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

Category: Antiwar crowd

  • Taliban threatens Code Pink group traveling to Pakistan. (Updated)

    Some of you may or may not know but it seems that Code Pink is sending a thirty plus group to Pakistan to join a protest at the use of drones in a areas suspected of hiding Taliban groups. Also photos from them suggest that they are already have arrived.

    Today the full CODEPINK delegation to Pakistan will arrive in Islamabad to begin a week of activities to express their opposition to US drone strikes in Pakistan. A pre-delegation group of American activists has been on the ground in Pakistan for several days meeting with think tanks, human rights organizations, and military and academic institutions.

    The response from Pakistanis has been overwhelmingly positive and welcoming, and many plan to join the CODEPINK contingent as it marches to South Waziristan to protest US drone strikes on October 7th. “We are already receiving an outpouring of support from Pakistani people who are heartened to learn that there are Americans with a conscience who are willing to come all the way to Pakistan to show solidarity and apologize for the drone strikes that have brought so much death and destruction to the impoverished people of north Pakistan,” said CODEPINK cofounder and delegation leader Medea Benjamin.

    Well not everyone is feeling the love. Nor the idea of a peace parade through Pakistan.

    U.S. diplomats Friday warned a group of American peace activists not to attend a rally against U.S. missile strikes scheduled for this weekend, saying terrorists have threatened to attack the demonstration.

    Separately, the Pakistani Taliban warned Friday that they oppose the rally, which is being led by Imran Khan, an internationally famous cricket player who has become one of Pakistan’s most popular opposition politicians largely on the basis of his outspoken criticism of the U.S. role in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

    The demonstration, which has been organized by Khan’s political party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, is scheduled to leave Islamabad Saturday and hopes to enter South Waziristan, part of the militant-plagued tribal area that is considered a no-go zone, on Sunday as a protest against the use of unmanned drones to attack suspected al Qaida and Taliban militants.

    What will happen in the next few days is anyone’s guess, but I have a feeling that this could end badly since the Taliban is threatening to bomb the protest.

    On Saturday, a statement from a Taliban faction said to be based in Pakistan’s eastern Punjab province warned that militants would welcome the protesters with suicide bombings.

    “We ask the brave people of Waziristan not to side with the gang of Jews and Christians – otherwise their fate will be terrible,” the Punjabi Taliban said in the statement.

    UPDATE: It seems that they have been spotted and interviewed by CNN in Pakistan.

  • Occupy Obama Campaign

    It looks like the far-Left isn’t happy with Obama either. In a link sent to us by GI Jane and Claymore, a few dozen occupied Obama’s Portland campaign headquarters to protest the treatment of Breanna Manning who is being tried for releasing thousands of classified documents.

    Scott Olsen seems to have been there, although he left before the voluntary arrests began. “Once bitten…”, but not before he quipped that he sure would like to urinate in a police car.

    Yeah, I said “voluntary arrests”. If you’ve ever been to a protest in recent years, the hippies coordinate with the police as to who will be arrested and when. We’re so civil here in the US.

    The local news was a little more sympatico with Olsen when they said;

    Some of the seven protesters sitting inside wore t-shirts reading “Iraq Veterans Against the War,” including Scott Olsen, an Iraq War veteran seriously injured by a police projectile during an Occupy Oakland protest on Oct. 25.

    I’m not sure that it was ever determined to be a “police projectile” Was it? I mean determined in the way rational people determine things…like not taking the word of hippies.

    But, it sure is nice to see IVAW doing things to help injured veterans like they did for about a minute sometime last year. Obviously, they’re back on the fund raising train and linked to Veterans For Peace, those lying pretenders;

    Many of the Oakland protesters claim to be associated with Veterans for Peace, a prominent fixture in the institutional left’s anti-war movement.

    Well, we can certain that if the IVAW and the VFP are involved there are few, if any, real veterans of the current wars, or any other war, for that matter at the protest.

