I know you’ve been missing our “all-Matthis, all-the-time” format of recent months. We’ve had our highly-compensated staff of reporters and photographers following him day-in and day-out, waiting for something to report. Until now, there’s been nothing.
Finally, from their bunker in Manhattan, our crew reports that Matthis is engaged. A photo of Matthis and the comely lass that we here at This Ain’t Hell agree he richly deserves is below the fold.
SGT Travis Bishop, a Fort Hood, Texas soldier who thought that Victor Agosto had the right idea and decided to miss movement for his deployment to Afghanistan like Agosto was court martialed today. According to Courage to Resist, he was sentenced to a year in prison.
That’s the only place I can find the outcome of the court martial, I guess they’d know.
Bishop thought he was going to get 30 days like Agosto, but Travis didn’t decide to miss movement until the day his unit pulled out, then he was AWOL for a week after they left. Agosto, on the other hand, made his intentions clear before his unit left. And Bishop made the mistake of blabbering about how he’d been inspired by Agosto. I guess that’s worth 11 months.
I’m sure that Bishop had been listening to his idiot lawyer, James Branum, who has successfully had each of his defendants imprisoned. Why those clowns keep hiring that doofus is beyond me.
More on Bishop at the Killeen Daily Herald.
UPDATED: Photo added and more info from Killeen Daily Herald.
One of our resident IVAW refugees had an email exchange the other day with Geoff “Stolen Valor” Millard, Adrianne Kinne and TJ Buonomo in regards to the vote on the resolution to punish members who advocated violence against our deployed troops which I mentioned the other day.
From Millard;
The reason why this did not pass is because members disagreed on wording not the meaning or intent behind it. Therefore the Board will be drafting a different more inclusive policy that will be adopted by the Board and then voted on by the full membership at the next opportunity.
Ah, the law school grads of the IVAW membership were upset at the wording. What wording? Buonomo explains;
I voted against the resolution because the language has the effect of restricting free speech and asserts an explicit and unqualified moral judgement on the use of violence and sabotage, which I considered to be inappropriate.
Buonomo isn’t explicit about what wording he’s talking about, but I don’t see anything that would restrict free speech, as the Supreme Court defines free speech. Buonomo must be one of those super-legal eagles. Or maybe not. He continues;
First, my understanding is that part of the motivation for this resolution was provoked by Carl Webb’s vocal sympathy toward the use of violence by the occupied in opposition to their foreign occupiers. While he may have voiced this viewpoint in an unnecessarily inflammatory manner, I do not view it as controversial. In fact on numerous occasions I have heard and read military members and veterans- including non-IVAW members -say that were they in the same position they would likely do the same thing.
This is hardly a radical viewpoint.
In other words, Buonomo is defending his vote against the resolution by claiming that he has heard other members of the military say they’d resist an enemy who attacked the US. He makes some lame comment about how he’d willingly fight the Chinese if they invaded – I chuckle. Buonomo would be welcoming them on the drop zones with flowers and wine.
It’s important to understand that IVAW continues to call the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq “occupations” – that’s how they defend their votes against the resolution. As long as they can ignore that we fight the enemies of Afghans and Iraqis for their own benefit, they can advocate for sabotage against our troops.
Buonomo continues;
It is painful for me to read about our troops getting killed and maimed but this does not negate the fact that the U.S. military is a foreign occupier, that in the case of Iraq it had no real justification to be there in the first place, and that the political leadership under the Bush administration betrayed the trust of the Iraqi people at our troops’ expense.
So let Carl Webb advocate for their deaths. That’s how painful it is for him. Buonomo, being a blowhard, waxes endlessly about how brave he was for bailing out on the American people with his free Air Force Academy education.
Adrianne Kinne chimes in with her history lesson;
I don’t know about what Carl said exactly… but you do realize that in the history of GI resistance… soldiers sabotaged THEIR OWN equipment!!! They threw wrenches in engines to stop them from working and anything they could do to break transportation equipment to stop themselves from shipping and arms from shipping. Please do a little research about the history of the GI resistance movement…
Yes, that makes sense – the troops deployed in combat would sabotage their own equipment. Especially since they’d be the ones that either depended on it to save their lives or had to repair it.
The consensus seems to be that the best thing IVAW can do for the troops is to end the war, and that sabotage speeds them to that end. To quote Buonomo;
As for helping veterans, in my opinion the best thing we can possibly do is to help bring an end to these occupations so that they don’t have to go on three or more deployments and suffer from PTSD, TBI, etc. I’d say our approach is reventative, though certainly not as effective as we’d like. That distinguishes us from most other veterans organizations
Yes, it certainly does, TJ. I have a text file of the entire exchange that I’ll gladly share with anyone who asks by email. Buonomo is a real blow hard and I just don’t want to waste the bandwidth on him, but his yammering is certainly instructive. I’ve cut the text of the responses of our refugee out, so all you get is pure loon.
