Richard sends us a link to Popular Science which warns about Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America-commissioned emoji application for smart phones. It’s supposed to be a clever little thing to add to your phone so you can use emojis that have little patrol caps and military-oriented subjects;

I was super excited when I got the email from IAVA about new military emojis. I gladly paid the $1.99 and then was told the app needs full access to my phone with a key logger. This allows the app to track and store sensitive information like credit card numbers and [Social Security] numbers. More importantly I can’t communicate with my troops on drill activities or fellow employees as a police officer. I denied access and every time I type a message and click the emoji keyboard to add an emoji I get an additional pop up screen asking me allow access to this additional keyboard.

[…]

The Defense Technical Information Center listed keyloggers as malicious code, noting they can corrupt files and destroy or modify information, compromise that information and lose it, or give hackers access to sabotage systems.

I have a hard time believing that IAVA intentionally decided to give hackers a helping hand busting into your phones. However, I can believe that the IAVA would sell a defective product to line their pockets without getting a professional opinion on it’s security. I can barely answer my phone let alone start sending pretty messages, so I have no apps on my phone that aren’t related to that function.

The other day we talked about Paul Rieckhoff and his Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America and their boundless support for a parade through New York City to mark the end, such as it is, of the war in Afghanistan. Today, we read in the pages of the Washington Times how they are pushing for a memorial for veterans of the war against terror;

Veterans of the war on terrorism say they deserve a monument in downtown Washington to recognize their sacrifices, but they are hindered by a rule that says a conflict must be long finished in order to build a memorial, leading some to wonder how to commemorate a “never-ending war.”

Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America wants a location by the end of 2015 for a monument to those who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan, the major battlefields of the war on terrorism.

SO, I’m just wondering where the IAVA is going to get money, since a lot of veterans of those wars are unemployed. I’d think that getting them back to work would be a priority, or doing something about the suicide so there would be more working veterans to contribute to the project. But, see that’s what you get when you let a liberal group like IAVA take your megaphone. IAVA sprang from Rieckhoff’s first project, OpTruth which was just IVAW in suits complaining about President Bush incessantly. The board of OpTruth had such luminaries as Jesse Ventura, Code Pink’s Ann Wright and Obama cheerleader, Paul Bucha.

Obviously, IAVA is more interested in making empty gestures instead of really helping veterans. Having parades and building memorials is easy compared to solving the problems that veterans face. Rieckhoff can get you free tickets to a ball game or free music downloads, but he can’t help you find a job – especially with IAVA, since they don’t seem to want to hire veterans for their executives. Can we talk about fixing the suicide rate and the backlog of disability claims before we talk about building a monument to Paul Rieckhoff?

Phil Carter, one of the co-founders of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, that completely useless organization headed by valor thief, Paul Reickhoff, and Obama’s veteran adviser for his 2008 campaign, wrote in Foreign Policy a little piece about how you folks aren’t mature enough to make choices in your life because the popular culture has a firm grasp on your mind.

He’s complaining about the Budweiser commercial that ran during the Superbowl. Here it is if you missed it;

Carter writes;

Despite all that data, the military has a long and complex relationship with alcohol. In past wars, active-duty servicemembers drank on the battlefield. Booze stains the occasional page of many World War I and II veterans’ memoirs. “Band of Brothers” veteran Dick Winters writes of his troops’ liberation of Hermann Goering’s wine cellar at the end of their fight across Europe. In Korea and Vietnam, our troops drank too, often to excess. Such was the nature of war, and the military embraced alcohol as part of the wartime experience.

That changed with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, where the military instituted policies explicitly banning all deployed troops from consuming alcohol. There was a good reason for those rules, which is the same reason Sunday night’s Super Bowl ad went too far. Alcohol can lead to depression, worsen PTSD and — in some cases — accelerate the downward spiral that leads to suicide. Decades of research should have persuaded the Army to avoid getting in bed with Budweiser. Better for at-risk soldiers to hear a simple truth: This Bud isn’t for you.

Good thing Phil Carter is looking out for us dumb grunts who are going to drink a wagon load of beer because we watched that ad. But, I guess Carter is less opposed to IAVA’s (the organization that Carter co-founded with Reickhoff when IAVA morphed from Reickhoff’s anti-Bush organization OpTruth) partnership with Miller Brewing;

By the way, Carter was fired from the Obama Administration’s reward for being the vet adviser of the 2008 campaign, as the deputy secretary of defense for detainee affairs when he couldn’t figure out how to close Guantanamo.

There’s a fairly good article at NBC News about female veterans returning home, sent to us by Green Thumb and Ex-PH2. My problem with it is that they quote Paul Rieckhoff in the article who says health care employers should be hiring more women veterans;

“There aren’t enough female health professionals in the VA system. There aren’t enough folks specialized in female health, especially around reproductive health. We’ve got to push the system to work harder for them,” said Paul Rieckhoff, chief executive officer and founder of IAVA

“The bottom line is you need someone who recognizes that female veterans are a critical part of this population and that they have unique needs,” added Rieckhoff, who served as a first lieutenant and infantry rifle platoon leader in Iraq during 2003 and 2004. “We’ve got women on our staff who say that a lot of times, when they walk into the VA, they get treated like a candy striper instead of like a returning warrior. As a country, we’ve got to go through a huge cultural shift.”

Really, Paul? You have women on your staff who talk first hand about the VA? Who are they exactly? Here’s a link to IAVA’s Staff & Board. There are 15 women listed in the staff of thirty-nine, and because they helpfully put “Veteran” next to their veterans’ names, I can easily see that none of the women on IAVA Staff are veterans. In fact, out of the thirty nine names, only 15 of the total are veterans. That’s including Paul. So thirty eight percent of IAVA employees are actual veterans. I’m pretty sure that even IVAW employs more veterans.

Wouldn’t you expect an organization that calls itself Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America to be employing more veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, especially if they’re out there telling employers and the Department of Veterans’ Affairs to hire more veterans? Maybe it’s just me. I’m sure this will trigger another piece at the Military Times machine and Stars & Stripes to provide cover for poor Paul who is being victimized by the evil blogger at TAH and all of his facts again.