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

Category: Phony soldiers

  • Pass the platitudes, please

    I got an email last night from a irate reader. It was a policy of this blog to not write about emails, but lately they’ve been getting a bit extreme – like the guy who wrote me about how I didn’t understand anything about combat but he did because he’d been a recruiter in southeast DC in the 90s.

    But last night’s missive was about a post I wrote early last week entitled “IVAW’s Matt Howard is a dumbass” about one of the extremely stupid morons who told the bobbleheads at Winter Soldier that the US is disposing of it’s nuclear waste by firing it from tanks in Iraq. He went on to explain that we are “changing the human genome”. He didn’t offer any proof, just empty words. And of course, the bobbleheads did what bobbleheads do.

    Well, this young lady (I have to assume the writer was a woman since her email address was lotusblossom84 – either that or a guy with a piss-poor sense for cool screen names) writes that my blog…

    SUCKS!!!

    Thanks for bashing my IVAW friend, Matt Howard… Your intellect is smaller than the size of a crayon.

    Thanks for promoting bigotry, racism of other cultures, war violence and war crimes, Republican lies, environmental destruction, corporate American greed, hegemony and imperialism…. and the list goes on and on.

    Peace is patriotic, you fool…
    And the war on terror can never been won, simply because war is terrorism!!
    Take your white blinders off, you Republican slug!!
    Hilary

    “There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people”
    Howard Zinn

    How many other empty platitudes can you cram into one email? It reads like protest signs piled up on the sidewalk. I’d like for the youngster to point out one post where I promoted bigotry or anything else she claims I promote.

    Peace is patriotic? When have I other said otherwise? Waving an upside down flag isn’t patriotic, though – in fact it’s the complete opposite of patriotism. And tell me…why my blinders got to be white, girlfriend?

    Yes, we should stop fighting the war against terrorists because you say we should stop and you say it can’t be won. We’ll start on that in the morning.

    Quoting Howard Zinn? I’d have more respect for you if you’d quoted Howard the Duck.

    If you’re boinking Howard (the Matt), please use protection…don’t curse the planet with what could possibly be the stupidest children ever.

  • Navel gazing in the anti-war movement

    The antiwar movement has hit a brick wall and they don’t understand why. The War Resisters League has published a report they call a “Listening Process Report” assessing the movement. Mostly, it reads like a Junior High student council meeting. Lots of lofty ideas not at all with a even a little thought to process. TSO’s secret heartthrob, Kelly Dougherty illustrates that real well;

    IVAW’s three goals are: immediate withdrawal of all occupying forces from Iraq, full veterans benefits, and reparations for the Iraqi people. Our strategy to end the war is to withdraw military support from the war.

    Yeah, well, how are you going to do that, Kelly? Are you going to wait until the shooting stops and then declare victory for your side?

    The Vets for Peace weigh in with the benefit of their experience. Michael McPhearson;

    The most important thing about Veterans For Peace is that we are vets. Many of us have been to war. All of us are trained to fight. We know what war is about. In the public eye, we have credibility.

    Here’s a picture I took of MacPhearson last September at a protest – he was an artilleryman in the 1991 Gulf War;

    VVAW lost so much credibility after their Winter Soldier testimony and membership couldn’t stand up to scrutiny that they nearly melted away and joined the VFP. The same way the IVAW’s membership and fables don’t stand up to scrutiny today – coached by the thugs and storytellers at the VFP and VVAW.

    The national field organizer of the War Resisters League, Matthew Smucker, in his conclusions to the “listening process” worries that the war will end before they can have any influence;

    The U.S. military occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan will eventually come to an end. But will we be able to build a grassroots political force in the United States strong enough to positively influence when and how that happens?

    Central to their strategy is the use of the IVAW as a wedge between the military leadership and their subordinates. But, as always with the drama queens of the anti-war (pro-profit) movement, the IVAW wants a more central role. “We’re tired of being window dressing for other people’s events” Jose Vazquez is quoted as saying in the report.

