Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Lawyer for Haditha Marine plans to sue Murtha
In light of the fact that 7 of the 8 Marines accused of murdering 24 Iraqis in Haditha, Iraq have now been cleared of all charges; One of their lawyers plans to sue Congressman John "Abscam" Murtha.
http://worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=67434
Murtha as many of you know "fueled the case by declaring the men cold-blooded killer the lead attorney for Lt. Col. Jeffrey Chessani said he and his client will look into suing Murtha and the Time magazine reporter Tim McGuirk, who first published the accusations by Iraqi insurgents."
If anyone who needs to be sued it is Mr. Abscam. What do you think?
http://worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=67434
Murtha as many of you know "fueled the case by declaring the men cold-blooded killer the lead attorney for Lt. Col. Jeffrey Chessani said he and his client will look into suing Murtha and the Time magazine reporter Tim McGuirk, who first published the accusations by Iraqi insurgents."
If anyone who needs to be sued it is Mr. Abscam. What do you think?
Labels: corruption, Democrat Party, eating crow, military
Monday, February 26, 2007
A Guardsman's Response to Criticism of Escalation
Rod Dreher posted this on 2/22/2007:
This burns me up. Excerpt:
If this is the kind of thing we have to do to keep the Iraqis from killing each other, to hell with the mission. In my hometown -- a very small town, of the sort where a disproportionate number of the soldiers dying in this war come from -- a lot of men are in the National Guard. I can just imagine how the news that the military is breaking its promise to the Guardsmen, and sending some of them back into the war zone early, with inadequate training and possibly without sufficient equipment, must feel to Guard families and their friends. This has gotten real personal to me since finding out the other day that my brother-in-law's Guard unit has been put on alert for mobilization to join the surge. George W. Bush and the Republican Party are going to reap the political whirlwind from this abuse. It's a long way from 2008, but I can't see myself voting for any Republican who backs this surge.
Then Collins commented:
"I realize everyone is rushing to attack the war on any grounds possible but the story you cite Rod is grossly misleading. From the story"Nearly half of the more than 3,100 U.S. military fatalities in Iraq have come from towns like McKeesport, where fewer than 25,000 people live" Yet, also from the story "The Census Bureau said 56 percent of the population in 2005 lived in towns under 25,000" So that's roughly proportionate.You know as a person from one of those steel towns mentioned in the article it ticks me off to see the pity party and disdain shown for the soldiers who serve from here. They are good decent people, they don't need an AP reporter to fabricate facts to show how dumb and poor they are because it fits nicely with the AP's Marxist worldview."
Collins Homepage 02.22.07 - 1:58 pm #
Emphasis mine. Laughing, I replied.
"The Census Bureau said 56 percent of the population in 2005 lived in towns under 25,000" So that's roughly proportionate.
Whoops. Like Dilbert's boss complaining that 40% of call-in sick days are on Mondays and Fridays.
Pauli Homepage 02.22.07 - 3:55 pm #
Other people gave their bits of Armchair General advice. Then we were treated to a little lesson from an Oklahoma Guardsman calling himself RTO Trainer.
"As an Oklahoma Guardsman who may be affected by the call up that inspired this post, let me say that if called, we will go. It's just how it is. Some are looking forward to it. Some are looking for a loophole. Some dread the very idea. But go we will, if it even happens, which is not yet a certainty. In addition, for those of you worrying, about the 1-180th, presently deployed to Afghanistan, facing a deployment almost as soon as we come home, the NYT article conveniently left out that our command is doing all it can to keep us from having to deploy that quickly. Some of will volunteer anyway. 80% of those of us here didn't have to deploy this time, but we volunteered to do so, because servicemen serve.
Broken promises? Sorry, here, you'll have to do some explaining. Changes in policy are not broken promises, so I'd need some more details here about what you refer to.
Servicemen sign up to serve. Guard enlistments are up because we are deploying. It’s not a universal trait either, any more than the destitute reservist, but it’s enough to stave off the fulfillment of the “broken army” warnings I’ve been hearing every three months or so since the end of 2003. It’s my opinion that they keep making their predictions either because they think they may actually come true and can say “toldjya” or because it’s a plausible scary story that might convince people to join the white flag/white feather crowd.
Don: If it's a slaughter, it's the smallest slaughter in history (If we extrapolate Desert Storm fatalities over the duration of the GWOT, you'd have had 71,000 deaths by now). And it's not affecting Guard troops in any particular disproportionate way so Anonymous Also's point is moot.
