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

Category: Usual Suspects

  • More (good) bad news for IVAW

    Aaron Glantz is a Berkely grad who claims to be a journalist. He co-founded Pacifica Radio and he has written two books.

    When the war against terror began, he decided he’d become a propagandist focused on returning veterans. One book was entitled “How America Lost Iraq”. It was wildly popular for about a minute. The last time I looked for the book, it was selling for a penney on Amazon;

    Well, he went on to write “Winter Soldier; Iraq and Afghanistan” about IVAW members and their stories of the war. TSO reviewed some the book back in January. It’s not in Amazon’s bargain bin yet, but it’s headed there.

    One of the reasons it’s such a poor seller, aside from the ridiculous stories in it, is because Glantz excluded many of the stories that were half-way true. The reason he did that was for strictly political reasons. Some of the IVAW members actually think they’re doing the whole IVAW thing for their country – those aren’t the people Glantz included in the book.

    I get to talk to a few IVAW members in the course of my business and they tell me stuff – one told me that he was upset that Glantz left him right of the book after all this particular member had done for IVAW. In fact, he wasn’t allowed to partake in the bounty of speaking tours and book royalties and he was bitter about it. He was also really pissed off that moocher Matthis Chiroux, who isn’t an Iraq or Afghanistan veteran, was draining the coffers of IVAW while people who needed the money and were real Iraq or Afghanistan veterans were hung out to dry – in some cases they were denied help in securing their earned benefits from the VA by their IVAW/VFP/VVAW mentors.

    Glantz had a litmus test for including stories in his book – a political litmus test. He included only IVAW members who were pledged to the International Socialist Organization – like in the email that TSO published yesterday.

    Well, let’s look at how that’s paying off for Glantz;

    Well, no one ever accused socialists and communists of have much business sense, I suppose.

  • The airport to No Where

    1stCavRVN11b sends us this article about the John Murtha-Johnstown-Cambria County Airport from the Washington Post;

    Inside the terminal on a recent weekday, four passengers lined up to board a flight, outnumbered by seven security staff members and supervisors, all suited up in gloves and uniforms to screen six pieces of luggage. For three hours that day, no commercial or private planes took off or landed. Three commercial flights leave the airport on weekdays, all bound for Dulles International Airport.

    The key to the airport’s gleaming facilities — and, indeed, its continued existence — is $200 million in federal funds in the past decade and the powerful patron who steered most of that money here. Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.) is credited with securing at least $150 million for the airport. It was among the first in the country to win funding from this year’s stimulus package: $800,000 to repave a backup runway.

    Sweet work if you can get it, I suppose.

    Murtha spokesman Matt Mazonkey defended the public spending and said it is unfair to weigh the airport’s low volume of passengers against the federal dollars invested in the facility. He noted that several regional airports are confronting the same problem.

    “Would we like to have additional commercial flights and business? Absolutely. But you don’t attract additional business without having the infrastructure in place to do so,” Mazonkey said.

    Yeah, well, US taxpayers have been paying for the airport to no where for ten years. When can we expect to start seeing more passengers than employees? Well according to the WaPo article, not any time soon. In fact, Murtha just scored 800 grand to repave a back runway at the airport. I’m sure it needs a repaving with the voluminous traffic that uses it.

    Murtha wants to cut bonuses to the troops and cut defense spending, but these boondoggles of his don’t get any where near the budget axe.

  • Terrorist Chavez meets the black ignoramus

    The ignoramus meets the terrorist
    The ignoramus meets the terrorist

    Look at these two buddies clasping hands as if they’re old friends. I guess Obama forgot already that Hugo called him an ignoramus and refers to him as “the black man”, something that would probably get me a Secret Service visit if I said it. It was less than a month ago that Chavez called President Obama an ignoramus for mentioning that Chavez exports terrorism;


    That’s how we treat tin pot dictators these days, though. It’s been proven that this sort of treatment never comes back to bite us in the ass, hasn’t it? Look at the time we helped Saddam…oh, never mind. And when we gave the Canal to Panama…forget I said that. OK, all the help we supplied Stalin during WWII…oh, wait. Well, we helped the Afghans boot the Soviets…damn. Hmmm, well there must be an incident that proves stroking our enemy paid off. Isn’t there?
    Well, I’m sure Chavez will rethink his support of regional terrorist groups after that dap with Obama. If he doesn’t, Obama can do what seems to be the popular solution in Latin America among it’s leaders these days; go on a hunger strike like Chavez’ acolyte Evo Morales, the cocaine farmer turned President of Bolivia;

    Or Obama could hold his breath and stomp his feet – Chavez understands that, too.