    The protesters said in a statement that they were demanding that President Obama apologize for statements they said he made regarding Manning’s guilt, that the president ensures soldiers are free from pre-trial punishment, alleging that Manning was held in long periods of isolation, and that Manning be pardoned.

    Ain’t that precious? They think that taking over a campaign headquarters will impact the Manning trial. Little naive dicks that they are.

  • Abdo gets life

    Naser Abdo, the ambitious fellow who plotted to bomb and then shoot up a restaurant in Killeen, Texas, outside the gates of Fort Hood has been sentenced to life in prison by a federal judge, according to the Associate Press.

    Let’s recap, shall we; Abdo was AWOL from Fort Campbell after winning conscientious objector status from the Army, before child porn was found on his computer. His lawyer was James Branum, famous around these parts for defending countless deserters and AWOL soldiers at Fort Hood. After going AWOL himself, Abdo shows up in his lawyer’s stomping grounds, in the vicinity of “Under the Hood” an IVAW-sponsored coffee house where much of the local anti-war crowd gathered to plot the voicing of their displeasure with the wars. And where James Branum recruited clients for his law practice.

    Abdo had no visible means of support, yet he was living in a motel in Killeen and he was able to buy guns, ammunition and components for his bombs, not to mention military clothing he needed to execute his plot and the things like food and stuff.

    On the day Abdo was arrested, IVAW and James Branum went absolutely silent. Within a few weeks, Branum was out of the military lawyer thing and he’s gone back to Oklahoma to fail at practicing his trade there.

    We had IVAW members and some of their former fans from the Killeen area emailing us asking about how they could get in touch with the FBI in the hours following Abdo’s arrest. I don’t know how any of that turned out, and we’ll probably never know. But we can guess what all of that drama was about.

    Maybe someday Jason Abdo will tell us about it. I’d write his book for him.

  • 67 Years Ago Today and the Continuing Nuclear Protest

    It was on this date in 1945 that Hiroshima was destroyed by a new weapon, a single bomb dropped by a B-29 named Enola Gay, named after the mother of the pilot, Colonel Paul Tibbets. In the years since, many have tried to make the point that dropping of the bombs was an unnecessary act, as they claim the Japanese home islands were on the verge of defeat and would have surrendered soon enough without dropping the bomb.

    There are several flaws in that argument. First, after nearly four years of all-out war, Americans were tired of war. The prospect of what would surely be at least another 12-18 months taking the Japanese home islands was not a palatable thought. Second–as alluded to in movies and elsewhere, the Allies won the war in Europe, but at a huge cost. America was nearly bankrupt, spending nearly 38 percent of GDP on defense, compared to less than 4 percent of GDP today. Third–the casualty estimates of Operation Downfall varied widely, but all agreed that there would be huge casualties, and most of those estimates were only for the first sixty days, and only one took into account Navy casualties. Iwo Jima and Okinawa that same year showed that taking of the Japanese home islands would be possibly far more devastating in terms of both allied and Japanese casualties than eariler estimates. Finally, when the Japanese were asked to surrender after the July 16th test of the Trinity device in New Mexico, the Japanese basically was that of “mokusatsu,” meaning to treat with silence or silent contempt–a nice way of them telling the Allies to shove it up their ass.

    A quick end to the war with the fewest casualties was needed, and the atomic bomb, rightly or wrongly, provided that end. It is said that all of the Purple Hearts made up for Operation Downfall have been given out to the casualties of every war and action the United States has been involved in over the past six and a half decades, and there are still Purple Hearts left.

    To that end, a semi-related story from WBIR-Knoxville about several protestors who broke into the Y-12 facility at Oak Ridge last week and threw what they claimed was human blood on the building. Way to go, G4S–great security job you’re doing there. I would suggest to those people that the bloodshed had the bomb NOT been dropped, and the deterrence it provided for several decades afterwards, saved far more blood than was shed on this day and three days later in 1945.

