It seems that Cindy Sheehan and Matthis Chiroux met at Martha’s Vineyard this week and while no one was paying attention, they made a video together. Whoever took the video should have adjusted the audio – old guys like me can’t hear what they’re saying. Probably lucky for them. Here’s the video – I’ll leave the comments to you guys;
Thanks to Sporkmaster for the link.
This is a real smoldering turd of a video starring TSO’s favorite journalist, Dahr Jamail, and my new penpal, Jose Vasquez, the Executive Director of Iraq Veterans Against the War. To Vasquez’ credit, when the reporter introduces him as an Iraq veteran, he admits that he never served in the war. Like Carl Webb, Matthis Chiroux and and endless list of (IV)AW members who aren’t Iraqi Veterans. But certainly we can understand her confusion – he’s wearing a T-shirt that says “Iraq Veterans” and he’s the Executive Director of an organization that calls itself “Iraq Veterans Against the War”. Many of us would automatically think he’s an Iraq veteran.
The video is 14 minutes long, and I’ve watched it five times, so you don’t have to;
To begin with, Jamail states that there have been 50,000 soldiers who have deserted since 2001. To understand the statement, you first have to understand the terms. A soldier has to be Absent Without Leave (AWOL) for 30 days before he’s considered a deserter. LTC Nathan Banks, our new friend at the Army’s Pentagon Public Affairs Office claims that they have apprehended 29,926 deserters since 2001 and that there are 2442 outstanding warrants.
So how does that compare with peacetime years;
There were 3687 desertions in 2000 which was .7% of the total force. In 2007, 4698 desertions which was .9% of the force – statistically, yes desertions were on the rise in 2007, a minuscule number when we’re talking about more than a half million people. In 2006, it was .6% (one of the bloodiest years in Iraq) and in 2003, (when the Iraq began) it was .5%. We haven’t seen the data for 2008 and 2009 yet. The fact remains that over 99% of the total force don’t desert, so I don’t know what Jamail is trying to say.
Jamail claims that the military is taking steps to prevent dissent in their ranks. “They” stopped the draft. Um, “they” didn’t stop the draft, it was ended decades ago, not part of some Bush conspiracy. He also claims that the military is blocking access to social networking media (Facebook, Twitter, etc…). That’s just false. The military is blocking access to social media ON THEIR OWN internet access points – just like every other employer. Doesn’t it make sense that only military business is conducted on military computers? Soldiers are still able to use those media on their own computers.
Vasquez claims that the only people who can’t find jobs are joining the military. The proof of that is National Guard recruiters at his college – I guess that’s why I was involved in recruiting on campus back in 1988. It was just a Bush plot for this war. I guess recruiters should recruit in nursing homes and not among the their target market. More than likely, the people who volunteer to go in the Army are the types of motivated people that any employer would love to have in their business rather than some slovenly, shitdick peacenik. Jose says it’s because recruiters know the economy is bad – or maybe they know where to find smart, motivated recruits.
Retention and recruiting has been successful through out the period since 9-11-01. All of the branches of service have met their goals nearly every year of the Bush boom. Yes, the economy has some effect periodically, but there’s no real evidence that the troops are reenlisting and joining JUST because of the economy. Vasquez makes it sound like they have no choice but to die for their country, for Pete’s sake.
Vasquez continues the myth that Pat Tilman was killed by some government plot to silence his dissent against the war. In other words, he thinks that the soldiers he says that he loves so much would treacherously kill one of their own on the order of Darth Cheney. Way to support the troops, there, Jose.
Vasquez also claims that in his 14 years in the Army Reserves, he never got any counter-terrorism training. He was a medic. What part of his job would change in a counter-terrorism environment? Think they have some ninja bandaids or self-propelled stretchers for terrorist operations?
Vasquez, Chiroux, Webb all had no problem drawing their paychecks until they were about to be deployed to war – yet we’re supposed to believe that their motivations were completely altruistic. I’ve told Vasquez that if he was as truly dedicated to his military profession as he’s claimed, the politics wouldn’t have prevented him from deploying and doing his job as a medic.
Vasquez was a medic, Chiroux was a journalist, Webb was a generator operator, Agosto and Bishop repaired radios, Andre Shepherd handed out volleyballs in Iraq because he was too incompetent to repair Apaches. I’m just sayin’….
Jamail claims that because he found some soldiers five years ago that sandbagged on their patrols in Iraq (Jamail uses the “Search and Avoid” term from Vietnam), he claims avoidance of their duties is “widespread” throughout the military. I’d like to see some proof of that – proof beyond a few IVAW members who claim it. We’ve already seen how he falsifies the desertion rates to suit his reportage, we have to assume he does the same in this instance.