    Snot-slinging Jason Hurd who ALMOST shot someone once, wants to create a generation of mutineers;

    The philosophy is that if they don’t have soldiers to fight the war, they can’t fight the war no matter how much money they have. We see what helped end the Vietnam War was that all these soldiers said, “No. We’re not going to do this anymore. This is screwed up.” That’s what we want to do.

    Um, Jason, that’s what soldiers in the Hollywood version of the Vietnam War did, not the real ones. I know all of those heroes at the VFP and VVAW told you that’s what happened, but if I were you I’d check more reliable sources.

    Aimee Allison is quoted as saying;

    “Military members represent a diversity in society that movement people often don’t. And I’ve always had that struggle as a former military person myself, that I’ve been in rooms where I look at everyone and I think, ‘You guys freak me out. I can’t relate to where you’re coming from.’”

    I don’t know why they would freak you out, Aimee;

    I guess the real hilarious part of the whole thing is that the war is ending just as they’re ending their navel-gazing.

    Iraq has met 15 of the 18 goals for this year, more troops were killed Afghanistan (the war they characterize as legitimate) than Iraq last month…and the peace-for-fun-and-profit movement is coming up short. They refuse to believe that their movement is unpopular because it runs counter to human nature and counter to the American character. They’re old hippies trying to revive their glory days when they lived in an echo chamber and idiot college professors told them they were brave.

    Now they’re trying to influence a whole new generation of misfits, liars and sociopaths.

  • Change the IVAW can believe in

    logobama-1.jpg

    TSO has gotten the IVAW pissed at him again, so I figured I’d take some of the heat off him for a while. I figured out how when I visited my buddy, Jacob, at Views of a Veteran so you get the Jesse MacBeth/IVAW/Obama logo.
    TSO and I will be planning our next move over lunch at Stan’s again.

    UPDATED: Marooned in Marin recounts the story and the personal history of some other phony soldier clowns who spit on the graves of soldiers. They’d better stick to those who can’t defend themselves.

    UPDATED Again: I knew that I knew this Crooks clown. I’ll leave the link up to Marooned in Marin, but I urge you not to go to the video…not because it’s nasty, but because this guy is a publicity hound. He rants and raves about the troops and how we should “forsake” them and cut their pay.

    But the truth is this; Crooks was a slick-sleeve private for about three weeks back before the war began and he was booted for inability to adjust to military life – he probably didn’t get to wear all of the socks they issued him before he got thrown out. Ever since he was cashiered, he’s had a personal vendetta against everyone who was ever in the military.

    When GI Jane and I were on another forum, he’d pop up occasionally with his latest bit of theater. Jane used to dig up his crap from cached websites where he’d alternately supported the troops and then bashed them.
    I see Cao has more information on one of his more recent antics – pretending he’d been murdered by some sort of extremists who thought that killing him was worth a couple years in the slammer.

    The guy’s just a delusional moron who thrives on internet traffic to his idiot rants. Don’t give him the satisfaction.

  • Chanan Suarez-Diaz meets TSO

    My drinkin’ buddy, Thus Spake Ortner takes on yet another IVAW fable-ist at The Sniper. A sample;

    We relieved the Second Battalion, Fourth Marines, and they wanted us to do the same death mission that one of its squads–which is eight Marines, plus a Navy corpsman, for a total of nine–did.

    The squad was completely wiped out. They got ambushed in a bad part of Ramadi, and all of them were killed–their bodies were stripped and left on the street. They wanted us to do the same thing–to go on the same route, but have backup at some distance. They wanted us to draw the fire, call in the backup and then wipe them out.

    Death Mission? There are several things to this story that are interesting/inaccurate. First off, the so-called “Death Mission” happened on April 6, 2004, over 6 months before Diaz’s unit even arrived in country. So it wasn’t like they were sending him the next day. When a unit is said to “Land on Omaha Beach”, it would make a big difference if they did so on June 6, or November 6.

