Nonpartisan Veterans Organization Executive Director Jon Soltz meets with bipartisan group of Democrats/military supporters like John Murtha (who accused our Marines of murdering civilians “in cold blood.”)
Jon Soltz is a leader of the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans community and is originally from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. From May to September 2003, Soltz served as a Captain during Operation Iraqi Freedom, deploying logistics convoys with the 1st Armored Division. During 2005, Soltz was mobilized for 365 days at Fort Dix New Jersey, training soldiers for combat in Afghanistan and Iraq. He also served his country with distinction in the Kosovo Campaign as a Tank Platoon Leader between June and December 2000. Soltz is a graduate of Washington & Jefferson College with dual degree in Political Science and History. He has completed graduate work at the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public and International Affairs.
Jon Soltz has quickly become one of the most authoritative voices on veterans issues and military issues.
Remember that last sentence, we will come back to that. (more…)
TSO just called and promised two very revealing posts for Monday morning. The folks at IVAW can rest easy, it ain’t them. Nope, TSO’s target is Jon Soltz and his band of political misfits. He has assured me his posts will include Wesley Clark, Beaker, Dicksmith, Kayla Williams and the whole cast of characters at Vote Vets.
Jon Soltz has quickly become one of the most authoritative voices on veterans issues and military issues. He has been interviewed by national outlets such as the Associated Press, Washington Post, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, TIME, Newsweek, among others, and in dozens of local outlets.
They forgot to mention that he was interviewed by the Denver Post, too – in regards to the advertisement that Vote Vets bought and paid for starring Rick (Duncan) Strandlof. But, more about that on Monday.
Last night on CNN, Anderson Cooper interviewed phony soldier, IVAW member, VoteVets TV star, Richard Strandlof/Duncan. Somehow, he thinks that the good he did for veterans should outweigh his deception.
Doug Sterner from Home of Heroes (who has also visited here at TAH) is also in the video and he sums it up well – John Wayne Gacy did some good too as a clown, but it hardly outweighs his serial killings.
I don’t understand why none of these supposed news outlets won’t focus on the REAL issue here – the anti-war movement attracts an inordinate number of phonies and fakes and the anti-war types think they can just make excuses and make the whole thing go away until next time another one inevitably pops up. It’s been that way for decades – and the anti-war crowd doesn’t seem interested in vetting the messenger as long as the fake message they bring is compelling.
While I commend CNN for finally facing up to the story, they only gave Strandlof an opportunity to be a sympathetic figure by blaming his undiagnosed mental disorder and announce that he in no way profited from his deception. He may not have benefited, but he certainly cost all veterans a measure of honor and credibility.
Thanks to all of the people who reminded me in my email this morning about the interview. Especially the IVAW refugees.
In other phony soldier news, last night, the daughter of our fake general came by and somehow turned around her father’s fakery into something that I did. Apparently, I “dig up dirt”. She’s upset that her picture is posted “surounded [sic] by all this negativity” – never mind that she’s standing next to a Private First Class dressed as a general in the picture.
It seems she ought to be more upset at her father for putting her in the position of defending the indefensible. She’s asked that I remove her picture, and I’ll do it, just because she asked and out of respect for her rank and her service, but not out of fear of a lawsuit. I don’t have to be sued to get me to do the right thing. Next time ask nicely, El-Tee.
For the record, I’ve always known she’s an officer along with her brother, but I never mentioned their names or their duty stations, or their units since it was their father that’s the criminal. Her threats and demeaning language towards me won’t stop the FBI and DVA OIG investigations against her father. Nor will it stop me from busting the next phony.
Everyone’s favorite IVAW member/VoteVets blogger this year, Rick Strandlof-Duncan, is up for a breath of fresh air today according to the Denver Post;
The man now known as the fake veteran for duping politicians, veterans and advocate groups into believing he’s a wounded Iraq veteran will be released from jail Tuesday after pleading guilty to two misdemeanor traffic citations.
