Someone sent me a set of photos of Victor Agosto, the fellow who went to jail in Texas for refusing to deploy with his unit from Fort Hood to Afghanistan last year. During his one visit here to TAH, he sounded fairly rational. What a difference a year in IVAW makes;
I don’t even know where to find an heroic poster of Mao leading peasants – yet….
And it’s a quick change from the IVAW banner…
To the ISO banner;
And, oh, he’s pals with Matthis;
Mattis went to Detroit for the US Social Forum and hooked up with flag-burning buddy Elaine Brower this weekend. Their big adventure was to post a banner in an abandoned building with some of the chumps from Geezers For Sitting On Our Hands;
Yeah, he’s afraid of the police, that’s why he stopped to take a group portrait;
Here’s the lame-ass crowd – they took several photos despite the fact that they were so afraid of the cops;
If the Detroit police need the picture to identify the trespassers, I can still blow the original up another 200% to help out. Anything to help out Detroit’s finest. But obviously, Matthis and his friends weren’t all that interested in the social forum that was being held in Detroit, well not as much as they were enamored with the idea of childish, useless pranks. Given that the average age of the trespassers was about 90 years old, I think I can safely say “Grow up, Vets for Peace.” At least act half your age.
I was pretty sure he had a dick (it sticks through his shirt collar and speaks), but I saw this news story a few days ago about his trying to seduce a red headed masseuse in Oregon and I was pretty shocked. Howie Kurtz at the Washington Post tells us the background on the incident and how it got to our attention;
The Enquirer obtained a Portland, Ore., police report in which the red-haired masseuse, whose name the tabloid withheld, told authorities that Gore had sexually assaulted her during a 2006 hotel massage. The woman initially declined to be interviewed by police, but reconsidered and met with detectives early last year. The detectives concluded there was insufficient evidence to launch an investigation. The police never sought a statement from Gore or attempted to interview him about the claim.
An Enquirer reporter asked the woman why she didn’t contact police on the night of the alleged incident, rather than waiting several weeks. “I was completely shaken and afraid I would lose my job,” she responded. The woman, who told police that Gore had requested an abdominal massage, also said the Hotel Lucia asked her to provide services to a VIP guest registered as “Mr. Stone” and she was surprised to learn that it was Gore.
The woman probably felt like she was being accosted by a sea cow. I only wish she had recorded the incident with Mr Stone…that name, by the way, could only be funnier if it was Mr Wood or Mr Tree. He was almost President, you know, and only missed it by this much. Small favors.
Here’s your morning blood pressure check sent to us by someone. It’s from Elaine Brower’s Memorial Day visit to Coney Island. I profiled Elaine once before here, and posted her video of her shouting “Baby killers!” at some other Marines on Coney Island;
She calls some Marines “murderers” while they’re putting on a demonstration for the tourists. In between the name calling, Brower shouts that her son did three tours in the war so I suppose that somehow she thinks she has some kind of absolute moral authority to call other mothers’ sons murderers.
That’s her with Matthis. He burned the flag while she shouted “This is what we think of this country”. In my opinion, she’s just waiting for someone to punch her in the throat so she can play a victim on a whole new level.
The one time she summoned the courage to come to TAH, she threatened that her son would set us straight – we’re still waiting, Elaine.
Someone sent me this link yesterday, and if you are still undecided about how Matthis (IVAW Board member and Election Committee Chair) makes you feel, this video will definitely push you over the fence;
The video is from last year when he was discharged from the military at an administrative board and given a general discharge under honorable conditions for refusing his IRR recall.
He’s jubilant as he comes out of the board. What he doesn’t tell the journalists is that he got the absolute worst discharge the board could give him – he would have gotten the same discharge if he hadn’t showed up at the hearing. Matthis acts like it’s some big victory, but the board screwed him to the wall. And, oh, despite the fact that he says he gets to keep his benefits, that’s not true. I have been in contact with Veterans Affairs Departmen’s Office of the Inspector General who is working on his case.
He tells the interviewer that he suffered for his military benefits, when the interviewer asks him how he suffered when he’s never been to the war, he tells the journalist “That’s really unfair”. The interviewer really isn’t sympathetic to Matthis. It’s no wonder I haven’t seen this video before. When he can’t stick to his talking points, Matthis gets really flustered.
The video is really satisfying.
A few people have come on this blog and told us what Matthis was like during his service in the Army and after. Now, for the first time, we read about his pre-Army days – and the back story is not really that surprising. Matthis has changed his bio to to include this little fairy tale;
Matthis was impressed into the U.S. Army at age 18 during a period of homelessness in Alabama.
