Category: Shitbags

New York Magazine decided that they needed to do a piece on those brave Americans that absconded to Canada instead of fulfilling their commitment to the country of their births – the deserters. But, they really should have done their homework. Take for example, Kimberly Rivera;

Kim Rivera, was deported from Canada in 2012. Rivera completed a tour in 2006 as a driver with the Fourth Infantry Brigade Combat Team, but she came to believe the long-term occupation of Iraq was excessive and immoral. In 2007, she left her post in Texas and moved to Toronto with her husband and their two children. Over the next five years, they had two more children and Rivera became pregnant with another. At her court-martial, Rivera’s supporters included Amnesty International, the archbishop Desmond Tutu, and several veterans organizations, but she lost the case and was sentenced to 14 months in military prison.

Kimberly Rivera didn’t complete her tour of Iraq – she absconded during her mid-tour leave. you know when the Army let her go back for a few weeks half way through her deployment. The Army was rewarded by her disappearance. I’m sure that she wasn’t missed given witness accounts of her “service”. She claimed some altruistic anti-war reason for not returning to duty, but she told Marie Claire magazine that she didn’t return because he fat, lazy husband was tired of taking care of their children alone. You know, even though he convinced her to join the Army in the first place while they were living in her parents’ basement and working at Walmart.

They talk to Andre Sheperd who deserted from his Apache repair job in Germany before they deployed his second time. He claimed that it was because he couldn’t stand the thought of the damage that his work was doing to the Iraqis, even though during his first deployment, they put him in charge of their recreational equipment because as a mechanic he wasn’t competent enough at his job fixing Apache helicopters. Folks who knew Sheperd before he joined the Army told us that he had stolen money from friends and was living in his car – so that’s how he paid the Army back for lifting him out of poverty.

In the NY Mag article, they talk to Corey Glass, who left Canada ahead of his forced deportation. Corey Glass isn’t even wanted by the United States. TSO wrote about him in 2008. We even checked with the Pentagon (when they liked us still) and they said that Glass isn’t wanted by authorities. That he had absconded to Canada after the date of his enlistment ended. But, he’s on the run in Europe now;

He spent his days behind a desk, writing reports on field intelligence. Except for the occasional mortar round dropping into camp, he saw little action. The trouble for Glass was what he saw in the field reports delivered to his desk. His job was to read the contents and rewrite them into a coherent narrative for commanders to skim. Instead, he found himself questioning the reports themselves. Like other U.S. deserters, Glass has been careful not to reveal the operational details of what troubled him, but over time, he became convinced that U.S. troops had committed war crimes.

Yeah, so when he came back, he went to Canada and made himself the poster child of deserters, even though he didn’t really desert.

And there’s rocket scientist Dean Walcott who was ordered to leave Canada and instead he imprisoned himself in a Canadian church demanding sanctuary – he hasn’t been able to leave the church grounds since he entered it five years ago.

So, you can see that we’ve lost our best & brightest to Canada. And they can keep them, too.

So the news this morning is that Eddie Ray Routh, the fellow who murdered Chris Kyle and Chad Littlefield last year, was found guilty and he was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. The prosecutors had hoped for the death penalty. From Fox News;

Routh showed no visible emotion as the verdict was read, while Kyle’s brother and parents were among a group of the victims’ families and friends who cried and held hands. They did not issue a statement.

Jerry Richardson, Littlefield’s half-brother, told Routh that he “took the lives of two heroes, men who tried to be a friend to you, and you became an American disgrace.” Routh had no reaction.

I’ve read some speculation on line that this was the Veterans’ Affairs Department fault, that they need to “do better” in regards to treatment of veterans. I disagree. There are certainly problems with the VA, but this doesn’t have anything to do with service-connected mental health. According to testimony in the trial, Routh had problems before he joined the Marines. The morning before the murder, Routh had been sitting around blazing doobies with his family. He had a long history of drug abuse in a dysfunctional family environment that encouraged that sort of behavior.

Too many people blame military service for some of these people’s bad behavior and in most cases it’s just not true. Like the father of the fellow in New York City who shot two NYPD officers blamed his son’s six weeks of basic training for that incident. It’s just too easy for everyone to click that military box when they’re looking for excuses for criminals’ behavior.

Of course, a lot of that has to do with that divide between the military and the citizens that we served, but it also has a lot to do with the reputation that we give ourselves when we blame our own bad behavior on “what we saw”. Not you guys, but you have to admit that we see it too often here from the phonies, like the fellow who got five years on probation for a murder because of the wild tales he told a judge about his tour of Vietnam. And pot-smoking “Wayward Bill” who needs pot to forget the ears that he had chop off of dead VC as a company clerk in Vietnam – despite the fact that he’d never been to Vietnam. There’s Terry Farmer who gets away with beating his wife because of the things that he never saw in Vietnam.

Those are just a few examples, of the countless phonies who blame their fairy tales of military service for their bad behavior. I’m very glad that a Texas jury saw through it in this case. According to Fox News, Routh’s lawyers plan to appeal because Texas wasn’t a fair venue for Routh’s trial. Yeah, good luck with that since the victim in this case is now the subject of a blockbuster movie.

