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

Category: Usual Suspects

  • Left plots exploitation of Wikileaks documents

    The Left didn’t waste any time getting together in New York City yesterday looking for ways to use the documents from the Wikileaks drop for their own nefarious purposes. Someone dropped a link to me Saturday about the conference. They highlighted the luminaries that they had invited to speak;

    * Dahr Jamail, journalist, author of “Beyond the Green Zone”
    * Cindy Sheehan, antiwar leader, author, Director, Peace of the Action
    * Josh Stieber, Army veteran of Bravo Company 2-16
    * Matthis Chiroux, Army veteran, Iraq war resister
    * Mike Ferner, President, Veterans for Peace
    * Ray McGovern, former CIA Agent, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
    * Jeff Paterson, Courgage to Resist, spokesperson for Bradley Manning Support Comm
    * Elaine Brower, military mother, World Can’t Wait
    * Debra Sweet, Director, World Can’t Wait

    Debra Sweet calls them “a strong group of resisters and truth-tellers”. They resist common sense and none would know the truth if it bit their collective ass. Dahr Jamail has made a career of ignoring facts that get in his way, Cindy Sheehan you all know, Josh Stieber bears witness to the “Collateral Murder” video yet he was still behind the wire during the events of that day. Matthis, well he’s a celebrity here. TSO dealt with Jeff Paterson‘s hyperbole last year. Elaine Brower, hiding behind her son’s service, calls other troops baby killers.

    Someone just sent me a video of their discussion (obviously an event designed to raise money to put up their noses). The video is 2 hours long and obviously, I haven’t watched the damn thing, I just skipped ahead to 1:10 (that’s an hour and ten minutes) and saw Matthis with his little band of pirates at the Under The Hood cafe. I couldn’t even listen to him drone on about something about himself and his plan to spend a month in Killeen with the junior buccaneer club.

    You’re welcomed to watch all of the video that you can stand. Looking at Deborah Sweet’s and Elaine Brower’s fat thighs wears out pretty quickly, though. That’s why I put it below the jump;
    (more…)

  • Whittenberg’s AAR of the protest last Friday

    In case you were wondering how well the participants thought the protest went outside of Fort Hood last week, Bobby Whittenberg, the head pirate of the new revolution, says it went well;

    Whittenberg sounds a little disappointed that no counter protesters showed up, but I’m sure everyone else had better things to do on a Friday afternoon than hang out with pirate-wannabes in the Central Texas heat.

    I’m sure getting a thumbs-up from Carl Webb was worth the whole thing for them. Oh, and why wasn’t Webb there? No one to lend him a bicycle? Couldn’t get off someone else’s couch soon enough? He wasn’t working for the Man, was he?

    Yep, speaking truth to power, that’s what it was. That’s what we expect from buccaneers like Bobby and his parrot, Mike Kern. This is how I envision Kern and Whittenberg’s relationship.

    Welcome to the new revolution – same as the old revolution.

  • Wikileaks in Baghdad trash dump

    There’s an article in The Nation written by Sarah Lazare and Ryan Harvey entitled “Wikileaks in Baghdad” that has really tested my strength to avoid punching my poor, innocent laptop. The article begins;

    One by one, soldiers just arriving in Baghdad were taken into a room and questioned by their commanding officers. “All questions led up to the big question,” explains former Army Spc. Josh Stieber. “If someone were to pull out a weapon in a marketplace full of unarmed civilians, would you open fire on that person, even if you knew you would hurt a lot of innocent people in the process?”

    It was a trick question. “Not only did you have to say yes, but you had to say yes without hesitating,” explains Stieber. “In refusing to go along with the crowd, it was not irregular for somebody to get beat up,” he adds. “They’ll take you in a room, close the door and knock you around if they didn’t like your answer,” says former Army Spc. Ray Corcoles, who deployed with Stieber.

    According to these former soldiers, this was a typical moment of training for Bravo Company 2-16 (2nd Battalion, 16th Infantry Regiment), the ground unit involved in the infamous “Collateral Murder” video, which captured global headlines when it was released in April by WikiLeaks….

    A few points that the least bit of research would have revealed about those first paragraphs; Beating a soldier won’t change his answer to that question. Just by slamming him around in room doesn’t make him react differently in the real situation. Soldiers aren’t dogs and have their own minds.

    Another point; Any “commanding officer” who took the least part in such ineffective conditioning would lose their jobs…and no such incident would go unreported. Give us the names of these “commanding officers” and watch how swiftly justice comes to them.