Well it turns that it’s not exactly true. He made a series of bad choices in his young life that left the Army as his own option according to his father who sent me the following email;
Matthis was called to the Lee County Justice Center (Alabama) by his juvenile probation officer after his father reported he had discovered his son was selling mushrooms (the drug kind) in a playground next to the local elementary school. The father met with and invited the local army recruiter, located his son, who was staying in a tent in an older lady’s backyard, and transported him to the Lee County Justice Center for a meeting with his probation officer, his father and the army recruiter. Due to Matthis’ not insignificant juvenile history involving repeated drug and theft incidents Matthis’ father made it clear that Matthis had a choice of joining the army or his father would file a complaint with the Opelika Police Department and testify against him. Matthis probation officer made it clear that being found guilty of selling a controlled substance in such close proximity to an elementary school, combined with his juvenile history would likely result in a minimum 5-year sentence in the State Penitentairy as an adult convict. In the presence of his Juvenile Probation Officer Matthis then turned to the army recruiter and said, “It looks like I am joining the team”, to which the army recruiter asked, “So what do you like to do, besides drugs?”
So, anyway off Matthis went to the Army and he actually fared pretty well – Sergeant in five years, made it through 5-jump-chump school, assignments to Japan and Germany, honorable discharge. And then the Army called him back for a few months of his IRR obligation and he decided that he didn’t want to cut his hair again and declared his intention to ignore the order and he made a big scene. His father visited him on Fathers’ Day 2008 when Matthis was “hiding out” in the DC IVAW treehouse. While they were down on the National Mall touring DC, Matthis threatened his father;
…he threatened to reveal the details of how I pushed him into the army. The discussion ended abruptly when my response was “the truth was fine with me, go right ahead.” He looked perplexed…
Oh, and that whole anti-war thing? For Matthis, it’s situational and subject to revision;
I asked him earlier that day why he was doing this and he told me he felt the war in Iraq was illegal. I asked him what if the army would be willing to commit to send you to Afghanistan instead. He told me he would not hesitate to go, that war was sanctioned by the U.N. and was legal. He was very clear about that.
That’s funny because in April 2009, he apologized for his minuscule part in the occupation of Afghanistan to Afghanistan peace activist Malalai Joya when he said “[I]n 2005, for a brief time, I helped occupy Malalai’s country, and it was wrong.”
The only thing Matthis occupied in Afghanistan was the corner booth at the Baskin Robbins on Bagram airbase – if he even went at all. Thus far, I haven’t seen any evidence that he even went to Afghanistan.
Oh, and the part about being homeless, well, it seems his father asked him what he was going to do after high school and he told his father he was going to “hang out” and his father told that’s not an option, that he had ten days to decide what he was going to do with his life. At the end of the ten days, Dr. Chiroux put Matthis’ stuff in a storage locker. Matthis pitched a tent in a friend’s yard and sold drugs at a playground near an elementary school. That’s homeless to Matthis.
The only reason he was homeless is because he’d burned bridge after bridge behind him until he had no choices except the militar – and he was damned lucky they took him. So he repays the Army for giving him an opportunity to straighten his life out (and paying for college) by thumbing his nose at them when they needed him during the Surge. So he treated the Army like he treats everyone else in his life.
And, oh, those schools that let him talk to their kids, I wonder how they’d like to know that he sold drugs at a playground next to an elementary school. Knowing schools these days, they’d probably make him a guidance counselor.
So if you didn’t already know the person in the picture above, would you think he’s an iraq veteran? It’s Matthis, by the way, at the UXO concert. Photo is courtesy of Bill Perry. He doesn’t act like the crowning glory of his military career was occupying the corner booth at Baskin-Robbins on Bagram Airbase for six days.
Well, anyway, the following exchange took place on Facebook between all of the great thinkers of IVAW past and present. carl Webb, Dahlia Wasfi, Carl Webb and Bobby Whittenberg. The discussion of course was over whether they should support killing US soldiers to satisfy their own bloodlust for the cause.
The discussion begins with Matthis criticizing some soldier on Facebook for wishing some diplomatic solution hadn’t been arrived at in some corner of the war so hat soldier could resolve the problem with force. Of course, matthis and Branum jump on it as an example of the evils of the American fighting man. Carl Webb on the other hand, whines that he was uninvited from the IVAW convention because of racism, to which Dahlia Wasfi, race pimp that she is, agrees. Hart Viges, to his credit, explains to Carl, once again, that it was his extremist views that got him kicked out of IVAW. And that’s where we pick up the conversation;
See Bobby Whittenberg expressing the same extremist and violent views that Carl Webb espoused last year? Yeah, that’s the guy that I dressed down (ex-) Army Sergeant for convincing him to stay in IVAW when he threatened to quit because they weren’t extreme enough for his taste.
The only reason I’ve gone easy on Whittenberg is because he did earn a Purple Heart and because there is obviously something wrong with him (and no one in IVAW or VFP is telling him he needs help) and he’s being used by the rat fucks in Austin to play to the radical crowd there. The best thing IVAW could do for Bobby is cut him loose and get him some help – but the best thing for IVAW is to keep putting him in the front lines to act like he’s insane for the cameras – which they will continue to do until someone gets hurt.
I have screen shots of the rest of the conversation, I just didn’t feel like uploading them all, but I will if a participant wants to dispute the conversation.