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

Category: Code Pink

  • Combat tours cut

    The President today announced that because of the success of our troops in the Middle East, the enemy is on the run and the troops can count on shorter tours (Wall Street Journal link);

    President George W. Bush declared progress in the Iraq war Thursday, saying terrorists “are on the run” and a generally improved security environment should permit further U.S. troop reductions.

    Standing on the Colonnade outside the Oval Office of the White House, President Bush also announced that effective Thursday, the duration of troop tours in Iraq will be cut from 15 months to 12 months.

    Mr. Bush said this reduction “will relieve the burden on our forces and it will make life easier for our wonderful military families.”

    With no help from Democrats, with no help from the cutthroat back-stabbing sociopaths of the IVAW and Veterans For  Peace, no help from the drama queens at Code Pink, no help from the filthy hippies of ANSWER. With no help from Barack Obama, no help from Chuck Hagel. With no help from Harry Reid, no help from Nancy Pelosi. With no help from phony soldier John Murtha, no help from phony earthling Dennis Kucinich. No help from Jim Webb no help from Ron Paul..

    The troops and the President, all by themselves, did what nearly every media outlet said they couldn’t. Against the odds, against the pseudo-experts.

    They can all claim credit and change their stories from now until the cows come home, but the troops know who stood with them. And who didn’t.

  • Conyers ignores Nader

    Ralph Nader is more than a little peeved that the Democrats, specifically John Conyers, haven’t included him the hearings on impeachment slated to begin earlier today so he did what nerds do best – fired off a strongly-worded letter;

    You have invited four members of the House to testify including, of course, Congressman Kucinich and several observers of the subject, including the inestimable former mayor of Salt Lake City Rocky Anderson, Bruce Fein and John Dean. The Libertarian candidate for President, Bob Barr is also on the witness list, but I am not.

    This is not the first time that I have been excluded from testifying on subjects both of us have been concerned about and have discussed.

    I see  poor Ralph underneath the basket in gym class jumping up and down waving his arms yelling “Throw it to me! Throw it to me!” And John Conyers, knowing Nader’s gonna drop the ball, just won’t.

    Never mind that they have no evidence, or any legitimate charges, or that they could better use their time trying to find some place to drill for oil or some place to build a refinery. Ralph just wants some face time.
    It’s all a little political theater for the nutroots and so Adam Kokesh, IVAW, the VFP and Code Pink won’t yell at them again.

  • IVAW’s Adam “Fallujah” Kokesh confronts Conyers

    Former lance corporal Adam Kokesh (who’s been to Falluja) and his merry band of geriatrics from the Veterans for Peace pressed John Conyers on the impeachment of the President and Vice President on Capitol Hill last week. Conyers tells the gang of imbeciles that he hasn’t made up his mind yet what he’s going to do about impeachment.

    Let me translate that for those of you who don’t know Conyer’s history; Conyers has nothing to impeach Bush and Cheney for. It’s that simple. If Conyers had something on them, he’d be shouting it from the rooftops.

    Conyers was part of the crew who tried to slow the Senate’s “advice and consent” of Vice President Ford so the House could impeach Nixon leaving the Presidency slot to the Democrat Speaker of the House and overturning the 1972 election. Conyers is a purely partisan hitman for the Democrats. If he “hasn’t decided” what to do about impeachment, it’s because he’s empty-handed.

    The YouTube video;

    [youtube Evey795noUA nolink]

    It seems that since Kokesh has been busted publicly on his misuse of the rank of sergeant, now he begins every conversation with the fact that he’s been to Falluja to wrap himself in the glory of the heroes of that battle. The story he tells Conyers sounds suspiciously similar to the story Logan Laituri told at Winter Soldier, and his story was meant to tug at Conyer’s heart strings.

    Believe me, boys, Conyers doesn’t need to see your disappointed faces to convince him to impeach. What he realizes that you gumballs of the Left can’t seem to grasp is that there’s no impeachable offense. But Conyers blames his reticent behavior on that nebulous “corporate media”. You’ve used that excuse to cover up your shortcomings, too, so you should recognize it as camoflage when someone else uses it on you.

    But the IVAW and VFP and Code Pink and all of the rest are just using the impeachment fantasy to raise money from the ignorant masses anyway.

    Impeachment advocates in Michigan met with Conyers last week and got the same cock-and-bull story from Conyers along with a hint that Conyers has tricks up his sleeve;

    “He has sent mixed signals all along,” said David Redemann, a citizen supporter of impeachment. “This meeting was more of the same.” Conyers said that he and Kucinich would discuss the matter with the other House members to see if there was any support for it. But he warned that the conservative Blue Dog Democrats, as well as Democrats who are serving their first term in Congress, would be unlikely to support impeaching Bush for crimes he committed while in office.

