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

Category: Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America

  • Rieckhoff finds a nut

    Let today be forever remembered as a day of blind squirrels finding nuts. We celebrate Paul Rieckhoff, our Lex Luther, the Executive Director of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America who invariably writes unadulterated crap at the Huffington Post, but today, completely out of character, actually does a good job tearing apart Headline News’ Dr Drew’s treatment of the SSG Bales issue;

    On Monday night, Dr. Drew did us all a big favor. He covered the Kandahar shooting incident on his HLN cable show in such a sensationalized way, that it should serve as a powerful example for how the media should NOT cover an issue — particularly one as devastating as this.

    And Rieckhoff just gets better from there;

    For 20 minutes, Dr. Drew continued to push the narrative of Bales as a victim, a baseless one that many in the media have latched onto this past week. This does Bales a ton of good for his defense, but it does 2.4 million troops who have served honorably, and not gone on murderous rampages, a total disservice. It’s also pretty damn dismissive of the real victims, the 16 Afghan civilians killed. Of course, the segment got worse. Next, Dr. Drew brought on Dr. Paul Ragan. Ragan, an associate professor of psychiatry at Vanderbilt University, suggested “a combination of Traumatic Brain Injury and PTSD” was responsible for the Kandahar shooting.

    You sure about that one, Doc? Were you there?

    I didn’t see the show, because I don’t know where the channel is on my TV set, but I’m glad to see that someone from the Left recognized it for what it was – tripe. But you should read the whole thing, just to get pissed off at the Turner networks.

    Because I don’t think my blog platform will support two blog posts which are not critical of IAVA, I’ll mention for those of you who are college-bound veterans, IAVA has made a new Post-9/11 GI Bill calculator so you can compute the benefit that DVA will send you late, if at all.

    And, Paul, because I know you read this blog and you’re on our Twitter list, enjoy this one – it only goes downhill fast from here. I guess we all found an issue we can agree upon.

    Thanks to Daniel for the link.

  • Rieckhoff the martyr

    I know this won’t surprise anyone, but Paul Rieckhoff, the executive director of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA) and an Obama cheerleader, was invited to the White House Dinner, “A Nation’s Gratitude” tonight to somehow honor Iraq War veterans. But Rieckhoff very publicly gave up his ticket;

    “As founder, I’m especially proud to give my seat to Iraq veteran Angela Peacock, a unique voice for our nation’s women warriors and a rising leader for our entire veterans community. Only a hundred Iraq veterans like Angela will actually dine in the East Room tonight, but all one million deserve our country’s gratitude for their individual service and sacrifice,” said IAVA Founder and Executive Director Paul Rieckhoff.

    It seems magnanimous doesn’t it? I wouldn’t give up my ticket if I had been invited…unless something very important was scheduled for the same night. I mean, regardless of who the President is, it’s the fricken White House and a State Dinner. Well, Paul gave up his ticket because he had somewhere to be, that was more important to him – the extremely pretentious TED2012.

    Yeah, he’s out in California rubbing elbows with T Boone Pickens and Bill Gates and checking out the little robots along with a shitload of other liberals and assorted crackpots.

    I dunno, it seems to me that an executive director of a group called Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America has a place to be when he claims to be the leader of the largest group of contemporary veterans of the war which is the first word in the group’s title. And that place isn’t with a bunch of hippies. I’m just saying.

    Thanks to an anonymous tipster who also thinks that the IAVA is all about one veteran.

  • @PaulRieckhoff: How’s the shark look from up there?

    It seems that everywhere I turn, I see something in the media about Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America Executive Director Paul Rieckhoff pimping for a parade for returning veterans from Iraq. He’s been in the New York Times, the Huffington Post and an unnoticed appearance on Rachel Maddow’s show (yeah, I know, I’m surprised she’s still on the air, too)

    The latest is in the Stars & Stripes;

    “The country wants to come out and thank these veterans,” said Paul Rieckhoff, executive director of IAVA. “We’ve already seen one celebration in St. Louis, and we’re hearing from other communities who want to do more. Rather than have a scattering of parades here and there, we think it should be a coordinated effort.”

    Really, Paul? This is what you want to hang your hat on? A parade? I get the feeling that with all of the problem facing veterans – unemployment, combat stress and injuries, rising health care costs, DVA backlogs – this parade thing seems less daunting to Paul, and one that he might be able to actually solve if he focuses all of his energy on this. All he has to do is shame someone into promising one, and given that Bloomberg worships symbolic crap, he’ll probably fall for this first.