Judge Jonathan L. Walker sentenced Rick Strandlof to 20 days in jail with credit for time served and one year of unsupervised probation. Strandlof must also pay a $150 in court fines.
Strandlof was being held on a $1,000 misdemeanor traffic warrant since his arrest May 12.
Does this sound like contrition?
In a previous interview with 9Wants to Know, Strandlof admitted he did not always tell the truth when he fought for veterans’ rights and claimed to have served three tours of duty in Iraq.
“Always tell the truth”? How about “ever told the truth”? Even his name was a lie. He probably wasn’t even gay…well, until now.
In another Denver Post story earlier in the week, they claimed he was still being investigated by the FBI;
…while the FBI is investigating possible fraud, no charges have been filed.
That’s probably because “his heart was in the right place” to use IVAW’s Garret Reppenhagen’s words;
Besides, Duncan’s intentions seemed straightforward. He sent care packages to troops in Iraq. He stood up for homeless veterans in Colorado Springs. He advanced his anti-war politics by connecting with like-minded candidates.
He even launched his own organization, the Colorado Veterans Alliance, which he said represented 32,000 veterans on a massive mailing list — though the only visible members seemed to be a cadre of local vets.
He certainly talked the talk. Duncan mingled easily in the military milieu. And in some ways, he walked the walk.
“It seems like his heart was in the right place,” said Reppenhagen, 33. “He was a really hard worker. He did a lot of good by raising a lot of awareness, but then you find out that he’s a fraud.”
“Talked the talk”, “walked the walk”? Yeah, as long as it was anti-war gibberish, he fit right in with the rest of them. But, that’s the IVAW we’ve all come to know. And apparently the Colorado Springs justice system. Maybe there are two Americas.
Even Common Ills, the anti-war blog can add two and two;
This ain’t Hell, but you can see it from here is a right wing website and, if you click here, you will be taken to their post on Rick Duncan and see him at the top of the post wearing his Winter Soldier IVAW t-shirt. Scroll down and you will see his bio at the Iraq Veterans Against the War website. Scroll down just a bit further and you will see how they disappeared it after it turned out Rick Duncan was Rick Strandlof and not a veteran or ever a member of the military. Only members would have the ability to post to IVAW’s website. There’s your answer. He posted there and he posted that he was a member. So he’s a member.
Looking for some laughs today, I cruised over to read some of Soltz and the gang to see what they think is important. I was justly rewarded. What with a war looming with North Korea and Iran, Israel changing some of their policies in regards to Palestinians, the president in Europe, Cuban spies arrested in DC, what is our buddy Dicksmith worried about? Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell;
Well, you know, I looked at the chart from Gallup that shows a shift in US public opinion, and my first thought was “So?” Since when do we ask the general population to write military policy?
I’ll bet if we polled the general population on whether the UCMJ’s Article 15 or Captain’s Mast policy is fair, they’d probably disagree in large numbers. If we asked them if the Army should be able to punish people for the violation of the Army’s 670-1 Wear and Appearance regs, they’d probably tell us “no”.
So why should VoteVets, ostensibly a veterans organization (the word “vets” is right there in their name) even care what what civilians think? Why don’t they commission a poll of veterans and active duty soldiers instead of parroting the MoveOn line? Well, probably because the polling data wouldn’t come out like they want it.
Dicksmith continues;
As you can see, repealing Don’t Ask Don’t Tell (a discriminatory policy that has harmed unit cohesion, readiness and combat effectiveness) has broad support across every single ideological, partisan and geographic demographic with every demographic also trending toward increased support for the repeal.
I wonder where he got the information that DADT has “harmed unit cohesion, readiness and combat effectiveness”. Like everything else they write over there, it probably has anal origins. He claims there’s “broad support across every single ideological, partisan and geographic demographic” – well, except veterans and the military.