    Speaking of IVAW, TSO also sent me this video last week promising to write about it (and he never did – but it’s good for entertainment value). It should have been entitled The Army of Duh;

    For those of you who don’t know, Robin of Chickenhawk Express (my alter ego according to the IVAW) is back blogging more regularly.

    Concretebob wants you to contact your Congressman to get him/her to sponsor a bill to protect recruiters.

  • Salon writer takes IVAW at face value

    Robin sent me a link this morning to a Salon article written by Chris Hedges entitled The real consequences when America is at war. Hedges uses IVAW members strictly as a source in order to demonize the troops and he borrows from our favorites like Geoff Millard and Camilo Mejía to make broad generalizations – mostly that our troops are a bunch of racists and borderline retarded.

    We all know Millard’s line – every single soldier, Marine and airman in Iraq are racists because, as a general’s gopher, Millard heard one officer refer one time to Iraqis as Hadjis. Well, now Millard has expanded on that idea;

    “The first briefing you get when you get off the plane in Kuwait, and you get off the plane and you’re holding a duffel bag in each hand,” Millard remembered. “You’ve got your weapon slung. You’ve got a web sack on your back. You’re dying of heat. You’re tired. You’re jet-lagged. Your mind is just full of goop. And then you’re scared on top of that, because, you know, you’re in Kuwait, you’re not in the States anymore … So fear sets in, too. And they sit you into this little briefing room and you get this briefing about how, you know, you can’t trust any of these f—ing hajis, because all these f—king hajis are going to kill you. And ‘haji’ is always used as a term of disrespect and usually with the F-word in front of it.”

    Fear sets in, so the tiny-brained troops are susceptible to racism. That analysis from the super-intelligence of Geoff Millard, the guy who takes his Mom to a Code Pink Mothers Day protest. But of course, hedges finds others to play along with the racist platitude;

    “A lot of guys really supported that whole concept that, you know, if they don’t speak English and they have darker skin, they’re not as human as us, so we can do what we want,” said Spc. Josh Middleton, who served in the 82nd Airborne in Iraq. “And you know, 20-year-old kids are yelled at back and forth at Bragg, and we’re picking up cigarette butts and getting yelled at every day for having a dirty weapon. But over here, it’s like life and death. And 40-year-old Iraqi men look at us with fear and we can — do you know what I mean? — we have this power that you can’t have. That’s really liberating. Life is just knocked down to this primal level of, you know, you worry about where the next food’s going to come from, the next sleep or the next patrol, and to stay alive.”

    I’ve heard that plenty of times from people who’ve never been in combat – that combat makes men into cavemen. So after you make guys pick up cigarette butts in Fort Bragg, they get a sense of liberation when you give them a gun and surround them with brown people. How very mature and enlightened.

    To lend credence to Middleton and Millard, Hedges draws from a book about Poles rounding up and shooting Jews in the woods during World War II;

      Battalion members were offered the option to refuse, an option only about a dozen men took, although a few more asked to be relieved once the killing began. Those who did not want to continue, Browning says, were disgusted rather than plagued by conscience. When the men returned to the barracks they “were depressed, angered, embittered and shaken.” They drank heavily. They were told not to talk about the event, “but they needed no encouragement in that direction.”

    Of course combat operations in Iraq are just like shooting Jews in Poland in 1940. Nice.

    Mejía condemns the US troops because they were disrespectful towards Iraqi toilets;

    Fellow soldiers instantly ridiculed Arab-style toilets because they would be “sh-tting like dogs.”

    Even in their privies Arabs weren’t safe from American racism. Sigh. Mejía continues with his odd recollection of how he tortured prisoners for weeks during the 24 hour period he was near prisoners. Of course, Hedges neglects to repeat the chronological error – artful editing on his part.

    Then, Hedges makes a flight of fancy to elevate himself above all of the war-making from which he benefits mightily;

     We make our heroes out of clay. We laud their gallant deeds and give them uniforms with colored ribbons on their chests for the acts of violence they committed or endured. They are our false repositories of glory and honor, of power, of self-righteousness, of patriotism and self-worship, all that we want to believe about ourselves. They are our plaster saints of war, the icons we cheer to defend us and make us and our nation great. They are the props of our civic religion, our love of power and force, our belief in our right as a chosen nation to wield this force against the weak, and rule. This is our nation’s idolatry of itself. And this idolatry has corrupted religious institutions, not only here but in most nations, making it impossible for us to separate the will of God from the will of the state.

