Still out there and driving the liberal anti-war loons nuts.
Act of Valor STILL in the top five!
Jonn’s review is here.
I’ve seen it and certainly recommend it too.
More than anything it serves as a valuable counterpoint to other recent events.
Sure gonna try to catch it again.
Claymore sends a link from Big Peace which reports what we already know; Code Pink and Veterans For Peace are coming our for Ron Paul. It was almost a year ago that we first reported Code Pink support for Ron Paul.
But, as we’ve said before, Ron Paul’s foreign policy isn’t that far from the anti-war Left, which is why he has attracted people like IVAW’s Adam Kokesh and Rethink Afghanistan’s Jake Diliberto. Of course, Kokesh and Code Pink have been tied to each other for ages, like when Adam hosted their Karaoke fundraiser over three years ago, and their recent adventures in dancing at the Jefferson Memorial. It’s a foreign policy that is naive and will intentionally make the US weaker. That Maoists and racists like Medea Benjamin are attracted to him isn’t that surprising;
It’s CODEPINK founder Medea Benjamin, who’s now on record saying: “I think Ron Paul has a remarkable position when it comes to U.S. foreign policy, and his call for no war on Iran is something that many of us support.”
Benjamin has latched onto Paul’s incessant criticism of the wars we’ve fought in Afghanistan and Iraq, and she claims that the Texas Congressman “has tremendous support among many young people who see that their futures are being frittered away by spending trillions of dollars on unjust wars.”
The article goes on to mention that Veterans For Peace, that POS stepchild of the old Vietnam Veterans Against the War which is chock full of phonies and pretenders like Ward Reilly and Doug Zachary. So I guess that’s more proof that most veterans support Ron Paul. As long as they don’t mind getting in bed with Medea Benjamin.
Dallas Homas M.D., an Army Colonel who’s the head of JBLM’s Madigan Army Medical Center, has been relived after concerns arose of “under reporting” of PTSD among soldiers. Initial coverage by local ABC affiliate KOMO News claims that the Army’s Medical Command has determined soldiers were essentially having their PTSD swept under the carpet in order to reduce PTSD diagnosis and save money. Much of the focus was the result of my old Congressmen, Norm Dicks-(D), voicing concern that Madigan chose to close a PTSD clinic. Two things immediately occurred to me.
First off it would seem that KOMO, who seems to go out of their way to find the lowest of the low in order to generate sensational quotes they can place next to sympathetic descriptions, has enlisted the help of yet another communist activist, Chanan Suárez. Suárez, at least, is merely a member of the Seattle Chapter of the Trotskyite International Socialist Organization and generic IVAW goon. The last time JBLM was generating controversy in the news the producers at KOMO slithered all the way to the bottom of the heap and enlisted the help of the Stalinists of International ANSWER and the Party for Socialism and Liberation. Way to get out the true feelings of the veteran’s community on the PTSD issue, KOMO.
Tangentially, the other Navy guy they found to stump for the evils of military medicine is Adam Horton. Horton, who is either a former aviation electrician on the EA-6B Prowler according to a profile piece, just recently “won” his own PTSD claim. On the other hand his LinkedIn profile says he got out as an Aircrew Survival Equipmentman 2nd Class. I don’t always speak Navy that well so maybe my confusion is simply a matter of failing to translate.
The disgusting tendency of local Seattle media to distort the views of the veteran community aside, the second thing to occur to me is that this is probably an old and largely resolved issue that’s catching up to the command staff only now. I never worked in the medical field in the military and I never filed for PTSD but it seemed to be fairly common knowledge among Marines during my time that the flood of disability requests hitting the Navy’s desk during the height of the Iraq War was causing medical to “tighten their belt” when it came to claims. Whether there was an active conspiracy to short PTSD claims, a consensus that standards needed to be reevaluated to ensure funds were available for the highest priority claims or it was all the habitual scuttlebutt of perpetually paranoid Marines, is out of my lane. I’m sure some readers have their own, more qualified, perspectives.
Old Trooper sends us a link from PressTV, the English-language Iranian news organization, which tells us that our old buddy, Mike Prysner, IVAW cum March Forward anti-war activist is using his organization to co-opt the Occupy LA sheep to turn them against the nebulous war against Iran;
Mike Prysner is an Iraq War veteran and an organizer with the Answer Coalition.
Prysner says protesters want to stop America from starting another unauthorized war in the Middle East, similar to what happened in Iraq.
Activists say the war drive is based on U.S. imperialism and a desire to control the resources of the Middle East.
“Similar to what happened in Iraq”? If that was imperialism, why are we not there anymore? Kind of redefines imperialism, doesn’t it?
Prysner, you might remember, was indeed a veteran who served in Iraq, but his stories about what he saw there are somewhat in doubt because of his job…a radar operator. He wears remnants of his uniform at every opportunity to give himself some measure of authority in the discussion, but that only works among the hippies.
Prysner also ran for public office, Florida, I think on the ballot for the Party for Socialism and Liberty and he’s a died-in-the-wool socialist. he left the IVAW because they weren’t radical enough, but he returned long enough to run for membership on their board in hopes that he could make them more radical. When that didn’t work, he formed March forward, the veteran arm of the Maoist-inspired ANSWER.
