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

Category: Iraq Veterans Against the War

  • Kokesh and Rand Paul – BFFs

    TSO phoned me from the road yesterday about a Rand Paul/Adam Kokesh video. I hope I found the right one, because it appears that there are several on Youtube. This one is from last summer and filmed in Kentucky;

    It’s funny, but I agree with everything they said – but it’s what they don’t say that makes them dangerous. Like in other clips where Kokesh mentions “humble foreign policy”. Yeah, that sounds like what we need right now, what with Chavez building up his military for a confrontation to our south and negotiating away oil to China. With North Korea expected to build a missile that can reach the US by the end of next year. With Iran threatening the Middle East and Europe. Russia trying to rebuild the old Soviet Union. Yeah, let’s be humble.

    I wonder if Rand knows he’s discussing gun rights with a convicted arms smuggler (sorry, a little Gordon Duff-style hyperbole there).

    Too Kooky for Kentucky finds white supremacists supporting Rand Paul just like they supported his father. Here’s another Kokesh for Congress video edited by Josh Paul. I can’t find any familial ties to Ron Paul, but it’s a bit coincidental.

    I think it’s hilarious that Kokesh avoids talking about IVAW these days. There’s a reporter for Stars and Stripes who did an interview with me and Army Sergeant last summer about the IVAW who is holding up publishing the interview until he can interview Kokesh who won’t return the reporter’s call. Kokesh now likes to call himself an “Iraq War veteran” instead of an IVAW member these days. I guess the need for xanax and gin has worn off.

  • Crossing the streams

    The grand queen of all moonbats, Cynthia McKinney has been deemed worthy of receiving the “Peace through Conscience” award from the European Moonbat organization Munich American Peace Committee, a group of disaffected Americans in Germany;

    Included in McKinney’s program is a meeting with the Munich American Peace Committee (MAPC – www(dot)mapc-web(dot)de) which will present to McKinney its third annual award, “Peace through Conscience,” during the ceremonies of the Munich Peace Conference on the evening of February 6, 2010. The MAPC Peace Prize is normally awarded by the previous year’s winner.

    Who was last year’s “winner”. Why, it was none other than our favorite derelict Andre Shepherd, an IVAW member who gained notoriety by deciding he wouldn’t spend a year playing X-Box in Iraq with his unit while his German girlfriend kept company with the folks who stayed in the rear.

    Shepherd won the prize for applying for refugee status in Germany because he thinks the Army will put him to death for deserting.

    McKinney and Shepherd on the same stage can’t be good for the rest of us. I suspect it will be like crossing the streams in Ghostbusters. I suspect that Germany’s resident American commie Darnell Stephen Summers will be there, too.

    If there’s any Army CID guys reading this, here’s your opportunity to snag Shepherd when he leaves that lonely refugee station where the Germans are holding him. I believe that’s the only place he’s safe from y’all. Of course, as soon as I get done typing this, I’ll be contacting my connections in Germany.

  • WTH is a demilitarized Superbowl?

    That giant urine-hoarding freak Geof “Stolen Valor” Millard is hosting a “Demilitarized Superbowl Party at the DC IVAW house on Super Sunday, I guess it’s for people who really don’t like football and don’t have any real friends;

    ivaw-superbowl

    I’m not a big sports guy (after high school and spending half of my military career overseas) but this David Zirin (who apparently writes for The Nation) doesn’t seem like a typical sports journalist. He’s a little flamboyant. But, hey if you’re up for a demilitarized Super Bowl party – I guess this would be the best one to go to.

    Just make sure that’s a beer you grab from the fridge and not some of Adam Kokesh’s leftover uranium-tainted urine.

  • The bravery of anonymity

    Ever wonder how you can call yourself brave without having to identify yourself? Well, James Branum, lawyer to more imprisoned soldiers than anyone else would be proud to represent, has it all figured out. He puts a prospective client on YouTube wrapped up in some really snazzy duds;

    Of course, Branum begins the video with a commercial for more money. Probably because he’s run out of people from whom he can leach. This particular person (I won’t call him a soldier because he’s not brave enough to identify himself, so we don’t know if he’s really a soldier or not) tell us that he just returned from Iraq and he’s filing for conscientious objector and a medical discharge.

    Here’s some unsolicited advice; If you just returned, apply for CO status now – you don’t even need Branum. You have lots of time to get it approved (if you’re really a CO) so you don’t have to go AWOL the day of the deployment and get tossed in jail like Travis Bishop.