    Conyers also hinted that alternative measures could be taken so that Bush and his allies could be tried for crimes after they leave office.

    The Milwaukee advocates argued that impeachment proceedings would help Democrats in the November election, since voters want the president and vice president to be held accountable for their actions in office.

    Well, folks, welcome to the real world. You can wish on a star all you want, but dreams don’t always come true – especially when your fantasies have no basis in reality.

    Conyers, Pelosi, Reid, Kucinich and all of the rest are just stringing you along like they did to get your vote in 2006. Remember how they promised to end the war in Iraq? Here we are nearly two years later and all they’ve done is make empty gestures. Remember this video:

    [youtube Nc5lHXkrdQ8 nolink]

    The Democrats know they can’t impeach, but they also know you’re stupid enough to believe that they can impeach the President and Vice President. Hey, you fell for it once. They figure you’ll forget all about it after the Bush Administration is gone. And you will.

  • Navel gazing in the anti-war movement

    The antiwar movement has hit a brick wall and they don’t understand why. The War Resisters League has published a report they call a “Listening Process Report” assessing the movement. Mostly, it reads like a Junior High student council meeting. Lots of lofty ideas not at all with a even a little thought to process. TSO’s secret heartthrob, Kelly Dougherty illustrates that real well;

    IVAW’s three goals are: immediate withdrawal of all occupying forces from Iraq, full veterans benefits, and reparations for the Iraqi people. Our strategy to end the war is to withdraw military support from the war.

    Yeah, well, how are you going to do that, Kelly? Are you going to wait until the shooting stops and then declare victory for your side?

    The Vets for Peace weigh in with the benefit of their experience. Michael McPhearson;

    The most important thing about Veterans For Peace is that we are vets. Many of us have been to war. All of us are trained to fight. We know what war is about. In the public eye, we have credibility.

    Here’s a picture I took of MacPhearson last September at a protest – he was an artilleryman in the 1991 Gulf War;

    VVAW lost so much credibility after their Winter Soldier testimony and membership couldn’t stand up to scrutiny that they nearly melted away and joined the VFP. The same way the IVAW’s membership and fables don’t stand up to scrutiny today – coached by the thugs and storytellers at the VFP and VVAW.

    The national field organizer of the War Resisters League, Matthew Smucker, in his conclusions to the “listening process” worries that the war will end before they can have any influence;

    The U.S. military occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan will eventually come to an end. But will we be able to build a grassroots political force in the United States strong enough to positively influence when and how that happens?

    Central to their strategy is the use of the IVAW as a wedge between the military leadership and their subordinates. But, as always with the drama queens of the anti-war (pro-profit) movement, the IVAW wants a more central role. “We’re tired of being window dressing for other people’s events” Jose Vazquez is quoted as saying in the report.

    Snot-slinging Jason Hurd who ALMOST shot someone once, wants to create a generation of mutineers;

    The philosophy is that if they don’t have soldiers to fight the war, they can’t fight the war no matter how much money they have. We see what helped end the Vietnam War was that all these soldiers said, “No. We’re not going to do this anymore. This is screwed up.” That’s what we want to do.

    Um, Jason, that’s what soldiers in the Hollywood version of the Vietnam War did, not the real ones. I know all of those heroes at the VFP and VVAW told you that’s what happened, but if I were you I’d check more reliable sources.

    Aimee Allison is quoted as saying;

    “Military members represent a diversity in society that movement people often don’t. And I’ve always had that struggle as a former military person myself, that I’ve been in rooms where I look at everyone and I think, ‘You guys freak me out. I can’t relate to where you’re coming from.’”

    I don’t know why they would freak you out, Aimee;

    I guess the real hilarious part of the whole thing is that the war is ending just as they’re ending their navel-gazing.

    Iraq has met 15 of the 18 goals for this year, more troops were killed Afghanistan (the war they characterize as legitimate) than Iraq last month…and the peace-for-fun-and-profit movement is coming up short. They refuse to believe that their movement is unpopular because it runs counter to human nature and counter to the American character. They’re old hippies trying to revive their glory days when they lived in an echo chamber and idiot college professors told them they were brave.

    Now they’re trying to influence a whole new generation of misfits, liars and sociopaths.

  • Vietnam vets at war again

    Those filthy hippie freaks of the 60s are so steeped in their self-importance, so self-assured they somehow made a difference in this country’s history, they’re back to attacking the veterans of the same era. Dodging their spittle the first time wasn’t enough, I suppose.

    It was honest-to-goodness Vietnam veterans who dealt the death blow to John Kerry’s 2004 Presidential bid. Not only did the Swiftboat Vets do him in, but a thousand or so veterans stood outside the Capitol one September afternoon and told America that John Kerry lied while good men died.

