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

Category: Antiwar crowd

  • Peace Grannies circling for grim milestone

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    Some posts just write themselves;

    On Saturday, Feb. 20, U.S. military fatalities in Afghanistan reached a total of 999. With the likelihood of the toll reaching 1,000 in the next day or two, peace grannies in New York City have planned a special commemorative vigil to be held the day AFTER the dreaded number has been announced.

    It is requested that people be on the alert for a probable event on either Monday or Tuesday, Feb. 22 and 23. The day after the announcement, all New York City peace groups will meet at 5:30 p.m.

  • The US Military and “Wehrmacht penis envy”

    Alternet has reposted an article from TomDispatch about the US military’s “surprising fascination with failed German war thinking” and the US military’s “Wehrmacht penis envy”. The article was written by William Astore, a retried Air Force Lt. Col who is a frequent critic of the US military in his writings on TomDispatch. In this particular article, Astore argues that the United States military has embraced flawed German military strategy and implies that many US military officers are closet Nazis.  Alternet added their own introduction which was pretty much made the same the point. They even added this lovely picture:

    C’mon Alternet, I know its easy to play the Nazi card and it gets you guys web traffic from the anti-military left, but could you at least try to be original for once? Just for me? Please? PLEASE? (I said please)

    Aside from the fact that this is just a blatant attempt to bash the US military, Astore is factually inaccurate and displays a very shallow understanding of modern US military doctrine.

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  • Interrogator Camerino plays lawyer, fails

    Late last week, the Justice Department announced that it probably didn’t have a reason to prosecute the White House legal team upon whose opinion the Bush Administration built their interrogation policy. As lawyers argue from their particular point of view, DOJ’s mind seems to be made up. This from the Washington Post;

    “When you combine all this with the threat reports that were being done and everything, I don’t know whether anyone crossed the line,” former department lawyer Jack Goldsmith said. “I certainly couldn’t say that myself. I don’t even know what the standard is.”

    Of course, since at least some of the discussion is about interrogation, Anthony Camerino, formerly known as Matthew Alexander, thinks he has something important to say on VoteVets and the Huffington Post;

    When I took the oath as a military officer, I don’t remember any mention of sunny or dark days. I swore to support and defend the Constitution and to faithfully discharge my duties on all days. Isn’t this the essential element of leadership? A ship doesn’t need steering when the river is its steady guide.

    What part of the Constitution covers interrogations, Tony? And since when have you become a lawyer? Because countless lawyers can’t agree with each other, why does a interrogator suddenly think he has the education to make policy for the administration? Getting paid by the George Soros Foundation and the ACLU doesn’t make you a legal expert.

    Camerino’s opinion is based purely on his pocketbook. Camerino gets paid to have the opinion that what the Bush Administration engaged in was torture. How else could a major in the Air Force afford to pay cash for a $300k condo on Capitol Hill? I also wonder how, if he disagrees so vehemently with the government, he’s accepting a promotion to Lieutenant Colonel and planning to deploy to conduct interrogations this summer.

    I also have problems with the Air Force for those exact same reasons. Do they think so little of the troops on the ground, that they’d put a Soros-funded, ACLU-trained pseudo-lawyer to be in charge of a unit of interrogators? The man is obviously a self-serving boob, so what scares the Air Force?

  • Matthis muddies debate on Marc Hall

    DanNY sent us this link of phony soldier Matthis Chiroux defending Marc Hall, the Stop Loss Rapper, on Russia Today;

    Of course when the interviewer compares Hall to Chiroux, Chiroux takes the opportunity to mention how brave they are for being chickenshits. Chiroux also says that Hall isn’t being persecuted for his song, but because he refused to go to Iraq. That’s absolutely false. Hall himself admits that he wasn’t tossed in the hoosegow until he mailed his CD to the Pentagon right after the Hasan murders at Fort Hood.

    Chiroux also advocates for a draft to replace Stop Loss which fails to address the fact that the Army uses Stop Loss to avoid bleeding experience. And Chiroux doesn’t really want a draft anyway. He just wants something else to complain about.