The LA Times reports that Wassef Ali Hassoun, the Marine who deserted his unit in Iraq and then jumped ship again once he got back to the States and was convicted of desertion yesterday was sentenced to two years today.

A military judge at Camp Lejeune, N.C., found Marine Cpl. Wassef Ali Hassoun guilty of deserting his combat post in Fallujah, Iraq, in June 2004 and deserting his Marine unit at Camp Lejeune in January 2005. In both instances, Hassoun fled to his native Lebanon.

Hassoun, 35, a naturalized American citizen, was also found guilty of causing the loss of his service-issue pistol, which he took with him during the 2004 disappearance.

He was sentenced to just more than two years in jail — 735 days — reduction in rank, forfeiture of pay and allowances, and a dishonorable discharge.

Still no word on Bowe Bergdahl’s fate.

Chip sends us a link to ABC News which reports that judge, Marine Major Nicholas Martz, has determined that Wassef Hassoun is guity of desertion. You might remember that he left his unit in Iraq, turned up in Lebanon a few months later, then went AWOL from the Marines again when he was returned to the states for an investigation into the first incident;

Martz found that Hassoun was guilty of deserting in Iraq in 2004 and then deserting again in 2005 by fleeing to Lebanon after a brief return to the U.S.

Hassoun was also found guilty of causing the loss of his service pistol.

Sentencing is expected later this week.

Prosecutors argued during trial that Hassoun made preparations to flee his base in Fallujah in 2004 and foreshadowed his actions by threatening to leave for Lebanon.

Still no word on Bergdahl, though.

Y’all have been sending links to the reports that Eddie Routh, the fellow who shot and killed Chris Kyle and Chad Littlefield over a year ago, hasn’t served in a position in the Marine Corps that would have lent itself to the theory presented by his defense attorney that Routh suffers from PTS. I agree and I said as much when this case presented itself. It’s old news. He was a unit armorer and he never left the wire.

Routh’s defense team doesn’t deny that he killed the two. I just watched a clip from his lawyer’s opening remarks and he said that Routh was so screwed up that he didn’t know that he’d done anything wrong. Well, that’s just BS.

In his phone call to his sister during his getaway, Routh told her that he’d murdered the two because he wanted Kyle’s truck. PTS doesn’t make people covet their neighbor’s truck. The lawyer continued that Routh thought that if he didn’t kill the other two, they would kill him – more BS. PTS doesn’t make you paranoid. You know what does make a person paranoid? Illegal drug abuse.

The folks at WarFighters talked to his recruiter, who claims that Routh came from a dysfunctional environment in which drug abuse was very common and his enlistment in the Marines didn’t change that.

The only people who blame their bad behavior on Post Traumatic Stress are people who don’t have PTS. Routh is an evil criminal who hides behind his military service. Neither him nor his lawyer are not doing real veterans with real PTS any favors with their defense of Routh’s behavior.

ADDED: According to the Washington Post, Chris Kyle had Routh nailed earlier in the day that he would be murdered;

On the way to the outdoor resort where former Navy SEAL Chris Kyle was killed, he sent a text message to the friend sitting next to him about the third man in the truck: “This dude is straight-up nuts.”

Yes, according to Politico, Bradley Manning now works for the UK’s Guardian. I guess they have a pretty liberal telework policy;

Manning, previously known as Bradley Manning, was an Army private who was convicted in 2013 and is serving a 35-year term for leaking national security materials to WikiLeaks. She will write “occasionally from Fort Leavenworth prison on the subjects of war, gender, and freedom of information” for the British newspaper’s American site, Viner wrote in a staff memo. Manning will not be paid.

Of course, the Guardian was the UK’s news source that benefited greatly from the document dump from Wikileaks, so it’s probably a quid pro quo because that’s how those people roll.

Chip sends us a link from Fox News in regards to this Jason Mullaney fellow, a former Navy SEAL who ripped off his friends to the tune of $1.2 million. Mullaney convinced his SEAL friends to invest in his security company, but it was just a pyramid scheme to line his own pockets;

The SEALs had no idea they were cheated until some tried to collect on their investment. Mullaney, they reported to the FBI and San Diego District Attorney on April 27, 2011, had vanished with their money.

Former Navy SEAL Alexander Sonnenberg lost $160,000.

“The worst part of my experience with Jason Mullaney is the reprehensible way he calculatingly misrepresented himself to solicit former teammates that he knew would trust him as a brother…,” Sonnenberg said in a written statement.

Navy SEAL Kevin Blackwell lost $10,000. “[Jason] made fools of all of us and, in the end, only looked out for his own interests. He didn’t care about my daughter’s college fund or anyone else, their financial futures, impacts on their families, or their livelihood.”

He scammed 11 of his team mates and blew the money on trips to Vegas, a new Mercedes and a huge house. He also attacked a team mate for the non-payment of a debt.

[Alexander] Sonnenberg’s statement to Mullaney is likely more reflective of the SEAL community’s views: “Jason, I wish you the worst and hope that you rot in Hell for what you did to all of us – you are the most repugnant scum on Earth.”