{"id":19353,"date":"2010-06-04T18:19:43","date_gmt":"2010-06-04T22:19:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=19353"},"modified":"2010-06-04T18:31:33","modified_gmt":"2010-06-04T22:31:33","slug":"navy-kiboshs-ivaw-uxo-concert-tour","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=19353","title":{"rendered":"Navy puts kibosh on IVAW-UXO concert"},"content":{"rendered":"

The latest money-raising scheme of the Iraq Veterans Against the War is their UXO Tour. UXO means unexploded ordinance – hinting that veterans back from the war are going to go off any minute now. Well their first concert was on a cruise ship in New York City and it was timed to coincide with Fleet Week when the most active duty service members, mostly Marines and Navy personnel, would be there.<\/p>\n

Well of course, the Navy forbade their people to go to this concert and IVAW is mightily upset. I won’t link to them, because they block traffic to their site from this blog anyway, but here’s the “press release” they link<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe military chain of command has no right to micromanage what service-members are doing in their off time\u201d, said Nick Morgan, an Iraq veteran and UXO organizer. \u201cThey have no right to censor the information that\u2019s available to them, especially when it\u2019s within the confines of the law.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

You remember Nick Morgan, don’t you? He was the IVAW member who got stomped by horse-mounted police at the last Presidential debate on Long Island. I guess he’s survived. <\/p>\n

Another organizer was junior rocket scientist Bobby Joe Grubb;<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Grubb, another IVAW member who has never seen Iraq, said;<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were incredibly successful in reaching out to these Sailors and Marines,\u201d says Grubb. \u201cWe made solid contact with those we met while doing outreach\u201d. He said many of them were interested in getting more involved in the active-duty and veteran-led anti-war movement.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But then the Navy forbade Navy personnel from attending. So I called the Navy in New York City and spoke to a PAO LT Sean P. Riordan. LT Riordan told me the reason the Navy restricted attendance at this particular GI Resistance Concert is because all of the Marines and Sailors were in New York in an official capacity and they were all in uniform, so the Navy decided that attendance at a GI Resistance Concert in NYC during Fleet Week in uniform would be inappropriate according to military guidelines. <\/p>\n

Morgan also added that these concerts are helping to bring legal and mental-health resources to members of the military. \u201cIt\u2019s imperative for these veteran-led efforts to be accessed by active-duty troops to make up for the lacking support they get from the current administration, the Department of Defense, and the Veterans Administration.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yeah, that’s why they had a concert. They could hand out brochures describing the help IVAW provides soldiers – like homeless Trey Kindlinger<\/a> (a former member of the Navy) and legal help like James Branum<\/a>. And if the concert was about providing veterans services, why is it called a GI Resistance Concert? <\/p>\n

The Sailors and Marines weren’t “off” the whole time they were in NY, Nick Morgan, neither did the Navy restrict information. You could talk to them all you wanted.<\/p>\n

The Navy made the correct call and IVAW is left to cry into their empty glasses because they overplayed their hand.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The latest money-raising scheme of the Iraq Veterans Against the War is their UXO Tour. UXO … Navy puts kibosh on IVAW-UXO concert<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,37,84,52],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19353","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-antiwar-crowd","category-ivaw","category-military-issues","category-usual-suspects"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19353","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19353"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19353\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}