    I’d say Hedges made his heroes out of clay. Millard, Middleton and Mejía are drooling morons whose only claims to fame is their sociopathic tendencies to avoid their duty and stand up for their fellow soldiers. In every decent recollection of life among soldiers, one truth always emerges – warriors stand with each other, even among enemies.

    Millard, Middleton and Mejía have, at every opportunity, done their level best to disparage and mistreat their fellows, their accomplishments and their memories. Yet Hedges and the other pretend intellectuals hold these goobers as heroes to their nihilist cause. Where’s Hedge’s contrasting image of the truth of what’s happening in Iraq? Where’s the fact that none of these IVAW icons have been in Iraq in the last three years so what could they possibly know about the war there now?

    What’s wrong with this picture?

  • 46Q refuses deployment to Iraq (UPDATED 2X)

    Actually, I read this yesterday at the IVAW OneStop about Matthis Chiroux who refused to go to Iraq, but I’d had enough of IVAW for one day. But now it won’t seem to disappear. Zero Ponsdorf sent me this Breitbart link;

    “I stand before you today with the strength and clarity and resolve to declare to the military, my government and the world that this soldier will not be deploying to Iraq,” Chiroux said in the sun-filled rotunda of a congressional building in Washington.

    “My decision is based on my desire to no longer continue violating my core values to support an illegal and unconstitutional occupation… I refuse to participate in the Iraq occupation,” he said, as a dozen veterans of the five-year-old Iraq war looked on.

    His military background is at Jammie Wearing Fool;

    Some details AFP omits.

    Matthis enlisted in the Army days after graduating from high school. During his five-year enlistment, Matthis served as a journalist in the Army, with tours in Germany, Japan, Afghanistan and the Philippines.

    While serving in Afghanistan and Palawan, Philippines, Matthis experienced hostile environments fighting against Islamic insurgents.

    Can you believe it? Actually entering hostile environments while playing a journalist?

    Hmm, no agenda here, I’m sure.

    Well, what no one else knows is that it was all staged. As soon as yesterday’s hearing ended, Maxine Waters arranged a press conference so young Matthis could announce he’d been converted by the testimony – as I described yesterday, the testimony couldn’t convince me of anything, it couldn’t convince anyone of anything. So they manufactured a miraculous conversion.

    How do I know? His sister posted on an IVAW website yesterday that Matthis had been duped and used by the IVAW, and now her post is gone. If I hadn’t been so tired of IVAW BS last night, I would have screen capped it…but d’oh.

    UPDATE: Thanks to Marooned in Marin who found another of her comments;

    untitledsister.jpg

    Here’s Chiroux’ video. That’s Kelly Doughtery on his right and Army Sergeant over his left shoulder, Sergio Kochergin behind him and Kristopher Goldsmith on his left.

    [youtube Q_PPIU38MM0 nolink]

    Big surprise, he signed on for an eight year commitment, finished four years active duty and got called back in. being a 46Q journalist isn’t going to require him to do any of the heavylifting – no fighting, no patrolling. The reason I know the MOS for journalist is because it was my secondary. I spent some time as a private working as an Army journalist in Panama during the treaty negotiations in 1977.

    There’s always a backstory to these conscientious objectors. Always.

    Are these hearings affecting effecting the public’s perception of troops? LT Nixon thinks so;

    Finally, Matthew Yglesias discusses an escalation of force incident that got resulted in Iraqi civilians killed, and an angry commenter quips:

    And people wonder why I sincerely desire that Bush, Cheney, Rice, Powell, Lieberman, both Clintons, and roughly 200,000 others, be tried as war criminals and, upon conviction, be hanged by the neck until DEAD DEAD DEAD? As far as I’m concerned, anyone who DOESN’T want that is a baby killing monster.