Patrick, check your chronology on that. An Army troop increase of 30,000 was mandated by Congress over the recommendations of the SECDEF, the JCS and the CSA. The 70,000 Army/Marine increase was called for and approved before Rumsfeld resigned.
redoppto: You don't appear to be familiar with the mission of the National Guard. I recommend this post: http://www.donaldsensing.com/index.php/2005/05/23/wherefore-the-national-guard/. And none of us are victims, thank you very much.
St_Irinaeus: Your ire for Rumsfeld might well be misplaced. Undoubtedly one of the recently lamented "promises" was the "24 months deployment over 6 years" policy. I'm personally getting an extra $1000 a month in my paycheck because I volunteered for a deployment that would take me over that 24 month threshold.
And that policy was Rumsfeld's. No accident that the policy changed when he left. The law only requires that any one contiguous deployment for a Guardsman not exceed 24 months.
Kit: If you don't have a "stake in the Guard," I feel for you. I take it to mean that you don't know any National Guardsmen and you would not feel the loss of any of us. Too bad. Guardsmen are some of the finest people this country has to offer. You should make an effort to get to know us. That you haven't speaks poorly of you.
Andy, Pauli, Collins: Rock on."
RTO Trainer Homepage 02.25.07 - 10:20 am #
So, Jonathan, what's the over-under that Rod has learned his lesson from this little smackdown?
This burns me up. Excerpt:
The Pentagon is planning to send more than 14,000 National Guard troops back to Iraq next year, shortening their time between deployments to meet the demands of President Bush’s buildup, Defense Department officials said Wednesday.A journalist friend, quoting a source in military intelligence who had been deployed in Iraq, told me the other day his source said it is "criminal" -- the intel guy's word -- what the military is doing to the National Guard. He meant specifically deploying them into a combat zone with inadequate training.
[snip]
Changing the reservists’ schedules means abandoning previous promises that they would get several years between deployments. And the acceleration means that soldiers who usually drill just once a month and for a few weeks in the summer will have to begin intensive preparations right away.
[snip]
Given that they would be in Iraq for about nine months, that would leave only three months for training before they go. In the past, six months of training has been the norm before heading to the war zone.
If this is the kind of thing we have to do to keep the Iraqis from killing each other, to hell with the mission. In my hometown -- a very small town, of the sort where a disproportionate number of the soldiers dying in this war come from -- a lot of men are in the National Guard. I can just imagine how the news that the military is breaking its promise to the Guardsmen, and sending some of them back into the war zone early, with inadequate training and possibly without sufficient equipment, must feel to Guard families and their friends. This has gotten real personal to me since finding out the other day that my brother-in-law's Guard unit has been put on alert for mobilization to join the surge. George W. Bush and the Republican Party are going to reap the political whirlwind from this abuse. It's a long way from 2008, but I can't see myself voting for any Republican who backs this surge.
Then Collins commented:
"I realize everyone is rushing to attack the war on any grounds possible but the story you cite Rod is grossly misleading. From the story"Nearly half of the more than 3,100 U.S. military fatalities in Iraq have come from towns like McKeesport, where fewer than 25,000 people live" Yet, also from the story "The Census Bureau said 56 percent of the population in 2005 lived in towns under 25,000" So that's roughly proportionate.You know as a person from one of those steel towns mentioned in the article it ticks me off to see the pity party and disdain shown for the soldiers who serve from here. They are good decent people, they don't need an AP reporter to fabricate facts to show how dumb and poor they are because it fits nicely with the AP's Marxist worldview."
Collins Homepage 02.22.07 - 1:58 pm #
Emphasis mine. Laughing, I replied.
"The Census Bureau said 56 percent of the population in 2005 lived in towns under 25,000" So that's roughly proportionate.
Whoops. Like Dilbert's boss complaining that 40% of call-in sick days are on Mondays and Fridays.
Pauli Homepage 02.22.07 - 3:55 pm #
Other people gave their bits of Armchair General advice. Then we were treated to a little lesson from an Oklahoma Guardsman calling himself RTO Trainer.
"As an Oklahoma Guardsman who may be affected by the call up that inspired this post, let me say that if called, we will go. It's just how it is. Some are looking forward to it. Some are looking for a loophole. Some dread the very idea. But go we will, if it even happens, which is not yet a certainty. In addition, for those of you worrying, about the 1-180th, presently deployed to Afghanistan, facing a deployment almost as soon as we come home, the NYT article conveniently left out that our command is doing all it can to keep us from having to deploy that quickly. Some of will volunteer anyway. 80% of those of us here didn't have to deploy this time, but we volunteered to do so, because servicemen serve.
Broken promises? Sorry, here, you'll have to do some explaining. Changes in policy are not broken promises, so I'd need some more details here about what you refer to.