Their defense of Carl Webb’s unrestricted free speech makes them all Carl Webb, now. There’s nothing in the resolution that restricted constructive discussion. Buonomo and the 40 others who voted against the resolution can gaze at their navels and pat themselves on their backs, but at the end of the day, they are complicit in Carl Webb’s treasonous preachings.
How soon do you think they’ll have another resolution ready to put to a vote? I suspect they’re just biding their time hoping everyone forgets about it. Not if I can help it.
And if IVAW has 1700 members, why are there just 70 people voting on these things?
The Canadian judiciary has once again decided to hold on to deserter and manipulator Kimberly Rivera and her herd a bit longer. I first wrote about Rivera earlier in the year just before she was ordered out of the country, then given a stay which expired recentlyand now the Canadians have awarded her another reprieve.
The Canadian Press/CTV write;
On Tuesday, [Judge James] Russell tossed out the existing review, ruling it contained “no meaningful examination” of whether Rivera would face targeted prosecution for having spoken out against the war in Iraq — a major concern for Rivera’s defence team.
Had the ruling gone against her, Rivera would likely have been deported to the United States, where she could face a court martial and a potential prison sentence.
You’re damn right she would. Ya wanna know why? She took a $10,000 bonus from the Army for enlisting (which she spent on a leather couch that she left behind when she deserted with her herd and her fat-assed, lazy husband) and absconded to another country to avoid fulfilling her contract.
Every time I tell the story about the loving Rivera family, I get stares like I’m making it up. Her husband and she worked at WalMart until he knocked her up – they got married and moved into her family’s basement – literally. Somehow living her family’s basement, they incurred a lot of bills, so her fat-assed husband convinced her to join the Army (since, by his own admission he was too damned fat to get in the Army). She joined the Army and – SURPRISE – they sent her to Iraq. After a few months she got a mid-tour leave to see her family. She thanked the Army by packing up her kids and fork-lifting hubby-the-fat-ass to Canada where they’ve been living off the Canadian taxpayers for the last two year and change.
They went to Canada because hubby was upset that he had to take care of the kids by himself and it really cut into his computer game playing. I guess Kimberly has taken him away from his gaming at least once, because they’ve had another kid to saddle Canadian welfare with since they moved there.
Now it looks like they’re going to get a four-month reprieve while the judge gets briefed by the feds on what Rivera will face when she returns.
In his ruling Tuesday in Ottawa, Justice James Russell said an officer from Citizenship and Immigration Canada who performed a pre-removal risk assessment of Rivera did not consider whether she and other outspoken Iraq war objectors would face “targeted prosecution” based upon their political opinion.
In an email to CBC News Tuesday evening, Liberal MP Gerard Kennedy said [Immigration Minister Jason] Kenney “continues to abuse his position as minister by substituting his personal opinions for public policy.”
“Mr. Kenney knows full well that the American military continue the policy of stop-loss — compelling service after contracts have ended — and other forms of compulsion,” Kennedy wrote.
What stop-loss? The peckerhead deserted while she was on active duty, ya stupid hippie.
One of the resolutions that were up for a vote this last weekend at the IVAW convention was a resolution to declare that IVAW was a peaceful organization that didn’t advocate killing and sabotage of US forces deployed overseas. It read like this;
Resolution proposing that IVAW only use, supports or endorses, non-violent and peaceful actions
Whereas there is no official statement regarding Iraq Veterans Against the War’s stand on methodology for achieving our goals; namely, ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, ensuring all returning veterans have adequate health care, and repairing the damage done in Iraq and Afghanistan by the occupations;
Whereas calls for violence and sabotage are both illegal and immoral, and will only serve to do great damage to Iraq Veterans Against the War’s efforts to end the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan;
Whereas any endorsement, passive or active, of violence would lead to IVAW being banned from active duty bases, Reserve centers and National Guard armories; being declared an extremist organization and thereby making it illegal for a member of the military to become a member of IVAW;
Whereas, the Board of Directors has stated that it is the position of IVAW that only non-violent, peaceful methods are to be used to accomplish our goals;
Therefore be it hereby resolved that Iraq Veterans Against the War only uses, supports or endorses, non-violent and peaceful actions in seeking to accomplish its goals of ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; providing proper medical care to all returning veterans and repairing the damage done by the occupations.
Additionally be it resolved that any member found promoting violence in pursuit of the goals of this organization, will be subject to immediate discipline, including the termination of his or her membership, in accordance with the procedures outlined in the policies governing termination of memberships.”
