Category: Shitbags

Islandofmisfittoys sends us a link to Newsbusters’ Noel Sheppard report on a Salon article by Justin Doolittle entitled “Stop thanking the troops for me: No, they don’t “protect our freedoms!”. Yes, it’s exactly what you’d expect from Salon. Doolittle looks in his trousers and finds himself woefully unprepared for life.

The corollary to the claim that our freedom exists only at the pleasure of the military, of course, is that the same military can revoke said freedom if it so desires. Indeed, as Hibbert so bluntly put it, “obviously we wouldn’t have freedom without them.” This widely held belief, that our freedom is bestowed on us by soldiers, has obvious implications for how the public views the military. One such implication of the ubiquity of this myth is that people will feel they owe boundless gratitude to the military as an institution and all the men and women who serve in it.

Yeah, well, Justin, your corollary doesn’t hold up, because, while it’s true that they we would be less free if our military shirked their collective duty, they are required by their oaths and their personal commitment to the Constitution to do otherwise. The military can’t “revoke said freedom” on a whim. And Americans have faith in the fact that they won’t. It takes a special, unselfish person to defend our freedoms. And the only reason that you can express your vacuous opinion is because they stand in the breach for you.

The root of your complaint is that they’ve never failed to stand in the breach, and so you really don’t appreciate the fact that they protect your freedoms. You don’t even realize that they have secured your freedom for centuries before you were even conceived.

We need not thank the troops for every breath we take. When we do, we reduce our entire existence as free people to something that only exists at the whim of the U.S. military, and suffocate critical thought about the military and what it’s actually doing in the world.

Yeah, well, we had a sample of what you think is “critical thought” following the Vietnam War and veterans and servicemembers were ostracized and denigrated by your ilk. They did their jobs when their country called, but I’m thinking Doolittle wouldn’t lift a finger to defend this country and what it stands for in the world if it meant a measure of discomfort on his part. But he’d be the first to demand that someone save him if he was threatened.

I get the impression that Doolittle thinks that somehow it’s lawyers and judges that protect his freedoms. In a world jammed-packed with terrorists and nuclear rogues, that’s more that just little naive. And if you can’t take one day out the rest of the year to thank folks for something you don’t fully understand, you’re a self-centered little prick.

Every place I turn, I see this guy’s face – my email, Facebook, my phone text messages. So, this is to let you know that I’m not blind. He’s a fat piece of shit and he does this every year to get attention and I’m not giving him any. Besides, Mother Nature has been more brutal to him than I could ever be.

I don’t believe that anyone would mistake this turd for a real veteran, anyway.

Yeah, this is what you ‘d expect from an administration that is currently dropping Vietnam veterans from the rolls of Tricare Prime for the healthcare they earned. From Fox News;

New U.S. ambassador to the UN Samantha Power didn’t waste her diplomatic skills on Vietnam veterans at a New York speech, praising actress Jane Fonda for “being outspoken on behalf” of her convictions.

Power, 43, was speaking at the United Nations Association of the USA 2013 Global Leadership Awards in New York Wednesday, where honorees included Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani teenager who survived being shot in the head by Taliban thugs and is now an education advocate for girls.

“Hi everybody,” Power said, according to a transcript. “You know life has changed when you’re hanging out with Jane Fonda backstage. There is no greater embodiment of being outspoken on behalf of what you believe in — and being ‘all in’ in every way — than Jane Fonda. And it’s a huge honor just to even briefly have shared the stage with her.”

If she said “Hanging Jane Fonda backstage” I could get on board. Thanks to Mr Wolf for the heads up.

The Associated Press reports that British spymasters told legislators there that al Qaeda is taking advantage of the intelligence that Eddie Snowden gave to the media;

Iain Lobban, chief of the eavesdropping agency GCHQ, said his spies have picked up “near-daily discussion” of the unauthorized disclosures among his agency’s targets. His colleague John Sawers, the chief of the British foreign spy agency MI6, was even more explicit.

“It’s clear that our adversaries are rubbing their hands in glee,” he told lawmakers. “Al-Qaida is lapping it up.”

Meanwhile, Snowden has agree to testify about NSA surveillance for the Germans, according Agency France Press;

Intelligence leaker Edward Snowden is ready to assist a German probe into US spying on Chancellor Angela Merkel but also wants to talk directly to the US Congress, a German lawmaker who met the fugitive said Friday.

Snowden had late on Thursday met German Green party lawmaker Hans-Christian Stroebele at an undisclosed location in Moscow to discuss his revelations that Washington for years monitored Merkel’s mobile phone, which has caused an uproar in Europe.

On his return to Germany, Stroebele published a letter from Snowden and said the American was ready to testify to the US Congress to shed light on “possibly serious offences”.

The former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor, who began work at an undisclosed Russian Internet firm on Friday, was granted asylum in Russia in August to the fury of the United States, where he faces trial on charges under the Espionage Act.

Now, wait a second, didn’t Snowden initially say that he was more than willing to face justice in the US? So why is he only willing to testify to the US Congress in Germany?

Reuters reports that Snowden now thinks that his actions are justified by calls for reform in Congress. Well, junior if you were justified, why not face a jury of your peers;

In “A Manifesto for the Truth” published in German news magazine Der Spiegel on Sunday, Snowden said current debates about mass surveillance in many countries showed his revelations were helping to bring about change.

“Instead of causing damage, the usefulness of the new public knowledge for society is now clear because reforms to politics, supervision and laws are being suggested,” the 30-year-old ex-CIA employee and NSA contractor wrote.

“Citizens have to fight against the suppression of information about affairs of essential importance for the public. Those who speak the truth are not committing a crime.”

Yeah, Eddie, what you’re doing is not fighting, it’s running and hiding.