    In 2005,Vietnam veteran Michael A. Smith spit tobacco juice into the face of Jane Fonda in Saint Louis. Millions of veterans of all eras stood and cheered for Smith doing what we’d all wanted to do for so long. The Left was outraged that one of them was on the receiving end of a differing opinion – that someone would actually disagree with their treasonous, shallow opinions.

    The Left trotted out “research” that “proved” that not one Vietnam Veteran had ever been spat upon. They even created an expert out of VVAW member Jerry Lembke who couldn’t really prove it didn’t happen so he pooh-poohed it down to an urban myth – the Left, of course, gobbled up the “research” of this Ph.D. In this Slate article, he provides the unassailable proof that it never happened;

    He writes that he never met anybody who convinced him that any such clash took place.

    Well, that’s enough proof for me. How ’bout you?

    Then, the Left held their last successful anti-war demonstration in January 2007. When they spray-painted steps at the Capitol and defaced the statue at the Navy Memorial, Vietnam Veterans said enough was enough.

    2001784008875464499_rs.jpg

    They put a call out and thousands of Vietnam veterans flocked to the Vietnam Memorial two months later and formed an impenetrable human shield around “their”memorial.

    Photobucket

    Ever since then, the Left has been disparaging Vietnam veterans. I don’t know how many exchanges I’ve had with IVAW veterans who think that only their service is relevant and they’ve called Vietnam veterans fat, old has-beens. Even my buddy, TSO, an Afghanistan veteran, was physically threatened by IVAW thugs at Winter Soldier when they found out he was a member of Vets For Freedom.

    Every time the Left planned an antiwar protest, Vietnam veterans showed up to stand in stark contrast to the anti-war side. Vietnam veterans announced that what had happened to them when they were fighting our nation’s wars would never happen again.

    Support for the Left dwindled from thousands at their protest in January 2007 to hundreds at their last big event in March 2008. Now, they’ve decided that they need to focus their rekindled hate for Vietnam Veterans on John McCain.

    It began with Jay Rockefeller;

    “McCain was a fighter pilot, who dropped laser-guided missiles from 35,000 feet. He was long gone when they hit,” Rockefeller told the newspaper, which published the article on the interview Tuesday.

    “What happened when they [the missiles] get to the ground? He doesn’t know. You have to care about the lives of people. McCain never gets into those issues,” he is quoted saying.

    Then Wesley Clark, because he got away with it defending Hillary back in March, disparaged McCain’s Vietnam service using nearly the same words. It’s signaled the Left’s attack poodles that McCain’s Vietnam experience is fair game.

    My buddy, Robin at Chickenhawk Express quotes Code Pink’s Medea Benjamin;

    “I wouldn’t characterize anybody who fought in Vietnam as a war hero,” said Medea Benjamin, a co-founder of the theatrical anti-war group Code Pink. “In 23 bombing sorties, there must have been civilians that were killed and there’s no heroism to that.”

    “Anyone who can’t look back and admit how wrong it was to be in Vietnam and be killing civilians deserves to be challenged,” she said, though she stressed that her group is more focused on McCain’s present support for the war in Iraq than on his past.

    At Lew Rockwell, Michael Gaddy uses McCain’s “I’m a war criminal” confession given to his captors against McCain. At the Daily Kos, they ask “What’s so special about McCain’s service?;

    Getting shot down, tortured and then doing propaganda for the enemy is not command experience….

    But being a Harvard-educated lawyer does?

    Politico even exhumes the corpse of Vietnam activist Noam Chomsky for a quote on the subject;

    Noam Chomsky, the linguist and activist, said in an e-mail that he thought Americans should question whether McCain’s torture in an unjust war is relevant to his campaign.

    “The questions could scarcely even be understood within the reigning intellectual and moral culture — though I don’t doubt that much of the population would understand,” Chomsky said.

    Confederate Yankee writes;

    We’ve known that Barack Obama’s base among the radical fringe would bring out some long-seated uglinesses in part of the Democratic Party that makes up his base, but I don’t think that anyone could have expected it would come out this soon, this hard, this transparently.

    It’s been building for years – since they got away with disparaging Dan Quayle’s and George W. Bush’s National Guard service, it was inevitable.

  • Guantanamo Protest in DC

    Today in Washington, DC, Amnesty International and the Torture Abolition and Survivors Support Coalition, staged events protesting Guantanamo. I learned that they were in town from reading VanHelsing at Moonbattery, so I took the Blogger Urban Reconnaissance Vehicle (BURV) and headed downtown. The first thing I found was the Amnesty International’s Guantanamo Cell Tour 2008.