  • Carl Webb news

    He probably enjoys this kind of publicity, but I’m going to do my best to continue to remind IVAW why they booted Carl Webb last year. Their membership punishments tend to be brief. So here’s some screen shots of a conversation Webb had with some veterans somewhere that someone sent to me just to hold IVAW’s collective feet to the fire;
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  • What the Hell do you know about Afghanistan?

    I caught wind of a little presentation that the Chicago chapter of IVAW was giving in the Windy City next month entitled “What the hell do you know about Afghanistan?“. Apparently, it’s designed to inform us woefully ignorant Americans about Afghanistan. But here’s their press release about the event;

    Iraq Veterans Against the War present a series of shorts, improvised skits, talks, stories, and performances that dive into how little and how much we know about Afghanistan. Hear from the first hand experience of veterans that have walked the streets and driven the roads of a country that too many of us know too little about. And tell us what the “hell” you know about a country we have now occupied
    for over nine years.

    So I went over to the Chicago Chapter’s roster just to see who the Hell is going to tell me what the Hell they know about Afghanistan.

    Chicago | Chapter 12

    President – Pete Sullivan
    Treasurer – Mike Applegate
    Secretary – Jim Redden

    So what is their background? According to their profiles, none of them have been Afghanistan – or Iraq for that matter;
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  • Hall’s lawyers try to block his move to Kuwait

    Marc Hall, the Stop Loss Rapper had his lawyer file in a US District Court in Savannah, GA to prevent Hall’s unit from taking him to Kuwait for a court martial;

    Hall’s attorneys say the Army would violate his right to a fair trial by moving his case to a “war zone” where few civilian witnesses or lawyers would travel to defend him.

    So? What would civilians witnesses have to testify about in this case. As far as I can tell, everything in the case is related to the military.

    Gespass said Hall was making a political statement with his song and intended no real violence. He said Hall’s defense would likely include expert witnesses on hip-hop culture, who may be reluctant to travel to Iraq or Kuwait.

    Expert witnesses on hip-hop? Please.

    “I would think you would want people to testify about the nature of hip-hop and that those things contained in the song are not necessarily things to be taken seriously,” Gespass said.

    Yeah, because no one in the hip-hop culture has ever been murdered – well, except those rappers. And, oh, the fans at their concerts. But other than that, it’s only music, right?

    A note to Mr. Gespass; soldiers aren’t entitled to make political statements. And writing about internal military policy isn’t a political statement – it’s technical term is typical soldier bitching. If he hadn’t sent the CD to the Pentagon, he’d be sitting with his unit in Iraq right now doing whatever mechanics do in Iraq these days.

  • REMFs for Peace

    This came up while I was trolling around the Left side of the internet today about a guy named Richard Hendrick, a member of the Veterans for Peace, as an introduction to his past in anticipation of his talk at some private hippie high school in New Hampshire;

    I was drafted at the end of my sophomore year because of an administrative error on the part of Princeton, where I was an undergraduate in Politics. Because my brother was in Vietnam at the time, I was not sent there, but rather to Germany, where I worked in a Corps headquarters. This army experience tended to radicalize me politically and when I returned to Princeton three years later, I participated in many anti-war demonstrations, including those which culminated in shutting the university down for the rest of the year in April of 1970.

    Yes, his experience in a Corps Headquarters in Germany radicalized him. Probably from testing all of those microphones, sharpening pencils and running the mimeograph machines. Those three-day weekends in Bavaria and touring the wine fests would drive anyone to radicalism. Poor, dirty little hippie.

    I’m sure the “administrative error” at Princeton had something to with his failing grades and the loss of his student deferment. If he’d been drafted, why was gone from Princeton for three years, since the draft only required two years of service.

    And, oh, yeah, Princeton students went on strike May 1st, 1970, not April, so the school shut down two weeks early for summer break. Big whoop. Big, tough hippie standing up to the Man.

    I guess the worst thing about him is that someone thinks he has something of value to tell high school students.