By the way, one of Jamail sources in his book for the origins of sandbagged patrols is Geoff “Stolen Valor” Millard.
Jamail also claims that new Private Travis Bishop was jailed for “resisting” despite the fact that he filed for conscientious objector status. He fails to mention that Bishop went AWOL for a week before he filed for CO – that’s why he got a year in jail.
So there’s your introduction to the “new” (IV)AW Executive Director. Pretty much the same as the old director. Still willing to smear the troops, still advocating for desertion, still just another (IV)AW member who hasn’t been to Iraq, yet wears the T-shirt.
Uh-oh, they noticed;
Yes, Chris, there is a leak. In fact it’s more like a wide-open floodgate. There are people in IVAW that aren’t happy with the direction you’re taking the organization. In fact, I noticed that half of the members at the Houston Chapter have had their profiles removed. The most prominent being Brandon Neely who was pretty popular with the media back in February when I wrote about him. In fact I found his testimony to be fairly forthright, a bit overstated and dramatic, but truthful nonetheless – that’s more than I can say about new board members Buonomo and Chiroux.
I noticed another member is missing a profile, too – another actual veteran of the war against terror. One I’d never written about because he’d behaved himself.
Not only is information leaking out of IVAW, it’s bleeding membership.
And, oh, don’t flatter yourself – this isn’t a military counterintelligence operation against IVAW – I’m just a guy sitting in my La-Z-Boy with a couple of laptops.
I don’t know what I can say about this photograph of Congressional candidate who is still an IVAW member, Adam Kokesh, so I’ll let my readers provide the commentary;
The Santa Fe Reporter has already decided who they want to represent them, I guess;
For some reason, the Stars and Stripes thinks the opinion of 70 people who call themselves “Iraq Veterans Against the War” (in my opinion, they should change the name to “Random People Off the Street Who Want You to Think They Are Iraq Veterans Against the War“) is important enough to report to our troops overseas;
At its annual convention in College Park, Md., earlier this month, members of Iraq Veterans Against the War vigorously debated what the group’s stance should be on Afghanistan, according to some participants. Opposition to the war quietly became official policy earlier this year following an online membership poll. The vote was said to be close, though no details were publicly released.
“A decision has been made in terms of our position, which is we are against it,” said Jose Vasquez, executive director of IVAW and co-founder of the New York City chapter.
Jose Vasquez, the new Executive Director of RPOSWWYTTAIVAW, decided after 13 years of service as a medic that he was a conscientious objector right before he was supposed to deploy to Iraq (yet claimed he would have gone to Afghanistan).
As is the case with Iraq, the existing IVAW resolution advocates “the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of all occupying forces in Afghanistan and reparations for the Afghan people, and support (for) all troops and veterans working toward those ends.”
The third plank is the least important, of course. You can bet the debate over whether to include Afghanistan as something they oppose included a big discussion over how much money they could make. But who is surprised that a “majority” of members of the RPOSWWYTTAIVAW would vote for this? After all, a “majority” voted to protect Carl Webb’s right to preach sabotaging and killing US forces in theater. A “majority” voted to make Matthis Chiroux, self-admitted rapist who calls himself an Afghanistan veteran, a member of their leadership.
And this so-called “majority” was 70 members of a supposedly 1700-member organization. And did the International Socialist Organization members of RPOSWWYTTAIVAW stack attendance at College Park in their favor? They paid for Carl Webb to attend – how many others’ travel did they pay? And how many of those who got free travel were members aligned with the ISO?
How do I know Carl Webb got a free trip to College Park? He told me.
That was right before his profile disappeared from Facebook.
Not all of the members of RPOSWWYTTAIVAW approve of their new stance against the war in Afghanistan;
One of the members who supports the war in Afghanistan is Army Sgt. Selena Coppa, an active-duty military intelligence specialist based at Wiesbaden, Germany.
“The organization is kind of split on that,” Coppa said.
At times, she added, the issue of whether to oppose the war in Afghanistan “ran the risk of tearing us apart. IVAW is like a family. You don’t want members leaving.”
Well, it looks like you can’t stop that, Selena. I’m hearing rumors that an entire chapter resigned this weekend and some actual veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan from some other important chapters resigned as well. I hope you’re loving your new ISO overlords.
Yes, according to junior space cadet, and newly-elected board member TJ Buonomo, he tried to give advice to the State Department earlier this month. Keep in mind that Buonomo spent a few months in the Army as a second louie (after soaking the US tax payers for an Air Force Academy education), so he introduces himself to a State Department “official” as a “former US Army Intelligence Officer”.
