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

Category: Iraq Veterans Against the War

  • IVAW and Jeff Hanks

    Jeff Hanks went AWOL last year when he was scheduled to deploy. His excuse is that he needs treatment for his PTSD. To prove that he didn’t go AWOL as a publicity stunt, he turned himself in after his unit deployed, on Veterans’ Day at a press conference. Yeah, I know.

    Well, of course, since it conveniently segues with IVAW’s Operation Recovery program which claims that wounded troops are being re-deployed while they’re still being treated, IVAW took up Hanks’ cause.

    Here’s video of someone (I think it’s Jason Hurd but who can tell with all of that fur) delivering an Article 138 complaint to the 1st Brigade of the 101st Airborne Division on Hanks’ behalf.

    For those of you who are wondering what an Article 138 is, it’s a complaint from a servicemember against his commander, because a service member thinks he or she is being mistreated. From the Navy’s IG website;

    Any member of the Armed Forces who believes he/she has been wronged by his Commanding Officer must seek redress with the Commanding Officer personally.

    What the above paragraph doesn’t say is that some random, unclean hippie off of the street can just walk into a brigade headquarters and file an Article 138 complaint on behalf of some member of the military. And I’m pretty sure that’s what the young staff sergeant in the video is thinking.

    That Navy website also says;

    Who should I contact to obtain more information about Article 138 procedures?

    Your legal officer or command Staff Judge Advocate.

    Notice that it doesn’t say “Ask any random, unclean, errant hippie off of the street”. The last word in the above quote is “personally”. The last time I checked, some unclean pot-smoking hippie handing a random staff sergeant a sheaf of papers isn’t “personally” between Hanks and his commander.

    So I guess this is just more ineffective theater on the part of IVAW in what could be a laudable and effective campaign if they kept words like “AWOL” out of it. How can we take IVAW seriously if they’re going to make the same empty gestures that they always make?

  • Matthis: This avoiding work thing sure affects my bank account

    Matthis discovers that the “feeding the beast” thing sure does keep him from feeding himself;

    Getting gob smacked by reality is always tough. I guess cutting himself off from the IVAW treasury had a real down side.

  • Prysner: I resolve to be a better commie this year

    I took the day off yesterday, but my ninjas didn’t. They caught Mike Prysner resolving to be a better communist in the New year;

    If you don’t remember Prysner, he’s the co-founder of March Forward, the veteran wing of ANSWER who is ashamed of his service inside the wire in Iraq, yet wears his uniform more than most people on active duty. He tried to stage a coup in IVAW when he and some of his fellow travelers ran for positions on the IVAW’s board last year, mainly because his own membership drives in March Forward have ended up very anemic so he thought he could take over IVAW and turn them towards a more radical agenda.

    The Long March was Mao’s retreat in order to avoid combat with federal Chinese forces in 1934-35. I really don’t see much that Mao did that would inspire me, since he murdered millions of Chinese during his Great Leap Forward. But then, I’m not Mike Prysner.

  • IVAW in your hometown

    Yesterday, a young soldier home on leave to his hometown for the holiday season found this article in his local newspaper;

    Iraq War veterans Aaron Hughes of Chicago, Scott Kimble of Champaign, and Brock McIntosh of Normal spoke about Operation Recovery, which opposes sending troops with PTSD, Traumatic Brain Injury, and Military Sexual Trauma back into battle. Operation Recovery insists that traumatized veterans have the right to heal.

    “I think it’s morally abhorrent to send mentally traumatized soldiers back to battle where they use heavy weapons and armor,” McIntosh said. “Many of these soldiers are on psychotropic drugs and are a danger to themselves, to fellow soldiers and everyone else.”

    Twenty percent of troops deployed repeatedly have PTSD, Hughes said. Suicide rates among active-duty troops are twice as high as that of the civilian population, and veterans with PTSD are six times more likely to attempt suicide, according to the IVAW.

