15 posts tagged “veterans”

Read the whole thing here.

I have read quotes from Lt. Col. Chessani’s lawyer saying his client is considering suing Murtha. I hope he does. The colonel’s career has been ruined, his reputation besmirched and our country has lost the services of a man who by all accounts is among the most dedicated and capable of Marines. I hope he takes Murtha for every dime he has, his party has, his neighbors can collect, and his staff can pony up.

But before that happens I have one other suggestion.

After the Colonel body slams that windbag Congressman, I would suggest that he settle, under these conditions: the President of the United States agrees to recall Murtha to active duty for 24 hours; the Commandant of the Marine Corps agrees to hold a Special Court Martial on the spot; a panel of Chessani’s peers hears Murtha’s comments to the news media; they give him five minutes to make whatever statement he wants; then they find the bastard guilty of conduct unbecoming.

Then the Commandant strips Murtha of his rank, his retirement, the phony combat medals he never deserved in the first place, and drums him out of the Corps in disgrace. Then the defense lawyers for the falsely charged Marines can set their sights on libel suits against the media; slander if they think the malice issue might get in the way, although I believe most American juries would convict the news media on the first ballot.

I'm going to forgo adding to my ramblings regarding the IVAW/VVAW Winter Soldier 2 farce, and direct your attention to my good friend Rurick who spent the entire day Friday inside the belly of the beast, so to speak.

I have to warn you that Rurick goes into great detail and as a result, the piece I am directing you to is long; but well worth the read, because he describes the situation inside very well.

The link is here. Here is a sampling from the first part of his report.

Now on to the most widespread of all the alleged crimes, what I call car-icide. Everybody has a story about shooting cars, either cars sitting by the side of the road, or speeding up and trying to dash through American convoys. Ever since the Hajjis started using cars as a major means of delivering explosives, the troops have been very sensitive about cars that fail to cooperate. Convoys are preceded and followed by vehicles bearing large signs in English and Arabic warning civilian vehicles to maintain a 50 meter distance, or so I have been told by other non-IVAW Iraqi vets. Funny that the IVAWs omitted mentioning that detail. Just as it is funny that they omit mentioning the quaint Islamic couture of suicide belts when mentioning occasions of Iraqi civilians being gunned down by US troops.

Now, between you and me and the internet, 50 meters is only, ONLY, 160 feet, (+/-). The distance from the 50 yard line to the end zone. That's called DAMN CLOSE when you're dealing with a VBIED.

And of course we have the requisite racist mind-set of America. After-all all Americans are racists right?

Of course the template requires that anything involving America must include racism to be complete. Thus we have the first speaker Hart Viges, who is at pains to denounce the term “hajji” as racist. First of all, in Arabic the term “hajji” is a title of honor, attached to the name of anyone who has made the pilgrimage (hajj) to Mecca, though I doubt that the average American knows the significance. Or would care if he did. Fact is, in every war, both sides have some special term they use to designate the enemy. This is a common feature of us, our allies, and our enemies as well. Even as far back as 1776 when we fought the Lobsterbacks. And yes, they have always had negative terms for us as well. Logan Laituri, who seems to be a real prince of self-loathing-by-proxy made a big deal of comparing himself to a KKK member because he was more bothered by the death of a fellow American than by anonymous Iraqis. Do not let your hair down and relax with a man like that. While some of these guys might be plausible drinking companions this one seems like he would be an unbearable PC shithead.

Umm, more bothered by the death of his fellow warriors, than the death of an Iraqi, who may or may not have been a terrorist? Analyze that sentence. He's bothered by his concern for his brothers. I'm sitting here shaking my head, trying to understand that and it's going to give me a headache if I think about it for much longer, so I'm going to stop.

Go read the rest.

OOOOOOORAHHHHHHHHH!!!! The Gunny was walking with'em today...SEMPER FI, Gunny.

I'll see you Saturday 0600 hours

The blog for Resolve to Win is here.

Bubba has pictures from Day 5 here (I think). http://www.gatheringofeaglesnc.org/rtw_day5pix.html

I went to DC today and listened to a 3 star speak.

General Odierno was at the Heritage Foundation. He gave a good review of the situation in Iraq and was candid with

answers. The video should be up at the Heritage Foundation website.

from David Limbaugh. Read the whole piece here.

How many times have we heard McCain say: "Money corrupts all of us. We need to get money out of politics"? Assuming he really believes money ineluctably poisons every politician, it is astonishingly naive to believe such ubiquitous corruption can be eradicated with a mere finger on the dike aimed at restricting certain avenues where money enters the process. It's as insultingly ludicrous as John Edwards' promise to end all poverty.

Plus, it's not as if the campaign-finance-reform experiment is just a well-meaning but harmless enterprise. On top of its woeful ineffectiveness, perhaps even counter-productiveness, it also has egregious consequences: It does violence to free political speech — the most important category of speech essential to the preservation of our republic.

McCain's tunnel vision on this and his refusal even to consider the speech-suppressing aspects of his reckless, utopian fantasy bespeaks an ends-justifies-the-means attitude, also typical of the liberal mindset. "We know what is best for you, so there is no harm in our beneficent suppression of the most important freedom guaranteed by the Bill of Rights."

But perhaps most troubling about McCain is his habitual resort to class warfare. While he now says that he opposed the Bush tax cuts because he received insufficient guarantees that they'd be coupled with spending cuts, his stated reason at the time was that they were cuts just for the rich. This is demonstrably untrue.

