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

Category: Iraq Veterans Against the War

  • How about some consistency

    You’ve all seen how I condemned Marine Sergeant Gary Stein for continuing to run his mouth on his keyboard on his Facebook page and making stupid threats about what he would and wouldn’t do. It was immature and childish for to continue after his commanders told him to stop. Whether you think you have rights or not, you’re just begging for bad things to happen to you. And I’m not going to defend him in any way, shape or form, but the Marines should step back for a minute and think about what they’re doing. According to US News, they’re thinking about serving him a Big Chicken Dinner (a euphemism for a Bad Conduct Discharge);

    A Marine who criticized President Barack Obama on his Facebook page has committed misconduct and should be dismissed, a military board recommended late Thursday.

    The Marine Corps administrative board made the decision after a daylong hearing at Camp Pendleton for Sgt. Gary Stein.

    The board also recommended that Stein be given an other-than-honorable discharge. That would mean Stein would lose his benefits and would not be allowed on any military base.

    Now, it’s a board recommendation, so it’s not a foregone conclusion. Stein’s commander gets to make the final decision. Me? I’d like to see a little consistency from the USMC.

    Recall, if you will the case of Adam Kokesh who got a General Discharge, because he cussed in writing at an officer who was investigating whether or not he wore his Marine uniform at protest. They let Kokesh continue his college career at the expense of the American taxpayer. And the same goes for their investigation of Liam Madden who represented himself as a veteran while he was “making disloyal statements during a speech in February in New York, when he says he wasn’t wearing his uniform” according to the Washington Post. Neither Kokesh nor Madden lost their benefits.

    Now, the Marine Corps wants to take Stein’s benefits away after nine years of service. Now, I was all for them yanking Kokesh’s and Madden’s benefits, but since they didn’t, it hardly seems fair to pull Stein’s plug. I’d hate to think that the Marine Corps judges these things based on who is being criticized.

  • Coming to NYC “An Army of Rape: Why Supporting the Troops is Wrong! “

    I went over to the facebook page that was in this post. There is one comment that I could not pass up.

    Looking at the names involved that this conference this is going to be a real meeting of the minds. We have Sunsara Taylor, Carl Dix and Mathis. I find it funny that people are still refer him as a member of IVAW. Not to mention the direct statement that Carl Dix is a Communist.

    I tried to look for anything on the net but nothing so far. But considering that anything Mathis does is kept quiet for fear of use ruining it with his past.

  • IVAW’s Jorge Gonsalez weighs in on Afghanistan shootings

    In a link sent to us by Patrick, CNN goes straight to Iraq Veterans Against the War when they want to blame the military for those shootings in Afghanistan. They take the same tone as the Washington Post, blaming the leadership at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, because the media likes to see general officers take the fall. But CNN goes to Jorge Gonzalez, apparently, according to his profile at IVAW, one of the few remaining actual Iraq veterans left in the organization, if that tells you anything about his character. But, of course, CNN needed the insight of a five-year specialist to judge the leadership of the Joint Base;

    “This was not just a rogue soldier,” said Jorge Gonzalez, executive director of G.I. Voice, a veteran-run nonprofit organization that operates a soldiers’ resource center near the base called Coffee Strong. The base is “a rogue base, with a severe leadership problem,” he said.

    “If Fort Lewis was a college campus, it would have been closed down years ago,” Gonzalez said.

    In the wake of Sunday’s shootings, he called for a congressional investigation and hearings “into the multiple crises” at the base.

    Of course, it’s not the first time we’ve heard of Gonzalez. NSOM wrote about him a few weeks ago doing the same shit.

    For those of you who have never served, we senior leadership in the Army get to hear the opinions of Soldiers in the E-4 pay grade like Gonzalez everyday, all day long and we don’t pay attention to them, because most of them think they have valuable opinions, but that’s hardly ever the case. According to Gonzalez’ profile he spent five years in the Army and only managed to get promoted three times. that’s a little on the low side for soldiers. But he’d probably tell you it’s because the man was keeping him down and didn’t recognize his talent.

    So, good job, CNN, finding the least credible person in Washington State to support your story. Gonzalez hasn’t been stationed on Lewis-McCord since 2009, so he’s basing his expertise on listening to the more current E-4 Mafia as they bitch and complain about things they don’t understand.