It was written specifically to deal with the Carl Webb question. For those of you who may not know, Carl Webb advocates for sabotage and the killing of US troops among IVAW members who are deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. Mostly, he’s a 43-year-old pervert who preys on youngsters, bums their money, bums rides and generally sucks canal water. Several members of IVAW left the organization specifically because of Webb’s behavior – and the refusal of IVAW to remove him from their ranks.
Anyway, the resolution needed 40 votes to pass and it only got 39 votes – so Carl Webb is free to promote his vile and despicable advocacy for the injury and death of US troops. The majority of IVAW is content to have Webb among them – they’re content to support his violent strain of the movement. Did I mention that Webb isn’t even qualified to be in the IVAW?
Here’s Webb’s Google profile;
Sweet. Marxist revolutionary fixin’ your kids’ food at college. He’s claimed that he’s been enrolled in Austin Community College for about four years now. Tough-ass two year school, huh?
This one I thought was strange;
Why would a self-professed Marxist belong to a group called”Democracy for America”?
But, oh, well, there you have it – the Iraq Veterans Against the War once again put the “Against the War” part ahead of the “Iraq Veterans” part. Which would follow because not very many of them are Iraq Veterans anymore, either.
One of our IVAW refugees smuggled out the election results for the IVAW board. Only 79 people out of their supposed 1700 members voted;
1. Seth Manzel – 60
2. Cameron S. White – 57
3. Matthis Chiroux – 50
4. Trey Kindlinger – 48
5. Thomas J. Buonomo – 43
6. Bryan Reinholdt Jr. – 42
7. Victor Agosto – 38
8. Joesph Kurtenbach – 38
9. Selena Coppa – 24
I guess Agosto was their Eugene V. Debs candidate running from prison – I didn’t know he was running – he must’ve been a write-in. I’m guessing that the first six are their board members now (but who knows how it’ll shake out in that bass-akward society of theirs).
Geof Millard certified the election, so you know there’s nothing fishy about it.
To the “so what?” crowd; I know this doesn’t interest you – but proves the point that TSO and I have been making for the last year and more – IVAW is no longer a veterans organization. That’s obvious by the way they voted. The two with the lowest vote counts both campaigned on serving veterans – the others campaigned on being a peace movement not a VSO.
Now, IVAW is a group of self-propelled mannequins for the anti-war movement to put in front of their protest marches to wear their “Iraq Veteran” T-shirts and give the hippies some perceived measure of legitimacy.
But since they’re being led by people who’ve never set foot in Iraq, there goes their legitimacy – and the membership chose that route. If there was no This Ain’t Hell who would prove that to you if you saw them on the street?
The lovely Greta of Kiss My Gumbo has forwarded us the link to the TSO and AS match up last Saturday morning in the event you missed it.
They both did a fine job (AS did the best she could with what she has to work with).
Here’s the link for the downloadHere’s the link for the download, have a ball.
BTW, it’s a 7mb .wmv file and it’s safe for work.
One of our resident IVAW refugees just wrote that the new Executive Director of the Iraq Veterans Against the War is Jose Vasquez – another IVAW member who has never deployed to Iraq nor Afghanistan according to his own profile at IVAW;
So despite all of the guarantees that we’ve heard in recent months about the change at IVAW, there will be none, apparently. He’s a marginal improvement over the last ED who went AWOL from the Transportation Department to keep from managing fisheries in Hawaii.
Yet another Veteran Against the War with no duty in IRAQ. In fact, before he was a conscientious objector, he was an Army medic – precisely the kind of job a CO should want if he cared about the troops the way he claims. This is from a Salon article;
After 9/11, he would have served in Afghanistan with few reservations; but by the time his unit got the call for Iraq in 2005, he’d been having doubts not only about the efficacy of the war but about the morality of serving. As a medic, he patched soldiers’ wounds so that they could head out on another mission and kill again. After “a lot of soul-searching,” Vasquez applied for conscientious-objector status, and more than a year later he separated from the Army with an honorable discharge. When he described the day he told the men he led that he was not going to Iraq with them, Vasquez sounded remorseful and sad. He misses the Army and his Joes.
Yeah, he would have gone to Afghanistan but the Army wouldn’t accommodate him. We’ve heard that one before, haven’t we?
According to some preliminary research on him, he was the guy in charge of the IVAW Verification team at Winter Soldier II. How could he verify testimony without having spent a day in country himself. He organized First Casualty in New York City two years ago – bringing the Iraq war experience to civilians. How could he do that with any measure of accuracy without his own experience.
And now he’s going to lead an organization of Iraq veterans, never having been one. Funny, but when I talk to member of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, I can reasonably assume that the guy I’m talking to was a veteran of a foreign war.
Peter Griffin says this about IVAW’s choice;