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

Category: Iraq Veterans Against the War

  • Another IVAW to toss his Army Service Ribbon at NATO

    Thanks to a link from Rurik, MSNBC introduces us to yet another member of the IVAW who wants to be public about reenacting the John Kerry Memorial Medal Toss this weekend. This one is Steven Acheson and here’s his profile at IVAW;

    He says that Kris Goldsmith brought him into IVAW, but Kris left when he realized that IVAW was more about the personalities and not the movement.

    By the end of my tour, I didn’t learn to hate the people of Iraq, I began to hate the powers in America that lied to us and put us there in the first place.

    I didn’t realize that hatred was necessary to be a soldier. In fact, I saw thousands of pictures of our troops in Iraq handing out candy and hugs to the Iraqi children.

    But Acheson explains why he’s going to toss his ribbon at NATO;

    “I feel like this is a really good way for me to kind of, not clear my conscience, but just make a step in the direction of healing and kind of reconciling with the Afghan people and the Iraq people,” said Acheson, a 27-year-old college student from Wisconsin and a member of Iraq Veterans Against the War, which includes soldiers who served in any of the post- 9/11 conflict zones, “… and let them know that we’re standing by their side and we’re not standing with NATO anymore. We don’t agree with the policies that are driving these wars.”

    Yeah, good step, wrong direction. Our buddy, Troy Steward of You Served comments in the MSNBC article;

    “They’re as much of a disgrace as the veterans back in the Vietnam days that did the same thing,” said retired Army 1st Sgt. Troy Steward, of New York, who served 22 years and is now a military blogger. “If these veterans aren’t proud of the service that they did … then they should never have accepted them (medals) in the first place.”

    Steward, 43, who served in Afghanistan, said the action was “disgraceful and disrespectful” to others who had served. While the veterans were welcome to express their opinions, he said, there were a lot of “better ways to do it than essentially shaming your military service and your brethren.”

    Yeah, I don’t understand why these guys always say that they’re ashamed of their military service, yet they still wear their uniforms, or the remnants thereof. or why they still have their medals that they’re so eager to toss for a political statement. Seems to me that if they’re so ashamed they wouldn’t even have the stuff anymore. And I’m particularly disturbed that the media thinks they’re relevant at all to the discussion. Throwing their medals didn’t alter our course in Vietnam and it certainly won’t affect the policy in Afghanistan, which is geared towards withdrawal at this point anyway. It’s just so much mental masturbation.

  • Aaron Hughes to toss his medal at NATO in Chicago

    We talked about Aaron Hughes the other day. He was a truck driver stationed in Kuwait and drove supplies into Iraq in the early months of the war and now he’s the head spokesperson for IVAW in Chicago based on his unique view of the war in Afghanistan.

    Tom sends us this video from Democracy Now! in which Aaron is interviewed by Amy Goodman and Nermeen Shaikh because he’s threatening to throw his GWOT Medal and his Army Commendation Medal at NATO this weekend in Chicago. If you’re having trouble sleeping tonight, this is the video you need. It’ll put you right out.

    He starts out spewing out the little speech with all of the same talking points of his previous video and he doesn’t stray from those talking points through the whole interview. When ever the interviewers ask him to stray from his points, he says he doesn’t know.

    He complains that as a truck driver he was only trained to kill, not to build democracies;

    There’s a real moral disconnect between the idea that our military can build a democracy and the idea that our military is trained and designed to control, dominate and kill people. … Occupations don’t build democracies, don’t extend individuals’ freedoms.

    Yeah, Aaron, I know you weren’t in Afghanistan, so you wouldn’t be able to ask those Afghan school girls if the Americans haven’t helped them any, what with girls just recently being allowed to go to school, in the school houses that we built. But I’m sure if look far and wide through the ranks of IVAW, you might find someone who has been there and can explain it to you.

    Aaron also explains that the only people who are qualified to bring democracy to Afghanistan have studied the problem for years. Yet here is Aaron, with his degree in Art Theory telling us how to run our foreign and defense policies. I guess in Art Theory they don’t teach the word “irony” to their students.

    PS: Aaron loves birds!