    Then to further support their story, CNN uses the case of Benjamin Colton Barnes, the Army-trained survival specialist who was found face down in a creek when he dies from hypothermia (like a true survival specialist whom the Army trains) who was booted from his service at JB Lewis-McChord more than three years ago. Of course, CNN used him as an example of “vets gone nuts” a few weeks ago, too. So it must be JBLM that’s at fault, even though the nut they used in the “vets as nuts” story with Barnes was a Marine.

  • IVAW to change name

    One of you wonderful people posted this to Facebook. I’m more than sure that it’s satire since it says so at the top of the page, but I consider it a compliment, nonetheless;

    Thanks to Paul Szoldra, a Marine veteran who wrote that. I needed a chuckle or two this morning.

  • This is where we take our stand; a review

    One of our ninjas sent us a preview copy of the Iraq Veterans Against the War’s last gasp, their last chance at relevance, an hour long video entitled “This Is Where We Take Our Stand” about the lead up to and the events of their Winter Soldier II theater in Silver Spring, Maryland one weekend in March, 2008. TSO and I worked together for the first time at that event, so I figured the internet needs my perspective on the day we were there. You can see the live blogging I did there at this link.

    The video seems to focus mostly on three members of IVAW; Geoff “Stolen Valor” Millard, Selena “Army Sergeant” Coppa and Jason Washburn. I’ve met all of them. Of the three, Geoff Millard was a general’s gopher during his tour of Iraq and then went AWOL when he came back and the Army wouldn’t give hi a medical discharge for his high school football injury, Coppa never deployed to the war, and Washburn, a former Marine corporal, might have some level of authority to speak as an Iraq veteran.

    In the video, Millard talks about how he’s having difficulty adjusting after the war because of the things he’s seen. Yeah, the only thing he saw was power point presentations and backed up latrines. Millard was the epitome of a POG, even though we caught him wearing a CIB during one of his protests. To prove he was a POG, the medals he pirated to impress the hippies with were 3 unearned Meritorious Service Medals – only a POG would think that would be cool. The video follows the admitted bisexual Millard while he shops for tattoos, as if that’s what combat veterans do when they have down time. And it shows a conversation Millard had with the shop owner about how he was an explosives expert and it was fun until he started blowing up people. I don’t know how many people he blew up while working on the general’s staff, but I’m guessing it was none.

    Coppa comes off like a martyr in the video for sticking to her anti-war views while the Army was trying to boot her out. It wasn’t that at all. TSO and I were both advising her to sit down and shut up if she wanted to remain in uniform. Advice that she ignored and paid the price, so it shouldn’t have been a big surprise to anyone. The Army and she are both better off for that now.

    The video focuses on some of the testimony at Winter Soldier, like Jason Hurd’s tear-jerker about almost shooting a woman, and Millard’s recounting of the story about a General’s staff officer calling Iraqis “hadjis” and making fun of the driving skills. They also throw in the clip of Jon Turner as he throws his pin-on ribbons on the floor after his testimony and the declaration that he is no longer the monster he was. Those were probably the highlights of my time in the testimony, too, since TSO and I were giggling our asses off in the back of the room while these antics occurred and the filthy hippies were blubbering and cheering.

    At the end of the video, Millard complains that no one cared, that the American public panned the testimony. There were more than 50 media agencies covering the event from nearly every outlet in the world, but, as one of my readers said at the time, it went off like a wet firecracker. No one cared because their testimony was not compelling. There were no atrocities revealed, they missed their mark. More Americans read about the Winter Soldier II event in my blog than in the media – I had over a half-million hits in the days that followed my attendance because people wanted an unvarnished look at the testimony that wasn’t filtered through the media. And testimony about shooting a building to pieces with a 50 cal. just doesn’t pique people’s interest.

    So this video is supposed to fill that gap between the media largely ignoring them and my reportage. But, like the testimony, the video reports a non-story. I don’t know what they spent on the propaganda piece, but it was too much.

  • If Matthis says so, it must be true

    Those vacuous hypocrites at Russia TV feature the equally vacuous hypocrite, Matthis on a few minutes of their reportage about how the US needs a war to fuel our economy;

    Of course, because it doesn’t undermine their credibility a whit, they call him an Iraq War veteran, even though he spent a year in hiding trying to prevent that precise label.

    For any new viewers, Matthis avoided his recall to active duty after serving honorably in Japan and Germany for five years as a military journalist. He refused to deploy, so refusing to deploy to Iraq doesn’t make him an Iraq War veteran.

