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

Category: Antiwar crowd

  • IVAW in Stars and Stripes

    For some reason, the Stars and Stripes thinks the opinion of 70 people who call themselves “Iraq Veterans Against the War” (in my opinion, they should change the name to “Random People Off the Street Who Want You to Think They Are Iraq Veterans Against the War“) is important enough to report to our troops overseas;

    At its annual convention in College Park, Md., earlier this month, members of Iraq Veterans Against the War vigorously debated what the group’s stance should be on Afghanistan, according to some participants. Opposition to the war quietly became official policy earlier this year following an online membership poll. The vote was said to be close, though no details were publicly released.

    “A decision has been made in terms of our position, which is we are against it,” said Jose Vasquez, executive director of IVAW and co-founder of the New York City chapter.

    Jose Vasquez, the new Executive Director of RPOSWWYTTAIVAW, decided after 13 years of service as a medic that he was a conscientious objector right before he was supposed to deploy to Iraq (yet claimed he would have gone to Afghanistan).

    As is the case with Iraq, the existing IVAW resolution advocates “the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of all occupying forces in Afghanistan and reparations for the Afghan people, and support (for) all troops and veterans working toward those ends.”

    The third plank is the least important, of course. You can bet the debate over whether to include Afghanistan as something they oppose included a big discussion over how much money they could make. But who is surprised that a “majority” of members of the RPOSWWYTTAIVAW would vote for this? After all, a “majority” voted to protect Carl Webb’s right to preach sabotaging and killing US forces in theater. A “majority” voted to make Matthis Chiroux, self-admitted rapist who calls himself an Afghanistan veteran, a member of their leadership.

    And this so-called “majority” was 70 members of a supposedly 1700-member organization. And did the International Socialist Organization members of RPOSWWYTTAIVAW stack attendance at College Park in their favor? They paid for Carl Webb to attend – how many others’ travel did they pay? And how many of those who got free travel were members aligned with the ISO?

    How do I know Carl Webb got a free trip to College Park? He told me.

    webbs-ivaw-trip

    That was right before his profile disappeared from Facebook.

    Not all of the members of RPOSWWYTTAIVAW approve of their new stance against the war in Afghanistan;

    One of the members who supports the war in Afghanistan is Army Sgt. Selena Coppa, an active-duty military intelligence specialist based at Wiesbaden, Germany.

    “The organization is kind of split on that,” Coppa said.

    At times, she added, the issue of whether to oppose the war in Afghanistan “ran the risk of tearing us apart. IVAW is like a family. You don’t want members leaving.”

    Well, it looks like you can’t stop that, Selena. I’m hearing rumors that an entire chapter resigned this weekend and some actual veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan from some other important chapters resigned as well. I hope you’re loving your new ISO overlords.

  • ACLU outing CIA agents to terrorists

    The Washington Post‘s Peter Finn writes this morning about some lawyers investigating detainee abuse at Guantanamo who showed their clients pictures of CIA agents in an attempt to ID perpetrators of the alleged abuse. Some agents were pictured outside of their homes.

    The photos were taken by researchers hired by the John Adams Project, a joint effort of the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, to support military counsel at Guantanamo Bay, according to the sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the inquiry. It was unclear whether the Justice Department is also examining those organizations.

    Both groups have long said that they will zealously investigate the CIA’s interrogation program at “black sites” worldwide as part of the defense of their clients.

    That’s kind of odd, because the ACLU was pretty upset at the supposed “outing” of Valerie Plame by the Bush Administration.

    The ACLU/SC board urges the House of Representatives to investigate impeachable offenses by the President and Vice President, including:

    • Manipulating intelligence before the Iraq War and deceiving the American people about imminent threats they faced. • Authorizing the torture of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay and other military prisons and handing over suspects to other nations who tortured them (a practice known as “extraordinary rendition”). • Authorizing the firing of federal prosecutors for political reasons and obstructing justice by defying Congressional subpoenas investigating the firing. • Authorizing wiretaps on U.S. citizens without warrants and in violation of the Constitution, and concealing the program from Congress and the public. • Conspiring to disclose the name of Valerie Plame, a covert agent in the Central Intelligence Agency. This action risked her life and the lives of her intelligence contacts.

