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

Category: Phony soldiers

Combat tours cut

The President today announced that because of the success of our troops in the Middle East, the enemy is on the run and the troops can count on shorter tours (Wall Street Journal link);

President George W. Bush declared progress in the Iraq war Thursday, saying terrorists “are on the run” and a generally improved security environment should permit further U.S. troop reductions.

Standing on the Colonnade outside the Oval Office of the White House, President Bush also announced that effective Thursday, the duration of troop tours in Iraq will be cut from 15 months to 12 months.

Mr. Bush said this reduction “will relieve the burden on our forces and it will make life easier for our wonderful military families.”

With no help from Democrats, with no help from the cutthroat back-stabbing sociopaths of the IVAW and Veterans For Peace, no help from the drama queens at Code Pink, no help from the filthy hippies of ANSWER. With no help from Barack Obama, no help from Chuck Hagel. With no help from Harry Reid, no help from Nancy Pelosi. With no help from phony soldier John Murtha, no help from phony earthling Dennis Kucinich. No help from Jim Webb no help from Ron Paul..

The troops and the President, all by themselves, did what nearly every media outlet said they couldn’t. Against the odds, against the pseudo-experts.

They can all claim credit and change their stories from now until the cows come home, but the troops know who stood with them. And who didn’t.

July 31, 2008
Obama still hasn’t learned his lesson

How soon they forget. Barack Obama and the Democrats have forgotten how we spent billions of dollars in the eighties keeping Saddam Hussein in his box. How many times were our aircraft enforcing the No-Fly Zone attacked by surface-to-air missiles? At least twice, Hussein rattled his saber during the 90s and caused the Clinton Administration to send troops to Kuwait to man the prepositioned equipment we had there to protect the Kuwaitis. Not to mention missile attacks on Iraq proper to punish his assassination attempts or destroy his weapons labs.

Iraq was the right war, but at the wrong time…Hussein should have been punished in 1991 when COB6 and I sat near the banks of Euphrates poised and equipped to rumble into Baghdad. But, Obama still insists it was the wrong war;

“Our military is stretched extraordinarily because of trying to fight two wars at the same time, and so my job, as the next commander in chief, is going to be to make a decision what is the right war to fight and how do we fight it. And I think that we should have been focused on Afghanistan from the start,” [Obama] said.

Two wars? Afghanistan and Iraq are part and parcel of the same war. Remember that some al Qaeda fighters busted ass for Iraq when the Taliban fell – including al-Zarqawi the first leader of al Qaeda in Iraq. All of these motor-mouths who claim we should have focused on Afghanistan instead of Iraq, I’d like them to tell me how we should have focused on Afghanistan more. They easily criticize how our resources should have been in Afghanistan…what resources? How, exactly, would they have done it differently? I’d like to see an alternate plan.

President Bush criticized the Democrats for shooting off their mouths in the 2004 election without offering any alternatives…they still take the easy path and no one demands from them answers to the questions their empty platitudes raise.

July 28, 2008
Montalvan’s unit WAY better than mine

In September 2003, I was put in charge of 80 soldiers who entered Iraq without any weapons or ammunition. We were mortared for three days in Balad, north of Baghdad, before arriving in Al Anbar province to link up with our unit. We were unable to return fire.

Dude, I thought I had some pretty good troops. But not a one of them could shoot a mortar out of the sky as it came at us. Also, none of them could reach out and touch someone at 3,490 m especially when they aren’t line of sight.

Raoul found this thing by IVAW’s Montalvan that is hilarious. Seriously, go ahead and read it, but turn down your BS detector before doing so or it might drive you nuts. Montalvan has always been one of my favoritest crazies.

On another occasion, my higher headquarters ordered me (unlawfully) not to offer humanitarian assistance to refugees caught between the Syrian and Iraqi borders. Dozens would have died had we not disobeyed those orders.

Even assuming the facts are accurate, what gives you the right to go outside Iraqi borders to do anything? Why is such an order unlawful? And why the F didn’t you resign your commission after being ordered into a country without a weapon and being ordered illegally to let people die?