    But I think this is IAVA jumping the shark. They’ve never done anything for returning veterans, despite their excellent ad. There were a couple of glitzy Hollywood parties to assuage the guilt felt by movie star-types that no veterans could afford to attend. there have been ball game seats – he even invited me to a ballgame in NYC once to influence me to shut my stupid mouth about him.

    I agree with Colby Buzzell in this MSNBC article on the subject – Rieckhoff’s relentless obsession with a parade is an embarrassment;

    Former U.S. Army soldier Colby Buzzell, author of My War: Killing Time in Iraq, calls the Rieckhoff and IAVA’s push for the parade embarrassing. “It’s premature,” he said in a phone interview with msnbc.com. “We don’t know what’s going to happen in Iraq and there are still troops in Afghanistan.”

    The only veteran that IAVA has ever helped is Rieckhoff, and now he won’t shut up about this parade idea…I have to think that there’s something in it for Rieckhoff, call me skeptical. I guess it’s just his way to look like he cares about the troops, and it won’t cost him anything – well unless he crashes into Fonzie over that shark tank.

    “We’re heading for the ramp, Paul, are you sure you want to do it?”

  • No parade, but a state dinner

    The Obama Administration decided that there won’t be a parade from veterans of the Iraq War, but there will be a victory lap in the White House in the form of a state dinner later this month;

    The core theme is the common fighting man or woman, said Douglas Wilson, Pentagon public affairs chief.

    The intent is for those invited — with guests, numbering more than 200 — to represent the 1.5 million who fought in a nine-year-war that left nearly 4,500 dead and 32,000 wounded, he said.

    I know most of you don’t care about a parade, but this is clearly a campaign maneuver to take credit for the end of the war, the war that this administration had little to do with ending.

    There seems to be some sour grapes involved in the state dinner, too;

    Factions led by the 200,000-member Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America are pushing for a ticker-tape parade in New York City, the USA’s ritual celebration for heroes. “That (dinner) is a nice effort. The problem is what do you tell everybody outside that 200 who want to be a part of this,” Executive Director Paul Reickhoff said.

    I’m guessing that Reickhoff either isn’t getting an invitation, or has his heart set on marching at the head of the parade.

  • The parade train

    The Associated Press reports that organizers of the Saint Louis “welcome home” parade for Iraq veterans are getting inquiries from other cities to have their own parades;

    Organizers of the parade that drew an estimated 100,000 observers and 20,000 participants in St. Louis on Jan. 28 said Friday that they have been approached by people from Chicago, Denver, Philadelphia, San Antonio, Oklahoma City, Seattle, Tucson, Ariz., Nashville, Tenn., Greensboro, N.C., and Clinton, Iowa.

    “The revolution for America to rally in support of our troops has just begun,” said Tom Appelbaum, who along with his friend, Craig Schneider, came up with the idea for the St. Louis parade and pulled it off within a month.

    Paul Rieckhof of the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America wrote in the Huffington Post yesterday that if New York City and Boston can afford parades for their Super Bowl champions, they can afford parades for the Iraq champions;

    Getting Super Bowl-champ football players a parade in their hometowns is never an issue. But Iraq War veterans? They deserve a little praise, too. They answered our country’s call, and in the least, they survived. But for some reason, they’re running into all kinds of resistance. Last week, New York City’s Mayor Bloomberg said that a parade “would be premature while so many troops are still in harm’s way around the world.”

    While I appreciate the sentiment, I’d rather see the effort to have a parade that would bring those Americans who haven’t been so connected to the events that were perpetrated in our name feel like they did something go towards making veterans feel at home with efforts to help them get back into society. The unemployment rate of veterans, the suicide rates of recent veterans, the erosion of our health benefits all show how thin the appreciation for the job that Iraq veterans really is.

    I get the impression that some people, like Rieckhof, think that parades and organizing for parades will somehow cleanse them of their bad behavior that extended these wars. Remember how we wrote about IAVA and the way they spend their money, and how IAVA only had one paid veteran on their masthead – that veteran was Rieckhof. And how Rieckhof started OpTruth to undermine the war effort in Iraq.

    Now he want to shame American cities into having parades…nothing more than symbols. No one wants the troops to be honored more than me, that’s what this blog has always been about. But I, and I suspect you, want more than pretty words and fluttering banners behind martial music. I want actions that speak louder than words.

  • A Message to Paul Rieckhoff: the troops aren’t props

    Paul Rieckhoff, the executive director of the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, has a piece in the Huffington Post today entitled “A Message to All Candidates: Our Troops Aren’t Props“, of course, his message is just for the Republican candidates, because he’s referring to the incident last week when Corporal Jesse Thorsen spoke at a Ron Paul rally.