    Hughes said that Military Sexual Trauma is a major problem for female soldiers, one third of them suffering sexual assault. Ninety percent of women soldiers seeking help from the Veterans Administration report sexual assault from fellow soldiers, he said.

    “Women have to go to their commander to prove their case first,” Hughes explained, and often their complaints are dismissed. “Women are expected to return and serve with the same soldiers who assaulted them,” he said. The actual number of cases of MST is difficult to verify, as many sexual assaults go unreported. According to a 2004 study cited by the Service Women’s Action Network, 71 percent of women veterans seeking help from the VA had been sexually assaulted.

    The young trooper, after writing to Blackfive (who forwarded the email to us) fired off this letter to the author of the article;
    (more…)

  • They should have dragged him by his feet

    I just got back from spending a day with the great medical folks at Walter Reed and some parents of wounded warriors and found these pictures in my inbox (from one of my ninjas). The first thing that popped in my head is that they should have picked Matthis up by his feet and dragged him on his face to see if he’d dig that mug into the snow.

    Someone told me that Matthis was wearing a VFP pin or patch, so he’s a Geezer For Sitting On Our Hands.

  • A midweek pick-me-up

    Things that make me happy; Matthis face-down in the snow wearing handcuffs.

    I’ll leave the obvious jokes to you guys.

    Thanks to one my ninjas for the picture. No, I really mean thanks.

  • American Legion joins in Stolen Valor battle

    SFGate reports this morning that the American Legion has filed a friend-of-the-court brief on the Richard Strandlof Stolen Valor case;

    The American Legion decided to intervene in Colorado because prosecutors have a stronger case there, said Mark Seavey, the group’s media manager.

    Seavey said the Colorado case also is “a little more germane to us” because Strandlof claimed to be an advocate for veterans.

    Yeah, and I’m just sitting here thinking where VoteVets and IVAW are in this case. After all, those two organizations had put Strandlof in front of their organizations to spread their respective messages. VoteVets used him in their political ads in Colorado. Stranloff made them look silly while they discussed whether they should admit that one of their stars was a complete fraud. You’d think they’d have a dog in this fight.

    IVAW had countless videos with Strandlof talking about his imaginary service and the horrors of dreaming about combat. IVAW had more personal contact with him and might have been more likely to notice that the finger he had shot off was still there and the pate in which he claimed he had a steel plate was scar-less. In fact, at the Winter Soldier hearings, Strandlof was in charge of their PTSD clinic, so someone had to have had contact with him and grounds to testify to the damage that he did while living out his dream as a gay Marine captain.

    But, then if IVAW came out against lying about their service, they’d be smearing at least half of their membership, but only beginning with the ones who put on a T-shirt that calls them “Iraq Veterans” Against the War.

  • IVAW in your school

    Their tentacles are extending. That’s Iraq Veterans Against the War member Hart Viges representing a Texas organization called Sustainable Options for Youths, a rather benign title for another anti-recruiter organization. I’d rather see Hart, a combat veteran, in classrooms rather than others we’ve seen. But since the theme was International Human Rights Day, I wonder how much time he spent discussing human rights under the Taliban, Saddam Hussein, or even Castro. Just wondering.

    In regards to the bit I wrote last week about teachers’ reactions to World Can’t Wait’s “We Are Not Your Soldiers” program, some of you called the schools and got angry replies from administrators, but you’ll also notice that the videos have been taken down. Someone told me that the whole organization’s channel has been taken down. So I guess you evil repuglicans are having an effect. Most importantly, you’ve’ve proven that “We’re Not Your Soldiers” can’t withstand a little scrutiny.

    One of you who called told me that one of those teachers, David Strausbaugh, the teacher at Worthington Kilbourne High School Columbus, OH, teaches something called “Radical Politics”. His students can’t speak or write in sentences of more than three words, but he’s wasting the taxpayers’ money by teaching something that doesn’t even exist at most colleges. I hope he chokes on his Noam Chomsky primer.