    Ugh. I’ve heard of BushHalliburtonCheneyCo being tried for war crimes, but us military types going to the gallows is news to me. While I sympathize with the angst of the IVAW members, and in some cases their hearts may be in the right place, I strongly urge them to examine their tactics and how they are perceived by the civilian public.

    All of this mud slinging being done on the Republican Administration is splashing on the troops. Can spitting on the troops in airports be too far away?

    UPDATED AGAIN: From A Soldier’s Perspective;

    The media is making it sound like Chiroux is about to deploy and that he is making this big stand as an active duty Soldier in refusing to deploy. The fact is that he is a civilian who received a recall letter back in February which he has ignored. The military has already said that they are not hunting down individuals who ignore those letters, though they’d have a legal right to prosecute if they wanted to. So, where’s the news again? Here’s the part of Chiroux’s speech no one seems to be reporting:

    “As an army journalist whose job it was to college and filter service members’ stories, I heard many a stomach-churning testimony of the horrors and crimes taking place in Iraq. For fear of retaliation from the military, I failed to report these crimes. Never again will I allow fear to silence me. Never again will I fail to stand. In February, I received a letter from the Army, ordering my return to active duty, with the purpose of mobilization in Operation Iraqi Freedom.”

    Thanks in great part to the truths of war being fearlessly spoken by my fellow IVAW members, I stand before you today with the strength and clarity and resolve to declare the military and my government and the world that this soldier will not be deploying to Iraq.

    According to the UCMJ, Chiroux is guilty of every crime he failed to report. The testimonies of his fellow yellow-bellies is a direct result of his cowardice in reporting crimes. I find it ironic that he has the “strength and clarity and resolve” to refuse deployment and doesn’t fear “retaliation from the military” in this endeavor, but when it came to potentially saving lives, he chose to remain quiet. Basically, what Chiroux is saying is that he’s a selfish bastard whose own life is more important than anyone else’s!

  • IVAW takes the Road Show to Congress

    Well, your intrepid blogger immersed myself once again in the IVAW backwash. Thus Spake Ortner live blogged the hearing off the radio from the comfort of his Playboy Manor so you can probably read a more coherent version there. I’ve cracked open a Saranac Traditional Lager and I’m uploading pictures and suds while I type this.

    When I arrived – at exactly 7:30 – there was no one else there so I plugged in and started filming just in time to catch Geoff Millard doing what he does best – testing all of the microphones like a good little general’s gopher;

    [youtube m_mK0EkXOWc nolink]

    But they asked me to leave and wait in the hall. The VVAW already had a guy at the table to the enterance. You remember VVAW – the guys that are babysitting IVAW to give them some leverage and the benefit of IVAW’s vast experience at being blowhards. Soon after I arrived, I was overjoyed to see Coby show up – Coby is a member of the Free Republic, the Veterans for Freedom and the Gathering of Eagles and I’ve seen him at nearly every event I’ve attended this year. He’s also upwards of 6 feet tall and a very imposing figure. He set out to deliver the opposing view of the GOE to various Congressional offices on the floor. While we were talking, Army Sergeant showed up and we took a picture to prove that no matter how much we disagree, we’re still buds;

    Notice the VVAW guy horning in on our picture with the VVAW shirt – I’m sure Raoul knows who he is. He tried to talk to me once because we’re both wearing CIBs, but I know I earned mine, so I didn’t have much to say to him.

    Code Pinks drone hags showed up, but I wasn’t in the mood to photo them after spending Sunday at their clown picnic. Finally it was time to let us in the hearing room. Five old hippie chicks got ahead of me because they’d explained to the IVAW chic that they’d come a long way to be there. I’d come a long way, too. Glenmont’s at the end of the Red Line. Luckily, the Code Pink hags got there late and there was no room for them. For some reason they told Coby and I to sit next to each other. Whatever.