    A child who really needed to get a sandwich or two was handing out fliers to passers-by;

    Then there was the cell itself;

    The woman who was conducting the tour told me that it’s not representative of normal cells, but those of “Class V” prisoners. But according to Fox News, that’s not true;

    Amnesty International-USA said the cell, which contains a toilet, sleeping bunk and a small window, is meant to symbolize the U.S. government’s alleged mistreatment of detainees at the prison.

    It said the tour is designed to increase public awareness and mount pressure on the Bush administration and Congress to close down the U.S.-controlled detention center. The group planned its display in Washington to coincide with a House Judiciary subcommittee’s hearing on harsh interrogation techniques.

    But Charles “Cully” Stimson, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Detainee Affairs, lashed out against Amnesty’s campaign, calling it a “complete fraud in misrepresenting the condition of detention at Gitmo today.”

    Not having been to Guantanamo myself, I can’t attest to either story so I’ll just go with the experts on this. Since AI has an axe to grind and funds to raise, I’ll stick with the ex-government guy. Here’s an interview I did with the “tour guide” Cicely;

    [youtube HwQMCU-0WPU nolink]

    The particular Gitmo alum who was identified as the suicide attacker in Mosul last month was Abdullah Salim Ali al-Ajm. Cicely said he was held six years at Gitmo, but that’s not true he was there three years before he was released.

    After I was done taping, we all had our picture taken – that’s Gabrielle Birchak and Rob Raffety from Project Breakout.

    Their corner of the Mall was virtually ignored by the thousands of tourists out on this sweltering June morning;

    But their cell on the Mall was a little bit more realistic than the one I found at the other event in Lafayette Park (across from the White House where there are usually more tourists);

    It seems someone should have spoken up and mentioned thats how Americans get treated, not how we treat foreign prisoners. But, oddly, no one did speak up.

    I don’t think this guy’s hunger strike began intentionally;

    Just as I got there, they formed up for their march – around Lafayette Park.

    I was doing an interview with the Washington Post so I missed the shot of them walking by the White House. It might have been part of WaPo’s plan. But the reporter assured me that he wasn’t a communist, so who knows.

    These two guys (Raoul might know who they are) were lamenting the fact that their planned protest in Denver wasn’t going to be as good as their protests at Fort Benning’s School of America or Seattle because they weren’t going to be in charge. I’m guessing they’re not happy that the umbrella organization is making them tone down their dissent.

    About that time, this guy started eye-balling me;

    And sent this woman over to take my picture;

    I just noticed this guy from the picture three photos above taking my picture;

    I don’t what that was about, but I handed all of them my card and told them if they needed to ask me anything they can reach me at this blog. We’ll see how that turns out. Here’s a video of their little march around Lafayette Park and some REALLY BAD sax playing;

    [youtube uk579SHG23c nolink]

    All-in-all it was a pretty pathetic event. They were vastly outnumbered by the apathetic tourists. I didn’t see any support for them from the tourists, hardly any asked questions, and aside from me and the Washington Post reporter, I didn’t see any media. He told me that he was so new at the Post, he didn’t have business cards yet.

    Code Pink had the event on their website, but there were none of the usual suspects there – in fact the only people I saw wearing pink were tourists.

    There were more participants at the protest in the middle of January in the pouring-ass rain. Today was a sunny June day. I think they’re losing their cache`.

    Thanks to Jammie Wearing Fool , Little Green Footballs, Nice Deb, Stop the ACLU , Gateway Pundit, The Real Revo, Inoperable Terran, Libertarian Republican, Pirate’s Cove and McClatchy Watch for the links.

    Welcome Weekly Standard readers.

  • Free tomorrow night?

    pink.jpg

    TSO sent me this. I don’t know if he was he was asking me out on a date or what. The email heading was “Let’s keep the heat on!” Then he left town. If anyone knows what he was thinking, let me know.

  • Zombie in Berkeley

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    The blogger who influenced me to focus my own blog on the countless protests here in DC, Zombie, has a great photo essay on this weekend’s events in Berkeley against the Marine Recruiting station there. Complete with video;

    [youtube 3j5TstKikD0 nolink]

    Code Pink was classy enough to disrupt a eulogy a Gold Star Mom was giving for her son. World Can’t Wait showed their class by throwing Nazi salutes and booing the National Anthem. More pics at PC Free Zone, Melanie Morgan and a coupla AARs at Eagles Up.

    Zombie actually sent me an email a few weeks ago complimenting our work here, but I could never reach the quality of Zombie – they have much loonier moonbats in Berkeley.

    There’s supposed to be a protest this weekend in Lafayette Park and TSO and I were talking about going. If nothing else, there’s several bars in the area where we can cleanse our memories.