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

Category: Iraq Veterans Against the War

  • I guess we all have PTSD, then

    IVAW member, Jeremy Bergren, has a blog post up on the IVAW website in which he defends his bout with PTSD. Like most of the IVAW members, Bergren never deployed. His unit deployed, but he was legally absent – and that, apparently is the source of his PTSD;

    I will not get too much into the guilt and shame that goes through a marine’s, or probably any servicemember’s, heart and head in a situation like this, but it is at a disturbing level to be stuck stateside while your friends, your peers, and unit are gone. Throughout my unit’s deployment I had a difficult time sleeping, had nightmares about what they were doing, but this made me feel more alienated so I never talked about it and just bid my time and got out as soon as my contract allowed me to.

    Yeah, his unit was a mortuary unit, so I’m guessing his nightmares were somehow related to ninja zombie mutant robots. If his unit was infantry, or engineer, I might understand crediting his discomfort to survivor’s guilt, but they were pogues in the rear with the gear.

    I don’t usually comment about others’ PTSD, but let’s recount what IVAW members think cause their PTSD. We had one, whose name slips my mind for the moment, who got PTSD while guarding a gate at 8th and Eye in DC in the weeks following 9-11. We have Matthis Chiroux who claims his PTSD stems from listening to others tell war stories in the barracks and finally, Bergren, who claims he suffers PTSD because he DIDN’T deploy – he got it from his dreams and imagination.

    I guess that about covers everything, doesn’t it? Everyone who ever put on a uniform for more than a day suffers from PTSD. Hell, I pulled gate guard while I was at the reception station at Fort Polk on day four of my active duty time. All of the prior service guys at the reception station were Vietnam vets in 1974, and they loved to tell us their war stories – shit, I guess I had PTSD right from the get-go.

  • Matthis and Agosto: flag burning is cool

    Matthis Chiroux of the IVAW burns an American flag in Lafayette Park, DC
    Matthis Chiroux IVAW burns flag

    Two new blog posts at IVAW, one by Victor Agosto another by Matthis Chiroux, explain why they’re cool to like flag burning and you’re not. First, Victor rolls out a list of terrible things Americans have done – none of them anything done by people we know, but things that happened before we were all born;

    The flag represents the U.S. but it does not represent us. The flag represents the state, a tool the ruling class uses to further its interests. This state has killed its indigenous inhabitants and has enslaved its people.

    Yeah, that’s not from the International Socialist Organization, is it?

    It is a state which serves the interests of insurance companies rather than the interests of people who are ill. It bails out banks but not hard working people who face foreclosure. It facilitates corporate exploitation of workers all over the world. It engages in wars for control and profit.

    I am for the people who live within the territorial bounds of the “republic.” I am proud of their struggles for an eight-hour work day, gender equality, racial desegregation, ending child labor, and ending wars. However, we are not better than the rest of the world’s people. We are all one human family.

    That could’ve been taken from a speech by Eugene V. Debs, the socialist who ran against Woodrow Wilson in 1920 from prison. All of the same talking points. Now that Agosto is out of prison, he can go anywhere he wants. I urge him to go to a country that doesn’t embarrass him quite so much.

    But Matthis takes his fractured rhetoric to comedic heights;

    As the burning American flag clutched in my fist above me bathed my fingers in yellow flame, I felt no pain nor shame of conscience. I stared into the eyes of 5,000 people and returned to dust a genocidal fairytale. One force-fed to me since birth and later used to enslave my body. A bed-time story of epic deceptions. A lost dream groped for in the empty darkness.

    What a douche. Of course, he tried to write about the flag, but, as always with Matthis, he can’t help but make himself the center of the room.

    I long to take the needle off this skipping record and rest it on my broken heart.

    Me, too, you drama queen. I hope your broken heart doesn’t take as long to heal as your broken leg, you pansy. I wonder if Jesse MacBeth is writing his stuff these days.

    I didn’t put links in because you can’t get to IVAW from here – don’t ask me why, it makes no sense, but they blocked incoming traffic from TAH. But you can get there from Yahoo or Google.

    All of the ISO members of IVAW are changing their avatars on Facebook to the picture of Chiroux burning the flag according to people who can see their profiles. Camilo Mejas is one of them.

    Word on the street is that one of the board members of IVAW is planning to file a grievance with the rest of the board over this incident. Of course, knowing who that board member is, I don’t believe he has the testicular fortitude to follow through. He’ll probably be bought off by the rest of the board with the promise of a Skittles castle with a moat of Snickers bars.

  • The DC protest video highlights

    Here are some of the videos I’ve found and were sent to me about the protest this last weekend.

    A young reporter gets a lesson from a tea partier on wardrobe selection;
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  • Matthis’ Big Weekend Adventure

    A little bird called to tell me that Matthis Chiroux was arrested this weekend for making mud stencils in front of the White House. Sure enough, I found a photo of the arrest at Al Jazeera.