Buonomo, in his own words, “I was discharged from the Army for vocally supporting the impeachment of Vice President Dick Cheney and for denouncing American imperialism as a betrayal of our revolutionary principles”. But he sure throws around that “US Army Intelligence Officer” around like he’s proud of it. And he writes like he’s in high school.
So anyway, after he cleared up his status to the State Department “official” he pretty much got a “no comment” answer. “Numerous attempts to contact the State Department’s Office of International Labor and Corporate Social Responsibility by phone and email have not been responded to.”
Probably because the State Department doesn’t answer letters from pseudo-experts who end their sentences with prepositions. It makes them sound like cranks.
But Buonomo’s whole schtick is that he went to an Iraqi labor conference, well, once the shooting stopped. So he thinks that short stay makes him an expert on labor relations in Iraq – such an expert that he presumes he can advise the State Department.
Of course, to someone who spent 14 months in uniform and calls himself a “former US Army Intelligence Officer” I’m sure a week or so in Iraq seems like time enough to know every thing.
So let’s hear one more time how significant it was that Obama’s veteran adviser met with IVAW at the Democrat National Committee.
The Left is trying to make a martyr of SGT Travis Bishop, the soldier who went AWOL on the day his unit deployed to Afghanistan, returned a week later to begin the processing of his application for conscientious objector. Bishop was sentenced to a year in jail last Friday. TSO’s favorite journalist Dahr Jamail who was there writes;
Despite Sgt. Bishop’s commander, Captain Christopher Hall’s admission to the court that he had never provided CO training to Bishop’s unit, the jury, who were all officers of much higher ranks (six to seven ranks higher) than Bishop, therefore, not necessarily a jury of his peers, appeared hostile to Bishop’s plight.
For example, one of the jurors had to be woken up during the trial. Another, a Lt. Col. Atkins, rolled his eyes and shook his head throughout most of the defense’s time of making their case.
So Jamail is trying to push the theory that Bishop’s trial was unconstitutional (because the jury wasn’t a panel of peers – check the court martial regs, Jamail), instead of admitting that James Branum, Bishop’s lawyer is an incompetent boob;
“The war in Afghanistan does not meet the criteria for lawful war under the UN Charter, which says that member nations who joined the UN, as did the US, should give up war forever, aside from two exceptions: that the war is in self defense, and that the use of force was authorized by the UN Security Council,” Branum told Truthout in an earlier interview, “The nation of Afghanistan did not attack the United States. The Taliban may have, but the nation and people of Afghanistan did not. And under US law, the Supremacy Clause of the US Constitution, any treaty enacted by the US is now the ’supreme law of the land.’ So when the United States signed the UN Charter, we made that our law as well.”
Yeah, the Taliban attacked the US not the Afghan people – however, the Taliban was the government of Afghanistan at the time of the attack, weren’t they? Is Branum trying to say that the US is attacking the current government of Afghanistan – truly a freakin’ moron.
Branum told Truthout he is attempting to establish a precedent with the trial, regardless of the outcome. “We want to change the law, and I would argue that when soldiers are informed of their deployment, which is generally two to six months in advance, they should be giving training about CO status. I will argue that if you don’t do the training, you can’t deploy.”
Branum’s argument that Travis didn’t have time to file his application for CO status is boobery, best illustrated by Branum’s other client, Victor Agosto, who was in Bishop’s unit and had plenty of time to inform his unit he was not going to deploy with his unit to Afghanistan. Agosto got thirty days in jail because he didn’t go AWOL on the day his unit deployed, unlike Bishop who was awarded a year in jail at my expense.
At the link above, there’s also a letter from Bishop who continues the stupid defense his lawyer tried – that he’s ignorant, so he shouldn’t be in jail;
All I can say is this: If I had a Soldier that acted on impulse and did something illegal that I, his Sergeant, could have trained him on, there is no doubt in my mind that I would be in the First Sergeant’s office the next morning explaining how I ‘failed’ the Soldier, leaving this Soldier untrained and, ultimately, unprepared.
Yeah, dumbass, except that you hung out with Victor Agosto for months before your unit deployed and you didn’t learn anything from him? Your lawyer is a stupid moron and you’re paying the price for listening to him. Have a nice year, cupcake.
Our friend, Tankerbabe, got a quote from a member of the jury that illustrates just how stupid Branum is and how badly he screwed Bishop with his bass-akward representation, but I’m waiting on his permission to use his quote, I’ll have to report on that later.