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

Category: Military issues

  • Choi Discharged for DADT

    Everybody’s favorite Don’t Ask Don’t Tell attention-whore Lt. Dan Choi was discharged from the National Guard today. From ABC News:

    Lt. Dan Choi has been discharged from the Army National Guard.  The Iraq war veteran became one of the most outspoken critics of the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy on homosexuals in the military after outing himself as a gay soldier on national television.

    Choi told ABC News that his battalion commander called him Thursday morning to notify him of his honorable discharge under the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy.

    In a statement he said, “After 11 years since beginning my journey at West Point and after 17 months of serving openly as an infantry officer this is both an infuriating and painful announcement.”

    I’ve stated before on this site that I think it is time to make changes DADT (in a reasonable and logical manner however). However, Lt. Choi’s conduct since he outed himself on the The Rachel Maddow  has been completely unbecoming of an officer and I don’t think he deserved that honorable discharge. In many ways, this is what he wanted. He wanted to be a martyr for gay rights and most importantly he wanted the attention. He will probably get both.


    Added Sporkmaster:     Seems he is likes the feel of steel. He was recently arrested today with eleven other people for chaining himself to the White House gate, again.

  • Freedom of Speech suppressed in TX

    Poor Nick Tiller has been victimized in his home state of Texas when he was sentenced to ten years in jail for trying to impersonate a Texas Ranger;

    A felony indictment returned in February accused Tiller of inducing the company, FireStoreOnline, to rely on and submit to his pretended authority.

    David Brugh of FireStore testified Tuesday that his company canceled the sale after being told by Bexar County officials that Tiller wasn’t a constable there.

    Tiller, 65, didn’t take the stand to explain his affiliation with the Republic of Texas, which asserts that Texas is an independent nation whose government has been reactivated after more than a century of dormancy.

    Tiller must’ve been praying for a judge like Blackburn who would have used his own brand of pretzel-shaped logic to exonerate the harmless crackpot. but it’s blindingly obvious to me that Tiller was just exercising his free speech rights. Am i the only one?

    Thanks to one of our lurkers for the link.

  • Hegseth on Kagan

    Out buddy, Pete Hegseth, the executive director of Vets For Freedom, takes on Elena Kagan, the Supreme Court nominee, in the pages of the Wall Street Journal this morning on her contention that she’s friendly towards the military;

    At her hearing on June 29, Ms. Kagan testified that “The military had full access to our students at all times.” To the contrary, Ms. Kagan persistently blocked its access to the law school’s Office of Career Services and the wide array of services it provides. Almost all students use this office to identify employers, so it’s hard to imagine how Ms. Kagan believes the military had “full access.”

    Moreover, she encouraged students in speeches to protest, and obstruct, the presence of military recruiters. The Army called her actions “stonewalling;” I call them downright discriminatory.

    Her backers say Ms. Kagan supports the military because she has praised them publicly and hosted dinners for veterans. A handful of veterans have defended her, and I concede that she has had good things to say about our troops, which I appreciate. But actions always speak louder than words. Ms. Kagan’s actions toward recruiters while wars were raging trump her rhetorical support.

    Kagan is like all liberals who pay lip service to their support of the troops, but their actions don’t match their noise. We’re going to get Kagan on the court (thanks Lindsay Graham), the only thing we can do now is replace the guy who appoints judges.

  • RIP Vernon J. Baker

    The Washington Post reports that the sole liveing African American MOH recipient of WWII has left us.

    First Lt. Vernon J. Baker, 90, an Army infantryman who, more than 50 years after the end of World War II, became the only surviving African American to receive the Medal of Honor for his heroic actions during the war, died July 13 at his home near St. Maries, Idaho.

    The article goes on to describe Lt. baker’s actions agaionst the Germans in Italy.  It reads like something out of a movie:

    Two hours after starting their mission on April 5, Lt. Baker and his men came within 300 yards of the castle. While attempting to find a suitable place for a machine gun, Lt. Baker observed two rifle barrels hanging out of a concealed slit in some rocky earth.

