protesters to disperse and when they don’t, the mounted police walk their horses into the crowd (not charged as it’s been alleged here). The crowd, instead of moving away from the horses, moved towards the horses, clearly antagonizing police who are only trying to restore order outside the building in which the future president of the United States was speaking at the time.

    As I wrote earlier today, being a veteran doesn’t give you a license to act like a buffoon. Whether the police support veterans or not is irrelevant. They have a job to do – just like folks in the military have a job to do. I’m sure none of the veterans in that crowd who were in Iraq and Afghanistan ever thought once about telling the terrorists that they support their cause and laying down their weapons in the middle of a firefight. I wish some of them had, actually.

    And yes, I take a certain measure of pleasure in the fact that Nick Morgan got stomped for not complying with the authorities. Maybe the next nimrod will think twice before defying the police (but I seriously doubt it). Maybe Nick getting injured will save a life.

    And the yammering about how veterans should love each other is bullshit, too. I’ve already experienced what IVAW thinks of veterans who don’t think like them – I’ve experienced the threats of violence first hand both on the internet and in person. When the love goes both ways, tell me about it.

    But, anyway, this isn’t the end of civilization as it’s being claimed by the intellectually stunted Left. It’s about time the police started enforcing the laws to protect those of us who’ve always been truly peaceful. That’s what I applaud – enforcing the law so peace returns.

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  • A finger in their eye – better than a horse hoof.

    The other day, TSO mentioned that he’d like to send T-shirts to the cops in Nassau County who tossed our good buddies from the IVAW in jail. Then he mentioned it in interview on Blackfive Wednesday, too. Frankly Opinionated made up some items commemorating the event, DanNY offered to deliver them to the cops personally, Rurick sent me some money, so I tossed in a bit of my own and ordered five hats and five coffee mugs (cops can never have too many coffee mugs). FO also gave me a discount and saved me about $40.

    Now, I’m not going to beg, because it really wasn’t all that much, but if you want to buy into the process, you can hit my donate button (Amazon or PayPal) below. If I end up with more money than I paid, I’ll make another buy…there hasn’t been any profit in this blogging endeavor and I don’t want to start now, lest I start counting on it.

    Hopefully, DanNy will send us some photos of the delivery.

    UPDATED: DanNY sent me a link to his AAR of the event last week, in case you want to read about what we’re honoring.

  • What is the proper gift…

    to honor the cop that arrested phony combat veteran Matthis Chiroux? This is Peter Sikinger of the Nassua County Police Department. (On left)

    According to phony Afghanistan Veteran Matthis Chiroux:

    Look at you friend’s face,” said one officer. “You’re responsible for that.” As if I gave the order to charge horses onto a crowded sidewalk. I saw this same officer in the Colony diner where we went to eat after we were charged with disorderly conduct and released. He was with the one who threatened me with prison rape, and when I approached them respectfully and again asked for their names, he leapt to his feet, threw his finger in my face and began threatening to “beat my ass” if I didn’t drop it.

    Afterward, one of his friends, also a police officer, approached me, accused me of being drunk and said I was about to get arrested again. I retorted that his accusations were false (considering I’d only gotten out of jail 30 minutes prior) and that I was only interested in learning the names of the officers who arrested and harassed us as I have the legal right to do. He responded with only his name, which he said was Peter Sikinger, but refused to reveal the names of his partners, though to his credit, he did back down from threatening me with arrest.

    Anyway- I want to get Det Sikinger something nice, but what? A fruit basket has a nice irony to it, but Sikinger is clearly all man. A Dirty Harry boxed set? And a 12 pack of Guinness? I don’t know, gotta get him something though. Who wants to join me in honoring the man who caused phony combat and Afghanistan veteran Matthis Chiroux to run crying to Michael Moore?

    In case I wasn’t clear, Matthis Chiroux is a phony Afghanistan Combat veteran.

    PS- Also taking donations of apples for the horse.

  • More IVAW questionable blather

    A reader sent me an article from OpEdNews (Google it) with an account from Matthis Chiroux of his arrest at Hofstra University last week at the presidential debates. There was one paragraph I found exceptionally deceptive;

    One officer, when I brought up the prospect of speaking to a lawyer,threatened to put me in the back of the jail, where, the big boys will pop your cherry! When I asked this officer if he had just threatened an honorably discharged veteran of Afghanistan with prison rape and told him I wanted his name and rank, he refused and told me to look it up on the police report which the Nassau County Police Department has refused to provide us a copy of.

    Actually, it was one part of one sentence when he referred to himself as “an honorably discharged veteran of Afghanistan”. First of all, if he did indeed refused to honor his IRR recall, went AWOL and missed movement to Iraq, he hasn’t been honorably discharged. He hasn’t been discharged at all. Unless it’s ALL a lie. Like I said the other day, if the Nassau police recognized him as a deserter, they would have turned him over to the Army. I’m wondering if he was ever recalled – either way he’s lying.

