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

Category: Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America

  • Supporting the troops, IAVA style!

    Those of us who served overseas during Operation Enduring Freedom and/or Operation Iraqi Freedom come from all across the political and socio-economic spectrum. But, if there is one thing that binds all of us, besides our service in GWOT, it is certainly our ability and desire to plunk down $250 for an evening of cocktails to be enjoyed with noted Veterans advocates from Hollywood.

    IAVA’s West Coast Heroes Celebration
    This spring, please join us in honoring the nation’s newest generation of heroes and celebrating the successes of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA). IAVA is holding the first annual West Coast Heroes Celebration on Thursday, April 30th, 2009. The cocktail reception will be held at the offices of Creative Artists Agency (2000 Avenue of the Stars) in Los Angeles, California from 7-9:00PM.

    We are excited to have Cameron Diaz, Nick Styne, and Norman Lear co-host this special evening.

    Ticket $250
    Sponsor $5,000
    Patron $10,000
    Benefactor $25,000
    Premiere Sponsor $50,000

    I mean, who among us could ever forget Ms. Diaz’s standing up for the veterans during the 2004 election when she said:

    Women have so much to lose. I mean, we could lose the right to our bodies. We could lo–if you think that rape should be legal, then don’t vote. But if you think that you have a right to your body, and you have a right to say what happens to you and fight off that danger of losing that, then you should vote.

    Well, that really had nothing to do with veterans actually, but I am sure she is spectacular on her caring.

    Since I didn’t know who Nick Styne was, I looked it up:

    High-powered motion picture talent agent Nick Styne is leaving International Creative Management after more than ten years. He’ll be joining the Creative Artists Agency and is reportedly taking major clients like Cameron Diaz, Luke Wilson, Selma Blair supermodel Heidi Klum with him.

    Man, I can TOTALLY see why OEF/OIF vets want to hang with him. I know when I came off the airplane on my return my first thought was “Shit! Where am I gonna get a talent agent now?” Because, if there is one thing a wounded vet without a job needs, it is a talent scout. Don’t believe me? Just run up to Walter Reed and ask for a show of hands on how many have their own, and I bet not a one of them does.

    And Norman Lear, man, that dude is Teh Awesome! Just a few weeks ago he was talking about how he supported the troops of this war, as he had ones in the past:

    But like any great film, and Stop-Loss is a great film, it can help the viewer to experience that “feeling,” if only fleetingly. Stop-Loss did that for me. I feel as never before for the men and women fighting it and for their families.

    During the Vietnam protest days there was an indelible photograph of a group of students lying on the track in front of a troop train. Where, I wonder, is my troop train?

    Dude, I am *SO* down with that logic. I truly am. I like the Red Sox, but until Jimmy Falon played a deranged lunatic member of Sox Nation, I never truly understood. It really does take a movie to make you understand and grasp the importance of an event you took part in, doesn’t it?

    (To his credit, at least Lear is a veteran of WWII)

    I just personally want to thank IAVA for doing this for all of us out here struggling with having $250 of expendable income that we can’t get rid of, and giving us the opportunity to meet the types of counsellors we need the most: ones who can get us into the movies.

    Here is one guy who gets it:

  • Raising the ban on the Dover Photos

    By now you all have heard.  Would it surprise you to learn that the Gold Star Mom that started all this is with Code Pink?

    From CNN:

    One of the family members who favors lifting the ban is Karen Meredith of San Francisco, California, who wrote Obama urging him to order the change.

    Lt. Ken Ballard left for Iraq on Mother’s Day in 2003. He came home in a casket on Memorial Day 2004.

    “I wanted the nation to grieve with me, and if we don’t see those images we don’t know that these young men and women are dying,” she told CNN.

    “And to me its an honor to have an honor guard at Dover when they’re bringing these men and women back through the mortuary. But we’ve never been able to see those pictures of the honor being given.”

    From MetroActive:

    She’s become friendly with advocacy groups like the Gold Star Families for Peace, Military Families Speak Out and Code Pink. She was asked recently to appear at a counter-military recruitment event, but begged off because it took place on Mother’s Day (although she is quick to note that Mother’s Day started as an antiwar holiday).

    She recently participated at a gathering in Berkeley and also traveled to Arlington West, a project by the Santa Barbara Veterans for Peace to re-create the grave sites of soldiers killed in Iraq. Later this month, on Memorial Day, the anniversary of Ballard’s death, Meredith plans to return to Washington to again visit her son’s grave at Arlington.

    She also lived in the Crawford ditch with Cindy Sheehan. In an article about Fenton Communications, which ran the ditch bitch fiasco:

    Gold Star mother Karen Meredith came here from Mountain View. Her son Ken Ballard died last year.
    Karen Meredith, Gold Star mother: “Sometimes things don’t feel quite right to me. They don’t feel wrong, but maybe that’s how they do it in the marketing business.”
    ABC7’s Mark Matthews: “You feel you’re part of a marketing business?”
    Karen Meredith: “Possibly. Yeah I think so.”

