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

Category: Media

  • WaPo’s foray into the world of phony soldiers

    In this morning’s Washington Post, they try to write an “everybody does it” story to offset the damage done to Richard Blumenthal in Connecticut by going after Republican candidate for Obama’s Senate seat in Illinois;

    Kirk, an Appropriations Committee member, changed his Web site last week to incorporate a different account of the award. Kirk wrote on his blog that “upon a recent review of my records, I found that an award listed in my official biography was misidentified” and that the award he had intended to list was given to his entire unit.

    A professional group, the National Military Intelligence Association, gave Kirk’s unit — based in Aviano, Italy — an award for outstanding service in 2000. The association’s Vice Admiral Rufus L. Taylor Award celebrates “the exceptional achievements of an outstanding Naval Intelligence career professional,” but the citation does not mention Kirk and instead designates the entire Intelligence Division Electronic Attack Wing at Aviano.

    So actually, he was just one of the recipients of the Vice Admiral Rufus L. Taylor Award – an award not given by the US Navy but by a private organization. It’s not like his unit was awarded a Valorous Unit Citation (an Army award which is equivalent to awarding every member of a unit the Silver Star) and then claimed he was awarded a Silver Star. Or like claiming he was in a war when he wasn’t.

    Now let’s play name that party. First the Republican, Kirk;

    Now from the first article the Post did on Blumenthal’s deception;

    Now, I’ll admit that in the very next paragraph, the Post identifies Blumenthal’s party with a “(D)” after his name, but that’s hardly the equivance of spelling out “Republican” twice in the first ten words of the article, is it?

    And no matter how hard they try, the Post can’t make the award a “Navy award”. It was given by a professional organization, not the US Navy.

    Yeah, Kirk shouldn’t have done what he did, but it hardly rises to the level of deceit that Blumenthal set or that the Post tries to make it.

  • Who are the CT vets who “hold off” condemnation of Blumenthal

    There’s an article in the CT New Times entitled “Area Vietnam Veterans Hold Off Condemnation of Blumenthal” about the revelation that Connecticut’s Attorney General had been lying about his service during the Vietnam War. The reporter mentions five veterans who don’t seem to care much about Blumenthal’s lying – a couple even cite the “everybody does it” excuse.

    One name jumped out at me – Paul Bucha. Now Bucha is an honest-to-goodness Medal of Honor recipient for his actions in Vietnam and I don’t mean to denigrate his service in the least, but Bucha said in the article;

    “I hope it isn’t true,” said Paul Bucha, of Ridgefield, who was awarded the Medal of Honor for his service in Vietnam. “He’s a decent guy. I’d like to believe in our better angels.”

    Bucha declined to speculate about what his opinion might be if Blumenthal were proved to be intentionally lying.

    “My reaction might be far more dramatic than other people,” he said, nothing that some of the men he commanded in Vietnam were killed there.

    But maybe the reporter should have mentioned that Paul Bucha is a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat who famously campaigned for President Obama.

    There are rumors going around that Bucha is the fellow who advised President Obama’s staff that they could skip the “Salute to Heroes Inaugural Ball” for Medal of Honor recipients. Only rumors, mind you, I don’t mean to lend credence to rumors.

    There’s nothing wrong with Mr. Bucha supporting Obama, of course, but it seems to me that if the reporter wanted to give just a few examples of veterans’ opinions, he’d want us to know from whom those quotes are coming and who, exactly, was supporting Blumenthal’s duplicity.

    Knowing this about Mr. Bucha makes me doubt the intentions of the other four veterans in the article.

  • BP Coast Guard?

    I got a link off of FaceBook that makes a claim that the US Coast Guard is running interference for those that are trying to report on the BP spill and the oil that is being left on the Gulf. “This is BP’s rules, it’s not ours,”Except that there is more to the story.

    Because I was following this on my phone I could not watch the video and it had trouble going to a second link. So I was on the assumption that the reporters where trying to get too close to the original oil platform and the Coast Guard was preventing them from entering the area. But it seems that the Coast Guard was preventing the reports entry into a undetermined gulf coast location. Well maybe it was the Coast Guard.

    When CBS tried to film a beach with heavy oil on the shore in South Pass, Louisiana, a boat of BP contractors, and two Coast Guard officers, told them to turn around, or be arrested.