A friend of mine said it best: “if you saw all that, why wasn’t THAT your Winter Soldier testimony, instead of that boring shit you forced us to listen to?”

Exit question: Do I even bother contacting a PAO to debunk the ridiculous “we had no weapons” story, or just a waste of my time?

July 23, 2008
Life’s a bitter shame, [He’s] going off the rails on a crazy train…

(Title from Ozzie)

It’s about 2:30 am right now and I am in no shape to write this blog post, but I have to get this on the record. I haven’t been sleeping much lately and I have been mixing gin and Xanax to cope with all the anxiety I have been dealing with lately, but here goes nothing.

If I wrote those words there would have been an intervention by about 2:45am. But coming from Adam Kokesh, I doubt it struck anyone as odd. I had held off posting this for damn near forever, but his increasingly bizarre behavior is honestly starting to concern me, and hopefully some of his IVAW brethren will help him get some help.The first sign that things were amiss with the Cult of Personality was when the Matthis Chiroux drama began. At the time, Sunday June 15 Adam wrote that:

(more…)

July 22, 2008
Delusional Congress

On July 14th, Michael Yon typed these words;

The war continues to abate in Iraq. Violence is still present, but, of course, Iraq was a relatively violent place long before Coalition forces moved in. I would go so far as to say that barring any major and unexpected developments (like an Israeli air strike on Iran and the retaliations that would follow), a fair-minded person could say with reasonable certainty that the war has ended. A new and better nation is growing legs. What’s left is messy politics that likely will be punctuated by low-level violence and the occasional spectacular attack. Yet, the will of the Iraqi people has changed, and the Iraqi military has dramatically improved, so those spectacular attacks are diminishing along with the regular violence.

Yon verified what we all believed and what we’ve all hoped for since the surge began. Fewer Americans died last month than at anytime since the war begun. CNN reports that the troops in Iraq are itching to go to Afghanistan to finish off al Qaeda. But on July 11th, 13 members of Congress were urging the President to surrender in Iraq;

It’s as if we all live in different worlds. The signatories of that letter are;

That was a letter that these Congress people wrote in support of IVAW’s newest celebrity Matthis Chiroux to help him get out of the trouble he’s brought on himself by refusing to report for duty in Iraq…last month. In the letter these members of Congress “reaffirm their support for all military members who speak out, advocate and otherwise support efforts to bring the troops home.” I wonder how often these particular members of Congress have thought about supporting all military members. Period.

I found this letter on IVAW’s website posted yesterday. Whatever will the Iraq Veterans Against the War do when there is no war in Iraq? It’s almost over now, and they’re still trying to surrender. That probably explains why they’re acting like maniacs. You’ll see what I mean by that when TSO does his latest post on Adam Kokesh.

July 18, 2008
Do we really have to take him back?

US Army deserter Robert Long was deported this morning from our newest ally to the north, Canada, according to the Globe and Mail (h/t to Darcey at right-of-center Canadian blog Dust My Broom);

U.S. army deserter Robin Long was quietly deported from Canada Tuesday morning, while protesters unaware of his whereabouts picketed the Canada-U.S. border crossing south of Vancouver.

“I can confirm that the removal took place but the Privacy Act prevents any discussion of the specifics of the case,” Shakila Manzoor, a spokesperson for the Canada Border Services Agency, said today in an interview.

She declined to say at what time he was sent back, where he crossed the border or who received him.

A small group of supporters gathered early Tuesday morning at the Peace Arch border crossing, about an hour south of downtown Vancouver, for a symbolic protest against the deportation.

Weasel Zippers had the announcement from CBC that he would be deported this morning, but apparently Canadian authorities didn’t waste anytime scootin’ his moldy, chickenshit ass back across the frontier.

A Federal Court judge in Vancouver on Monday rejected Robin Long’s application for a stay of his deportation order.

The 25-year-old fled to Canada to avoid serving in Iraq. He was arrested in Nelson, B.C., last October on a Canada-wide warrant.

