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

Category: Iraq Veterans Against the War

  • Under the Hood plots harassment of 3rd ACR command

    This appeared on Facebook this weekend. The contention of Under the Hood is that by harassing the command structure of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, they can prevent the Regiment from deploying soldiers they think are “wounded”.

    They go on to list a number of commanders – I won’t do that.

    But, I figure if they think that calling Fort Hood will have any effect, we can prevent them from harassing Fort Hood soldiers (what commander answers his own phone?) by beginning a campaign to harass Under the Hood. Here’s their phone number; (254) 449-8811. Break out your cell phone and start dialing. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.

  • A name change – that’s the ticket!

    Suppose your organization was irrelevant and no one is paying attention to your message which is becoming less and less germane to your particular conversation, what’s the best way to make everyone pay attention again? Change the name? Well, that’s Victor Agosto’s idea. TJ Buonomo says the new name needs an adjustment;

    I told you that TJ was the smart one. Since a large number of IVAW haven’t served in either Iraq or Afghanistan, TJ’s idea has merit. Beth Roxby agrees;

    I SUPPORT limiting membership [of Iraq Veterans Against the War] to veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan. I know that’s an unpopular idea right now, but I don’t really care. I think the liberal membership policy has possibly caused more problems, both for member retention and media credibility, than any other single factor. And granted, IVAW is currently facing a lot of dividing factors.

    We already have an anti-war organization that welcomes all veterans, and that’s Veterans for Peace. They’re big-umbrella

    Big umbrella – that means everyone who doesn’t have enough credibility to speak to combat veterans’ issues. Including TJ who barely finished MIOBC when he got out of the Army. If they narrowed membership to veterans who’ve actually been to the war, most of the Board would be gone as well as most of the membership.

    So what do you guys want…a credible organization, or larger membership? I think they’ve already made up their mind – after all, dollars are more important than credibility.

  • Overseas troops to be screwed by largely Blue States

    Mr Wolf sent us a link to a story out of Colorado this morning that some states, mostly Democrat-leaning states, are planning to screw absentee voters (read that: active duty soldiers serving overseas) out of their right to have a voice in the government that sends them to war;

    Spokesman Rich Coolidge said the ballots will still be mailed, but some soldiers in remote battlefields might not have enough time to mail them back, even though the state will give them an extra seven days after the election. He said they can also send them by e-mail or fax.

    Coolidge blamed late primaries and petition deadlines. He said ballots for the Aug. 10 primary also went out under short notice, but the 45-day deadline doesn’t apply to those elections.

    Bob Carey, federal voting assistance program director for the Department of Defense, said waiver requests have been received from Washington, New York, Hawaii, Alaska, the Virgin Islands, Delaware, Maryland, and Washington, D.C.

    Of course the waiver they’re talking about is to the law that Obama signed last year – but there were enough loopholes in the law, states are allowed to apply for exceptions to the rule. yet another excuse for ballots to arrive late to the troops.

    You’d think that VoteVets, IAVA and IVAW would be jumping all over this, but, sadly, no they’re not. I’m sure TSO will have something to add since this is one of his principal issues.

  • Left plots exploitation of Wikileaks documents

    The Left didn’t waste any time getting together in New York City yesterday looking for ways to use the documents from the Wikileaks drop for their own nefarious purposes. Someone dropped a link to me Saturday about the conference. They highlighted the luminaries that they had invited to speak;

    * Dahr Jamail, journalist, author of “Beyond the Green Zone”
    * Cindy Sheehan, antiwar leader, author, Director, Peace of the Action
    * Josh Stieber, Army veteran of Bravo Company 2-16
    * Matthis Chiroux, Army veteran, Iraq war resister
    * Mike Ferner, President, Veterans for Peace
    * Ray McGovern, former CIA Agent, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
    * Jeff Paterson, Courgage to Resist, spokesperson for Bradley Manning Support Comm
    * Elaine Brower, military mother, World Can’t Wait
    * Debra Sweet, Director, World Can’t Wait

    Debra Sweet calls them “a strong group of resisters and truth-tellers”. They resist common sense and none would know the truth if it bit their collective ass. Dahr Jamail has made a career of ignoring facts that get in his way, Cindy Sheehan you all know, Josh Stieber bears witness to the “Collateral Murder” video yet he was still behind the wire during the events of that day. Matthis, well he’s a celebrity here. TSO dealt with Jeff Paterson‘s hyperbole last year. Elaine Brower, hiding behind her son’s service, calls other troops baby killers.