  • IVAW goofuses to throw away “medals” in Chicago

    Greg Broseus says “They’re my medals. I earned them. I can do whatever I want with them” so he’s going to throw them at NATO. Or something. I’m sure NATO would love to get their hands on that Army Achievement Medal or his ArGreg Broseusmy Service Ribbon (yes, at least three of those awards in this rack aren’t medals at all, but service ribbons);

    His purpose?

    “Just to let NATO know that, as the troops, the people that are sent to fight these wars … we don’t agree with them,” Broseus says.

    Yeah, because that will terrify NATO.

    Broseus says an enemy bullet struck his Humvee. It brought him way too close to becoming a casualty of a war effort he didn’t condone.

    But now he’s made peace with the gunman he’s never met — a lesson of war.

    “If I could meet that person today, I would want to sit down and drink tea with them and talk to them about their experience,” Broseus says.

    And he’d want to saw your head off on camera, so you have something in common, doncha?

    “They’re putting the bombs out there because we’re there. So, the best way for us to get rid of the bombs is to just not be there,” Broseus says.

    Yep, even though we were trying to help Iraqis build their country from scratch and a few were trying to seize power without the will of the people, we should have just let the thugs take over.

    Broseus and other veterans making a similar protest hope they’ll be able to hand over their medals to a NATO representative. If not, they say they will throw them over the fence that surrounds the highly fortified summit site.

    Which NATO representative will mollify you, Broseus? And how long will it take you to order replacements from Ranger Joe’s with a couple of extras? Broseus was smart enough to not have a profile on IVAW website, I wonder why?

    Thanks to Art for the link. I moved the video below the link because it was slowing down the front page;

    (more…)

  • Aaron Hughes; IVAW at NATO protest

    So, someone at Facebook mentioned that Aaron hughes was leading the IVAW’s effort in Chicago last week to protest the NATO conference. then Tom sent us this video yesterday in which he appears at 10:38 into it;

    If you missed it, Aaron says that there are 18 veteran suicides everyday, that 17% of people in Afghanistan are on psychotropic drugs, that 20-50% of those suffer from PTSD, TBI or Military Sexual trauma, 1/3 of military women suffer a sexual assault, 48% of sexual assaults are committed against male soldiers. I don’t know where he got those numbers from, but they’re all higher than generally-accepted statistics.

    But I get a feeling from his IVAW profile that he’s just a whiner, anyway. Apparently, he joined the military for the college benefits and was upset that he had to actually do something to earn those benefits;

    So, he was in Kuwait and made trips into Iraq occasionally for 15 months and he doesn’t like the idea that they pulled him out of school to do that little mission. But I guess since the protest was against NATO, he’s going to take his case to the streets of Chicago and continue whining. I don’t know how IVAW thinks that this helps veterans in any way, nice to know that they’ve found some relevance again, but i don’t think a whiner like Aaron should be the vessel for their message.

    Folks tell me that he was sporting an “I support TSO” beard last week, too, which was nice of him. By the way, 100% of the embedded bloggers from TAH in Afghanistan this month volunteered to go to Afghanistan despite their PTS (I learned this weekend that’s the accepted way to refer to Post-Traumatic Stress, because it’s NOT a disorder).

  • Naw, Paulians aren’t nuts at all

    Streetsweeper sends us a link to the Examiner (Not the Washington Examiner) which tells us about an Adam Kokesh podcast in which our buddy, Adam, reads an email from a fan. Rather than post yet another Adam Kokesh YouTube video, here’s how the reading went from the Examiner;

    “There is a way the nomination can be given to Ron Paul,” the email read by Kokesh said.

    “Romney needs to die,” the letter continued.

    According to the allegedly anonymous 19-year-old author of the email, the idea is more about saving America and innocent lives than ensuring a Paul nomination.

    “I don’t get a lot of emails like this,” Kokesh said, adding that he has been “privileged” to hear “various forms of this proposal put forth.”

    He went on to say that he has never endorsed or suggested such action.

    “But, I cannot deny that the thought hasn’t crossed my mind, as well as so many other libertarians and Ron Paul supporters of late,” he added.

    “Is Romney’s life equal to 500,000 innocent Iranian civilians he wants to kill,” the email asked, calling Romney a “terrorist.”

    The email’s author claimed to be planning a video highlighting the assassination of Romney “and the turn of events it could cause.”