    His little comment about streamers on the Army’s colors; I’m not sure if his number (185) is correct, but he claims there’s one streamer for each war the Army has been in and that’s not exactly true either (surprise) – the streamers represent campaigns, not separate wars. So that kinda shoots down his little vacuous point about the US participating in a war every year since it’s founding.

    And so, because Matthis says that we have a vested interest in continuing world wide wars, it must be true. It’s funny, not much, that the people we end up fighting are usually armed with Russian-made weapons like the AK47 and AK74, RPGs, so it’s more than a little disingenuous of Russia TV to make these empty charges without taking a gander at themselves in the mirror.

    Thanks to a ninja for the link.

  • Kokesh dragging the Paul train to RNC

    An anonymous lurker left a press release in our inbox about Kokesh choking the last drop out of the Ron Paul campaign with a veterans’ march on the Republican Convention;

    Adam Kokesh, Zakery Carter and Nathan Cox, all veterans of the Iraq war, released a statement today claiming that the mission of their newly formed Veterans for Liberty Super PAC is to ensure that Ron Paul is elected president. They are calling for veterans and active duty troops to join them at “FOB Domestic Defense” and to be present as a lobbying force for the duration of the convention.

    Yeah, “Domestic Defense” like that’s even an issue with the Paul campaign.

    Their goal is to convince delegates to the convention to ignore their constituencies and vote for Ron Paul – that makes complete sense. Someone who can’t even get the votes from his own party forced onto the ballot.

    Following a successful march on the White House on President’s Day under the banner “Veterans for Ron Paul,” three Iraq War veterans have announced the formation of Veterans for Liberty Super PAC. This week, the committee announced the organization of a march on the Republican National Convention in August to lobby delegates to support Paul in the all-important second round of voting at what many are now certain will be a brokered forum.

    Their “successful march on the White House“. Thousands pledged to come on Facebook, less than a thousand showed up and then after they weeded out the strap hangers, they had less than 500 actual veterans to march on the White House. That’s the definition of success, huh? Well, if their goal was to walk to the White House from the Washington Monument without falling down, I guess it was successful. But if their goal was to show overwhelming support for Ron Paul by veterans, I think it was successful not so much.

    But, they’re just as relentless in their defeat as their candidate. The Washington Times points out that, despite the fact that Paul has failed to win a single state in the primary race even though the race is almost halfway to the finish, Paul is still optimistic;

    On Tuesday, Mr. Paul put his effort into caucuses in North Dakota, Idaho and Alaska but managed just a second-place showing in the first and third-place showings in the other two.

    In Fargo, N.D., Mr. Paul said Tuesday that his campaign has succeeded in placing his issues before voters.

    “The momentum is building,” he said at his victory party.

    Yeah, that momentum has been building since I started watching the Paulians four years ago and it’s resulted in one second place win in a two-man race in those four years. Maybe in another four years he can actually come in second in a three-man race.

  • Code Pink (hearts) Ron Paul

    DSC_0077

    Claymore sends a link from Big Peace which reports what we already know; Code Pink and Veterans For Peace are coming our for Ron Paul. It was almost a year ago that we first reported Code Pink support for Ron Paul.

    But, as we’ve said before, Ron Paul’s foreign policy isn’t that far from the anti-war Left, which is why he has attracted people like IVAW’s Adam Kokesh and Rethink Afghanistan’s Jake Diliberto. Of course, Kokesh and Code Pink have been tied to each other for ages, like when Adam hosted their Karaoke fundraiser over three years ago, and their recent adventures in dancing at the Jefferson Memorial. It’s a foreign policy that is naive and will intentionally make the US weaker. That Maoists and racists like Medea Benjamin are attracted to him isn’t that surprising;

    It’s CODEPINK founder Medea Benjamin, who’s now on record saying: “I think Ron Paul has a remarkable position when it comes to U.S. foreign policy, and his call for no war on Iran is something that many of us support.”

    Benjamin has latched onto Paul’s incessant criticism of the wars we’ve fought in Afghanistan and Iraq, and she claims that the Texas Congressman “has tremendous support among many young people who see that their futures are being frittered away by spending trillions of dollars on unjust wars.”

    The article goes on to mention that Veterans For Peace, that POS stepchild of the old Vietnam Veterans Against the War which is chock full of phonies and pretenders like Ward Reilly and Doug Zachary. So I guess that’s more proof that most veterans support Ron Paul. As long as they don’t mind getting in bed with Medea Benjamin.