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

Category: Antiwar crowd

  • What you have to believe to support Bradley Manning

    This is a video someone sent me from the Geezers for Sitting on Our Hands calling for support for the Wikileaker Bradley Manning.

    At 2:50 in this video Ethan McCord admits that the Iraqis who were killed in the “Collateral Murder” video had an RPG anti-armor weapon and an AK-47 (a fact that the anti-war crowd has disputed since the video was released). McCord goes on to claim that the Iraqis were just “standing around” and not a threat to the helicopter crew, so the crew had no reason to fire on those Iraqis, cuz you know an RPG is a home defense weapon.

    What McCord neglects to recognize is that there was a firefight a few minutes before the video started and the crowd of Iraqis were coming from the direction of that firefight. McCord’s own unit was in the neighborhood and might have been on the receiving end of the RPG if the helicopter crew hadn’t taken care of them. If the Iraqis were just hanging out, why were the reporters there? What reporter wants to write a story about some shiftless goons hanging around on a street corner?

    Here’s a video of what McCord calls detainee abuse in his unit;

    Ethan McCord was just another clueless private whose idiot opinions based in 20/20 hindsight don’t matter.

  • How IVAW can change you

    Here’s a study on how being a member of the Iraq Veterans Against the War can change you from an average veteran proud of your service into a blubbering idiot. Our buddy, Rochester Veteran, posted this article about three ladies who manned machine guns on their teams’ Hummers back in 2004-2005 in Iraq. One in particular, Robyyn Murray was very enthusiastic about her job;

    “They (the Iraqis) used to get really confused,” said Spc. Robyn L. Murray, a civil affairs specialist from Niagara Falls, N.Y. “I was the first. I volunteered on the second day we were here.”

    The civil affairs team that Murray was assigned to needed a gunner who knew how to use a squad automatic weapon. Murray said she jumped at the opportunity to “man” the machine gun in the turret.

    In 2008, I posted this video of Murray, who is still chipper and matter-of-fact about how she enjoyed her tour of Iraq;

    Earlier this year, I found this video of Murray standing next to Matthis and Elaine Brower while Matthis burned a flag in Lafayette Park, DC;

    This morning someone sent me this video of Murray-as-drama-queen reading a poem while she blubbers about her finger being on a trigger…that job she so enthusiastically volunteered for a few years back;

  • Fort Benning Protests, Told you so.

    In the golden promise of getting fatter in the celebration of Thanksgiving, I forgot to check what happened with the Protests at Fort Benning. I made a post about it a week before the event and some of the things did happen.

    But really the only people that really win are the people that rent parking spaces and sell food near the Victory Drive area.

    But that is not even the case as listed in a story for New York Times.

    The protest has brought the city as much as $2.2 million in business, more than twice what the annual Jehovah’s Witness convention did, said Peter Bowden, president of the Columbus Convention & Visitors Bureau.

    But…

    But the times, they are a changing. This year’s protest, the 20th, drew its smallest crowd ever over the weekend. Both the police and organizers agree that fewer than 5,000 people showed up.

    Signs of its decline were everywhere. At the Masonic lodge near the protest site, a local military family had hoped for a lucrative weekend selling hot dogs and drinks. They packed in 15 cases of water, but by Saturday afternoon only a dozen bottles had sold. They did not even bother on Sunday.

    Some other signs as well.

    Last year, more than 500 signed up to attend, mostly students from Catholic high schools and colleges. This year, only 128 were bused on base for the 90-minute session.

    The small crowd at the gates of Fort Benning disappointed Sheri Hosek, 39, who traveled from Dubuque, Iowa. She had heard about the event through her work with Franciscan nuns.

    “There was a lot of hype about it, but it feels like a much smaller presentation than I had expected,” Ms. Hosek said. “It feels more like a summer festival, a very liberal one of course.”

    But of course that it is not because people think what they are doing at Fort Benning is moronic but for other reasons.

    Others wondered if Latin America politics just are not capturing the attention of American youths as they once did.

    “My generation is all over the place,” said Ben Johnson, 28, of Athens, Ga., who was grabbing a coffee in a hotel lobby near the base. “They are completely apathetic, or they’ve completely devoted their entire life to change.”

    But I like this line the best and will close out with it.

    On the anniversary the following year, a small group led by the Rev. Roy Bourgeois, a Catholic priest, held a water-only fast at the gates. He has since become an internationally known peace advocate and still lives in a small apartment near the gate.