    I guess we’ve gone from “You’re either with or you’re with the terrorists” to “You’re either with us or whatever.”

  • The unprotected class (Updated)

    When TSO wrote that post the other day about the Department of Homeland Security’s report on “right-wing extremists” I was so pissed I couldn’t see straight. And before TSO identified the “prominent civil rights organization“, I knew which it’d be. But, even the public outcry from veteran groups can’t end this despicable smear. One prominent blogger from the Right whom I respect deeply, and won’t name, whisked the report away under his electronic rug and advised us to ignore it because it didn’t say what we thought it said.

    I started to pen a note to him to explain that he was wrong this time, but I didn’t want to see what that note would have turned into if I’d hit the “send” button. So I’ll just do it here where I have control of the context.
    (more…)

  • IVAW’s Chiroux apologizes for occupying Afghanistan

    This is some silly shit right here. Mathis Chiroux, the IVAW’s biggest drama queen liar who once stopped at an airbase in Afghanistan for six days apologized to Afghan peace activist Malalai Joya for occupying Afghanistan;

    [I]n 2005, for a brief time, I helped occupy Malalai’s country, and it was wrong. It was my mistake. I should not have been there. I should not have been supporting this oppression of her people. Today I want to look Malalai in the eye, and I want to tell you, Malalai, how sorry I am for the violence that my Army has done to your people, to your country. I want to apologize to you for the role that I played in it. I was wrong, and I will show you that my country and the rest of the world can come to a place where they can admit wrong, apologize, and offer some sort of reconciliation.

    Six days. I once spent six days occupying a table at the Ovalo Bar in Panama on a drunk. Maybe Chiroux would like to show us on his Form 2-1 where his “occupation” was recorded by the Army;

    Or show us his campaign medal for his “occupation” in his records;

    Further down, he plants the seed for his future PTSD claims;

    I was really happy to be in Japan and Germany, but felt the U.S. had no business in either place. I was sent to other places, Italy, the Philippines, and Afghanistan, for example to write an article about how great the U.S. military is to provide medical care to Rumanian NATO soldiers wounded in Afghanistan. On these assignments, I had to carry a weapon: I don’t want to think about how many women and children it may have inadvertently been pointed at. As an Army journalist it was my job to collect and filter service member’s stories. I heard many stomach-churning testimonies of the horrors and crimes taking place in Iraq. For fear of retaliation from the military, I failed to report these crimes. Now I feel I struggle with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), in part because of deep feelings of guilt that I used my art to further what I now consider to be a racist, imperialist and ultimately genocidal campaign.

    Yeah, we don’t belong in Japan and Germany – that’s why those two countries are constantly fighting for us to stay there. And now he’s going to claim he got PTSD FROM LISTENING TO STORIES! Yeah, I got PTSD from watching The Longest Day AND reading the book. That’s more ridiculous than the clown, Zach Maddox who got PTSD from pulling guard duty on 8th and Eye Street barracks in DC protecting it from pizza delivery guys who looked like Osama bin Laden.

    In related Chiroux news, he posted a press release on his blog today in the run up to yet another hearing date for his discharge reclassification. As we’ve come to expect from this prima donna, he thinks he’s going to turn an Army Administrative hearing into a three ring circus;

    “I go now to St. Louis to honor my promises and convictions,” said Chiroux. “Obama or No-Bama, the military must cease prosecuting Soldiers of conscience, and we will demonstrate to them why.”

    Soldiers of conscience, indeed. He’s a crybaby sissy who didn’t want to have his lifestyle disrupted despite his commitment to his country. Well, the people who know him say it best;

    Chiroux’s true character emerged after his orders to deploy. Prior to this moment, he had no inclination to rant against his “illegal war.” After all, it is easy to take from the government as long as you’re not serving it. Upon his realization that time was limited, Chiroux took a trip back to Germany to visit an ex-girlfriend. This is were the story gets interesting.. He was heard stating that he would run away to either Europe, essentially Spain, or to Canada as a means of avoiding the war. This was stated by him in tears of fear, not of any sense of illegality of mission at hand.

    If I may paraphrase it, he’s a big smelly pussy who threatens women, drains their checking accounts and casts them aside. And a dork.