    Our troops are many things to many people. Heroes, parents, diplomats, victims, villains, victors. But as the GOP Primary races roll through New Hampshire this week, there is one thing that all of America must understand they’re not: political props.

    And that’s not just my opinion, it’s the law.

    Yeah, it’s definitely not his opinion. Because, when Rieckhoff came back from Iraq in 2004, it only took him a few weeks to criticize the president on the airwaves in the form of a rebuttal following Bush’s weekly presidential radio address for the Kerry campaign. He then formed the radically anti-Bush organization, OpTruth. The board of OpTruth included our old friends Ann Wright, Paul Bucha and Jesse Ventura.

    As the 2008 elections drew closer, Rieckhoff realized that OpTruth was too radical to help the Democrats, so he morphed OpTruth into IAVA and took a more sober approach to politics. that’s when they hit on the idea to establish a scorecard system for rating Senators – not surprisingly, Democrats scored better on the IAVA scorecard in regards to veterans’ issues than did Republicans. Barbara Boxer scored better than John McCain, as did Barack Obama – you get the point.

    Rieckhoff closes out his HuffPo piece;

    So consider this is a warning and a plea to every single candidate this election year: let’s respect our troops and our democracy, and keep them out of this one–especially, if you want to be our Commander-in-Chief. If you want that job for the next four years (or eight), you should know whether it’s on the battlefields of Fallujah or Helmand, or the primaries of New Hampshire and South Carolina, our troops aren’t a prop.

    And they’re nobody’s toys.

    I guess the hypocrisy of his performance art in the Huffington Post is lost on him, so, since every time I mention his name, someone sends him a link, well, I just thought that I’d help him out this election cycle. Using the troops for props for Democrats is just as bad as using them for the Republicans’ props, Paul. I have crayon drawings that I can use to illustrate this for you if you don’t quite understand it yet.

    I guess this post is indicative of the reason he doesn’t invite me to ball games anymore.

  • IAVA on the cover of TIME

    Paul Reickoff sent out a letter to his membership of the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America organization congratulating them for being chosen to be on the cover of Time Magazine. But if you look at the cover, it’s not “we veterans” on the cover, it’s the follically-impaired Reickhoff;

    I dunno, if I led an organization of veterans and I wanted them represented on the cover of a national magazine, I’d have put someone besides myself on the cover…well, unless the organization is all about promoting me and getting me ahead. The letter he sent to the membership began;

    Dear XXXXXXX,

    We’ve got some huge news. And it’s all about you – the “New Greatest Generation.”

    This week, 4 IAVA Member Veterans and I are on the cover of TIME Magazine!

    This is a huge moment for IAVA – and for all new veterans.

    Well, if it’s all about veterans, why is Reickoff in one of the people in the picture?

    You can watch “the making of the Time cover” video.

    Thanks to StrikeFO for the link.

    Thanks to Blackfive, who made it past the cover of Time and read the article, for the link.

  • Priorities

    Most of you know that last year Congress passed and Obama signed an IAVA-crafted  bill that in effect cut GI Bill benefits for most active duty veterans. The bill was one of the few times that the Democrats applied PAYGO rules during the first two years of the Obama administration and some Dems even praised the fact it might save a couple million of dollars.

    Now fast forward to today. Part of the new debt deal is an increase in funding for Pell Grants for civilians who are looking to go college or a vocational school. Wait, I thought this whole debt deal was about cutting spending? Well, gee I guess Pell Grants must be incredibly fucking awesome if they are dumping more money into the program. Wrong. Lets look at some of the things that are fucked up about Pell Grants:

    1. There is evidence the Pell Grants and other forms of federal aid to higher education may actually be contributing to the rising cost of higher education.

    2. Recipients of Pell Grants have on average lower graduation rates than non-recipients (nearly half of all Pell Grant recipients do not receive a degree in six years).

    3. Pell Grants help prop-up worthless for-profit schools that would otherwise be devoured by the market.

    4. Pell Grants put more money in the pockets of corrupt college presidents that have chosen to invest heavily in the administrative aspects of their universities as opposed to the educational aspects.

    5. There is no incentive for a Pell Grant recipient to succeed considering it is a grant and not a loan. There is no requirement to pay back the money with a Pell Grant.

    So, to sum it up, President Obama without hesitation signed into law a bill that weakened the most successful college aid program in the history of the United States but aggressively fought for a massive increase in funding for arguably the worst college aid program in the history of United States.

    Priorities people. Priorities.