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

Category: Veterans Issues

  • How hungry do you have to be to pay to eat a meal with Michael Moore?

    Ya know there are hundreds of ways to give money that would help the troops, whether you want to help them live in a house made to the specifications which allow them to live a normal life in their own home, or buy laptops that keep them connected to the world despite their injuries. Now, how much money would you figure that Michael Moore spends on Ho-Hos in a week? Which organization would you figure is the last organization on Earth you’d give money if you really wanted to help injured troops?

    I’ll give you a clue – it’s an organization that is light on Iraq veterans, but the first two words in it’s name is Iraq Veterans. But guess which organization reaps the benefit of a raffled meal with Michael Moore;

    Would you like to have dinner with me? It would be just us — and up to three of your friends, if you want — and we can talk about anything…movies, politics, or whether LeBron, Bosh and Wade are going to live up to the hype. (I’m betting yes.)

    If you’re interested, just go here and make a bid. The money from the winner will go to Operation Recovery, a project of Iraq Veterans Against the War.

    I’m participating in this auction because the IVAW is, quite simply, one of the most important organizations in our country.

    Of course, we don’t expect Michael Moore to give his own money to any organization that benefits the troops, Hollywood just doesn’t work like that. But of all of the organizations that actually benefit troops, Moore picks the least likely to do anything for anybody except them-stupid-selves.

    IVAW also participates in the nationwide Truth in Recruiting campaign, so that young people can make informed decisions about joining the military. And they organized the 2008 Winter Soldier conference, at which veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan told the unvarnished truth about what we’re doing in our wars — and what our wars are doing to our vets.

    We all owe every member of IVAW a debt of thanks. And there’s no better way to help pay that debt than to support Operation Recovery, which is a new campaign to stop the military from sending already-traumatized veterans back into combat zones.

    They’d benefit the country more if IVAW had a “Truth in Michael Moore’s documentaries” campaign so that people can make informed decisions about entering theaters. Of course, as TSO and I proved when we attended the 2008 Winter Soldier hearings, IVAW would have trouble recognizing much truth in…well, anything.

    Some dimwit has bid the meal up to $7250 (the next bid will be $7750) at this writing. It’s gone up a bid in the half hour it took me to write this.

    I had a few jokes to toss in this about the fear of sitting at a dining table with Michael Moore and the potential for choosing fork stabbings or starvation, but I’ll leave those for you guys. The jokes almost write themselves.

  • Veterans offer donations, support for Westboro stalker

    You probably remember that I wrote about Ryan Newell a few days ago when he was arrested for stalking the Westboro fags. Veterans across the country and locally are supporting Newell according to the Wichita Eagle;

    Michael O’Connell, a Vietnam veteran from New Jersey, said he will fly out to Kansas to help Ryan Newell, 26, if necessary.

    O’Connell said he was 19 when he went to Vietnam and didn’t get help for emotional problems until 40 years later.

    “We were shut down for many, many years,” O’Connell said Friday.

    Of course, the Westboro fags released their own press offering;

    Westboro spokeswoman Shirley Phelps-Roper said she expects Newell to be treated as a hero.

    The church issued a news release Thursday that said anyone “who pays a dime for (Newell’s) legal matters is a co-conspirator and enemy of God.”

    Gladly, I’ll be a co-conspirator.

    JustPlainJason dropped off a link to one of the many donation links which have sprung up across the net to support Newell.

  • Gates targets retiree health care

    The New York Times warns us that the Defense Secretary is coming for our health benefits…once a-fucking-gain;

    Of nearly 4.5 million military retirees and their families, about three-quarters are estimated to have access to health insurance through a civilian employer or group. But more than two million of them stay on Tricare. As the costs of private health care continue to climb, their numbers are only expected to grow.

    Now, as part of a broad offensive to cut Pentagon spending, that group is once again in the sights of Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, who is seriously considering whether to ask for Tricare fee increases in next year’s budget — and perhaps start one of the last fights of his public career.

    See, the problem with raising Tricare fees, is that it not only impacts retirees, but also active duty recruiters, active duty ROTC instructors and, the last time I checked, the whole base at Fort Drum. Since there’s no hospital on Drum, the active duty troops there (about 10,000) and their families go downtown to the Watertown Hospital…and pay co-pays for their treatment.

    And so what if retirees skip their employers’ health care plan and opt for Tricare instead. We earned it. If you were anything like I was, you knew the monthly payments were going to be shit and you planned on the free healthcare to be worth the twenty years of shit-pay, shit-hours and shit-lifestyle. We paid upfront for our “free” health care. Unfortunately, we thought the government was serious when they offered it to us, now every time a Democrat weasels his way into the White House, we have to fight for them all over again. Remember Bill Clinton threw all retirees over 65 onto Medicare and pulled your military health care?