But see, just because he’s parroting the MoveOn line (more accurately, the Human Rights Campaign line) and he’s a veteran, dicksmith lends a measure of legitimacy to illegitimate data – and thus taking a little bit more credibility away from all veterans just to pay off Vote Vets’ pay masters on the Left.
Notice, I’m not taking a stand on either side of the DADT issue. What I take issue with is the fact that a veterans’ organization doesn’t represent veterans at all. A group of people who should know better than to listen to polling in regards to military policy, don’t. Anyone who has spent more than a day in the military knows why we don’t ask society how to govern military members.
In Politico this morning, Chris Frates ruminates over the cross-dressing nature of the various “activist groups” in Washington these days. Basically, since these organizations helped to get President Obama and the Democrat Congress elected, they’re reticent about criticizing their beneficiaries. I mean, Code Pink was all about ending the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, Obama hasn’t changed from the Bush policy, and you hear nothing from them on that much anymore.
Vote Vets’ former motor officer who fought his portion of the Iraq War from Kuwait Jon Soltz was featured in the article trying to weakly explain why veterans should be concerned about labor, environmental and energy policy;
Labor law and climate change don’t immediately strike most folks as veterans’ issues, but VoteVets has found an angle.
The group’s chairman, Jon Soltz, said the energy bill is relevant because it would help reduce the nation’s dependence on foreign oil and keep U.S. troops out of Iraq and other oil-producing countries.
Playing on more issues appeals to VoteVets because it keeps it in the bigger debates and offers a chance to expand its donor base.
But it’s not abandoning its core constituency.
Soltz said his group will also be getting more involved in the torture debate and will monitor the phasing out of the Iraq war and its effect on veterans.
“To continue to stay relevant, you have to … find where your organization can make a difference,” Soltz said.
Relevance. That’s not usually a word I’d associate with Vote Vets. In fact, the other day TSO discovered that Vote Vets and IAVA combined get less daily traffic on their web presence than This Ain’t Hell – a private blog on Yahoo servers that gets virtually no money that doesn’t come out of my pocket (because you cheap skates won’t even click the stupid Google ads). We don’t have Wesley Clark and Keith Olbermann stumping for us – although that may be to our advantage. It’s not that our traffic is so high – it’s that theirs is so low.
Soltz forgot to mention that he really doesn’t have control over the direction his organization takes. He takes his marching orders from MoveOn.org which takes it’s orders from the DNC. That’s why John Bruhn left Vote Vets two years ago – they are too partisan.
Yeah, Soltz is making a stretch. He’s not trying to keep Vote Vets relevant in the veteran community, he’s trying to keep it relevant in the MoveOn community. Veterans don’t care about environmental, labor and energy policy to the extent that Soltz tries to make it seem – otherwise we wouldn’t have Soltz trying to explain to us why we should care. Remember in the article that Soltz wrote yesterday about former Vice President Cheney also included an explanation about why veterans should care about the Democrat witch hunt in Congress.
We veterans know what our concerns are, we don’t need someone to tell us what we should care about – we need someone who’ll represent our concerns.
Notice how everyone we criticize usually shows up here to explain themselves? Ever seen any of the Vote Vets weasels do that? Nope, because they’re so intellectually shallow, their positions won’t stand up under the slightest bit of scrutiny – and they know it.
Vote Vets is too concerned about the past administration than the future of veterans – because their MoveOn masters have told them that’s how it’s going to be.
TSO sent me a sweet new link to the latest Jon Soltz missive at Vote Vets celebrating Bush Derangement syndrome. Soltz is worried that there still might be a Muslim or two in the wilds of Afghanistan contemplating martyrdom because Dick Cheney knows stuff he ain’t talking about;
Did Dick Cheney knowingly send intelligence officials to Congress to mislead them about the use of waterboarding? Did the Vice President himself?
We simply don’t know. But we need to know, in light of the explosive report in the Washington Post today, that the Vice President took a very personal role in some Congressional briefings.