    A third point; In the video to which they refer, the soldiers of B 2/16 Infantry didn’t do anything out of line. It’s the actions of two helicopter crewmembers which led to the killing of those insurgents and journalists on the street corner. Those helicopter crew members aren’t on the roster of B 2/16, so they wouldn’t have had this supposed conditioning that Steiber describes. The soldiers of B 2/16 are the folks who showed up later and rushed the two children to medical treatment. So even if the above story was true, what could it possibly have to do with the events which unfolded in the video?

    We return to the article;

    Now three former soldiers from this unit have come forward to make the case that the incident is not a matter of a few bad-apple soldiers but rather just one example of US military protocol in the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, where excessive acts of violence often stem from the chain of command.

    Except that the “excessive violence” came from the helicopter crew members, not members of B 2/16 – the unit from which those three former soldiers came. And there are about a hundred men in an infantry company – where are the other 97?

    The three go on to make vacuous charges against their leadership and peers without naming names, without providing dates and places. Lazare and Harvey were suckered – but I suspect it doesn’t bother either of them. Lazare writes with Dahr Jamail, the lead propagandist of the Left who completely disregards facts that get in his way and constructs mountains from molehills. Lazare also writes and works with Courage to Resist, so she’s pretty familiar with using hyperbole as facts.

  • Under the Hood rubs egos in Killeen

    Fort Hood Protest (32)
    So here’s the massive protest the gang from Under the Hood cafe staged at Fort Hood to protest the deployment of 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment’s deployment next month. I don’t know who sent me the pictures, they just fell into my inbox this afternoon.

    Here’s Under the Hood’s press release;

    Attending the rally will be Veterans of the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, military family members, active-duty servicemembers and other local activists. Bobby Whittenberg, former Marine, Purple Heart recipient and an organizer of the rally said marchers are standing in solidarity with the people of Iraq and Afghanistan, and troops being deployed against their wills.

    “We need to send a strong message that these wars and occupations are wrong, and that officers sending Soldiers in need of medical care into combat is wrong, too,” said Whittenberg. “Unfortunately in the military, this is standard operating procedure.”

    This latest demonstration comes less than a month after a prior demonstration at the East Gate of Fort Hood opposing the wars. As the latest outrage unfolds in response to the 91,000 documents leaked by Wikileaks detailing numerous human rights violations in Afghanistan, activity in the local peace community is surging, with similar demonstrations planned for the near future.

    (more…)

  • Mullen: Assange/Manning have blood on their hands

    As Sporkmaster and Old Trooper Tanker have written in the last few days, it appears that the culprit for releasing those 91,000 documents related to the Afghanistan War is Bradley Manning. It’s not surprising really, since he said he did it.

    The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Admiral Mike Mullen told reporters yesterday that the leak may have put some soldiers and their Afghan allies at risk (Stars & Stripes link);

    “Mr. Assange can say whatever he likes about the greater good of what he and his source are doing,” Mullen said. “But the truth is they might already have on their hands the blood of some young soldier or that of an Afghan family.”

    Defense Secretary Robert Gates has asked FBI and Justice Department officials to help with the investigation into the release. He also said the incident would likely force changes in the way sensitive documents are handled in the combat zone, an area where he admitted restrictions have been lax in the past.

    Gates did not rule out criminal action against Assange, but said defense officials have not made any such moves so far.

    The Washington Times chose not to publish Wikileaks documents because of the potential harm to our troops. In today’s op/ed they write;

    The First Amendment does not protect publishing information likely to result in troops being killed or that directly hampers military operations. The government has an overriding interest in safeguarding such information, even to the point of justifying banning publication before the fact.

    Of course, since Manning is in custody, he won’t be so hard to find. In fact, the word is that he’s been moved from Kuwait to Quantico.

    There should be a worldwide manhunt for Assange with a shoot-to-wound order.

  • Adrienne Kinne, Blue Falcon

    Time reports that Spain’s National Court has decided to re-indict three American soldiers for killing a Spanish journalist in Baghdad’s Hotel Palestine during the last hours of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.

    On April 8, 2003, one day before U.S. troops officially captured Baghdad, a U.S. tank fired a single incendiary shell on the hotel, killing Couso, a cameraman for Spain’s Telecinco television station, and Reuters journalist Taras Protsyuk. Since then, Couso’s colleagues and family have pursued a criminal investigation against the U.S. military. Their initial case, filed in May 2003, was eventually dismissed by Spain’s National Court, which cited a lack of jurisdiction. But when the higher Supreme Court reviewed the case in December 2006, it disagreed. The case was returned to the National Court, which in 2007 issued arrest warrants against Sgt. Thomas Gibson, the tank sergeant who fired the shell, Captain Philip Wolford, who ordered the attack, and commanding officer Colonel Philip deCamp.