    Just like we do without a COLA increase this year, we’re also going to get another broken promise of health care. Gates only has a year left in his office, so guess how soon he can inflict this abomination on us?

  • DVA warning

    ToothlessDawg sends us a copy of a letter he got from the Department of Veterans’ Affairs General Councils Office lifted from Patriots for America;

    WARNING TO VETERANS

    Forwarded by Kevin Secor, VSO Liaison, Office of the Secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs.

    An organization called Veterans Affairs Services (VAS) is providing benefit and general information on VA and gathering personal information on veterans.

    This organization is not affiliated with VA in any way.

    VAS may be gaining access to military personnel through their close resemblance to the VA name and seal. Our Legal Counsel has requested that we coordinate with DoD to inform military installations, particularly mobilization sites, of this group and their lack of affiliation or endorsement by VA to provide any services.

    In addition, GC requests that if you have any examples of VAS acts that violate chapter 59 of Title 38 United States Code, such as VAS employees assisting veterans in the preparation and presentation of claims for benefits, please pass any additional information to Mr.Daugherty at the address below.

    Michael G. Daugherty
    Staff Attorney
    Department of Veterans Affairs
    Office of General Counsel (022G2)

    I’m not aware of any evidence that VAS is involved in anything sneaky or underhanded, but forewarned is forearmed. Even though their website clearly states that they are not affiliated with the government, some people people may mistake them for the DVA.

  • Booth burned at Vietnam Memorial

    If you’ve been to the Vietnam Memorial, you probably remember the kiosk that sold Vietnam war era memorablia between the Wall and the Lincoln Monument. According to the Washington Examiner, it caught fire yesterday and burned to the ground;

    Walt Sides, a founder of veterans group Rolling Thunder, which operated and staffed the kiosk around the clock, says the organization plans to rebuild. The booth had been on the premises for more than 20 years.

    Rolling Thunder will have to go through the permitting process again and show that it has eliminated whatever issue caused the fire “so that what happened Monday night never happens again,” U.S. Park Service spokesman Bill Line said Tuesday.

    It looks like a propane space heater used by the person operating the booth caused the fire.

  • Veteran barred from school for paper on killing

    We’ve grown accustomed to the stories about elementary-schoolers suspended from school for bringing to class little plastic army men and tiny toy guns or drawing tanks and planes. VTWoody sends us a link to an article about a Baltimore college student who has been banned from his campus until he seeks professional treatment for writing about his experiences in combat;

    So [Charles] Whittington, an Iraq veteran, submitted an essay on the allure of combat for his English class at the Community College of Baltimore County in Catonsville. He called war a drug and wrote that killing “is something that I do not just want but something I really need so I can feel like myself.”

    Whittington’s instructor gave him an A and suggested that he seek publication for the piece. The essay appeared in the Oct. 26 edition of the campus newspaper.

    Two weeks later, the former infantryman was called to a meeting with high-ranking college officials, who told him he would be barred from campus until he obtained a psychological evaluation. “We all believe in freedom of speech, but we have to really be cautious in this post- Virginia Tech world,” says college spokesman Hope Davis, referring to the 2007 massacre of 32 people by a student gunman.

    Post VA-Tech? Really? Was Seung-Hui Cho a veteran who relived his experiences in combat in his mind? A veteran who knew that killing is no solution to personal problems? A man trained to keep his finger off the trigger until he needed bullets?

    But Whittington, 24, says that he has his violent impulses under control with the help of counseling and medication and that the college is unfairly keeping him from moving forward with his life.

    “Right now, that’s all I have left,” he says of his classes.

    The dispute speaks to the apprehension that steers college officials as they try to prevent campus violence. But it also illustrates a common dilemma for veterans, who have endured traumas their peers can barely fathom and who often feel misunderstood when they try to discuss their experiences.

    Yeah, that’s not preventing campus violence. That’s proof that the gap between Americans and those who serve is widening.

    Would the college ban violent rap music? Would they ban violent Islamic professors? Would they ban Black Panthers?

    It’s just easier to ban veterans because we make less noise and aren’t a real threat anyway. And everyone feels safer because the college acts like it’s doing something – even if it’s the wrong thing. Like the TSA.

    Update here.

  • Rag Blog; a memorial to the fallen of the Global War on Terror is a waste of money.

    There were many reasons that I stopped reading the Rag Blog, this is one of them.

    GWOT LOVE

    By Marc Estrin / The Rag Blog / November 14, 2010

    BURLINGTON, Vermont — I hear on the news this Veterans Day that our thankfully exiting governor — cynically known as Governor Scissorhands for all his ribbon cutting — will be dedicating a new memorial to our Vermont dead in Iraq and Afghanistan.