    “This is BP’s rules, it’s not ours,” someone aboard the boat said. Coast Guard officials told CBS that they’re looking into it.


    Watch CBS News Videos Online

    So the entire story that claims that the that the US Coast Guard is trying run interference for BP is based on the claim that two people on the boat were USCG Officers. Yep that’s it. We also know that people never lie about military or government service.

    But that is not stopping people from accepting that as gospel.

    This is wrong in so many ways I hardly know where to start. What happened to laws about free access to navigable waters? Since when does BP get to arbitrarily impose LAW on free U.S. citizens? Why are the Coast Guard, a branch of our Armed Forces taking orders from a FOREIGN company?

    Also considering that BP made public a video of the underground oil pipe break almost a full week before this story came out. What did people think BP was trying to hide. I mean really.

  • “Brazen” attack on Bagram

    The Associated Press is reporting that a slew of Taliban fighters attacked Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan this morning;

    Insurgents launched a brazen pre-dawn assault Wednesday against the giant U.S.-run Bagram Air Field, killing an American contractor and wounding nine service members in the second Taliban strike at NATO forces in and around the capital in as many days.

    At least 10 insurgents were killed as Taliban suicide bombers attempted to breach the defenses of the base north of Kabul, while others fired rockets and grenades inside, according to a statement issued by U.S. forces.

    Several US troops were wounded and a contractor killed. I figure it wasn’t as much “brazen” as it was foolhardy, desparate and almost comical if it wasn’t for the loss of one US life.

    An Afghan provincial police commander, Gen. Abdul Rahman Sayedkhail, said the attack began when U.S. guards spotted would-be attackers in a car just outside the Bagram base. The Americans opened fire, triggering a gunbattle in which at least one militant triggered his suicide vest. Running gunbattles broke out as U.S. troops hunted down the other attackers.

    So it wasn’t as much an assault as it was a goat roping exercise. Of course, the new York Times is too busy following this story to give much thought to anything else;

  • Thoughts on Blumenthal News Conference

    You can watch the news conference on Real Clear Politics here (thanks to TSO for the link).

    First of all, it is kinda of ironic that Blumenthal was defending himself against allegations that he lied about serving overseas in a combat zone in a VFW hall. Everybody knows that to be a member of the VFW you have to serve overseas in a combat zone.  In my opinion, he had no business setting foot in a VFW hall.

    Blumenthal surrounded himself with veterans (mostly Marines) and one spoke defended Blumenthal against the allegations he lied before Blumenthal spoke. On the Fox News feed, I heard a lot of “hooahs” and no “oorahs”. Marines don’t say “hooah” and most of the vets I saw on screen were Marines. Seem strange to anybody else?

    Blumenthal starts out by emphasizing he “volunteered” to serve in the Marine Corps reserve. In a technical sense, yes. However, it is clear that for five years (from 1965 to 1970) he avoided serving in an active-duty unit that could have been sent to Vietnam. In 1970, he did not receive a deferment and that is the year he joined the Marine Corps Reserve.

    Blumenthal then admits to a “few misplaced words” and that he misspoke “on a few occasions”. I guess  a “few ocassions” means eight times, including in print news articles that he didn’t make an effort to correct. He also stated he “regrets” those words. Yeah, I would regret them too when my lies become national news.

    Blumenthal then took questions and in response to one question he chastises the New York Times for barely mentioning his reserve service and deingrating the Reserves in its article. Here are some excerpts from the New York Times article, you decide if they barely mention his reserve service:

    “In 1970, with his last deferment in jeopardy, he landed a coveted spot in the Marine Reserve, which virtually guaranteed that he would not be sent to Vietnam. He joined a unit in Washington that conducted drills and other exercises and focused on local projects, like fixing a campground and organizing a Toys for Tots drive.”

    “He said he had tried to stick to a consistent way of describing his military experience: that he served as a member of the United State Marine Corps Reserve during the Vietnam era.”

    “In April 1970, Mr. Blumenthal secured a spot in the Marine Corps Reserve, which was regarded as a safe harbor for those who did not want to go to war.”