    Now they’re showing CIA agents’ pictures in front of their homes to honest-to-goodness terrorists? Why, that seems a bit hypocritical doesn’t it?

  • IVAW gives advice to State Dept. then promptly ignored

    Yes, according to junior space cadet, and newly-elected board member TJ Buonomo, he tried to give advice to the State Department earlier this month. Keep in mind that Buonomo spent a few months in the Army as a second louie (after soaking the US tax payers for an Air Force Academy education), so he introduces himself to a State Department “official” as a “former US Army Intelligence Officer”.

    Buonomo, in his own words, “I was discharged from the Army for vocally supporting the impeachment of Vice President Dick Cheney and for denouncing American imperialism as a betrayal of our revolutionary principles”. But he sure throws around that “US Army Intelligence Officer” around like he’s proud of it. And he writes like he’s in high school.

    So anyway, after he cleared up his status to the State Department “official” he pretty much got a “no comment” answer. “Numerous attempts to contact the State Department’s Office of International Labor and Corporate Social Responsibility by phone and email have not been responded to.”

    Probably because the State Department doesn’t answer letters from pseudo-experts who end their sentences with prepositions. It makes them sound like cranks.

    But Buonomo’s whole schtick is that he went to an Iraqi labor conference, well, once the shooting stopped. So he thinks that short stay makes him an expert on labor relations in Iraq – such an expert that he presumes he can advise the State Department.

    Of course, to someone who spent 14 months in uniform and calls himself a “former US Army Intelligence Officer” I’m sure a week or so in Iraq seems like time enough to know every thing.

    So let’s hear one more time how significant it was that Obama’s veteran adviser met with IVAW at the Democrat National Committee.

  • Professional Presidential stalker heads for Martha’s Vineyard

    Say what you want about Cindy Sheehan, but she’s consistent. Byron York reports that she’s packed her little bandana on a stick and headed to Martha’s Vineyard to camp out at President Obama’s vacation site;

    Will Sheehan’s stay in Massachusetts attract as much attention as her time in Texas? Probably not. Even the left wing of the Democratic party seems unconcerned with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan these days, compared to their bitter opposition during Bush’s time in office.

    From another York column;

    I asked Sheehan about the fact that the press seems to have lost interest in her and her cause. “It’s strange to me that you mention it,” she said. “I haven’t stopped working. I’ve been protesting every time I can, and it’s not covered. But the one time I did get a lot of coverage was when I protested in front of George Bush’s house in Dallas in June. I don’t know what to make of it. Is the press having a honeymoon with Obama? I know the Left is.”

    I guess she’s just jealous that Obama gets more news coverage than she does. I guess like everything else these days, there’s an expiration date on “absolute moral authority“.

    Code Pink won’t even give her any love. They’re planning a trip to Gaza;

    code-pink-gaza

  • 32 orgs plan assault on Army Experience Center

    There’s a plot afoot in Philly by 32 Leftist organizations to assault the Army Experience Center at Franklin Mills Mall near Philadelphia. One of my countless moles forwarded this notice to me;

    Activists affiliated with several dozen groups on the east coast will again descend on the Army Experience Center at Franklin Mills Mall in Philadelphia at 2:00 pm on Saturday, September 12, 2009.

    A protest on May 2, 2009 at the Army’s interactive video recruiting center was attended by 250 people and saw 7 arrests, but failed to generate mainstream print media coverage.
    This time, demonstrators are being encouraged to form small affinity groups and enter the mall through one of several locations. Protesters are encouraged to express their outrage in creative, nonviolent ways.
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  • Travis Bishop; ignorant martyr

    The Left is trying to make a martyr of SGT Travis Bishop, the soldier who went AWOL on the day his unit deployed to Afghanistan, returned a week later to begin the processing of his application for conscientious objector. Bishop was sentenced to a year in jail last Friday. TSO’s favorite journalist Dahr Jamail who was there writes;

    Despite Sgt. Bishop’s commander, Captain Christopher Hall’s admission to the court that he had never provided CO training to Bishop’s unit, the jury, who were all officers of much higher ranks (six to seven ranks higher) than Bishop, therefore, not necessarily a jury of his peers, appeared hostile to Bishop’s plight.