  • May Issue or No Issue? A Veteran’s Path to Getting a Legal Gun in NYC

    First, I’d like to give all the credit for this idea to Emily Miller of the Washington Times, for her very well-written series “Emily Gets Her Gun,” [1][2][3][4][5], (for a start), about her attempt, as a law-abiding citizen, to get a permit and a weapon in the nation’s capitol.

    Like Emily, with rising violence and crime in the streets, I don’t feel safe. My neighborhood had a serial rapist that the police never caught, and I’ve witnessed three muggings in the last year, all from too far away to help even when I started running to get up. I had to break up a fight between two machete-wielding homeless guys on a train armed with…my words, not the best choice. (For future reference, apparently if you ask “Is there a problem here, gentlemen?” they think you’re a cop.)

    I’m an Army veteran with an honorable record. I have numerous firearms qualifications and training. I’ve never been convicted of any crimes. I was arrested once as a juvenile for being in a park past curfew: charges were dismissed. I’ve had a few tickets for speeding, which I paid. I’m a decent shot. I know gun safety. And now, I’d like to obtain a firearm for my home and to carry with me to protect myself and my family.

    Only one problem: New York City, and Mayor Bloomberg. Mayor Bloomberg has never been a fan of guns, but in the wake of the Aurora shooting he’s gotten even more nuts.

    My goalposts may move, but here are my starters, which certainly don’t seem unreasonable to me:

    Would like to acquire (but do not currently possess):
    legal permits to have one rifle and one handgun in a NYC residence,
    NYC concealed carry permit for a handgun.
    rifle: M16 or something similar – it’s what I know.
    handgun: 1911, widely acknowledged as the finest gun ever made.

    For those who are easily amused, I’m the “token lefty” on this site. I was a precinct captain for Kerry. I have only the barest familiarity with the process of obtaining a gun in this country.

    So hold onto your beer and watch this shit.

  • UPDATED: A reply from the Rag Blog.

    A few days ago I asked for your experiences from the anti-war groups during the Vietnam War. Many of you responded about your personal experiences in response to the accusations that these never happened. A few days ago the main editor responded in the article.

    I was heavily involved in the movement against the War in Vietnam from its earliest days through its duration — working primarily in Texas, but also in Northern California and New York. I helped organize and attended dozens of demonstrations and public events, including major national actions like the massive March on the Pentagon.

    I rarely saw GIs in any way disrespected and never saw a single instance of physical abuse. It was a highly-charged time and certainly there were some idiots out there, but to suggest that there was widespread disrespect towards GIs from within the peace movement is patently absurd.

    The Vietnam War became extremely unpopular among the general populace and also within the military itself. There was major opposition — and active resistance — among soldiers in Vietnam.

    GIs and returning vets were at the heart of the peace movement and we considered GIs — who were overwhelmingly draftees and many of whom were our childhood friends — to be our brothers and sisters, and to be victims of the system. They were certainly not the enemy.

    This is a terribly destructive myth and a disgraceful — and highly political — reinvention of history.

    How in the world do you expect us to believe that returning veterans were welcomed by the anti-war groups when people in the current anti-war generations have made it vary vocal to the contrary? Or do you mean the veterans that say want you want them to say?

    But the main point is that how can you say that the anti-war groups during the Vietnam War was a friend to US Veterans when the the current one has been anything but?


    Update:     More comments are coming in.

    In the 47 years I have been back from that war, I have yet to find a veteran who can speak first-hand about being spat on or any of the other right wing lies about how the antiwar movement treated veterans. I am sure “Masterspork,” who probably never got closer to combat (assuming he actually ever served) than the “warehouse wars” in Cam Ranh Bay over how many cartons of cigarettes were going to be “lost” for later sale on the black market, can’t tell any first-hand accounts either.

    Yea, because I never deployed for 14 months and went on over at least 164 missions in that time.