“We don’t know, so he must be guilty”. Of course, this is Soltz and the veteran arm of MoveOn.org blowing a smoke screen up our collective ass for Nancy Pelosi. In fact, if you think this isn’t a veteran issue, Soltz explains in his typical motor pool officer whiny voice;
Now, why would veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan care about this? Isn’t this a political issue? Maybe, but it has far reaching implications for our troops in the field.
First – we absolutely have to send the message to the Muslim world that to the degree that we did torture, we fully investigated how those tactics came to be employed (including how it may have been hidden at the time), and held accountable those who were at fault.
To be clear, President Obama is making great progress by ending the use of torture, and moving to close the detainee facility at Guantanamo. But, it makes it harder for our troops to win hearts and minds, and still serves as a great terrorist recruiting tool, if there is word out there that the United States tortured, and let people responsible walk, without accountability.
Um, Jon, m’boy, our enemy doesn’t give a rat’s furry ass if we punish people or not. In fact, they don’t even care if it happened or not (remember the flushed Koran story?). There aren’t any folks sitting around the hookah when one suddenly jumps up and screams “I’m so pissed that Dick Cheney didn’t get punished, I’m going to blow myself up, dammit!” Grab a bit of reality, here, Jon.
Those three months you spent in Kuwait dispatching deuce-and-a-halfs didn’t give you any special insight into the Arab mind.
But the best part of the whole thing comes at the end of his fist-clenched rant. I had to screen capture it before the whiny little pseudo-intellectual brat changes it;
The actual quote from Santayana is; Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. Solz has not only misquoted Santayana, he’s also changed the meaning of the entire phrase. From some pointy-headed librarian;
Contemporary Hispanic Biography [1] said that “students of Santayana’s work complain that the maxim has been taken out of context: Originally it formed part of a theory about how knowledge is acquired rather than being a moral exhortation to pay attention to history, and it has a didactic quality that is foreign to the subtle, paradoxical, and occasionally humorous quality of Santayana’s thought.”
Now, this may seem like nit-picking to many of you, But remember VoteVets wasting column inches and an appearance on Keith Olbermann’s comedy show over Vets For Freedom’s Pete Hegseth who made the mistake of saying it’d been seven years since the invasion of Hussein’s Iraq instead of six – yeah, it’s just like that.
Oh, so now I see that TSO wrote a post about it, too. Jeez, why’d he send me link? Well, I’m not wasting this research.
So, it was with little surprise that I read this post of Dicksmith’s that Mr Wolf sent me late last night.
Vets for Freedom was founded a few months after the progressive Veterans’ organization I work with (not for, since I volunteer), VoteVets.org. You’d have to ask Pete [Hegseth] and his cronies to confirm this, but as best I can tell Vets for Freedom has served no other purpose than to be a GOP front group countering the work of VoteVets.
Now, I’m not saying that Dicksmith likes to bugger young boys, to drink the blood of young virgins from a rugby boot, to drink and then drive home to beat his girlfriend and dog, I mean, you’d have to ask his cronies about that, but what I can tell you is that master of the intertubes he is not. Rather than just using SourceWatch as a one stop shop, he might have been able to find that one of VFF’s first endorsements was for Jim Marshall, Democrat from Georgia. It would be hard to figure out why VFF’s masters in the GOP would stand for VFF endorsing their House Target #1.
….said Vets for Freedom Chairman, Pete Hegseth. “Jim has stood with us on Capitol Hill, and it’s time for us to stand with him. During his tenure in Congress, Jim has proved time and time again that politics always takes a back seat to doing what’s right when it comes to fighting our enemies and supporting those who wear the uniform. Our country needs more people like Jim in Washington.”
Vets For Freedom has emerged as one of the most influential and authoritative voices in the debate over the war in Iraq. As soldiers, the members of VFF answered the call to duty to serve our nation. Now they stand among our nation’s leaders to remind us to do our duty.
