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

Category: Iraq Veterans Against the War

  • Oath Keepers and IVAW

    I’ve been receiving emails over the last few months about Oath Keepers and my initial impressions of the organization were good. I mean, I’m all for military and law enforcement officers pledging to keep their respective oaths. And the Southern Poverty Law Center is scared by them, so that’s always good.

    A week or so ago, one of my RSS feeds took me to an article on Oathkeepers’ website that was written by Eric T Orseske, an IVAW member. At the time, I let it slide to see what Oath Keepers would do about it – within a few days, the post came down. Well, the same post popped up again today;

    eric-t-orseske1a

    Well, i just think it’s odd that Oath Keepers would associate itself with someone blatantly opposed to oaths. The IVAW has recently, at least at Fort Hood, encouraged soldiers to break their oath to serve. The IVAW won’t even vote to boot members who encourage violence against our troops.

    So what about the IVAW lends itself to cooperation with an otherwise commendable organization like Oath Keepers?

  • IVAW member complains that Army was good to him

    josh-noelsomethingorother

    Meet Josh Noehrenberg, a new IVAW member – so new that he doesn’t have a profile on IVAW’s website, yet. Or maybe it’s for a good reason he doesn’t have a profile. He’s another of the IVAW members who haven’t been to Iraq or Afghanistan, yet he’s in the IRAQ VETERANS Against the War. He fought against Germans;

    “Technically you only need to serve in the global war on terror which took place in a number of different theaters not just Iraq,” Noehrenberg said. Noehrenberg said that serving in Germany was easy and uneventful until he returned home. “When we came back to the states we got reports later that there was in fact a terrorist plot over in Germany and that the [Military Police] uncovered it,” Noehrenberg said. Noehrenberg said he knew the terrorists that were uncovered in the plot and said one of them worked as a store clerk at the Post Exchange on his base. “It just struck home like, holy cow her and her boyfriend had pipe bombs ready to blow us to pieces,” Noehrenberg said.

    Well, there you go, he’s going to be claiming PTSD from hearing about this terrorist activity – the Matthis Chiroux syndrome. Then he went to Fort Polk and admits he didn’t oppose the war until it was his turn to go;

    Noehrenberg said after that event they received their orders that the company was going to be deployed to Iraq and that started a pattern of nonviolent resistance with Noehrenberg and other soldiers in his company. “We formed our own opinion about the matter,” Noehrenberg said. Noehrenberg said him and other troops tried to convince other troops in their company that “this war is not our war,” and purposely performed poorly during military exercises and marksmen tests. Noehrenberg said he realized that this company was being “poorly” trained and under supplied by his commanding officers. “I saw that our unit was not ready for the mission that was being handed down,” Noehrenberg said.

    In all of his years of experience, Noehrenberg determined his unit wasn’t ready to deploy and tried to leave his buddies behind to deploy unprepared for war. Yep, that’s how it happened, I swear.

    Noehrenberg said him and other soldiers held a teleconference with Sen. Richard Durbin to try and explain their views on how prepared the company was. “We’ll never know for sure whether or not it was our efforts per sea that was the turning point in the decision but we ended up not going on that deployment,” Noehrenberg said. “The entire battalion went home and got much needed rest.”

    I wish I’d been his First Sergeant – I’d have worn his young ass out – push ups for days. Then he applies for a hardship discharge and gets it to help his family through some tough times – I understand that, but is Noehrenberg grateful for the Army’s decision to release him from his obligation to care for his family? You guessed it – nope;

    Noehrenberg currently works for the Iraq Veterans Against the War by talking to young people who are thinking about joining the military. He talks about his time in the military, and he hopes he can change their mind.

    Yup, cuz the Army so mistreated him. Here’s an article about Joshie-pooh when he showed up at an Immgrant-rights march in Chicago – you tell me what his politics are;

    Josh Noehrenberg, 25, of Lombard, showed up carrying a red and black anarchy flag, a skateboard and the book “The Political Philosophy of Poststructuralist Anarchism” by Todd May. “These people are being exploited in a very real way,” said Noehrenberg, a political science major at Roosevelt University, referring to low-income workers.

    I’m guessing he’s another ISO member, but I might be wrong.

  • Peace movement plans protest against Obama

    A gaggle of peace movement organizations wrote an open letter to the President urging that he adopt their platform for peace. However, they forget the time line of some important events;

    We feel you are stuck in the same trap, which ensnared President Lyndon Johnson. His decision to continue that awful war in Vietnam brought down his presidency. He failed to listen to the peace movement, and history has not been kind to him.

    Um, Lyndon Johnson didn’t “continue” the war in Vietnam, he escalated the operations in Vietnam to an actual combat role. US combat forces were introduced to Vietnam at Da Nang March 8, 1965 – at the beginning of the Johnson Administration.