    He’s also not a veteran of Afghanistan. Witness this photo of Chiroux taken the other night at the protest;

    Notice on Goldsmith’s right sleeve (Goldsmith is on the reader’s left), near his wrist, he has two bars. Each one of those bars represent six months service in a combat zone. Now notice Chiroux’s sleeve. Nothing.

    I blew up the picture of his ribbons, too;

    No campaign ribbons. He may have spent a few days in a combat zone, but he wasn’t stationed there. He was a straphanger. A pogue. A glory hound. A staff puke punching up his resume`.

    A color picture;

    And I figure any ‘bubba’ in jail that night would’ve been disappointed to learn Chiroux lost his ‘cherry’ long before last week by the looks of him.

    Chiroux continued;

    After my arrest, the police charged their horses onto a sidewalk and unprovokedly knocked my friend Nick Morgan, a veteran of Iraq, to the ground and trampled his face. They then arrested him, put a piece of gauze on his facewound and loaded him onto a bus headed for jail with the rest of the Hempstead 15.

    Isn’t that cute…they have a name for their little group reminiscient of the 60s. How would Chiroux know what happened to the little group of children after he was arrested? Is he going by the stories of his fellow alleged hate-mongers? Like those guys on “Cops” that cry out “I didn’t do nuthin’”.

    There’s a more hillarious account at Micheal Moore’s website (you’ll have to Google it, because I don’t link to fat boy’s website, either). Chiroux tried to accost the same arresting police officers at a diner near the station and got yelled at. While he wimpered and wiped snot from his upper lip, the police threatened to arrest him again. Which made him whimper even more. Too bad there are pictures of his swollen eyes and quivering lips.

    You’d think they were recounting their time in Abu Gahrab or something.

    The three who planned on getting arrested, Chiroux, Kokesh and Goldsmith complained that their injured compadre Nick Morgan wasn’t getting medical attention and looked as if he was suffering a concussion. I submit that Morgan wasn’t wired too tight before he got trampled by a horse. In his profile at IVAW, he demonstrates how the Maryland public education system failed him;

    I was deployed when I was 19 and didn’t return home until several months after I turned 21. I was overseas for a year and a week, most of my time was spent in Baghdad (BIAP).

    (Emphasis mine) Must’ve been 21 in dog years.

    I guess they all figure this is going to be their last chance to get any publicity since the war is winding down and they’ve got nothing to complain about. Well, with any luck, McCain will win the election and they’ll have plenty of opportunity to make asses of themselves for four more years.

    TSO: For the record, I am ashamed that my co-blogger Jonn woulod attack Matthis’ heroic 6 day tour of duty in Afghanistan. Just imagine the horrors he must have faced on Baghram Airfield. Between the $15 hour massages from Kyrgystani girls, and the dangerous trips down route Disney to the Baskin Robbins, I think what Matthis did really brings honor on himself and all those he hangs with. I mean, if 6 days on a walled compund with 10,000 troops doesn’t qualify as a tour of duty in A-stan, I don’t know what does. More on this story at my other stomping grounds.

  • What else are they hiding?

    IAVA’s Paul Rieckhoff emailed us and apologized for slighting TAH on his response to the charges TSO levied on them on this board. I won’t revisit that but I will amend my statement that Rieckhoff is just like Solz…he has a bit more class than Jon Solz. I’ve added his response below the jump, but first I have unfinished business;

    I mentioned in the previous post, I’d taken some screen caps of some of IAVA’s cached pages…ya know, just in case. TSO and I thought it was little bit weird that all of the links to IAVA were down last night at the same time we were having trouble with our own site. So here’s two of the screen captures I took last night from their staff page; the first mentioning Phillip Carter, but the second capture is what changed over night;

    In his email to Blackfive, Rieckhoff wrote “And as for Phil Carter, it is no secret that he is an IAVA member. We have tens of thousands of members—and Phil is one of them. And we have clarified Phil’s role at IAVA on this page just so there is no confusion.” At the time he wrote that, the page he linked to looked like the photo above. But then their website went blank after his email to B5.

    This morning, the same webpage looks like this;


    Notice the italicized disclaimer that’s been added. Did someone step in something?

    There has also been rumors bouncing around that IAVA is going to start an intimidation campaign. I can’t be intimidated – if you want to know where I live, email me and I’ll tell you. If you don’t want to be called deceitful, don’t be deceitful.

    I have an absolute hatred for my “comrades” who’ll climb the bodies of the fallen for their own selfish political gain – and that’s what that scorecard was. Political hackery bought and paid for by “our own” for themselves.

    There’s more than enough proof of everything TSO wrote and I won’t be intimidated into silence by any-Goddamn-body. You fucksticks think you can be the next John Kerry – not as long as I draw a breath.

    Per Rieckhoff ‘s request, here’s his full, unedited response in full below the jump;

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