    There was no internet access, so I just typed out notes in Notepad. As I said, if you can’t get what’s going on, go to The Sniper.

    Woolsey opened the hearing. I got the impression she was talking to kindergartners and treating them with kid gloves – but that’s just me. I thought there would at least be an appearance of objectivity, but Woolsey blew that away in the first minute when she said that General Petraeus was telling Congress things that just “not so”. I’m pretty sure that Congress is supposed to rely on the testimony of people on the scene and not make judgements that are contrary to that unless they have evidence of some sort.

    The Barbara Lee got cranked up – I just videoed her because Woolsey had me a little sick;

    [youtube 6_I7L93iAVU nolink]

    Lee went on to say that Congress wanted to be at the Winter Soldier hearing in Silver Spring, but they were battling the Bush Administration at the time. Kucinich was there briefly, so actually, Lee was just trying to make excuses for not driving in crosstown traffic at rush hour. If they’d held Winter Soldier in Vegas or Jamaica, I’ll bet they’d have made it. It was on a weekend, there were no battles on weekends.

    Lee also said that she expected the testimony to be damaging to the Bush Administration – so much for the whole impartial scrutiny of all of the facts. Why were the IVAW even testifying to Congress if the outcome was already clear before the IVAW said a word? She went on to talk about the “cheerleading” and “false bravado” of the Right. So basically she was admitting that the only reason these folks were testifying to Congress was for the media’s sake, not the People of the United States.

    At no time were there more than four Congresswomen in the room – when Jackson-Lee left, she was replaced by Kaptur so despite the list of 73 names on the committee, only five bothered to listen – or at least to be there.

    First up was Kelly Doughtery in her fishnet stockings. At least she spared us the ridiculous storyof the KBR security folks shooting bean bags at Iraqi looter. By avoiding that story, she probably helped me stay in the hearings a little longer. But, just like my discussion with John Grant last week, she hasn’t been in Iraq since 2004 – none of the folks who testified had – what could she possibly say that would disparage General Petraeus’ testimony last month? Well, she didn’t. She explained that IVAW had already vetted all of the testimony, so there was no need for Congress to put the witnesses under oath.

    Hey, good enough for me. Can you imagine a defense attorney telling a judge that he’d already verified a defendant’s story so there’s no need to put his client under oath? Drivel.

    Jason Lemieux followed Kelly. He was discharged in 2006 – before General Petraeus took command. He began with the standard illegal war blather and testified to the destruction of property. His Rules of Engagement (ROE) were that he should shoot Iraqis that made him uncomfortable and he claimed that excessive force was routine.

    Lemieux recounted one incident, and began the story with the standard “I don’t remember the date”. His unit returned fire with thousands of rounds and Lemieux called it indiscriminate (even though he was in the headquarters and only heard the rounds being fired and didn’t witness the actual fire fight). IVAW seems to be fixated on destroyed buildings. Probably because most were so far from the action, all they got to see was destroyed buildings. He went on to say that troops aren’t fighting for democracy, or the flag, or the country…just for their own safety and that somehow makes them dangerous to Iraqis. We can only hope the Iraqis realize that.

    He was followed by Scott Ewing who mumbled so badly that I couldn’t hear him, but he did show us pictures of a messy house – I can only assume that the house was made messy by evil US forces searching an Iraqi home. Nothing was destroyed, just strewn about – like those houses the police enter on “Cops” and find the criminal hiding in the closet. Then he showed a Iraqi guy with his face shot off – Coby tells me that Waters and Woolsey both cried, I didn’t see that. But there was no back story to the photo – he didn’t say the guy was tortured or innocent or anything. The picture was for pure shock value. Waters and Woolsey bit.

    Then came Geoff Millard who trotted out his “troops are racists” line. I’m not going through it, his story hasn’t deviated from the version that Denis Keohane detailed at Obiter Dictum.