    “Mr. Blumenthal landed in the Fourth Civil Affairs Group in Washington, whose members included the well-connected in Washington. At the time, the unit was not associated with the kind of hardship of traditional fighting units, according to Marine reports from the period and interviews with about a half-dozen men who served in the unit during the Vietnam years.”

    The Times also posted this picture of Blumenthal in his blues:

    Obviously, they didn’t ignore his service in the Reserves. Now on the issue of deningrating the reserves during the Vietnam War, it is a fact that (with a very few exceptions) the vast majority of reserve and National Guard units did not deploy to Vietnam. Service in those units was seen by many as a way of avoiding service overseas. That is indisputable.

  • Blumenthal Campaign Denies He Lied About Vietnam Service

    From the Atlantic:

    “The New York Times story is an outrageous distortion of Dick Blumenthal’s record of service,” Blumenthal’s campaign manager, Mindy Myers, said in a statement.

    “Unlike many of his peers, Dick Blumenthal voluntarily joined the Marine Corps Reserves in 1970 and served for six months in Parris Island, SC and six years in the reserves. He received no special treatment from anyone.”

    “Voluntarily” my ass. He got five deferments in five years to avoid service in Vietnam and when he couldn’t get anymore, he joined a reserve unit he knew wasn’t going to deploy (which isn’t true today-4th Civil Affairs Group is getting deployed a lot).

    Blumenthal is having a press conference today at 2 pm ET to discuss these charges (i.e. trying to kill the story).

    The video (he says he was in Vietnam around 0:35):

  • Phony Vietnam Vet In Connecticut Senate Race

    Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal (D) has made veterans issues and his supposed service in Vietnam a centerpiece of his campaign to replace Senator Chris Dodd as a senator from Connecticut. Quite frequently, Blumenthal speaks before veterans groups and often discusses the problems that he and other Vietnam Vets faced when they returned to civilian life. In many occasion, he gets quite emotional about the subject and burst into tears.

    The problem is he never went to Vietnam. According to the NY Times and Washington Post, Blumenthal got five deferments between 1965 and 1970 to avoid service in Vietnam. During those years, he was able to go to Harvard and even get a job working for the Nixon administration. In 1970, when his deferments ran out, he joined the Marine Corps Reserve and served with the 4th Civil Affairs Group in Washington, D.C. The closest he got to combat in Vietnam was repairing playgrounds in southeast Washington, D.C.

    Instead of backing away from this turd, the Democrats have gone on the attack and blamed Republicans (specifically Linda McMahon) for the reports about Blumenthal’s service:

    Eric Schultz, communications director for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, blamed Republicans for the report. In particular, he said, former World Wrestling Entertainment executive Linda McMahon, one of several Republicans running for the seat.

    “It’s no surprise Republicans would want to smear Dick Blumenthal, considering all of the debauchery at [WWE] under Linda McMahon’s watch,” Schultz said.

    Yeah, because the Washington Post and New York Times are in the pocket of the Republican Party. Whether this even puts Connecticut into play for the Republicans remains to be seen. Dodd was seen as weak before he announced he wasn’t running, however Blumenthal is (or was) extremely popular in Connecticut and was seen as a stronger candidate against  than Dodd.

    The New York Times did its homework on this guy and has a pretty good breakdown of his service records and what he actually did in the Marine Corps here. This is probably going to be the only time I am going to recommend you read the New York Times.

    Here is a video of Blumenthal talking about veterans’ issues and saying he went to Vietnam:

    Jonn added: Links to Dave in Texas and Uncle Jimbo on the subject.

  • New PBS Documentary: A Good Story or Anti-Military Hit Piece?

    PBS’s Frontline has an episode tomorrow on the increase in crime around Fort Carson, Colorado since the beginning of the Iraq War. The episode specifically focuses on one platoon which had three soldiers convicted  of murder following its Iraq deployment. Here is the trailer for the episode:

    The episode hasn’t aired yet so I don’t want to jump the gun and make a blanket judgment. However, PBS’s past reporting on the Iraq War (in particular the Haditha killings) hasn’t been great and there is an obvious hard-left bias at the network. I also worry that it could potentially reinforce the negative stereotypes that are associated with troops returning from combat.

    Hopefully, PBS does this story some justice but I am not betting they will.