Category: Shitbags

The Washington Post reports on a letter written by Robert Bales, that former staff sergeant now serving a life sentence for murdering in cold blood 16 Afghans in the dark of night, then setting his victims on fire. Of course, Bales blames the war for his unconscionable act;

“My mind was consumed by war,” Bales wrote to a senior Army officer late last year as he made a plea for clemency. “I planted war and hate for the better part of 10 years and harvested violence.”

[…]

“I still don’t believe the PTSD, [traumatic brain injury], alcohol, steroids, and sleeping pills were the only factors in my actions on 11 March 2012,” he wrote to Lt. Gen. Stephen Lanza. “I believe there is much more. I worked hard wanting to be the best combat Soldier in the Army. I was obsessed with studying manuals, watching war documentaries and reading about insurgencies. Later in my Army career, I began to change. I didn’t want to make a bad decision on the ground and [lose] one of my guys. We trained hard and most of the guys understood why we trained hard. … I had been through fire fights, IEDs … mass casualty situations, and many other combat situations. So, going into my fourth deployment, I was experienced.

“Normally that would be a good thing, but now I know it made me paranoid and ineffective.”

You know, hundreds, if not thousands, of soldiers and leaders went through much more than Bales and they haven’t murdered civilians while those civilians slept. Millions of veterans who have experienced war on varying levels go to work every day and do their jobs and come home at night without starting an incident with police, without going on a shooting rampage in their workplace. Thousands of soldiers are currently deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq, many have already experienced multiple deployments, and they’re not murdering children in their beds.

No, it wasn’t PTSD, but Bales, in contravention of command directives consumed drugs and alcohol while deployed. That, to me, indicates that he wasn’t as good a soldier as everyone wants me to believe. The “experts” blame the drugs, the alcohol, and anti-malarial drugs, but, you know what? A good leader doesn’t take drugs and alcohol when lives depend on him being 100% all of the time.

Yes, war is evil, but millions of Americans who went to war didn’t let the war make them evil like Bales.

Yesterday, we wrote about this Chalice Zeitner person who we helped expose about a year and a half ago as a phony. She said that she had years of service in the Marines and the Army Reserve, but her FOIA showed only two months of service and entry-level discharge. Zeitner was arrested in Georgia on a warrant from Arizona for forging medical documents which allowed her to get a late-term abortion at tax payer expense.

Well, one of our ninjas send us links back to Arizona where her victims are coming out of the woodwork as her face is spread widely in the media there. She was scheduled to have this Angela Aduri woman’s embryos implanted in her lady parts as a surrogate mother this week for a tidy $20k price tag;

The contract Aduri had was signed under Zeitner’s alleged alias [Al Serquez].

“We met her a couple of times in person. We checked all of her information out that she provided with her Georgia driver’s license, medical insurance, name and address, her references, everything was cleared and verified,” said Aduri.

According to the Arizona Attorney General’s Office, Zeitner’s been falsifying documents for years. She faces charges of fraudulent schemes, taking the identity of another and forgery.

Her first scheme had been a charity to help veterans which failed eventually. That’s how we got a hold of her DD214 back in 2013. Apparently, she’s going to fight extradition back to Arizona, I can’t imagine what excuse would prevent that.

But like Scottie is fond of saying; Stolen Valor is the toothpick that holds the shit sandwich together.

Yesterday we discussed major scumbag POS Joseph Kuzma who stole grave makers from veterans’ cemeteries in Genesee County, NY. He was sentenced yesterday, but according to David Andreatta, a columnist at the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle justice wasn’t done. He was allowed to plea the charges down;

Prosecutors allowed him to plead guilty to attempted third-degree grand larceny, as though he had only attempted to steal those flag holders and hadn’t actually pulled it off.

“I’ve been trying to figure that one out myself,” said Tom Williamson, the commander of the Sackett Merrill White American Legion Post No. 575 in Bergen, which he said supplied the flag holders at about $36 apiece. “This isn’t an ‘attempted’ thing. They caught him with them.”

One of the hundreds of missing holders was at the grave of Williamson’s father, a World War II Navy veteran who is buried at Mount Rest Cemetery in Bergen.

The Daily News Online details the discussion that took place in Judge Robert C. Noonan’s courtroom during the sentencing;

Noonan said Thursday’s court appearance “could have been much more serious.”