    201032103826513621_5

    Notice the cane on the ground – he’s still playing the sympathy card for his broken leg from A FRICKEN YEAR AGO! I think that’s Elaine Brower, crackpot emeritus, next to him.

    Of course, this is the photo that’ll bring the most comment. Former Army Sergeant and recipient of a General Discharge Under Honorable Conditions and six day TDY veteran of Afghanistan Matthis Chiroux burning a US Flag to score some hippie chic strange.

    chiroux-flag

    His leg doesn’t seem to be bothering him, does it? The IVAW folks were keeping this close to their vest passing it around on their Facebook accounts, but thanks to some refugees, we have it now.

  • VFP’s DC theater

    Code Red and Code Pink 027

    I ran into Concretebob at the Code Red rally yesterday and he pointed me to the VFP’s theater in DC yesterday. Anemic doesn’t begin to describe what was going on at their little theater yesterday;

    Code Red and Code Pink 028

    The display, of course is supposed to be markers of every soldier killed in Iraq. Some of the markers have actual names of the fallen, but most of them look like this;
    Code Red and Code Pink 030

    Most of the people who visited the display, were on their way to the Capitol Code Red rally, so the doofuses had an audience thanks to Jon Voight and Michelle Bachman. You have to wonder why VFP doesn’t support war with Iran – you know, the guys who’ve promised to erase Israel from the face of the earth, denied there was a holocaust, and are all for hastening the arrival of the twelfth imam;

    Code Red and Code Pink 029

    I’d heard from Concretebob that Cindy Sheehan was there along with IVAW and VVAw, but when I got there, all I saw was this ten-year-old girl and a few hippies;

    Code Red and Code Pink 033

    Code Red and Code Pink 032

    I guess it’s because when I was at the display, there were no TV cameras.

    Well, if you take a look at all three of the posts I’ve written about the events in DC yesterday, you decide which was more attended at their advertised start time. I’m not making any estimates of any of the crowds – you decide from the pictures.

  • Kokesh won’t quit (Updated)

    As I predicted, Adam Kokesh, IVAW diva, announced that, although he could only attract 16% of the delegates in new Mexico’s 3rd District GOP pre-primary race, he won’t quit;

    “Our campaign is energized, and we’re committed to winning the primary election,” Kokesh said in a news release. “We are a grassroots campaign, and over the next two and half months we will be calling on our many supporters to help us win this important election, and do our part to unseat the Luján-Pelosi-Reid Congress and stop the Obama agenda.”

    Typical Ron Paul tactic – ignore that fact that he’s unelectable and keep charging ahead with a useless campaign until the party is so fractured that the Democrat wins. Then he’ll claim that its the Party’s and the media’s fault because no would would crown him the candidate despite the wish of voters. Someone explain to me how Kokesh, who now has the support of one in seven voters, is going to turn that around in 10 weeks – he’s already been campaigning for a year, but a couple more weeks is all he needs.

    I wish someone would start a nationwide remedial math class for Paulians.

    Thanks to COB6 for the link.

    UPDATED: Below the jump is Kokesh’s latest campaign letter forwarded to us by a former IVAW member;

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  • ANSWER’s March 20th Rally

    I know Gathering of Eagles and some other groups are planning counter-actions to the annual ANSWER rally on March 20th in DC. How many of our readers are planning on being there? I’ll be driving down from my mountain retreat early in morning, so if anyone wants to meet up before hand, let me know.

    Yahoo says it’ll be 64 degrees and partly cloudy, so I guess the weather will be better than our first one in 2007, won’t it?

    From what I’ve read, the Code Pink hags will be there as well as Geoff “Stolen Valor” Millard and his DC IVAW crowd. ANd we can always count on the “Bert and Ernie” of the VFP crowd, Bill Perry and Ward Reilly as well as ANSWER’s new March Forward veterans group with our buddy Mike Prysner.

    A good time will be had by all.

  • Kokesh’s final delegate count?

    Someone just emailed me that the final count of delegates in the Kokesh vs. Mullins GOP primary battle is 16% to 84%. Candidates need 20% to get on the ballot. I haven’t found any confirmation of these numbers yet – so it’s all we’ve got. But the tipster is the same source that beat the Santa Fe news Saturday.

    As Sparky pointed out the other day, Kokesh can still get on the ballot for the primary by collecting 2,000 signatures. But really, what would be the point? Obviously New Mexico Republicans won’t vote for him – overwhelminly. Even if he’d made the 20% mark, it’s still and indicator of how little chance he had in the primaries – like Ron Paul claiming he had massive support, raising astounding amounts of cash and still not polling above 15 in actual elections.

    Now, if Kokesh is a real Republican like he’s been telling us, I expect he’ll come out and endorse Mullins – obviously the Republican choice for Congress in New Mexico’s 3rd District. If Ben Ray Lujan, the Democrat incumbant, is as bad as Kokesh has telling us, he should want to unseat Lujan more than indulge his ego, right?

    So, here I am, holding my breath waiting for Kokesh to do the right thing for the party he embraced.