    “The true patriot,” the email added, “would execute the ones who put the Patriot Act into place.”

    Yeah, except that Romney was never in Congress, so he had nothing to do with the Patriot Act.

    Of course, then Kokesh launched into a history lesson for his listener (singular on purpose) about how World War II could have been prevented by assassinating Hitler, because, you know Romney would be like Hitler if he was president and annex Austria. Or something.

    But, I guess the upshot of this is that Ron Paulians are perfectly rational Americans who never vocalize the incessant voices in their head. And they’re not crazy enough to broadcast their compatriots’ idiot emails on the podcast. Because, that would trigger a Secret Service investigation, wouldn’t it? I mean, Romney has a Secret Service detail, right?

  • Geoff Millard claims TBI

    Jason sent us a link to a Canadian sports radio show which had as a guest, for some stupid reason, IVAW’s Geoff “Stolen Valor” Millard who we caught wearing an unauthorized CIB and three Meritorious Service Medals (and his forged DD214) after he was chaptered out of the Army Guard because he went AWOL. Geoff tells the show’s hosts (his time on the show begins at about 49 minutes and makes the TBI claim at about 53 minutes in the podcast dated April 26th) that he suffers from Traumatic Brain Injury from his time in Iraq – I’d like to know how this is the first time we’ve heard this.

    First of all, Millard was a general’s go-fer because he was a whiny derelict who couldn’t do his job as an engineer. I guess he might have a brain injury if the overhead projector fell on him one time when he came out from under the general’s table. But I’m certain he would have mentioned it sometime in the past like he’s hung his reputation on some football injury in high school that made him ride sick call into the general’s employ.

    He says that he lost “a lot of friends” in the war. I’d say he’s FOS – he doesn’t have many friends. Period. He goes on to say that he has to walk with a cane because of his pain – that’s not from anything that happened to him in Iraq. Again it’s his football injury from high school. But, he’s doing the same shit that Ward Reilly and Gordon Duff do – it’s dishonesty by omission.

    Thanks to Jason for the link

  • Kokesh; every vote not for Ron Paul is an FU to troops

    Tommy sends us a video in which Iraq Veterans Against the War’s Adam Kokesh is still clinging to that utter bullsh*t about Ron Paul having more money donated from the military than any other candidate.

    “So when you see a campaign sign for Mitt Romney, Barack Obama or Newt Gingrich, what they’re really saying is ‘F*ck You, troops!’”

    For some reason the paulians still think that Ron Paul has a chance. They’re sending me propaganda about how they’re going to force the GOP to put Paul on the ballot either as president or vice president by being spoiled little children instead of abiding by the policy. While I’m not real happy that Romney is the candidate, the only other choice has sucked ass towards veterans in the last year or so…so we can’t do much worse.

    And Kokesh’s only argument for Paul, in regards to the military, is that Paul will never send the troops to war. He can’t even think of a good reason for sending the troops to World War Two, so, I’m guessing that al Qaeda will love a Ron Paul presidency – as much, if not more than they love the current administration.

    I’m sorry, but you were at the vets For Ron Paul Rally, just like I was, and you know the numbers of participants was anemic, at best. The amount of money that the Ron Paul campaign got from people who *said* they were in the military doesn’t matter if it doesn’t translate into votes at the ballot box. Remember even our own Soup Sandwich supports Paul.

  • Kokesh: I don’t support the troops

    In a video, sent to us by JP, Adam Kokesh titles “I don’t support the troops”, he admits to his own malfeasance deployed for six months as a Marine civil affairs NCO in Iraq. But, this was a guy who thought he could smuggle back an Iraqi pistol to the US. So we really can’t be surprised when he tells how he broke off a piece of a dead Iraqi’s skull and gave it to his girlfriend when he got back.

    He goes on for 14 minutes and 15 seconds describing how the military is a “yolk” around the necks of the American people and an embarrassment based on the LA Times story we’ve been discussing this week, and in the last three seconds, he declares “I don’t support the troops”. Nice of you to finally tell us what we’ve known all of these years, Adam. Of course, he also plugs the Oathkeepers, you know that clandestine Ron Paul conspiracy theorist group who claims they have no political connections to any candidate.