  • Another non-issue facing the military…again

    When the gay community started poking their nose into the military’s traditions and regulations again, I almost expected this snakes nest to spill forth once again. It seems that Sikhs are trying to keep their turbans, long hair and beards. I remember when the Army last took up the issue during the years that we faced the Soviets over the Iron Curtain – the Army announced that Sikhs could serve but they’d have to give up their religious accouterments. Many left the service when their time was up.

    Now the Stars and Stripes reports that the battle has begun again;

    On Tuesday, the Sikh Coalition filed a formal complaint with the inspectors general of the Army and the Department of Defense on behalf of Kalsi and 2nd Lt. Tejdeep Singh Rattan, a Reservist since 2006. The group was formed after two Sikhs were attacked in Queens, N.Y., on the night of 9/11 as reprisals for the attack.

    For Kalsi, whose family came to the U.S. in 1978, the issue is frustrating and confusing. He is the fourth generation to serve in allied militaries. His father and grandfather were both Indian Air Force veterans. His great-grandfather served in the British army.

    “I can’t understand why my Army would keep me from serving,” Kalsi said.

    Well, Kalsi, that’s because you haven’t been listening to LTC Nathan Banks (TSO and I giggle like school girls every time LTC Banks makes a public pronouncement);

    “The Army places a high value on the rights of soldiers to observe their respective religious faiths; however, the Army does not accommodate the exceptions for personal grooming standards for religious reasons,” said Army spokesman Lt. Col. Nathan Banks.

    The restriction forces soldiers to meet “health, safety and mission requirements,” Banks said, and facial hair prevents an airtight seal on gas masks.

    See, that “airtight seal” line referring to protective masks, Kalsi? That’s key in this part of the discussion;

    But lawyers representing the soldiers say the policy poses a “burden on their exercise of religion” under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993….

    Not like inhaling some nice blister agent through the unsealed mask will burden their exercise of religion, pal. Sure it hasn’t happened in 90 years or so, but there’s always the first time. And it only takes that one time.

    Now, I mentioned gays in the first line and I know someone out there is panting just waiting for me to finish this so they can jump on me for comparing religious beliefs to sexual behavior. I’ll explain myself – both groups claim that they want to serve, but only under their conditions and any concessions to the military are out of the question. The military has made it possible for both groups to serve if they give up something but they’re unwilling to concede any thing. So it just becomes an employment opportunity for lawyers.

    I’m not demeaning Sikhs I’m just pointing out that every one sacrifices something to be in the military, some more than others. If it’s so damn important for you to serve your country, make the common sense choice – and stop encouraging law schools to spit out cutthroat predators.

    Yeah, I know…I suck.

  • Hippies; put the troops in harm’s way, dammit!

    Someone sent me this article from the Atlantic Free Press in which a stupid hippie tells us about how he became anti-war in the 60s because the media published pictures of the horrors of war. He laments the fact that media doesn’t continue to feed his perverse need for gory photos.

    A key reason my—and millions of other Americans’ — eyes were opened to what the US was up to in Indochina was that the media at that time, at least by 1967, had begun to show Americans the reality of that war. I didn’t have to look to hard to find the photos of napalm victims, or to read about the true nature of the weapons that our forces were using.

    Today, while the internet makes it possible to find similar information about the conflicts in the world in which the US is participating, either as primary combatant or as the chief provider of arms, as in Gaza, one actually has to make a concerted effort to look for them. The corporate media which provide the information that most Americans simply receive passively on the evening news or at breakfast over coffee carefully avoid showing us most of the graphic horror inflicted by our military machine.

    Oh, goodness, he has to make a “concerted effort” – poor child. How can the media do this to a poor hippie – making him actually do something besides smoke pot and scratch his ample ass. But, see, it’s the media’s fault this war has continued – it couldn’t be because we learned our lesson in the 60s that we have to fight our wars to a successful conclusion, could it? Naw. Couldn’t be.

    We may read about wedding parties that are bombed by American forces—something that has happened with some frequency in both Iraq and Afghanistan — where the death toll is tallied in dozens, but we are, as a rule, not provided with photos that would likely show bodies torn apart by anti-personnel bombs—a favored weapon for such attacks on groups of supposed enemy “fighters.” (A giveaway that such weapons are being used is a typically high death count with only a few wounded.)

    Now, the poor thing is a bomb damage assessment expert – even though he successfully avoided the draft when it was his turn to serve. But, he tells us that we’re all a bunch of morons because we need graphic depictions of deaths before we understand that war kills people.

    We ain’t not smart enough to cipher that from them scribble thingies on that there paper stuff – we needs pitchers. Maybe them hippie fellers could buy us some crayons and them books that we kin color in, too.