    No one can account for every hippie walking through an airport. But it was the consistent policy of every antiwar group to reach out to soldiers. Why else did we found the Oleo Strutt and a dozen other GI coffee houses?

    Yea like Under the Hood? The place where several people used as a place to meet before and after trying to stop the #rd ACR from deploying?Telling them they were going to “Die like Shit”?

    But the best one of all.

    As a Vietnam War veteran who volunteered and served honorably, I feel I was very naive when I volunteered, but slowly realized that I had been lied to and duped. When I returned I was never accosted or abused by anyone, especially not the students at the University of Texas, or while I traveled; and I never observed this happening to any Vietnam Vet. As to those who say they did, well I just do not believe it. The book mentioned above (The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory, and the Legacy of Vietnam, New York University Press, 1998) researched and documented the news reports and magazines of the time and never found a report of spitting or calling “Baby Killer.” That line by Unknown (Jul 21, 2012) above, “They shouted “baby killer” and spit on me” is right out of the movie “Rambo: First Blood in 1982 ” where Sylvester Stallone delivers a monologue saying, “”It wasn’t my war. You asked me, I didn’t ask you and I did what I had to do to win, but somebody wouldn’t let us win. And I come back to the world and I see maggots at the airport, protesting me, spitting, calling me baby-killer and all kinds of vile crap!” ” The only true part of that is the, “It wasn’t my war.”

    UPDATE x2

    Your statements are absolutely false. There were many of the lying, so called “Swift Boaters for Truth [sic]” and others who made the statements you did. For this reason VVAW had a strict rule that when we participated in protests we were to always carry our DD214s to prove our service in Vietnam. To this day I still carry a copy of my DD214 and my orders to report to the 5th Special Forces Group when I protest another war. When the liars, Scott Swett, Jerome Corsi, Larry Bailey, and B. G. Burkett, made those claims to me at the 5th Triennial Vietnam Symposium at The Vietnam Center at Texas Tech University, I pulled out my DD214 Burkett waved me off and said, “That doesn’t mean anything, those can be changed.” You can view and hear the SwiftBoat Liars talks here. Note at 1:12:44 Larry Bailey’s response to me when he asked for questions:

    Then you can watch the VVAW responses here:

    As to your claim, “Anti-War groups were very violent and intolerant of anyone in a military hair cut” you are painting all those who protested the Vietnam mess with the same brush. There were those who, after years of protest, became angry and may have been violent. However, most of it was overblown. And the SwiftBoat Liars tried to say that VVAW and John Kerry were violent, yet the very FBI records that the SwiftBoaters refer to stated very clearly: “The delegations from New England and the East Coast proposed activities a week before Christmas and advocated non-violent civil disobedience.” The VVAW New England and the East Coast were Kerry’s delegations to the VVAW Steering Committee, yet the SwiftBoating Liars used the violent claim against Kerry in the 2004 election, all LIES!

    It was the Texas VVAW who helped the GIs in the Oleo Strut Coffee House in Killeen. We were not “intolerant of anyone in a military hair cut,” we were there to help and support them. If you felt that way, I suspect it was your own projection that made you feel that way, because it did not come from the VVAW.

    Peace, Terry J. DuBose, 1st Lt. US Regular Army, Airborne, Vietnam 1967-68; Texas VVAW State Coordinator & National Steering Committee, 1970-1972.

  • Asking for your experences with the the anti-war groups during the Vietnam War.

    I recently read one of the blogs that I avoid for this reason. This time the Rag Blog is writing about the insults and saliva that the Troops faced when they came back home. In this post they claim that it was all just a myth that never happened. That all of it was done by the media to discredit the anti-war movement.

    In addition the government and its “partners” will be distributing educational materials about the war, according to the Pentagon, but it is unlikely that the Vietnamese side of the story or that of the multitude of war resisters in the U.S., civilian and military, will receive favorable attention. Many facts, including the origins of the war will undoubtedly be changed to conform to the commemoration’s main goal of minimizing Washington’s defeat and maximizing the heroism and loyalty of the troops.