    Kristopher Goldsmith told the committee that he’d only joined the Army because he wanted to kill, that his longing for killing went back to his youth – but we shouldn’t be afraid of him because he’s not a killer or a racist anymore. Whew. He followed with pictures of backed up toilets and sewer systems. The horrors, the horrors. Goldsmith claimed he was discharged without benefits because he tried to commit suicide. I find it hard to believe, I mean really hard to believe. If he was discharged without VA benefits it was for something other than trying to commit suicide.

    You’ll be happy to know that Maxine Waters, communist POS that she is, told the witnesses that they are braver than than the folks who do their job day-after-day without seeing the atrocities of backed up toilets and she told Goldsmith, based purely on his testimony, that she’d get him his benefits and get him into college. Does that piss off anyone who did their time and did what they’d agreed to do to EARN their benefits? Apparently, if you want to get free benefits, just act up, get discharged and then go tell Maxine Waters.

    They all claim that IVAW saved them from a life of drugs, alcohol and despondency – good for them.

    Sheila Jackson-Lee told them that if they bring a hundred thousand protesting troops to Washington to march “we’ll be your soldiers”. Well, how about being the soldiers for the folks that are still over there? How about you stop playing keep away with their funding by tacking it to social spending. Be a real soldier instead of just mouthing the words to assuage your own guilt.

    I sat through Emanuele’s and Gilligan’s testimony which was word-for-word what they’d said in Silver Spring. Kokesh began and it was just like the tape I still have on YouTube. He was scheduled to talk about war trophies, but I was pretty sure that he wasn’t going to mention that he’d been busted from the rank of sergeant for smuggling his own war trophy back – an Iraqi pistol.

    I knew I had to get out of there before Montalvan started spraying the room with sleeping gas, so Coby and I split.

    I should mention that Coby stood by the door for the whole hearing and passed out GOE talking points to everyone who came in the room. I saw Millard sent one of his pudgy minions over to question him about it.

    Heading up the street, we found rongkirby, frequent commenter here and FReeper extraordinaire manning his corner outside the Rayburn Building. We seem to run into each other everywhere these days.

    If the media found anything to sink their teeth into, I certainly didn’t hear it. As I said in my AAR of the first Silver Spring testimony, in order to consider anything these folks said to be atrocities, you have to accept that the war in Iraq is illegal – and no one can prove to me that it is.

    Woolsey said that the 1971 Winter Soldier brought the Vietnam War to a close – but that’s faulty recollection. Combat trrops were already being withdrawn by 1971. The last draft was in 1972…Winter Soldier in 1971 was an asterisk, a footnote. The only people who think it brought the war an end are fooling themselves. this one will have the same pathetic effect. Waters claimed that the media isn’t giving IVAW a fair shake and getting the news out – it’s because it’s a “dog bites man” story. Buildings get blown up in war, soldiers fire lots of real bullets in war. Where’s the news?

    Every major news outlet was in Silver Spring and they all arrived at the same conclusion. Why would they bother to go to the expense of putting all of those crews on the scene if they hadn’t planned on using it in the first place? One of my commenters said it best, that Winter Soldier was a wet firecracker and I’ll add that no amount of hot air from Maxine Waters or Lynne Woolsey can dry it out.

  • Do your research, IVAW

    While researching for an upcoming post on Eagles Up! Talon, I ran across this from Sir! No, Sir! that purportedly is dedicated to “exposing and debunking military lies”;

    sirnosir.JPG

    Ok, it’s becoming apparent why you’re all so confused politically. You don’t do your research very well. Now, I do my research well enough to know that many of you will find your way here from the IVAW OneStop tracker that tells you guys who’s writing about you. So here’s the deal. I’m not Robin, this blog is not called “Chickenhawk Express”. We live several hundred miles apart, Robin is a grandmother and I’m a grandfather – so it’s pretty easy to distinguish us.

    If you have a problem with me, take it up with me, not with Robin.

    Since you’re too lazy to look at my “About” page, I spent twenty years in the infantry, my son is currently in the Air Force, I volunteered to go back on active duty last year. I don’t fit, even remotely, your definition of a chickenhawk.

    Oh, and my name is spelled J-O-N-N. Anything else I can research for you today?