    Here is her blog here. She can’t make it a full para on any given post without mentioning her loss. And everyone should know about her loss.

    Paul Rieckhoff thinks this is a swell idea as well:

    ““Less than 1% of the American population has served in Iraq or Afghanistan. There has never been a greater disconnect between those who serve in harms warm and those back home. All too often, the sacrifices of our military are hidden from view,” Paul Rieckhoff, executive director of the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. “The sight of flag-draped coffins is, and should be, a sobering reminder to all Americans of the ultimate sacrifice our troops have made and the high price of our freedom.”

    Other groups disagree:

    But a spokeswoman for a military family group expressed disappointment. “This is a complete disregard for the will of America’s military families and the need for their privacy during this solemn moment,” said Meghan Tisinger, spokeswoman for Families United.

    HERE IS THE LINK TO THAT IAVA STATEMENT.

    My Opinion:
    Had I died over there, my Dad would have made the decision (my mom died the day I joined the Army.) Now, I love my Dad, but we discuss 2 things, New England Sports Teams, and the weather in Maine. My Dad was a delegate for Ted Kennedy. To his credit, my Dad would NEVER openly say something about the War in front of me. And when I had a flag flown over Bagram on the day the Pats won the Super Bowl, my dad refused to fly it from the front porch, but instead went out and hired a guy to put a huge flag pole in the back yard. My Dad loves me, loves the country, but he’s a liberal, and he knows little about what I would have wanted. I would like to think he would have told them to screw off, but I don’t know. I sincerely hope that SRP from now on includes some sort of living will type document where the troop gets to voice his opinion on whether to be pictured or not. I also wonder what happens when one divorced parent supports, and one does not. Or the Mom and Dad want the pictures taken, and the Spouse does not. How do they iron that shit out?

    SHIT: I called and asked my dad. I shouldn’t have asked.

    MIlitary.com has a poll up:

    More on the Code Pink Gold Star Mom, from BOHICA 22.

    “There’s no one left to call me ‘Mom,’ ” Meredith told a teary-eyed congregation at First Unitarian Universalist Church in San Francisco on Sunday. “He left the day after Mother’s Day, and he said he’d make it up to me when he returned. Today is my third Mother’s Day that I will not pick up the phone and hear his voice.”

    And still more from the totally on fire BOHICA 22:


    Karen Meredith (center), who lost her only son in Iraq, hugs activist Pablo Paredes as Sean O’Neill, who served twice in Iraq, stands by at San Francisco’s First Unitarian Universalist Church. Chronicle photo by Brant Ward

    And who is Pablo Paredes? Per Michelle Malkin:

    Military deserter and anti-war Left poster boy Pablo Paredes has been denied conscientious objector status. His request for Other than Honorable discharge in lieu of a court-martial trial has also been denied.

    Unsurprisingly, O’Neill is with IVAW.

  • Wasting VA money

    TSO sent a link to Uncle Jimbo from Blackfive who now posts at Ace of Spades as well. We figured Jimbo would be able to do a better job with the link than we could, so stop by AoSHQ and read what IAVA and IVAW mean by “fully funding the VA”. And, oh, stop by and say hello to these fellas for us.

  • Still think they support the troops?

    The People’s Worker World recounts some testimony from some anti-war dorks speaking in support of the Maoist-founded organization that calls itself Military Families Speak Out. here’s screen shot of the page instead of a link;

    The testimony does nothing but impugn the character of people who join the US military;

    Eugene Cherry joined the army at the age of 19 in the hopes of getting money for college. Despite being a good student, he found his options in his impoverished south side neighborhood limited. “I thought the military would be my ticket out, but I found an organization based on racism, sexism and misogyny” he testified before the assembled audience. Later he spoke of “[a] culture of violence and racism” that the military promotes within its ranks. These pressures proved to be too much for Sherry. He deserted for 16 months after being refused mental health support by the army. “I found myself fighting and oppressing a group of people in the name of the war on terror” concluded his remarks to the gathering.

    The plight of women in the armed forces proved to be a recurring theme. Patricia McCann, a National Guardsman deployed in 2003, noted during her testimony that instances of sexual assault and sexual harassment within the armed forces have risen but court-martials for these crimes have declined. Another veteran (and current Chicago police officer), Lisa Zepeda, added that victims of assault have no outside authority they can report assaults to; a victim must go through her immediate superior within her unit.

    Here’s Cherry from Courage to Resist;

    Here’s McCann (although this profile says she’s an IVAW member, there’s no profile at IVAW in that name)

    I didn’t put up any profile about Zepeda because despite her toxic charges againt commanders, she’s still a cop who deserves a measure of anonymity.

    All of their stories throw fingers directly at the troops. All of them call all of our troops racist, sexist and oppressors. They couch their accusations in terms like “institutional” and “organizational” but those institutions and organizations are run by people – the troops.

    But really selfish? Is the story of Katy Zatsick who blames her divorce on the military when her son was injured in Iraq. And biggest gullible moron?