    “Most of the young people in the crowd don’t even know who he is,” said Liz Loescher, 68, an eight-time veteran of the protest who runs the Georgia Conflict Center in Athens.

    Yep time to turnout the lights, the party is over.

  • Now our Air Support is in their sight.

    It seems that the group Rethink Afghanistan recently published this article DEATH FROM THE SKY: Dropping more bombs on Afghanistan won’t make us safer, but it *will* hurt civilians

    But while civilian casualties as a whole have continued to increase, the proportion attributed to PGF has decreased markedly over the past two years. PGF are currently responsible for 12% of the civilian casualties in Afghanistan, down from 39% in 2008. IMF efforts to reduce civilian casualties began in earnest in 2008, but a large part of this reduction is due to a fall in the number of airstrikes since a tactical directive was issued restricting their use in July 2009. However, this achievement may be in danger of reversal due to a dramatic rise in airstrikes in recent months. US forces dropped 2,100 bombs or missiles from June through September 2010 – a nearly 50% increase on the same period last year – and ISAF figures show that civilian deaths caused by PGF are up 11% on October 2009.

    But I have to ask with the current number of troops spread out as they are with the attacks increasing is there anyone shocked that the number of close air support missions have increased. But don’t tell them that because it clashes with their nice photo shopped image.

    Of course a image like that is getting the standard replies.

    1. It’s Bush’s war … he got us into this mess.. he is off touring with his new book… gmab

    2. This is the true image of war. Shame on you United States military!

    3. your troops are trying to help them ???? are you kidding me ? since when did they start helping Afghans rather then killing them? yeah they killed marines well why are they in ther…e first place ….? obviously for their own (Bush & Obama) agenda ……its easy to come and comment here but i would say rather then that go educate yourself ……they hate you they got a reason and thats your trooops killing innocent people.
    YOU OWE AFGHANS BIG TIME

    4. America should be shame of this Hitler did not killed that many people

    5. This war is insane!! We went for all the wrong reasons, died for nothing but to boost the incomes of government contractors and politicians and we are killing thousands of people!! How would we like it if they came here and started dropping bombs on our babies and shooting people in the streets!!! God it makes me angry.

    6.Bombing poor civilians living in mudhomes, barely eking out a living — by bombs that cost more than an American home — by ‘brave’ pilots looking at video screens from high above — so removed from the blasts that wreak havoc on people’s lives and psyches — while America at home disintegrates as a nation — when oh when do Americans rise up to reclaim their country from the criminals in suits and uniforms??? END ALL THE WARS NOW! REMOVE ALL THE CRIMINALS IN POWER. MAY PEACE PREVAIL.

    Yea makes me feel warm and fuzzy all over. I imagine that at this rate there will be protests that we are using lethal rounds when fighting that might go astray. Then they ask why things in Afghanistan are going as they are? I wonder why.

    Oh and just to remind why kind of support our troops receive.

  • Matthis at Tufts; the final chapter

    Some of you may remember the article that was written for Veterans’ Day at Tufts Daily which was a cry-fest for poor little Matthis. You may also remember the letter his father sent in response to the article. Today, to their credit, the editorial staff of Tufts Daily published a response from a Vijay Saraswat, veteran, a former marine and a student at Tufts.

    The Daily could have interviewed any number of veterans at Tufts and the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy who would have given a balanced and reasoned account of military culture.

    […]

    That the Daily’s editors gave Matthis Chiroux a solitary platform in the first place is nothing short of outrageous. Even cursory research would have revealed fundamental inconsistencies between his statements, actions and service record which should have immediately tabled any consideration of a profile piece. And while Matthis Chiroux’s actual tour of duty deserves acknowledgement, his recent shameful actions and disingenuousness dishonor the legacy of service and sacrifice embodied by past and present members of the Armed Forces.

    Vijay wrote us last week and asked permission to use some of the research we’ve done in the nearly 3 years Matthis has held the spotlight on himself and he sent us a draft of this article before Thanksgiving. We heartily applaud his efforts. You should read “Setting the record straight on Matthis Chiroux“.

  • Wikileaks slam US diplomatic efforts

    So Bradley Manning, the wikileaker, really did it this time. Now it turns out that his document dump earlier this year before his arrest included communications from the Obama State Department. No one except the anti-war crowd got upset over the “collateral murder” video, we all collectively ignored the second dump, but now, heavens to Betsy, he’s whittled away the facade of smart diplomacy.