    The “Vermont Global War on Terror Memorial,” planned and funded by the families of “Vermont’s 36 Fallen Global War on Terror Heroes” to the tune of $350,000, is aimed at “marking both the sacrifice of those who served and the heartbreak of the loved ones left behind.”

    A memorial to oneself?

    Yea I mean spending money on something that honors those who have giving everything when you cannot even be bothered to give a damn. But here are a few things from people that do.

    America paused to honor its veterans Thursday. And Vermonters gave a special tribute to its fallen heroes with the unveiling of a new memorial.

    From all across Vermont they came, flooding the entrance to the Randolph Veteran’s Cemetery. They came to honor the 40 Vermonters who have given their lives in the global war on terror.

    Paula Chapin came for her husband. Master Sgt. Chris Chapin was killed in Iraq in 2005.

    “It’s quite beautiful,” Paula Chapin said. “It’s a little overwhelming.”

    Gregory Murano came for his friend and fellow Wilmington Police Officer. Lt. Mark Dooley was also killed in Iraq in 2005.

    “It’s important that we take time to remember all those who have stood up for our country and fought for our country and for what we represent,” Murano said.

    But of course the fringe see it otherwise.

    It is hard to know where to begin reacting to all this. I cringe at the language — bathetic, maudlin, soupy, cloying, schmaltzy, large-P Patriotic — but the sentiments inscribed in this language are more problematical still.

    A guy stopped by at our peace vigil last night and said, “My nephew got back from Iraq and blew his brains out. He couldn’t deal with the stuff he had done — killing civilians and all that.”

    Great huh? I mean it going for broke on those stereotypes. I mean trying to label all Vets as crazy war criminals that are just a trigger pull from committing suicide. Not to mention trying desecrate the dedication of a memorial to the fallen on Veterans Day. Oh and the fact that the person saying this is namless, and impossible to track. Kinda like the story at McDonald’ that a mystery “Danny” that the Rag Blog was trying to push.

    If there was any doubt about this I leave you with this last quote.

    In any case, the language of the Vermont Global War On Terror Memorial is tired, empty, and ever less to any point. It perpetuates a sentimental, obscuring cloud-of-unknowing over the realities we currently face and must radically change.

    ADDED Yea it seems that the guy what was voted off of the Rag Blog island for his behavior has this little gem to add.

    richard jehn said…

    That is a tired (and false) argument. Sadly, the right wing doesn’t care about facts.

    The US is a hegemonic, invasive nation. If all we ever did was defend our own soil, rather than act as the world’s cop, what you say might have some truth to it.

    ADDEDx2 Speaking of not caring about the facts by Dennis Cunningham

    They are not defending our freedoms (such as they are). they are engaged in a gigantic war crime and crime against humanity, “the paramount international crime” under the Nuremburg Laws, and all the people they kill are murder victims. our country has no business putting armies and fighting wars all over the Earth; and you know it’s only for the sake of those who get rich from the way it’s done.

    Eighteen veterans a day commit suicide, why do you think? they cant forget what they did and saw being done to innocent people;     they know it’s all wrong, and their lives were ruined by it; better to end them.

    Our country is sliding down a moral chute into a sewer of barbarism, destitution and repression. Public indifference to torture and war crimes, and indulgence of the burgeoning police state, prepares the way. If you cant yet ‘throw your body on the gears, at least get off the fence…

  • But we are suppose to be the horrible ones.

    So meanwhile while our image is being dragged through the mud by the people like Bobby Whittenberg while these are issues like this one going on in Mexico.

    Soldiers are hunting a 12-year-old suspected drug gang hitman accused of helping wage a gruesome turf war in central Mexico, a state prosecutor and Mexican media said on Friday.

    Yea, so in regards to us being accused of using our youth to comment horrible acts in war and that is the “obvious” reason that the world hates it. But in the mean time we have a 12 year old kid killing people for hire.

    The boy, known only as “El Ponchis,” is believed to be working for the South Pacific cartel in Morelos state just outside Mexico City and is one of a group of youths who have already committed “terrible acts,” Morelos State Prosecutor Pedro Luis Benitez told local radio.

    “These minors are still not fully developed and so it is easy to influence them, to give them a gun, pretending it is plastic, that it is a game,” Benitez said.

    Benitez did not name the boy or give more details but when asked directly about the teenage hitmen he said: “They’re persuaded to carry out terrible acts; they don’t realize what they are doing,” he added.

    Oh and never mind about doing wonders for the area.

    More than 31,000 people have been killed since Calderon launched his cartel crackdown four years ago, alarming many Mexicans and some foreign investors who are freezing investment in the country just as it is recovering from recession.

    So I imagine that good old Bobby and friends will be on this to giving full coverage, right?

    Also here is a link that is in Spanish if anyone can read it.