    But on July 26, Spain’s Supreme Court again ruled that the case should continue. On Thursday morning, the National Court took up the investigation for the third time, again ordering the three men to appear in its courtroom or face extradition.

    One of the main witnesses against the three Americans is Adrienne Kinne, co-chair of the IVAW board and hardcore member of the International Socialist Organization. Here’s her profile which I snapped several months ago before she removed it;

    Yep, she’s another of those Iraq veterans who never left the US. But somehow shr thinks her testimony about events halfway around the world is relevent in relation to the Palestine Hotel incident. Like Kinne told aging hippie, Amy Goodman at Democracy Now!;

    …there were journalists staying at the Palestine Hotel and this hotel was listed as a potential target, I went to my officer in charge, and I told him that there are journalists staying at this hotel who think they’re safe, and yet we have this hotel listed as a potential target, and somehow the dots are not being connected here, and shouldn’t we make an effort to make sure that the right people know the situation?

    And unfortunately, my officer in charge, similarly to any time I raised concerns about things that we were collecting or intelligence that we were reporting, basically told me that it was not my job to analyze. It was my job to collect and pass on information and that someone somewhere higher up the chain knew what they were doing.

    Kinne claims that if her supervisor had listened to her, those Spanish journalists would have been saved. But, while everyone on Amy Goodman’s side of the discussion applauds Kinne for being a “whistleblower”, I think she’s a Blue Falcon because the Spanish National Court is ready to try three Americans for the death of two journalists in downtown Baghdad and she sides with the Spanish courts.

    SSG Shawn Gibson, the tanker who fired the shot into the hotel says he was receiving indirect fire at the same time he saw someone on the roof of the hotel with binoculars and he spent ten minutes getting permission to fire. Maybe if Adrienne Kinne had spent some time in Iraq, she’d understand why Gibson fired – but it’s much easier to be a Blue Falcon.

  • Nutroots target vets

    I guess we missed it this morning. The Liberal bloggers of the world are meeting in Las Vegas to rub their parts against each other. We’re missing such great speakers as Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Jon Soltz and whoever else the left idolizes. But this caught my eye while I was leafing through their agenda;

    I just think it’s sad that they have to have a seminar for the ignorant Left to teach them to relate to veterans. What’s worse is they’ll all get it wrong when they’re out on their own – luckily, they won’t leave their Mom’s basement.

    Oh, Tony Camerino is supposed to be there too. Tony Camerino is the guy who calls himself Matthew Alexander and writes books about things he’s never done. yeah, he’s going to talk to the Nutroots about how they can shut down Guantanamo. of course, Camerino/Alexander has never set foot in Guantanamo, but that doesn’t matter to the left, I suppose.

    I thought Camerino was supposed to deploy earlier this summer. i wonder what railroaded that.

    At the bottom of the screen shot, you’ll see Brandon Friedman, known around these parts as Beaker. he really hates me. Really. Really. Hates. Me.

    We were supposed to do an interview with a Washington Post reporter. He threw a hissy because I was going to be a part of the interview (the interview was about how the VA could be more responsive to veterans on the internet). Friedman, the pussy, refused to do the interview until they got someone more passive, so they got CJ to do it. And it’s probably because he was afraid I’d call him Beaker in the interview and show the cute reporter chick pictures of the two to compare for her own edification.

    it’s not my fault you look like Beaker, talk to your damn ugly-ass parents, Brandon. He should grow a beard or comb his hair or dye it another color besides orange, for pete’s sake.

  • From the other end of the spectrum

    Bobby Whittenberg is doing his best to undermine the IVAW from his end of the political spectrum.

    Matthis expressed his support for Whittenberg and mentioned his desire to leave IVAW as well. Unfortunately, my ninja spy wasn’t fast enough to screen cap it – so you can believe me or not. I know it’s not likely Matthis will leave his latest abused girlfriend, the IVAW. He’s just butthurt because someone has been questioning his behavior – and he’s threatening to leave. The fact that he took his comment down shows all of the finger wagging is having an effect on him.

    I wonder if the IVAW will ban Whittenberg for life like they did to Casey Porter?

    Anyone who wants to greet Matthis, I guess he’ll be at Fort Hood soon;