    Of course, he’s one of those goofy elitists who claims the scales fell from his pro-war eyes the minute he went to college. Well, anyway, this goofball thinks we send soldiers into the fight instead of using drone aircraft;

    Meanwhile, the killing of civilians in Afghanistan and Pakistan is only likely to increase with the expanding use of Predator drone aircraft which kill from the sky, piloted by pilots based in control trailers in remote places like Nevada.

    To bolster his point he quotes John Grant, the stupid hippie Hun that butts heads with our buddy Skye and her Sheepdog friends in West Chseter, PA. Grant is the president of the local Geezers for Peace chapter;

    Is this who we want to be as citizens of the world, essentially hiding away in our comfy homes afraid of engaging with the world except through remotely piloted drones or controlled visits to Disney World? Considering the long history of warfare, why is this kind of warfare not cowardly? Are drones the answer to not wanting our young men and women brought home in aluminum boxes?

    So who do you want to be, John? The guy who is calling for more of our troops to come home in aluminum boxes so you can feel better about yourself?

    ADDED: Some guy named Thus Spake Ortner at some other blog I’ve heard of from time-to-time wrote about Dave Lindorff, the author of this nimroddery, here and here.

  • First test?

    Yesterday, the Washington Post ran this article by the Associated Press about how President Obama has passed his “first national security test” ;

    Yeah, he passed the test in the sense that he didn’t interfere with the same orders that every cop on the street is given before they start their beat. In the same issue of the Post, they ran this AP article; Undeterred Somali pirates hijack 3 more ships. So what national security goal has been accomplished beyond the life of a single man?

    The Wall Street Journal announces this morning that Pakistan created a haven for extremist jihadists in Swat and they seem to be streaming in and creating training bases.

    President Asif Ali Zardari effectively ratified the government’s deal with the Taliban Monday by signing a bill that imposes Islamic law in Swat, a key plank of the accord, hours after legislators overwhelmingly approved a resolution urging it. Pakistani officials have touted the deal, reached in February, as a way to restore peaceful order in the bloodied region — which lies just a few hours’ drive from the capital — and halt the Taliban’s advance.

    Yet a visit to the Taliban-controlled valley here found mounting evidence that the deal already is strengthening the militants as a base for war. U.S. officials contend the pact has given the Taliban and its allies in al Qaeda and other Islamist groups an advantage in their long-running battle against Pakistan’s military.

    The number of militants in the valley swelled in the months before the deal with the Taliban was struck, and they continue to move in, say Pakistani and U.S. officials. They now estimate there are between 6,000 and 8,000 fighters in Swat, nearly double the number at the end of last year.

    So should we say that Obama has failed that portion of his test? But that’s not all – because of the weak and inaudible response to North Korea’s launch of a missile over Japan, Kin Jong Il has found the inner strength to ignore six-party talks to disarm the Norks’ nuclear program (WSJ link);

    North Korea said Tuesday it would rev up its nuclear-weapons development program and pull out of the so-called “six party” diplomatic process where five other countries have tried since 2003 to persuade it to give up its pursuit of those weapons in exchange for economic help.

    The country announced the decision just hours after the U.N. Security Council in New York voted to issue a statement criticizing North Korea’s April 5 launch of a missile-like rocket.

    That penalty was lighter in tone and diplomatic weight than the resolutions that the Security Council passed when North Korea launched a long-range missile and tested a nuclear device in 2006. North Korea responded to those penalties by returning to the six-party bargaining table and forging a deal in early 2007 to dismantle a nuclear power plant that provided fuel for its atomic weapons.

    Oh, and to prove that we’re not Bush anymore, Obama is going to fund the Castro government by lifting remittances barriers (Washington Times);

    “We’re getting the United States out of the business of regulating the relationship between Cuban families,” said Dan Restrepo, the president’s top adviser on Latin American issues at the National Security Council.

    “The Cuban government should get itself out of the way and allow Cuban families to support Cuban families. And that creates the kind of space, in our view, that is necessary to move Cuba forward to a free and democratic Cuba,” he said.

    Yeah, that’ll happen because the Cuban government has a history of leaving Cuban families to their business. Hardly. 20% of the hard currency dollars that enter Cuba will go straight to the Fidel/Raul retirement plan. Can we call that a failure? Zombie Castro “says” Obama’s new Cuba policy doesn’t go far enough.

    I’m glad that Captain Phillips is free, I’m glad Obama didn’t screw that up – but all the rest of this crap should scare the media to death – and they should say so instead of looking for nothing but positives.