    He claims he’s anonymous to avoid retribution – well, if you don’t tell anyone who you are, how are you going to file for CO status? That’s just ridiculous – who is going to attack him? Me? It sounds like Branum is using the Matthew Alexander technique to hide something.

    The veil represents all of those soldiers who have come to the realization that our current wars and all future wars aren’t worth human life. The veil covers his conscience. WTF? The veil represents his fear…period. He claims that he speaks for “many” soldiers. So I guess he thinks he’s the only one smart enough and brave enough to hire James Branum to screw up his young life.

    The rest of the diatribe of this fellow basically calls the troops racists and murderers – well, not the troops specifically but he blames “the Army” who makes us racist and blood thirsty killer. He says he’d return to Iraq “to make [Iraqis] lives better” – looks to me like we’ve done that and there’s very little fighting going on in Iraq now. So what is he opposed to about our mission there now? Since we don’t know who he is and what unit he “recently” served with, we don’t even know what he’s talking about, do we?

    Branum is also using this fellow for raising funds on Facebook, and says the guy is an active duty Iraq Veterans Against the War. More than likely in Fort Hood and a member of the coven of Coffee Strong Under the Hood. The word is that Coffee Strong Under the Hood, and their mentor Cindy Richardson Thomas has swung over completely into the activism camp and their concern for soldiers is over shadowed by the anti-war aspect.

    Thanks to Casey Porter for the links. He wanted to write this post, but I couldn’t resist since Branum is so eager to use this as a fund raiser and is so set on screwing this guy to the wall (if he’s a real vet).

  • Today’s “WTF?” moment

    My buddy, Bev Perlson, sent this video this morning. Fox News’ Judge Napolitano interviews Adam Kokesh as if Kokesh is just another guy off the street running for office without mentioning that Kokesh was/is a member of IVAW;

    If Napolitano had done his research, he’d know that his endorsement of Kokesh’s candidacy is fairly misplaced. Kokesh was busted by the Marine Corps for smuggling an Iraqi pistol back to the States – does that sound like someone we need in Congress? He misrepresented his character of service and continued to call himself something he’s not – and oh, he bullied bloggers.

    He has admitted to drug abuse on his blog (which has since been altered since he started his congressional campaign but not before TAH captured it). Remember Kokesh when he teamed up with Jon DeWald to disparage veterans? Remember when Kokesh tried to start some violence on GWU’s campus by tacking up handbills around campus that were obviously racist, but were blamed on a conservative student group?

    Remember when Kokesh was arrested for posting anti-war handbills in Lafayette Park after the police told him to stop? Remember what Kokesh told the officer when the character of Kokesh’s discharge was being determined? And, oh, at that same link is Kokesh’s recounting of an incident in Germany when he tried to organize active duty soldiers against the war on base.

    You can see Kokesh’s DD214 here because TAH will always be there when Kokesh shows up in public.

    Is that who Napolitano is endorsing? A chameleon who changes his politics with the direction of the political wind? While the anti-war movement was deteriorating, Kokesh changed horses in midstream to become Paulian and now he’s a Republican candidate in New Mexico. Last March, Kokesh was marching with communists, anarchists and socialists in the ANSWER march on the Pentagon. Today he’s instructing us on his commitment to the Constitution on FOX NEWS as a REPUBLICAN candidate. In just ten months.

    I don’t know how Napolitano can call Kokesh a “Constitutional candidate” when IVAW encourages servicemembers to violate their oath to the Constitution.

  • For anyone under the mistaken impression that IVAW and VoteVets are Veterans Organizations

    From House Veterans Affairs Committee Chairman Bob Filner comes this via email:

    Washington, D.C. – On Wednesday, January 20, 2010, with both Democratic and Republican Members of the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs in attendance, Chairman Bob Filner held a meeting with 40 veterans service organizations to discuss priorities for the second session of the 111th Congress.

    “Today’s roundtable marks the second time during the 111th Congress that this Committee has met with veterans’ advocates to discuss the important issues facing our Nation’s veterans and plan how best to solve these problems,” said Chairman Filner. “The purpose of today’s meeting is to build upon the successes of the first session and collaborate on how we can better serve our veterans and wounded warriors going forward.”

    Just want to first thank the Chairman for having the organizations in to discuss the issues facing veterans. More importantly, I wanted to show you the list of 40 Veterans Service Organizations that were in attendance. You know how IVAW and VoteVets claim to represent veterans on Capitol Hill? Well, I would love for one of them to explain why these organizations were invited and they were not. If you think VoteVets and IVAW are representing you on the Hill, you should ask them when and where they are doing so. VoteVets is up there right now advocating closing Gitmo and bringing those terrorists into the states, but they were apparently too busy to go to a meeting to discuss issues facing our returning brothers and sisters.