I’m sure he licks his lips in anticipation at the thought of a nuclear-armed Iran.
Patrick and Alan both sent us a link to an NPR broadcast they heard on the radio on the way home about a guy who calls himself Leo Webb and claims he was a sniper. And “watched half my squadron die” – whatever the hell a squadron is, since he says he was in the Army. It doesn’t help his case that he’s at Occupy Oakland. There’s no record of a Leo Webb on AKO, not that it means anything, there could be several reasons why he’s not there, but it doesn’t help him with me;
“Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules.” -Saul Alinsky
The silent majority’s revulsion at the New Left’s demonization of Vietnam-era veterans created an environment in the popular consciousnesses that said, “Never again. Never again will returning troops be spit upon and libeled as criminals.” However, the media’s discovery of the 3/2 urination video has crystallized in my mind a reality of anti-war propaganda, that the nature and character of the troops themselves is the battleground, yet again.
In the wake of the video’s discovery, a sad dichotomy has emerged in the media. On one side are the “reasonable” and “responsible” forces who call for the discipline of these Marines for their actions. They studiously call for deeper investigations and ask “the hard questions” about how and why this happened. Those who have served in uniform, our nation’s true journalists, conservatives and those on the left with the strategic and moral clarity of the late Christopher Hitchens are left to cry out for context and make emotional declarations of solidarity with the dehumanization of Taliban fighters. In other words the narrative established in the opening hours of the story forced the defenders of the American service member into the indefensible position of championing pissing on dead people. That’s a losing fight.
In very recent history the discovery that Marines had urinated on the enemy’s dead would have triggered an internal disciplinary action, if for no other reason than such behavior undermines the professionalism and bearing upon which the Marine Corps stakes so much of its reputation. Today, though, it becomes a media firestorm, a chance for the often collusionary anti-war and anti-American forces to vilify the effort in Afghanistan as a lost cause perpetrated by the morally bankrupt. Stories such as these, in conjunction with the largely manufactured rash of recent PTSD horror stories, function to establish a narrative of immoral entropy, making the case that the war effort in Afghanistan is fundamentally corrosive to everyone touched by it. Instead of a difficult and noble endeavor to do right, to spread basic human rights and to doggedly pursue the most evil cabal of men in modern history it is a cancer on the nation to be cut out without mercy for the well being of the entire nation.
This is a fight which will be waged at your expense; the active duty and reserve service members and the families which sacrifice so much to put them and keep them in the fight. There’s a target on your back. Keep your chin up and your nose clean.
The officer who presided over the Article 32 hearing for Bradley Manning has decided that the case of Manning releasing classified material to the world through Wikileaks has merit and will go to trial. From the Washington Times;
Pfc. Manning faces 22 counts, including aiding the enemy, for allegedly giving more than 700,000 secret U.S. documents to the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks. Prosecutors say WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange collaborated with the soldier.
Defense lawyers say Pfc. Manning was clearly a troubled young soldier. They say the Army never should have sent him to Iraq or given him access to classified material.
The defense is brilliant. Their contention is that Manning didn’t leak the information, but if he did, the information shouldn’t have been classified, and he was confused about why he has a dick, so that’s another excuse right there.
ABC News reports that the morally bankrupt Left is aleady littering the landscape of the nation’s capitol with billboards in support of Manning;
The billboard at 1240 New York Ave. NE displays a picture of Manning with the words “Free Bradley Manning” and “Blowing the whistle on war crimes is not a crime.”
“Our goal was to basically display broad public support for Bradley,” said Jeff Paterson, project director of Courage to Resist. “We think Bradley deserves the same amount of support that Daniel Ellsberg received when he released the Pentagon papers.”
Yeah, Courage To Resist also supported Jason Abdo, the failed Fort Hood terrorist before his plot was revealed. They probably gave Abdo the wherewithal to escape the Army after he was charged with having child porn and a place from which to launch his doomed plot.
Remember all those optics that went missing from JBLM a couple days ago? Well it turns out it’s about $600k worth of stuff that was secured in a locked but not alarmed room. Whatever, like that doesn’t happen all the time. Somehow, though, the thieves managed to cut the locks and make off with it unbeknownst to the Company’s Supply section for as long as three weeks.
Right on time, the North Korean apologist, Stalinist lunatics at International ANSWER have crawled across I-5 from Coffee Strong to use this opportunity to take up the locked-down comapany’s cause via their front group “March Forward”. You might remember some illustrious members such as Michael Prysner. According to the Seattle Times:
The lockdown has angered some of the soldiers, who are part of the brigade’s 4th Battalion, 9th Infantry Regiment. They have received support from March Forward, a group of soldiers and veterans opposed to the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, who have been circulating a petition calling for an end to the lockdown.
“The Fort Lewis, 4th Battalion, 9th Infantry Regiment is again being subjected to abusive treatment by its chain of command,” the petition reads.
Ah, good to have some emo-Communist burnouts in your corner, isn’t it guys?
Don’t get me wrong, if I was stuck on lock down in the BEQ because some criminal in cammies stole a bunch of crap from my unit I’d be pretty pissed too. All that being said I have to add that, in the big scheme of things, sitting around drinking beer and watching cable while the CID figures out who’s going to lockup isn’t exactly a humanitarian crisis.