    Someone just sent me a video of their discussion (obviously an event designed to raise money to put up their noses). The video is 2 hours long and obviously, I haven’t watched the damn thing, I just skipped ahead to 1:10 (that’s an hour and ten minutes) and saw Matthis with his little band of pirates at the Under The Hood cafe. I couldn’t even listen to him drone on about something about himself and his plan to spend a month in Killeen with the junior buccaneer club.

    You’re welcomed to watch all of the video that you can stand. Looking at Deborah Sweet’s and Elaine Brower’s fat thighs wears out pretty quickly, though. That’s why I put it below the jump;
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  • Whittenberg’s AAR of the protest last Friday

    In case you were wondering how well the participants thought the protest went outside of Fort Hood last week, Bobby Whittenberg, the head pirate of the new revolution, says it went well;

    Whittenberg sounds a little disappointed that no counter protesters showed up, but I’m sure everyone else had better things to do on a Friday afternoon than hang out with pirate-wannabes in the Central Texas heat.

    I’m sure getting a thumbs-up from Carl Webb was worth the whole thing for them. Oh, and why wasn’t Webb there? No one to lend him a bicycle? Couldn’t get off someone else’s couch soon enough? He wasn’t working for the Man, was he?

    Yep, speaking truth to power, that’s what it was. That’s what we expect from buccaneers like Bobby and his parrot, Mike Kern. This is how I envision Kern and Whittenberg’s relationship.

    Welcome to the new revolution – same as the old revolution.

  • Wikileaks in Baghdad trash dump

    There’s an article in The Nation written by Sarah Lazare and Ryan Harvey entitled “Wikileaks in Baghdad” that has really tested my strength to avoid punching my poor, innocent laptop. The article begins;

    One by one, soldiers just arriving in Baghdad were taken into a room and questioned by their commanding officers. “All questions led up to the big question,” explains former Army Spc. Josh Stieber. “If someone were to pull out a weapon in a marketplace full of unarmed civilians, would you open fire on that person, even if you knew you would hurt a lot of innocent people in the process?”

    It was a trick question. “Not only did you have to say yes, but you had to say yes without hesitating,” explains Stieber. “In refusing to go along with the crowd, it was not irregular for somebody to get beat up,” he adds. “They’ll take you in a room, close the door and knock you around if they didn’t like your answer,” says former Army Spc. Ray Corcoles, who deployed with Stieber.

    According to these former soldiers, this was a typical moment of training for Bravo Company 2-16 (2nd Battalion, 16th Infantry Regiment), the ground unit involved in the infamous “Collateral Murder” video, which captured global headlines when it was released in April by WikiLeaks….

    A few points that the least bit of research would have revealed about those first paragraphs; Beating a soldier won’t change his answer to that question. Just by slamming him around in room doesn’t make him react differently in the real situation. Soldiers aren’t dogs and have their own minds.

    Another point; Any “commanding officer” who took the least part in such ineffective conditioning would lose their jobs…and no such incident would go unreported. Give us the names of these “commanding officers” and watch how swiftly justice comes to them.

    A third point; In the video to which they refer, the soldiers of B 2/16 Infantry didn’t do anything out of line. It’s the actions of two helicopter crewmembers which led to the killing of those insurgents and journalists on the street corner. Those helicopter crew members aren’t on the roster of B 2/16, so they wouldn’t have had this supposed conditioning that Steiber describes. The soldiers of B 2/16 are the folks who showed up later and rushed the two children to medical treatment. So even if the above story was true, what could it possibly have to do with the events which unfolded in the video?