    After stealthily crawling to the opening, he popped up and emptied the clip of his M-1 rifle into the observation post, killing two sentries.

    While searching for more camouflaged emplacements, Lt. Baker spotted a machine-gun nest occupied by two soldiers distracted by their breakfast. He shot and killed them both.

    A German soldier then hurled a grenade that landed at Lt. Baker’s feet. Undeterred, he fired two fatal rounds at the fleeing German, while the grenade by Lt. Baker’s boots failed to explode.

    He found the door to another bunker and blasted it open with a grenade. A wounded German soldier stumbled out in confusion, and Lt. Baker shot him. After tossing in a second grenade, he raided the bunker with a submachine gun blazing, killing two more Germans.

    Apparently, Baker spent 23 years in the Army and retired in 1968.  My favorite part of the article was the end:

    He spent much of his later life hunting big game in Idaho. During one expedition, he discovered a mountain lion lurking behind him. After receiving his Medal of Honor, Lt. Baker was asked by Clinton what happened to the cougar.

    “Why, it’s in my freezer,” Lt. Baker said. “I’m going to eat him.”

    BZ Lt.  Rest In Peace

  • HuffPo Poster Claims To Know More About War Than People Who Have Actually Been In One

    Nick Turse over at the Huffington Post knows a lot about war, even though he has never been in one. He knows so much in fact that he can tell people like Sebastain Junger who has actually in been in a war that they don’t know what they are really talking about.

    Turse has a lot of issues with Junger, which really boil down to the fact that Junger didn’t make an anti-war film (It should be pointed out that Turse wrote a book about why we should withdraw from Afghanistan). More below the fold…

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  • Shocker: al Qaeda kills most civilians

    Don’t get me wrong, every accidental death of a civilian is a tragedy, but the Associated Press tells us this morning than al Qaeda has killed more than Americans this year

    [T]he share of accidental deaths by coalition and Afghan government forces – which can turn people against the government and foreign troops – is falling, the Afghan rights group said in a report.

    It said international forces were responsible for 210 civilian deaths from Jan. 1 to June 30 this year – about 20 percent of the total, down from 26 percent for the same period last year.

    You wouldn’t think so reading the media’s reports and listening to Harmid Karzai’s complaints. One must also wonder how accurate that 20 percent number is given the difficulty of determining the combatant status in this war.

  • Setting up Mattis

    The general appointed to run Central Command to replace General Petraeus, James Mattis is the Washington Post‘s latest target. They post this heavily edited al Jazeera video on their website;

    “It’s fun to kill some people” is an actual quote from General Mattis, however you have to scroll down a few paragraphs ro read the context of the quote;

    “You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years, because they didn’t wear a veil,” Mattis said. “You know guys like that ain’t got no manhood left anyway. So it’s a hell of a lot of fun to shoot ’em.”

    The quote is five years old, but apparently because the media has been unsuccessful thus far ending this particular war, they’ll dredge up ols quotes to get rid of the military’s most effective leaders. The new sport.

  • SLDN: Don’t touch that, you don’t know where it’s been

    The rocket scientists at the Servicemember’s Legal Defense Network is advising gay and lesbian servicemembers NOT to fill out the questionnaire that the Department of Defense has commissioned to determine how to handle the repeal of the so-called Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy. Their reason? They suspect it’s a trick to bust gay and lesbian servicemembers.

    [Cynthia Smith, a Pentagon spokeswoman] noted that the survey doesn’t ask whether a respondent is gay. It asks questions about their overall experience in the military, their experience in serving with people they believed were gay and their attitudes about how a change in the law might affect recruiting, privacy, unit cohesion and so on.

    Officials stressed that the survey is not a referendum on the question of repeal but rather aimed at getting opinions and helping developing a plan for implementing any repeal.

    Isn’t that what the Sunnis did in the first Iraqi election? And then they complained that because they didn’t have a voice in the election the whole government was skewed against them?

    Well here’s something for gays and lesbians n the military to chew on – if you don’t fill out the questionnaire, everyone is going to know you’re gay. So there, let the SLDN sort that shit out. Dumbasses.