    The New York Times outlines some of the communications which include Saudi Arabia eager to convince the US to attack Iran, bribes to isolated kingdoms to take Guantanamo prisoners, the reticence of our partners in the war against terror to shut down terror cells in their own countries.

    Here’s a video from Fox News;

    All because Bradley Manning broke up with his boyfriend. A private first class with a troubled past had this kind of access to classified material. Clearly, military clearances need to be reviewed more often than they are, especially among first-termers and lower enlisted ranks. And potential drama queens that have access to millions of classified documents that they might release to super-gay looking hackers when their main squeeze takes away the lovin’.

  • And that what its all about.

    So once again the Rag Blog is leading the charge in the name idiocy. This time is claiming that the fighting in Afghanistan has nothing to do with Afghanistan, but the maintaining perpetual war for the sake of war.

    But George Orwell’s 1984 — now updated with important new books — illuminates the bigger picture: “continuous warfare” is the key to social control.

    It keeps the public frightened and dependent.

    Yea, this is the same conflict that was being referred to the Just war when compared to Iraq. Also the conflict that people think that we went in alone when in fact the UN passed a Resolutions 1378 and Resolution 1386 .

    Nowhere has our military madness become more transparent than in the Obama Administration. The “shellacking” the Democrats took this fall stems directly from Obama’s painfully visible failure to bring hope or change to a nation at war since 1941.

    At War for over 60 years? That is beyond a stretch, I would like know what war was going between 1953-1964, 1973-1990 and 1995-2003. I would also like to know what their definition of what is a War. Notice the following part below.

    Thus Afghanistan. Before it: The Cold War, Korea, Vietnam, Central America. After: Whoever else is handy.

    Yea, notice how they talk about we have been at War since 1941 and neglected to bring up one of the most bloodiest War is left out. Because depending on the conflicts a really bad day can be considered a good day. So how are you judging what is considered a war and what is not? I mean if we are counting every little military action as full blown war then we are really lowering the bar. Also the fact that the Korean War was a UN lead conflict and the UN also approved the Gulf War in 1991.

    But the bet part is thoughts like this one.

    War is a choice, and we need to stop choosing it.

    Yea…

  • Keep Harvard out of range

    Peter, a student at Harvard, sends us a link from the Harvard Crimson written by student Sandra Korn entitled “Keep ROTC out of Range“. Obviously, Korn is a student for a reason – she teeters on the edge of being an ignorant twit in her opinion piece. Korn tries to make the point that allowing Harvard to reinstate the ROTC program in the event that the military’s policy of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell is rescinded shouldn’t be a foregone conclusion. She makes several false allegations to illustrate her blunt point;

    [T]he U.S. Department of Defense has faced allegations of abuse ranging from torturing prisoners at Guantanamo Bay to training Latin American soldiers in anti-humanitarian tactics and principles at the School of the Americas. The Iraq War alone has seen torture at Abu Ghraib, the Haditha massacre, and the horrifying shootings by Blackwater military contractors in Baghdad, as well as approximately 100,000 civilian deaths. Wikileaks recently exposed that within the last decade, the U.S. armed forces have engaged in countless non-humanitarian and debatably illegal practices in Iraq and Afghanistan. The U.S. has provided military aid in support of Israel’s aggressive actions against Palestinian civilians.

    Sandra only has allegations, yet in her mind those allegations prove guilt. “Torturing prisoners” is completely a judgment call. If waterboarding is the worst thing that happened to prisoners, they weren’t tortured. The Abu Ghraib incident was carried out by soldiers themselves. Naked pyramids weren’t concocted in the halls of the Pentagon.

    Sandra, did you notice that no one has been convicted in the Haditha case yet? I wonder why. If you’reconvinced that the military is training Latin American soldiers to commit atrocities against their own populations, maybe you should talk to talk to some one who was actually at the School instead of the paranoid peacenik professors who’ve obviously wrongly informed you.

    Time and again, Korn praises the people serving in the military, yet she charges that the “Department of Defense” committed all of these things she considers horrible. Where is this machine called the Department of Defense? The people she claims to admire are the folks who would have to commit these “crimes” – there is no one to blame except real people.

    So I submit that the government cut off all of the funding and grants to Harvard until they stop churning out utter twits like Sandra Korn.