    After the fold, the list of 40 organizations that *ARE* looking out for you and yours.
    (more…)

  • AWOL Mom charged

    A lot of you sent us links back in November about Alexis Hutchison, the mom who went AWOL instead of deploying because her family care plan was weak. Our buddy, GI Korea, wrote a lot of good background in November. Well, the Army filed charges against her today.

    The story goes like this; Specialist who joined the Army childless, was ordered to deploy with her unit. She activated her family care plan, took her one-year-old son to live with Hutchison’s mother in California, who, after a week, decided that she couldn’t handle taking care of the child along with a sickly mother, a sickly sister and a sickly daughter. And, oh, grandmother also runs a day care center for 14 children in her home. How can she be expected to care for her grandson?

    It seems to me that someone might have considered the additional burden on Mom before it all fell apart. So when deployment time came, Alexis hid out in her off-base apartment, according to her, remaining in contact with her commander. I’m sure the commander was thinking of nothing else but Alexis while he was deploying to war with 100+ soldiers.

    I’m sure that the first thing out of everyone’s mouth was “What about that woman who showed up at Benning with her kids?” Well, Lisa Pagan was an IRR soldier who had already served her active duty time, and Pagan didn’t miss movement. Pagan’s cause wasn’t taken up by IVAW, VFP, Courage to Resist, GI Voice – because Pagan wasn’t a resister.

    Hutchinson isn’t a resister either, but she’s been made into one by the disingenuous Far Left straw-graspers. DoD says they have 70,000 single parents on active duty, why does this one think she’s so special that she can use that status to avoid going to war.

    I’ve found things that connect her lawyer, Rai Sue Sussman to the National Lawyers Guild which puts her on the same level as James Branum. She also interned last summer with the Military Law Task Force, the NLG arm which Branum co-chairs. Oviously, the anti-war clowns are going to wave Hutchison as their latest bloody shirt. Despite the fact that she’s not against the war in any political way.

    I guess my main question is “Where is the father?” All of this could have been avoided if she’d chosen to have a child with a more responsible man. So that’s a few bad choices she made for which she expects the Army to make allowances.

    Why is it the Army’s responsibility to cave into all of these interests and Alexis Hutchison’s demands when no one else seems to be accepting their burdens here. Why doesn’t lawyer Sussman, the recent law school grad, take the child for a year if she’s so damned concerned about her client’s welfare, for Pete’s sake. All of this talk about the Army forcing her to abandon her child – she abandoned her child at the moment of conception.

  • It’s all hugs and kisses until someone explodes

    Power Point Ranger and Southern Democrat sent me an article from BBC of one of our readers, Brandon Neely, a former IVAW member who left the organization last year over the Carl Webb dustup. I wrote about Neely and his testimony last year which was little more than hearsay from other guards at Guantanamo and some of his work as reaction force in the prison. Like some of the other guards at Gitmo who’ve come out against prisoner treatment, Neely admits that much of his information on terrorists came from his fraternization with them.

    Well, he took that fraternization a step further and apologized to two British prisoners for their mistreatment in front of BBC cameras. I understand what might have motivated Brandon to make the trip and beclown himself in front of the international media, but I wonder what good anyone thought would come out of that.
    Rusty Weiss at Newsbusters catalogues the real reasons that these two Gitmo prisoners, Ruhal Ahmed and Shafiq Rasul, are still in custody. Although they claimed that they were just looking for some good pot initially, they’ve admitted that they sought and found some weapons training from al-Qaeda.

    But because they could whip out some mean rap lyrics, Neely has decided they’re not terrorists. Since I know Brandon is a regular reader here, I’ll tell him that’s just naive. Being a member of the QRF in Gitmo doesn’t give you any special insight on terrorists. it doesn’t matter that they’re all 5’5″ tall and weigh about 120 pounds – how much exploding do they have to do right in front of your face to convince you that they’re dangerous?

    Gitmo guards gladhanding their former charges is good TV, but it’s just not good anti-terrorism policy. Six months on QRF doesn’t make you an expert, Brandon. It just makes for good propaganda. Yes the two pot heads forgave you, but they’d kill you and your family just as fast.

    Please grow up.

    Power Point Ranger and I agree that this photo looks like a screen shot from a beheading video;

    neely

    By the way, Brandon, I’m a little upset that you didn’t let TAH in on this interview.

    Correction: Rusty Weiss from Newsbusters writes to tell us that Ruhal Ahmed and Shafiq Rasul are no longer in custody since 2004.