{"id":5240,"date":"2008-11-16T13:52:28","date_gmt":"2008-11-16T18:52:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=5240"},"modified":"2008-11-16T17:02:49","modified_gmt":"2008-11-16T22:02:49","slug":"veterans-for-peace-at-the-archives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=5240","title":{"rendered":"Veterans for Peace at the Archives"},"content":{"rendered":"

Well, I’m back from my trip to the National Archives this morning and Vets For Peace still up there on the scaffolding. I asked three security guards separately if VfP been up there all night; one said he didn’t know, one said they had been up there all night and a third thought they were workers cleaning the building’s facade and didn’t know they were protesters until I told him.<\/p>\n

In the After Downing Street<\/a> post yesterday, they quoted some guy who said he’d seen their banner from over two miles away – dude had good eyes. I parked a block away and didn’t see the banner until I got to Constitution Avenue across the street from the Archives;<\/p>\n

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More pictures and video below the fold;<\/p>\n

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I needed a telephoto lens to even see them;<\/p>\n

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This is their support vehicle. Notice it’s so old, it still has “Impeach Nixon” stickers on it;<\/p>\n

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I’m sure Raoul recognizes the old hippy flashing me the peace sign in the front seat – but they all look alike to me.<\/p>\n

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The telephoto lens got me some good pictures of some of the guys up there, but I didn’t see matthis Chiroux who I was told was there;<\/p>\n

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Of course, I wanted to interview Matthis Chiroux so he can explain to me how he calls himself an “honorably discharged Afghanistan veteran” when he’s not been discharged from his eight-year commitment and how six days at a well-protected airbase to write a magazine article makes him an Afghanistan veteran. The Army certainly doesn’t think of him as an Afghanistan veteran judging by the ribbons he wore in the protest<\/a> in New York last month;<\/p>\n

\"Chiroux'
\n\"Larger<\/p>\n

That’s an Army Commendation medal on top, (from readers’ left to right, decending) an Army Achievement medal, a Good Conduct Medal, National Defense Service Medal, an Armed Forces Reserve Medal, Army Service Ribbon and an Overseas Service Ribbon. No medals for participation in a military operation outside of the US.<\/p>\n

But, anyway, I didn’t see Chiroux and the two members of the support team didn’t want to talk about him. I asked, but they were too paranoid – thought I was with the NSA. Notice at the end of the video how quiet they get when a Forest Service helicopter flies by;<\/p>\n

<\/embed><\/object><\/p>\n

Of course, the one guy I talked to thought that “six seconds” in Afghanistan qualified him to be an Afghan vet. I’ve flown over Cuba several times, I guess that makes me a Spanish-American War vet.<\/p>\n

I’m sure President Bush and Vice President Cheney have nothing to fear if these are the clowns that want to have them arrested. These fellas are about as sharp as a stick of butter. And Chiroux still leads my list of phony soldiers.<\/p>\n

The Metro DC cops seem unaffected by the “occupation” – the only police presence I saw was at an auto accident on the corner. I guess they’re willing to let the moonbats freeze (they’re on the southside of the building and the wind is coming from the north).<\/p>\n

UPDATE: <\/strong>One of the readers\u00a0 wrote to tell me that the guy I’m talking to in the video is Jim Goodnow, which explains the paranoia. Goodnow was the guy who said an evil Republican death squad headed by Karl Rove and funded by Haliburton burned up his POS Impeachment Bus <\/a>when he was camped out in New Jersey. No wonder he jumped when the helicopter flew over us. Here’s another link<\/a> with a picture of him. It turns out this “veteran” joined the Coast Guard in 1959 and got a medical discharge two years later…and he’s talking to me about “combat veterans”, for pete’s sake.<\/p>\n

But the draft instituted during the Korea War was still in effect, and in 1959 Goodnow decided that if he had to serve he’d do it on his own terms. He went into the Coast Guard because he’d still be working at sea, and in that branch of the service “I felt that you train to save lives rather than taking lives.”<\/p>\n

After getting a medical discharge two years later, Goodnow returned to Maryland and to commercial fishing. He didn’t have to worry about being shipped off to Vietnam, but he was opposed to the war and voted for Nixon in 1968 because of his vow to end the conflict.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I guess there were a lot of phony soldiers out there today.<\/p>\n

Someone else also sends the ID of the three visible on the scaffolding;<\/p>\n

\u2022 Bruce Berry VFP<\/span>: 62, Minneapolis, MN<\/span>, former SPC 4 Army, Viet Nam
\n\u2022 Fred Nagel VFP: 65, Rhinebeck, NY<\/span>, former SPC 4 Army
\n\u2022 Jay Wenk VFP: 82, Woodstock, NY<\/span>, former rifleman, 90th Infantry Div., WWII<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Well, I’m back from my trip to the National Archives this morning and Vets For Peace … Veterans for Peace at the Archives<\/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":[8,37,47,30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5240","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-antiwar-crowd","category-ivaw","category-liberals-suck","category-phony-soldiers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5240","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=5240"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5240\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}