    We return to the article;

    Now three former soldiers from this unit have come forward to make the case that the incident is not a matter of a few bad-apple soldiers but rather just one example of US military protocol in the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, where excessive acts of violence often stem from the chain of command.

    Except that the “excessive violence” came from the helicopter crew members, not members of B 2/16 – the unit from which those three former soldiers came. And there are about a hundred men in an infantry company – where are the other 97?

    The three go on to make vacuous charges against their leadership and peers without naming names, without providing dates and places. Lazare and Harvey were suckered – but I suspect it doesn’t bother either of them. Lazare writes with Dahr Jamail, the lead propagandist of the Left who completely disregards facts that get in his way and constructs mountains from molehills. Lazare also writes and works with Courage to Resist, so she’s pretty familiar with using hyperbole as facts.

  • Driving while IVAW

    I found this hilarious post by Catherine Bleish on her blog about IVAW member Will Stewart-Starks who was pulled over by the cops in Round Rock, TX, supposedly because he and his companion had an IVAW bumpersticker on their car, oh, and they were speeding.

    A New York State trooper once told me that cops give you a 10% leeway on the speed limit. So if they were going 6 miles per hour over the speed limit and the speed limit was 30, the cops would have forgiven 33 mph but not 36. So pulling them over for speeding was pretty standard. There’s a reason they call it a speed LIMIT.

    But anyway, Stewart got mouthy with the cop and now wants legal help to sue the Rolling Rock police department for violations of his civil rights (and wants contact information for the ACLU)

    I refused to tell specifically where we were going and pointed out my right to do so and its irrelevance to a routine moving violation stop. Upset he warned me, “if I was prepared to take this to the next level” and was soon told to step outside the vehicle. Another officer, Sergeant Eric Mount had already approached the scene and remained with the driver. Upon exiting the vehicle I took the keys from the ignition, rolled up my window, and locked my door. Standing outside I began to put the keys into my pocket when I was yelled at not to. I was immediately told to stand in front of the passenger door, forced around, arms pulled behind my back, fingers spread, interlocked, and squeezed against the keys in my hand. Later my left arm would ache from being jerked back.

    So because Stewart was such a whiny little brat, the cops searched the car and brought in the dogs, found nothing and released the duo. Stewart was afraid they’d “plant” evidence – it didn’t happen, but I’m sure it gave him PTSD worrying about it.

    Of course, because Stewart is a whiny brat he’s not willing to let it go;

    I have attempted to contact ACLU in Texas with no success, YAL, C4L, and representatives Lynn Jenkins, Dennis Moore, and TX rep. Lloyd Doggert. I have yet to hear back.

    Maybe you’re not having any success because even the ACLU recognizes a drama queen and a standard traffic stop when they see one.

    Getting pulled over for speeding and getting searched because you’re a mouthy little brat isn’t a violation of your civil rights, dumbass. It’s happened to all of us, but we usually don’t act like a spoiled two-year-old.

  • Under the Hood rubs egos in Killeen

    Fort Hood Protest (32)
    So here’s the massive protest the gang from Under the Hood cafe staged at Fort Hood to protest the deployment of 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment’s deployment next month. I don’t know who sent me the pictures, they just fell into my inbox this afternoon.

    Here’s Under the Hood’s press release;

    Attending the rally will be Veterans of the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, military family members, active-duty servicemembers and other local activists. Bobby Whittenberg, former Marine, Purple Heart recipient and an organizer of the rally said marchers are standing in solidarity with the people of Iraq and Afghanistan, and troops being deployed against their wills.

    “We need to send a strong message that these wars and occupations are wrong, and that officers sending Soldiers in need of medical care into combat is wrong, too,” said Whittenberg. “Unfortunately in the military, this is standard operating procedure.”

    This latest demonstration comes less than a month after a prior demonstration at the East Gate of Fort Hood opposing the wars. As the latest outrage unfolds in response to the 91,000 documents leaked by Wikileaks detailing numerous human rights violations in Afghanistan, activity in the local peace community is surging, with similar demonstrations planned for the near future.

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