Long had said he tried to gain refugee status in Canada because he believes he would suffer harm if he had to return to his home country.

In her ruling, Federal Court of Canada Justice Anne Mactavish said Long did not provide clear and convincing evidence that he would suffer irreparable harm if he is returned home.

Outside the court, one of Long’s supporters said he is unaware of any other recourse for Long and that he will likely be deported on Tuesday.

I see he’s already cultivated that homeless phony vet look that seems to get the most alms outside of Union Station – he’s probably going to need another schtick to compete with other bums claiming to be veterans, though.

I applaud the Canadian judicial system for making the legal decision and not the political one instead. That’s fairly refreshing these days.

Welcome readers of McClatchy Watch.

July 15, 2008
Brit phony soldier busted

Doubleplusundead emailed me this hilarious story of a middleaged British cadet instructor who bragged up his career on his MySpace page (Lancashire Evening Post link);

Mr McAuley, an adult instructor in the Lancashire Army Cadet Force, based at Fulwood Barracks, Preston, claimed that he had been a paratrooper at the battle of Goose Green in the Falklands War and that he was the second SAS man on the balcony of the London Iranian Embassy siege in 1980.

In fact married Mr McAuley, who lives in Chorley, used to serve in the Army Catering Corps.

Read the rest at DPUD’s house.

As DPUD said, I respect his real service, which was honorable enough until now, but that’s quite a leap to go from a cook to SAS trooper. Even before the war, I used to run into all kinds of fake heroes which makes me suspicious of many of the IVAW’s claims. All military service is honorable, don’t besmirch your own service with outlandish tales.

Did I ever tell you about the time I was a door gunner on the Space Shuttle?

July 8, 2008
Kerry; McCain inept

The biggest doofus the Democrats ever nominated for President, John (lied while good men died in two wars) Kerry (who hasn’t signed his Form 180 yet) thinks we still respect his opinion (MSNBC link);

“John McCain … has proven that he has been wrong about every judgment he’s made about the war. Wrong about the Iraqis paying for the reconstruction, wrong about whether or not the oil would pay for it, wrong about Sunni and Shia violence through the years, wrong about the willingness of the Iraqis to stand up for themselves,” Kerry, who supports Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”

“If you like the Bush tax cut and what it’s done to our economy, making wealthier people wealthier and the average middle class struggle harder, then John McCain is going to give you a third term of George Bush and Karl Rove,” the Massachusetts senator added, echoing an Obama campaign talking point.

Kerry later said the McCain of 2008 isn’t the McCain he courted in 2004.

Um, the success in Iraq proves that Kerry has been wrong about the war all along (after he was right about it). Kerry misjudged the majority of Americans’ opinion about the war from the beginning. Despite his personal campaign to lose the war in Iraq and denigrate the troops, he’s been proven a sap.

John McCain was a lone Republican voice against the people who told the truth about Kerry’s service. Not that I particularly agree with McCain on this, John Kerry should show his appreciation – not something John Kerry is known for.

Kerry stabbed the Vietnam War troops and veterans in the back, why not John McCain, too. John Kerry doesn’t have any respect for anyone except his-damn-self. Nice salute, by the way. Even an Air Force recruit could salute better on his first day of basic Training.

John McCain was wrong about the tax cuts before he was right about them – you should be able to understand, Kerry. At least when he’s wrong he admits it. The tax cuts got us through a difficult period, but not where Kerry is most concerned – taking Americans’ money from them to fund his idiot programs.

I noticed Kerry used the “that’s not the John McCain I knew” line of the Obama campaign when backing away from a supporter. I get the distinct feeling that we’ll all be saying “That’s not the Barack Obama I knew” about 100 days into his presidency.

MSNBC notes;

Not too long ago, Kerry might have described McCain, a fellow Vietnam veteran and former prisoner of war, as a bipartisan ally who could provide guidance on national security issues.

Who is surprised? Kerry is still flip-flopping.

July 7, 2008