Category: Veterans Issues

Spencer Ackerman at the Danger Room writes about a New Jersey branch of the Homeland Security Department study which discovered what we’ve all known – they could have paid me the money they spent and I could have told them – it ain’t veterans;

This is what a mass killer looks like, according to a Department of Homeland Security analysis. He works alone. He uses a semi-automatic handgun. He’s a he. And he probably didn’t serve in the U.S. military.

Thirteen out of the 29 observed cases “occurred at the workplace and were conducted by either a former employee or relative of an employee,” the November report finds. His “weapon of choice” is a semiautomatic handgun, rather than the rifles that garnered so much attention after Newtown. The infamous Columbine school slaying of 1999 is the only case in which killers worked in teams: they’re almost always solo acts — and one-off affairs. In every single one of them, the killer was male, between the age of 17 and 49.

They also don’t have military training. Veterans are justifiably angered by the Hollywood-driven meme of the unhinged vet who takes out his battlefield stress on his fellow Americans. (Thanks, Rambo.) In only four of the 29 cases did the shooter have any affiliation with the U.S. military, either active or prior at the time of the slaying, and the fusion center doesn’t mention any wartime experience of the killers. Yet the Army still feels the need to email reporters after each shooting to explain that the killer never served.

But, the media can’t help itself – being in the military, well, that explains it all and justifies their hatred and mistrust of folks who carry loaded weapons for a living. And then, there are phonies out there who tell wild-ass stories about their fake experiences in combat. And if the troops would pee on the corpses of their victims, what else do they do?

Then, you’ve got dinguses in the IVAW who tell about the time they played soccer with the disembodied heads of insurgents for fun. And the Joseph Cryers of the world who are secret squirrel killers in wars no one ever heard of.

Like that guy who is holding a child hostage in Arkansas Alabama today, 65-year-old Jimmy Lee Dykes; SPLC couldn’t wait to announce on their “Hate Watch” blog that he’s a Vietnam veteran and “anti-government”. In my opinion, there can’t be too many “pro-government” people left in the country looking at all of it’s recent failures, but gotta perpetuate the crazed vet meme. Because it explains to all of the people who have never spent a day in uniform how such a thing could happen. Because vets are all crazy.

But I don’t see Homeland Security making a big deal out of this report like the one they did a few years ago when they were warning police departments about us with no real evidence.

Brendan Marrocco lost both of his arms and both of his legs in Afghanistan in April, 2009. And now, through the miracle of the magic hands that practice at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, he had arms transplanted last month, according to the Washington Post;

The surgery was done by a special team of transplant experts headed by W.P. Andrew Lee, professor and chairman of the department of plastic and reconstructive surgery at the hospital.

It was the first limb transplant by his newly established group at Hopkins, the hospital says.

“He’s doing well,” Marrocco’s father, Alex, said Monday. “Doing well. It’s been a little over a month now.”

The hospital said it would detail the operation at a news briefing Tuesday.

Lee, in an interview, said there have been about 80 arms transplanted in about 60 patients so far around the world.

The times in which we live….

Thanks to Chief Tango for the link.

Brandon sends us a link from the Marine Corps Times about two former Marines, Stephen E. Harkness, 22, and Jeffrey W. Allen, 21 who were on a mission to rid the world of scumbags, but I think they took their plan a couple of steps too far;

“Detectives were led to an undisclosed location in Verona… where they discovered the torso and some dismembered body parts of a white man wrapped and discarded in a field,” the sheriff’s department said in a news release. Detectives “also learned the missing body parts had supposedly been disposed of in a Dumpster in Florence.” Investigators also combed a landfill in Butler, Ky.

Investigators on Wednesday determined the victim was Daniel Delfin, a 19-year-old from Walton, Ky…authorities suspected Delfin was a heroin dealer.

Harkness spent less than three years in the Marines and had a deployment to Afghanistan for a month and 22 days and was discharged as a private first class in a water support unit. Allen spent a little more than a year in the Marines and didn’t deploy, serving as a light armored vehicle crewman. So I guess no one can blame this one on PTS, because it doesn’t seem like they saw much more than the smoking area at the PX and certainly, they didn’t see the elephant.

I’m sure you missed it, but here was our chat about Scott Compton, the teacher who stomped on the flag in his classroom;

Just trying to reach an audience I wouldn’t ordinarily reach, to say the least.

Editor’s Note: I noticed that I can’t watch the video on my phone so here’s the link. Maybe you’ll have better luck there.