You might remember the bit we did a few weeks ago about Larry FitzGerald, the subject of a book by the title, Reaper 6, which was being sold as a non-fiction account of one soldier’s experiences in Vietnam, but was a total piece of shit and a collection of some creepy guy’s fantasies. Well, we just got an email from Andrew Rifkin, the author;

To Whom it May Concern,

I am Andrew Rafkin, author of Reaper 6. This notice is in response to the flagrant and misguided attacks on Amazon reviews, Green Beret web page, and a couple of internet marketing sites.

First and foremost, I have nothing but tremendous respect for all men and women who have served in our military, and the highest admiration for all Special Forces who have gone the extra mile to protect the country we hold so dear.

If you have read the book, you know that I recently ran into Larry FitzGerald, a childhood friend, after not having seen him in over 40 years. Larry had a compelling story to tell and expressed an interest in having me write it. I accepted the challenge.

I wrote REAPER 6 as it was told to me, using artistic license only to maintain a fast pace and hold the reader’s attention. I want to make it perfectly clear that I never conspired with Larry to write Reaper 6 with the intent of exploiting our Veterans, or to pursue monetary gain.

In fact, once expenses are covered, a portion of the proceeds from REAPER 6 are being donated to support PTSD and TBI services. Larry made it clear from Day 1 that all he wants this book to accomplish is help for the vets – plain and simple

It is unfortunate that everything posted on the internet remains there. I am 100% secure in the integrity of our goals for this book, and that it is essential to honor and respect all Veterans. To make it clear that we are adamant on this point, I have decided to re-publish Reaper 6 classified as FICTION, GENRE: ACTION/ADVENTURE.

My decision to make this category tag change to REAPER 6 is to honor the respect due to all veterans, and to preserve the excellent reputation I have maintained throughout my life.

Sincerely,

Andrew J. Rafkin

Here’s the thing, I know book authors, some of the greatest authors of this generation, who check their sources. When they’re writing history, they go to great lengths to verify what they’re told. Especially if it sounds like bullshit. They tell exciting tales, but they still verify what they’re being told. After reading this email, I went to Amazon and it still reads;

A Top Secret Story of Unparalleled Heroism… Staff Sergeant Larry FitzGerald, aka “Reaper 6,” of the U.S. Army Special Forces, led a special Black Ops team deployed to Vietnam in 1965. He reported to only two men: General Westmoreland and General Abrams, who were in command of the U.S. Armed Forces. His first assignment-a suicidal mission to assassinate four enemy generals in Laos who were planning the 1967 Tet invasion-was never disclosed to the media or the public. General Westmoreland stated that Sergeant FitzGerald deserved the Medal of Honor, and nine additional Purple Hearts, but unfortunately, most of his missions were conducted across the fence of South Vietnam, in Cambodia, Laos, and North Vietnam. In fact, all of his missions were classified, clandestine, and denied. They have not been disclosed until now. Reaper 6 is the only biography of this extraordinary soldier’s life, capturing the very sights, sounds, and smells of the Vietnam War. Today, Larry is the proverbial “last man standing” of 89 souls who went where lesser soldiers shouldn’t dare.

What in that introduction would lead a reader to believe that the book wasn’t written as non-fiction? What, excluding the words “is” and “the”, don’t sound like total bullshit? In my response to Mr. Rifkin, I told him that I, personally, as a veteran, dirty my hands with his money from the sales of this book and that he should take a flying leap. There’s no apology in his email, just an offer to assuage the guilt of his crime against all veterans, and more so, Vietnam Veterans by paying us off.

No apology, but our attacks are “flagrant and misguided”. He wrote a bullshit book that put all veterans of Vietnam in a bad light, what could be misguided about an attack against the perpetrator of those attacks on us. We could really give a shit about that kind of “tremendous respect for all men and women who have served in our military” when that respect results in a book like that.

In 1984, William Potts took out the pistol that he’d hidden in a cast and put on a black beret and came out of the airplane restroom and forced the jet to take him to Cuba. According to the Associated Press article, he wanted to change the world. yeah, i don’t know how that was supposed to happen either. Anyway, it didn’t work out the way he’d hoped. The Cubans put him in jail for 15 years instead. Now the disillusioned terrorist wants to come back to the US;

He said Friday that U.S. officials in Cuba are processing a passport application he submitted earlier in the week and they have told him it could be completed in a matter of weeks.

While he faces virtually certain arrest upon return, he said he believes that the time he served in Cuba will allow him to avoid a lengthy second jail term.

“Some people believe I should spend the rest of my life behind bars, but that’s not my position. I was sentenced in a recognized court of law to fifteen years in prison. I did the crime, I did the time,” Potts said. “I don’t expect to pay two times for a crime I already paid 15 years for.”

Potts said going home will help him move beyond what he acknowledges was a mistake that put dozens of passengers’ lives at risk and separated him from his siblings and parents in the U.S. in a way that’s increasingly painful as he ages.

Tough, as long as he remains in Cuba, he is in prison, so let him stay there. We have interpreters in Iraq and Afghanistan who have a legitimate need to come here, and they earned that right. This clown, not so much. If he wants to come to the US, he can make his voyage the same way he left – he can hijack a flight out of Cuba and see how that works out for him.

Chris Matthews’ perpetually twisted knickers made an appearance again on his “Nutball” TV show, or whatever it is called, because Senator Ted Cruz said, upon his return to Texas this weekend, “It’s great to be back in America.” From The Daily Caller, Matthews compared Cruz to Wisconsin Republican Sen. Joseph McCarthy who has been dead for decades for Cruz’ slight to Washington DC.
I moved the video below the fold because it auto-starts.
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