    Granted this is nothing new but this is the sentence that made me post about this.

    Thanks for this. It’s always amazed me that people would claim returning Viet Nam vets were badly-treated in the U.S. Hell, these guys were our friends; we all knew people who went over because they personally saw no alternative. We were on their side and we welcomed them home.

    Know who’s been making this shit up? The guys who backed the war but evaded service –– and who do nothing for veterans even now: the chickenhawks like Cheney and Rumsfeld and the AWOL Bush

    So if you have a experience with the anti-war movement feel free to head on over there and tell them your story.

  • Millard plays the expert on war again.

    Well looks like our good buddy Geoff “Stolen Valor” Millard is being used as a expert voice into war. It seems that he is the main source about Iraq in the article called War Is Betrayal Persistent Myths of Combat.

    He relates the story of a traffic-control mission gone awry when an eighteen-year-old soldier made a bad decision. He was sitting atop an armored Humvee monitoring a checkpoint. An Iraqi car approached, and the soldier, fearing it might be carrying a suicide bomber, pressed the butterfly trigger on his .50 caliber machine gun. He put two hundred rounds into the car in less than a minute, killing a mother, a father, a four-year-old boy, and a three-year-old girl.

    “They briefed this to the general,” Millard says. “They briefed it gruesome. I mean, they had pictures. And this colonel turns around to this full division staff and says: ‘If these fucking Hadjis learned to drive, this shit wouldn’t happen.’

    Yea mean while every person who has have used or familiar with the M2 and the rate of fire knows the errors in this, the author gets sucked into it.

    Those who return to speak this truth, like Goodell or Millard, are our contemporary prophets. They struggle, in a culture awash in lies, to tell what few have the fortitude to digest. The words these prophets speak are painful.

    Also considering that a case where a entire car being shot up would be in EVERY media outlet known to man that you think that it could be covered up? But it has more claims like this by him.

    The briefing that Millard and his superiors received after the checkpoint killing was one of many. Sergeant Perry Jeffries, who served in the Fourth Infantry Division in Iraq after being called out of retirement, said the killing of Iraqi civilians at checkpoints was routine.

    “Alpha troop and Balad Ruz shot somebody at least once,” he says, referring to a troop detachment and to the soldiers manning a checkpoint in a small Diyala Province village. “Somebody else on what we called the Burning Oil Checkpoint, they shot somebody with a .50 cal, shot a guy once, and then several times.”

    Killing becomes a job. You do it. Sometimes it unnerves you. But the demons usually don’t hit until you come home, when you are lying alone in bed and you don’t dare to tell your wife or your girlfriend what you have become, what you saw, what you did, why you are drinking yourself into a stupor, why you so desperately want to forget your dreams.

    But of course he is the good guy in all of this.

    Millard’s thirteen months in Iraq turned him into a passionate antiwar activist. He is the cofounder of the Washington, D.C., chapter of Iraq Veterans Against the War and served as its president for three years. He has taken part in numerous antiwar demonstrations around the country, was one of the organizers of the Winter Soldier hearings, returned to Iraq on a humanitarian aid mission in 2011, and now directs a homeless veterans initiative.

    But the best line is this one.

    If veterans speak of terrible wounds, of lies told to make them kill, of evil committed in our name, we fill our ears with wax.

    Yea no. There were some other names that I did not recall were Jessica Goodell. Anyone else know who she is?

    Jessica Goodell came to understand that torment only too well, as she relates in her 2011 memoir Shade it Black: Death and After in Iraq. Goodell wasn’t poor. She grew up in a middle-class home near Chautauqua Lake in upstate New York. Her father was a lawyer, and her mother worked at home. But her “universe fractured” when she was sixteen and her parents divorced. She could barely continue “the motions of everyday existence.” She was accepted at Ithaca College her senior year, but just before graduation a uniformed Marine came to her high school. He told her he had come to find “tough men.”