    The letter continues;

    Today’s peace movement is baffled by your persistence to wage war on the people of Afghanistan. Not only is your policy flawed, but it is doomed to failure. Afghanistan surely does not need more killing and destruction. It needs financial assistance and the willingness of the United States to build roads, schools and clinics. The people, especially the women and children, need food, medicine, shelter and an end to the fighting. Moreover, the U.S. military is unsuited to do humanitarian work in Afghanistan.

    What have the US forces been doing in Afghanistan? Oh, that’s right, they’ve been “air raiding villages”, I forgot. And were they “unsuited to do humanitarian work in” Bosnia and Kosovo, too?

    We protested the belligerency of the Bush administration, and now we are demonstrating against your misguided efforts in Afghanistan. We are mystified that in the midst of a horrible economic crisis, you are wasting precious tax dollars and other resources in a futile war without end. To call this a war of necessity is an attempt to rewrite history.

    I’ll bet you clowns are mystified about a lot of things, mostly simple tasks like tying your shoes and changing your underwear. To not refer to this war as a war of necessity is to ignore history.

    But on the upside, this coalition of misinformed idiots are planning to protest against the Obama White House on Monday, October 5th.

    I wonder if Jimmy Carter will call them racists.

  • Evil doin’s at Fort Hood

    Apparently Fort Hood has become the focus of the anti-war and “soldier resistance” movement. You’ll remember that we wrote about Victor Agosto who was shipped off to the Bell County jail in texas after he refused to deploy with his unit. When he finished his 30 day sentence, he was celebrated as a returning hero by about 50 Leftist clowns according to an article in Socialist Worker;

    On an unusually pleasant 95-degree afternoon at Under the Hood Café, the G.I. café just outside Fort Hood, there was a celebration for a hero, a barbecue and fundraiser, and a rally to continue the fight for the other men, women and families victimized by the war machine and inspired by Victor’s courage.

    Sweet, huh? I wonder how many of Agosto’s fellow soldiers get the same treatment when they return from their deployment – will Victor greet them with the amenities that he got upon his “return”?.
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  • Army Experience Center protest

    Even though I was at the protest on Saturday, one of our operatives was at the Franklin Mills Mall near Philadelphia keeping an eye on the moonbats for us. According to their announcement, 32 groups were supposed to decend on the Army Experience Center, a recruiting station in the mall. You can tell that apparently every other person had his own organization – there were 100-150 people there by my estimation from the pictures and videos I’ve found. Here’s the one video on YouTube about it so far, you can do your own counting if you want;

    Our operative, MayDayOG, sends these pictures and files in his report that, even though initially the hippies had planned to infiltrate the mall in small groups and appear suddenly at the AEC, instead they assembled near the mall and were escorted by mall security to the AEC.

    Hmmm, someone must’ve tipped the mall to their plot. I wonder who.

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  • Carl Dix and IVAW’s Communist connections

    Carl Dix was a soldier in the US Army until he refused to go to Vietnam. After a stint in jail, he came out and joined the Black Workers Congress (remember Darnell Stephens Summers? Links here and here.) From the Black Workers Congress, Dix went to the Revolutionary Communist Party which was co-founded by his friend Bob Avakian. Here’s Avakian a few days ago;

    Now Dix is the national spokesman for the RCP. Apparently, he’s not full of the hope and change of this administration. In a Democracy Now interview in July, along side Cornel West, Dix said;
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  • Josh Simpson: Live up to the creed, socialismo o muerte!

    The folks at 9/11 Families for America sent a link to an interview of Benji Lewis and Josh Simpson (who I wrote about the other day) conducted by Eva Golinger, a Venezuelan-American lawyer who was nicknamed the “Sweetheart of the Revolution” by Hugo Chavez for her blind and undying support for the Chavezistas. Of course, she supports Chavez’ revolution from the comfort and splendor of her Manhattan apartment and law offices.

    Anyway, Golinger, who also writes for the uber-Left, pro-Chavez website Venezuelanalysis, doesn’t bother to check the background of her interviewees. This is from the bio at the end of the interview;

    Josh Simpson, 27 years old, was a Sargeant [sic] in the US Army Counterintelligence Division. He was in charge of interrogations and source operations in Mosul, Iraq from 2004-2005. His actions resulted indirectly in the deaths of hundreds of Iraquis [sic].

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  • IVAW’s Josh Simpson can’t keep his story straight

    Just cruising through my feeds this afternoon, I came across this YouTube video from Venezuelan Television. It’s an interview with IVAW’s Josh Simpson who tells harrowing stories of interrogations while he was a US Army interrogator.

    Keep in mind that this the first of a series of four interviews by VZTV, the government-owned Telesur, attempting to warn Venezuelans that Americans and Colombians are intent on invading Venezuela – I guess because we don’t have enough poor people, so we have to enslave some more. Ed. Note: Although the program portion of this interview is in Spanish, Josh’s answers are in English;

    So I did a little research on Joshua and found that he’d claimed to be an interrogator a few times in the media – like this interview from Dahr Jamail last year;
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