    Randi Scheurer had two children in the military. Soon after her son was deployed, he called imploring her to purchase a new flack jacket for him. The army had issued him a Vietnam-era jacket that was woefully inadequate for the threats he faced in Iraq. During his second deployment, he again implored his mother to privately purchase equipment that had been stolen from him and that the Army refused to replace. She finally purchased the needed equipment because the Army would not.

    Yeah, Vietnam-era flak vests were all out of the inventory by the mid-80s. TSO has countered that argument here countless times – it was one of the ignorant commercials that VoteVets ran a few years back and it’s been thoroughly discredited. He might have had a kevlar vest from the 80s design – but that was two decades after Vietnam. And the Army is not in the habit of denying the replacement of equipment the troops need. His commander might have made him pay for the equipment, but he wouldn’t have refused to give it to a troop if he needed it to do his job. I noticed she didn’t name the items she replaced.

    But that kind of stuff has become part of the narrative and generally accepted by the ignorant masses. So these clowns, liars and dolts at Military Families Speak Out are just reinforcing the faerie tales. Oh, and they’re in DC this weekend “educating” people about their version of the war.

    Ed. Note: I made the mistake of claiming that IAVA made the ads about the flak vests. Paul Reickhoff of IAVA was kind enough to point out the error and I’ve corrected it. When I mistakes I admit it.

  • IAVA, VoteVets and AFGE “very excited” about Shinseki

    I hope they didn’t mess themselves when they heard about Obama’s choice for VA Director, but Todd Bowers, the governmental affairs director of IAVA, the “nonpartisan” organization that tried to turn veterans and troops away from Republicans with their VERY PARTISAN scorecard for the past election, declared that his band of merry fellows are “very excited”;

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  • TSO does Blackfive Radio

    In case you missed it this afternoon, TSO was a guest on Blackfive Media’s broadcast “In the Crosshairs” with Uncle Jimbo and David Bellavia. TSO tears up the phony soldiers and presents this blog’s case against IAVA’s disingenuous voter scorecard…the issues that have yet to be addressed by Paul Reickhoff.

    TSO’s interview is the first half-hour of the podcast’s hour two. Make sure you stick it out past the break following TSO to hear Jimbo’s great plug for This Ain’t Hell.

    If you aren’t listening to “In The Crosshairs”, you’re missing a great military talk show.

  • And boom goes the dynamite

    Um, yeah, so Matt isn’t buying the IAVA response either.

    Man I wish I had tivo’d this whole thing so I could go forward and see how it ends. I’m just glad that Jonn and that “TOS” guy pitched in on it!

    Jonn added: Matt and Jimbo’s podcast on the same subject (when Paul Reickhoff bailed on Jimbo’s interview). Paul Reickhoff on MSNBC this week on Air America’s Rachel Maddow’s Show (link to Crooks and Liars). Paul Reickhoff’s Huffington Post column today criticizing Military Times’ poll methodology for a sampling of how the people in the military are voting;

    The upshot is, the poll doesn’t represent the military as a whole. It skews towards retirees and undercounts minorities — meaning the title “Military Times Poll: Troops backing McCain” should instead read “Troops and retirees who answered our email back McCain.”

    It almost sounds like he’s complaining about his own scorecard doesn’t it?

  • What else are they hiding?

    IAVA’s Paul Rieckhoff emailed us and apologized for slighting TAH on his response to the charges TSO levied on them on this board. I won’t revisit that but I will amend my statement that Rieckhoff is just like Solz…he has a bit more class than Jon Solz. I’ve added his response below the jump, but first I have unfinished business;

    I mentioned in the previous post, I’d taken some screen caps of some of IAVA’s cached pages…ya know, just in case. TSO and I thought it was little bit weird that all of the links to IAVA were down last night at the same time we were having trouble with our own site. So here’s two of the screen captures I took last night from their staff page; the first mentioning Phillip Carter, but the second capture is what changed over night;

    In his email to Blackfive, Rieckhoff wrote “And as for Phil Carter, it is no secret that he is an IAVA member. We have tens of thousands of members—and Phil is one of them. And we have clarified Phil’s role at IAVA on this page just so there is no confusion.” At the time he wrote that, the page he linked to looked like the photo above. But then their website went blank after his email to B5.

    This morning, the same webpage looks like this;


    Notice the italicized disclaimer that’s been added. Did someone step in something?

    There has also been rumors bouncing around that IAVA is going to start an intimidation campaign. I can’t be intimidated – if you want to know where I live, email me and I’ll tell you. If you don’t want to be called deceitful, don’t be deceitful.

    I have an absolute hatred for my “comrades” who’ll climb the bodies of the fallen for their own selfish political gain – and that’s what that scorecard was. Political hackery bought and paid for by “our own” for themselves.

    There’s more than enough proof of everything TSO wrote and I won’t be intimidated into silence by any-Goddamn-body. You fucksticks think you can be the next John Kerry – not as long as I draw a breath.

    Per Rieckhoff ‘s request, here’s his full, unedited response in full below the jump;

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