Servicemen sign up to serve. Guard enlistments are up because we are deploying. It’s not a universal trait either, any more than the destitute reservist, but it’s enough to stave off the fulfillment of the “broken army” warnings I’ve been hearing every three months or so since the end of 2003. It’s my opinion that they keep making their predictions either because they think they may actually come true and can say “toldjya” or because it’s a plausible scary story that might convince people to join the white flag/white feather crowd.
Don: If it's a slaughter, it's the smallest slaughter in history (If we extrapolate Desert Storm fatalities over the duration of the GWOT, you'd have had 71,000 deaths by now). And it's not affecting Guard troops in any particular disproportionate way so Anonymous Also's point is moot.
Patrick, check your chronology on that. An Army troop increase of 30,000 was mandated by Congress over the recommendations of the SECDEF, the JCS and the CSA. The 70,000 Army/Marine increase was called for and approved before Rumsfeld resigned.
redoppto: You don't appear to be familiar with the mission of the National Guard. I recommend this post: http://www.donaldsensing.com/index.php/2005/05/23/wherefore-the-national-guard/. And none of us are victims, thank you very much.
St_Irinaeus: Your ire for Rumsfeld might well be misplaced. Undoubtedly one of the recently lamented "promises" was the "24 months deployment over 6 years" policy. I'm personally getting an extra $1000 a month in my paycheck because I volunteered for a deployment that would take me over that 24 month threshold.
And that policy was Rumsfeld's. No accident that the policy changed when he left. The law only requires that any one contiguous deployment for a Guardsman not exceed 24 months.
Kit: If you don't have a "stake in the Guard," I feel for you. I take it to mean that you don't know any National Guardsmen and you would not feel the loss of any of us. Too bad. Guardsmen are some of the finest people this country has to offer. You should make an effort to get to know us. That you haven't speaks poorly of you.
Andy, Pauli, Collins: Rock on."
RTO Trainer Homepage 02.25.07 - 10:20 am #
So, Jonathan, what's the over-under that Rod has learned his lesson from this little smackdown?
Labels: military, smackdown, war
Tuesday, January 16, 2007
Gordon on Gitmo
Here's a must read from Gordon Cucullu in the NY Post. His visit to the detention facility and interview of personnel basically confirms that all the torture/abuse talk among the unemployed protester class is a bunch of nonsense. Excerpt:
What about all this torture and abuse? "We are prohibited from doing anything that stupid," said Paul Rester, head of the Joint Intelligence Group, who reports to Joint Task Force Commander Adm. Harry Harris. "Aside from moral issues that would constrain us, and aside from legal issues that forbid it, the plain truth is that torture is a stupid, brainless thing to do because it doesn't work!"Check out Gordon Cucullu's site here.
This is echoed from the top down. The several interrogators I spoke with confirmed the use of approved interrogation techniques that focus mainly on trust-building and mutual respect to persuade detainees to talk.
Nor, by the way, have medical personnel - who spend an inordinate amount of time examining and treating detainees (e.g., elective colonoscopies for detainees age 50 and up) - ever noticed or reported signs of abuse, much less torture.
Labels: military, terrorism, war
Thursday, January 04, 2007
Navy Hymn
http://www.history.navy.mil/faqs/faq53-1.htm
I watched President Ford's funeral at the National Cathedral. It was very moving. One of my favorite hymns is called "Eternal Father Strong to Save." Having this hymn sung by the US Armed Forces Chorus with the US Marine Band playing backup puts a lump in my throat. Here are some of the lyrics.
Eternal Father, Strong to save,Whose arm hath bound the restless wave,Who bid'st the mighty Ocean deepIts own appointed limits keep;O hear us when we cry to thee,for those in peril on the sea.
I watched President Ford's funeral at the National Cathedral. It was very moving. One of my favorite hymns is called "Eternal Father Strong to Save." Having this hymn sung by the US Armed Forces Chorus with the US Marine Band playing backup puts a lump in my throat. Here are some of the lyrics.
Eternal Father, Strong to save,Whose arm hath bound the restless wave,Who bid'st the mighty Ocean deepIts own appointed limits keep;O hear us when we cry to thee,for those in peril on the sea.
Labels: military
Thursday, November 16, 2006
Ohio Tax Laws Unfair to Soldiers
Hat tip to Right Moment (Scott, the punching cat has got to go!) for giving us this bit of Buckeye bizarreness. Here's a quote from the PD's piece:
Write to the address given in the post and urge the passage of House Bill 378 or 208.
If you're an Ohioan in the military who is deployed to a noncombat post
outside Ohio or abroad, you pay state income tax.
If you're a civilian Ohio resident working out of state or overseas, in
most cases you don't.
Write to the address given in the post and urge the passage of House Bill 378 or 208.