“You’re lucky you didn’t get caught in the act by one of these veterans,” Noonan told Kuzma. “It’s unimaginable what they would have done to you.”

Noonan sentenced Kuzma to four months of weekends in jail, beginning Friday; and five years probation.

He also ordered him to pay $17,455.50 restitution, the cost to replace the markers, a five percent surcharge and a $325 court fee.

Restitution will be $300 a month beginning in September for Kuzma, who has no job and is in drug treatment.

In the D&C article, the author explains;

Plea deals are the grease that keep the wheels of the criminal justice system in motion, and they usually involve a defendant pleading guilty to a lesser charge in exchange for the prosecution expediting a conviction. That’s why they’re called “deals.”

Kuzma was caught red-handed, dead-to-rights – he had nothing to deal with. He has no job because he’s a stinkin’ junkie, so good luck trying to get restitution from a stone. His LinkedIn profile says that he has an MBA from St. Bonaventure University, another trust-fund Little Lord Fauntleroy. If he lived in Metro DC, he’d be wearing spandex in DuPont Circle and his mailbox door would be missing, along with at least one of his employees.

One of our ninjas sent us a link from Batavia, New York where 35-year-old Joseph J. Kuzma is currently awaiting sentencing for stealing more than 400 markers and flag holders on veterans’ graves back in the Fall of 2014.

A total of 192 brass markers and 262 brass flag holders [from] up to eight cemeteries in both Byron and Bergen were stolen. However, Mount Rest Cemetery, Byron Cemetery and Saint Brigids Cemetery were the worst hit.

Kuzma is required to pay restitution, and the Sacked-Merrill-White American Legion Post in Bergen, is accepting donations to help with the cost of replacing the markers.

He’s supposed to be sentenced today. His profile at LinkedIn doesn’t mention any military service, but he seems to be fairly well educated. Educated, but not smart, apparently.

Our friends in Brevard County, FL send us a link to the news of the sentencing of Jason Mullaney, who one of his victims called “the most repugnant scum on Earth”. Mullaney is a former Navy SEAL who spent the few years ripping off his old teammates. We talked about him back in February. Well, he’s been sentenced according to the LA Times;

San Diego County Superior Court Judge J. Frederick Maguire sentenced Jason Mullaney to six years and eight months in prison. Mullaney, 43, had pleaded guilty to grand theft and related charges.

[…]

Prosecutors said Mullaney promised investors returns of 24% from real estate and loan deals, but instead used the money for a lavish lifestyle, including gambling trips to Las Vegas.

Mullaney has expressed the requisite amount of regret and he has promised to pay back his victims.

I guess this is a thing this week – or maybe I’m a little behind. Eric Sheppard, a self-professed “terrorist against white people” challenges folks to stomp on a flag to express their displeasure with the white patriarchy, or something. But wait – the terrorist against white people is wanted on gun charges, so he didn’t stick around to see his “challenge” come to fruition. From the Inquisitr;

Eric Sheppard disappeared from the Valdosta campus last week and is being sought by the police on the gun charge. Sheppard reportedly “self-identifies” as a “terrorist against white people.” College officials cancelled classes and ordered all non-essential staffers off campus in later April due to concerns that Sheppard, who was deemed “armed and dangerous,” would appear on the grounds.

“That flag represents white supremacy racism which is plaguing the entire earth, so when we step on that flag we are stepping on racism, white supremacy,” Sheppard, who is now believed to be in hiding, said in a now viral video. Sheppard also said that the American flag represents “things that were erected alongside our genocide and our holocaust.”

Last year it was the ALS Icebucket Challenge, this year it’s the “Do what the racist coward wants” Challenge.

WNEM TV 5

Rob sends us a link to update our story about crooked-ass Leroy Brown, Junior, the financial adviser who we wrote about last week. It looks like the Securities and Exchange Commission have shut the fellow down;

On April 13, 2015, the SEC obtained a temporary restraining order and emergency asset freeze against Leroy Brown, Jr. and his firm, LB Stocks and Trades Advice LLC to halt this ongoing and fraudulent scheme. The SEC’s complaint accuses Brown and LB Stocks and Trades Advice LLC of using false pretenses to solicit funds from investors, many of whom are active members of the U.S. military, including those serving at Fort Hood in Killeen, Texas. Brown exploited relationships he made during his time in the military, as well as his own military experience, to gain investors’ trust. He assured investors that he had years of experience in the securities markets, and that he and companies he controlled had all necessary licenses and registrations with the SEC and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA). Brown promised investors he would double or triple their money, and that his investments could not lose.