– United States Senator Joseph Lieberman (I-CT)
And how does one explain the comments of Brian Baird with regard to VFF?
Vets for Freedom speaks with unique authority and is an essential non-partisan voice supporting those who are committed to success in Iraq.
– United States Congressman Brian Baird (D-WA)
Wait a minute? How the hell can that be? Isn’t Baird a Democrat? Isn’t that what the “D” means? And, holy hell, isn’t he a liberal? The American Conservative Union gave the guy a 4 out of a possible 100 in 2008. That means he’s to the LEFT of Baghdad Jim McDermott.
Well, possibly it has more to do with his position on Iraq than any partisan angle. This is from Baird’s piece from August 24, 2007 in the Seattle Times.
As a Democrat who voted against the war from the outset and who has been frankly critical of the administration and the post-invasion strategy, I am convinced by the evidence that the situation has at long last begun to change substantially for the better. I believe Iraq could have a positive future. Our diplomatic and military leaders in Iraq, their current strategy, and most importantly, our troops and the Iraqi people themselves, deserve our continued support and more time to succeed.
I’m not going to go into some lengthy defense of Pete, who can ably do so himself, but a few things about Dicksmith and his post. He goes on some rant about Pete apparently now writing at the Weekly Standard. Not sure why this is even relevant, but good for Pete, he got a paying gig. And thanks for all of us it isn’t as an accountant, because Pete refers to 8+ years without an attack, when it is 7+ years without an attack. Seemingly Pete saying this is far worse for veterans than say (hypothetically) a guy who stole a car in Nevada, and was in mental health counseling during the Battle of Fallujah that he claimed to have been injured in despite never having served in the military at all. Or, worse (again, hypothetically) than saying that Viet Nam-issued vests were being distributed to our troops in Iraq, when in fact no such thing was taking place. Pete’s inability to differentiate 7 from 8 is clearly one of the biggest problems faced by returning veterans, and I am on board for jacking him up over it. VFF should do what VoteVets does and just take all his shit down, issue only a press release to a media outlet without putting anything on this blog about it, and then just go along pretending that VFF never knew the mathematically challenged Mr. Hegseth. (Here is where I would link to the many comments of Dicksmith located on “Rick Duncan’s” various VoteVets postings, but alas, they are preserved for posterity only on Jonn’s computer.)
And to close out, Dicksmith cites to Matthew Yglesias. I know the name, but know nothing about the guy and don’t care to, but Dicksmith uses this quote to characterize his belief on the fallibility of Pete’s argument that we were safer post 9/11 for our actions:
The overwhelming majority of Americans to ever be killed by foreign terrorists were killed during Bush’s presidency. And even if you give him a pass on 9/11 itself it’s still the case that his conduct of the “war on terror” led to the deaths of thousands more Americans.
Well, let me take that quote and change it a bit, and you tell me if there are any inaccuracies.
Option A:
The overwhelming majority of Terrorists to ever be killed by American Military Forces were killed during Bush’s presidency. And even if you give them a pass on 9/11 itself it’s still the case that the conduct of the “war on terror” led to the deaths of thousands more Terrorists than Americans.
Option B:
The overwhelming majority of Americans to ever be killed by a foreign government were killed during Roosevelt’s presidency. And even if you give him a pass on Pearl Harbor itself it’s still the case that his conduct of the “war on the Axis powers” led to the deaths of thousands more Americans.
So, here we go again, a VoteVets guy who doesn’t do any research, throws in some ad hominem attacks under the guise of “go look for yourself at Source Watch” whose primary concern is with Pete’s ability to count, who closes with an argument from another liberal blogger than has no bearing on the argument at hand. It’s almost becoming cliché at this point, no?
ADDENDUM: For a bit of added idiocy, or to get a 2404 if you need one, go read Jon Stolz’s piece over at VoteVets today on why Petraeus could never be the 2012 GOP Nominee because he thinks we shouldn’t torture people and we should close Gitmo.