    For example, one of the jurors had to be woken up during the trial. Another, a Lt. Col. Atkins, rolled his eyes and shook his head throughout most of the defense’s time of making their case.

    So Jamail is trying to push the theory that Bishop’s trial was unconstitutional (because the jury wasn’t a panel of peers – check the court martial regs, Jamail), instead of admitting that James Branum, Bishop’s lawyer is an incompetent boob;

    “The war in Afghanistan does not meet the criteria for lawful war under the UN Charter, which says that member nations who joined the UN, as did the US, should give up war forever, aside from two exceptions: that the war is in self defense, and that the use of force was authorized by the UN Security Council,” Branum told Truthout in an earlier interview, “The nation of Afghanistan did not attack the United States. The Taliban may have, but the nation and people of Afghanistan did not. And under US law, the Supremacy Clause of the US Constitution, any treaty enacted by the US is now the ’supreme law of the land.’ So when the United States signed the UN Charter, we made that our law as well.”

    Yeah, the Taliban attacked the US not the Afghan people – however, the Taliban was the government of Afghanistan at the time of the attack, weren’t they? Is Branum trying to say that the US is attacking the current government of Afghanistan – truly a freakin’ moron.

    Branum told Truthout he is attempting to establish a precedent with the trial, regardless of the outcome. “We want to change the law, and I would argue that when soldiers are informed of their deployment, which is generally two to six months in advance, they should be giving training about CO status. I will argue that if you don’t do the training, you can’t deploy.”

    Branum’s argument that Travis didn’t have time to file his application for CO status is boobery, best illustrated by Branum’s other client, Victor Agosto, who was in Bishop’s unit and had plenty of time to inform his unit he was not going to deploy with his unit to Afghanistan. Agosto got thirty days in jail because he didn’t go AWOL on the day his unit deployed, unlike Bishop who was awarded a year in jail at my expense.

    At the link above, there’s also a letter from Bishop who continues the stupid defense his lawyer tried – that he’s ignorant, so he shouldn’t be in jail;

    All I can say is this: If I had a Soldier that acted on impulse and did something illegal that I, his Sergeant, could have trained him on, there is no doubt in my mind that I would be in the First Sergeant’s office the next morning explaining how I ‘failed’ the Soldier, leaving this Soldier untrained and, ultimately, unprepared.

    Yeah, dumbass, except that you hung out with Victor Agosto for months before your unit deployed and you didn’t learn anything from him? Your lawyer is a stupid moron and you’re paying the price for listening to him. Have a nice year, cupcake.

    Our friend, Tankerbabe, got a quote from a member of the jury that illustrates just how stupid Branum is and how badly he screwed Bishop with his bass-akward representation, but I’m waiting on his permission to use his quote, I’ll have to report on that later.

  • Matthis Chiroux engaged

    I know you’ve been missing our “all-Matthis, all-the-time” format of recent months. We’ve had our highly-compensated staff of reporters and photographers following him day-in and day-out, waiting for something to report. Until now, there’s been nothing.

    Finally, from their bunker in Manhattan, our crew reports that Matthis is engaged. A photo of Matthis and the comely lass that we here at This Ain’t Hell agree he richly deserves is below the fold.

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  • James Branum; lawyer to malcontents

    branum-and-bishop-pretrial-glee

    You’ve probably been wondering who is defending these “resisters” who are being prosecuted by the military during their court cases. For Victor Agosto, Travis Bishop, Robin Long, Cliff Cornell, and pot smoking deserter Ryan Jackson, it’s been James M. Branum, who calls himself the GI Rights Lawyer. He’s also a co-chair of the Military Law Task Force branch of the communist National Lawyer’s Guild.

    So who is James Branum? In his own words;

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