According to the SEC, these claims were false. Brown and his companies have no securities licenses, and Brown himself has no evident experience with investments.

I guess the SEC is only seeking civil relief and they want to get the money back (not that it will do the actual investors any good), so you folks be careful out there. My investments are with a very reputable, well-known mutual fund company. If we learned anything from Fred Flinstone it’s that there is no actual get-rich-quick scheme. investing takes patience. Only the greedy get ripped off.

Now that Bowe Bergdahl is facing the prospect of prosecution by the Army for deserting his post and for misbehavior, his liberal defenders, those who swallowed whole Susan Rice’s assertion that he served with honor and distinction, will be raising defenses for his crimes. Aware of the leftist media support for its client, Bergdahl’s defense team is already floating tales intended to at least mitigate, if not excuse entirely, the cold fact that this soldier deserted his guard post in the presence of the enemy, sought out that enemy, and remained with them until he was bartered back to this country.

Bergdahl’s attorney, Eugene Fidell, is quoted by the Seattle Times under this unbiased headline: “Bergdahl charged despite torture, attempts to escape.”

“This is a hellish environment he was kept in for nearly 5 years, particularly after he did his duty in trying to escape,” Fidell, a former military lawyer now in private practice, told The Associated Press on Thursday. “There is no question in my mind that a convening authority would not be doing his or her duty without taking into account the circumstances under which Sgt. Bergdahl was held.”

In the same article, Bergdahl claims to have attempted escape about a dozen times. So it is obvious that despite intelligence reports that he moved about freely among his captors, sometimes armed, a key element of Bergdahl’s defense is going to be that he was held in close confinement from which he tried to escape repeatedly.

And my response is, “So what?”

That response counts, because it’s coming from someone who served as an NCO in infantry units in two sister regiments of Bergdahl’s 501st Parachute Infantry in an earlier war. In that capacity, I could have sat on his courts martial board at one time. My response reflects a view that I will wager is ingrained in many of those officers and NCOs who may be called upon for that duty at some time in the future.

Let me explain. Bergdahl did not like the Army, a dislike he made clear in his writings home. Those writings demonstrate that like many young soldiers, his very limited view of the big picture led him to erroneous conclusions typical among the ranks. His self-assured sense of knowing better than his superiors led him to chafe under their leadership, in his case far more than is normal. Bergdahl likely had a flower-child upbringing, and the rigid and regulated routines necessary to maintain good order and discipline in a military unit may have constrained him to a greater extent than most soldiers. An example of that is that according to his platoon mates, he harbored some dreamy desire to go out into the mountains in some sort of rite of passage – a walkabout, as the Aussies call it – a pastoral stroll among the primitives to India.

And if Bergdahl chafed under Army restrictions on his freedom, imagine how constrained he felt in his new life among the people he had once idolized. They would doubtless have proved every bit as determined to curb his transcendental dreams of traipsing through the poppies.

Every officer and NCO has to deal with soldiers like Bergdahl, who simply can’t abide the considerable limitations on their freedom so necessary to preserve good order and discipline. Some soldiers can have their attitudes adjusted sufficiently to allow them to serve out their time with minimal success. Others, like Bergdahl, fueled by a self-righteous sense that only their way will ever be the right way for them, simply walk away. Those are the ones who never come back, which is the essential element of desertion under the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

So if Bergdahl did attempt to escape the Afghans, a claim we have but his and his attorney’s words for, what was his motivation? Was he seeking to return to the American unit he so despised, or was he seeking to continue on his way with his idyllic walkabout through the Himalayas to India, as he had previously told fellow troopers he wished to do? Were I weighing that question as a member of Bergdahl’s courts martial, I’d have to ask myself, “If he’d already felt so repressed by Army discipline that he’d walked away, would he wish to return to that, or, once free of the Afghanis, would he be inclined to continue his flower-child journey to nirvana on the sub-continent?” Knowing how much Bergdahl despised my Army, its leadership, and our bedrock concept of good order and discipline, I think I know how I’d come down on this crucial question of that foolish young man’s intent.

Are you listening, Counselor Fidell? Keep launching that turkey of an escape excuse; like a real turkey, it’s not gonna fly very far among those who count.

Crossposted at American Thinker