The reductions were across the board and skewed, if anything, in favor of the middle- and lower-income earners. Only liberals mouth these disingenuous and destructive platitudes — destructive because they alienate and polarize people, stirring resentment and demonizing producers and wealth. And don't forget that McCain was only one of two Republican senators who opposed the plan. That speaks volumes, and it should open the eyes of those resisting the truism that McCain is not a reliable Reagan conservative. They're the ones with blinders on, not those of us laboring to unveil the truth.

That's the theme of a front page article in today's New York Times: "Across America, Deadly Echoes of Foreign Battles." The article reports on what must have been a major effort by the Times to comb through news reports from across the country, identifying and tabulating instances where servicemen who returned from Iraq or Afghanistan were charged with some form of homicide. The Times summarizes the results of its research:

 

Town by town across the country, headlines have been telling similar stories. Lakewood, Wash.: “Family Blames Iraq After Son Kills Wife.” Pierre, S.D.: “Soldier Charged With Murder Testifies About Postwar Stress.” Colorado Springs: “Iraq War Vets Suspected in Two Slayings, Crime Ring.”

Individually, these are stories of local crimes, gut-wrenching postscripts to the war for the military men, their victims and their communities. Taken together, they paint the patchwork picture of a quiet phenomenon, tracing a cross-country trail of death and heartbreak.

The New York Times found 121 cases in which veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan committed a killing in this country, or were charged with one, after their return from war.

The Times article goes on just about forever--it is nine pages long on the web--but it consists almost entirely of anecdotes about a handful of the 121 alleged crimes. The stories are indeed sad, and some of the soldiers and veterans involved no doubt did suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. Still, the Times' approach is astonishingly unsystematic, especially since the paper takes seriously the idea that the U.S. military may be responsible for the supposed crime wave:

 

At various times, the question of whether the military shares some blame for these killings gets posed.

When it is not recounting stories of crimes committed by servicemen, always from a point of view sympathetic to the idea that service in a theater of war was a contributing factor--"plagued by nightmares about an Iraqi civilian killed by his unit, [Mr. Sepi] often needed alcohol to fall asleep"--the paper waxes pretentious:

 

Decades of studies on the problems of Vietnam veterans have established links between combat trauma and higher rates of unemployment, homelessness, gun ownership, child abuse, domestic violence, substance abuse — and criminality. On a less scientific level, such links have long been known.

“The connection between war and crime is unfortunately very ancient,” said Dr. Shay, the V.A. psychiatrist and author. “The first thing that Odysseus did after he left Troy was to launch a pirate raid on Ismarus. Ending up in trouble with the law has always been a final common pathway for some portion of psychologically injured veterans.”

Now put yourself in the place of a newspaper editor. Suppose you are asked to evaluate whether your paper should run a long article on a nationwide epidemic of murders committed by veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan--a crime wave that, your reporter suggests, constitutes a "cross-country trail of death and heartbreak." Suppose that the reporter who proposes to write the article says it will be a searing indictment of the U.S. military's inadequate attention to post-traumatic stress disorder. Suppose further that you are not a complete idiot.

Given that last assumption, I'm pretty sure your first question will be: "How does the murder rate among veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan compare to the murder rate for young American men generally?" Remarkably, this is a question the New York Times did not think to ask. Or, if the Times asked the question and figured out the answer, the paper preferred not to report it.

As of 2005, the homicide rate for Americans aged 18-24, the cohort into which most soldiers fall, was around 27 per 100,000. (The rate for men in that age range would be much higher, of course, since men commit around 88% of homicides. But since most soldiers are also men, I gave civilians the benefit of the doubt and considered gender a wash.)

Next we need to know how many servicemen have returned from Iraq or Afghanistan. A definitive number is no doubt available, but the only hard figure I've seen is that as of last October, moe than 500,000 U.S. Army personnel had served in either Iraq or Afghanistan. Other sources peg the total number of personnel from all branches of the military who have served in the two theaters much higher, e.g. 750,000, 650,000 as of February 2007, or 1,280,000. For the sake of argument, let's say that 700,000 soldiers, Marines, airmen and sailors have returned to the U.S. from service in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Do the math: the 121 alleged instances of homicide identified by the Times, out of a population of 700,000, works out to a rate of 17 per 100,000--quite a bit lower than the overall national rate of around 27.

But wait! The national rate of 27 homicides per 100,000 is an annual rate, whereas the Times' 121 alleged crimes were committed over a period of six years. Which means that, as far as the Times' research shows, the rate of homicides committed by military personnel who have returned from Iraq or Afghanistan is only a fraction of the homicide rate for other Americans aged 18 to 24. Somehow, the Times managed to publish nine pages of anecdotes about the violence wreaked by returning servicemen without ever mentioning this salient fact.

I've got a suggestion for the editors of the Times: next time, why don't they undertake a research project to identify all murders and other forms of homicide committed (or allegedly committed--no finding of guilt necessary!) by people who are, or recently have been, employed by newspaper companies? They could write a long article in which selected crimes allegedly committed by reporters, editors and typesetters are recounted in detail, accompanied by speculation about whether newspaper employment was a contributing factor in each case. No need to wonder whether reporters, editors and typesetters commit homicide at a rate any different from the rest of the population--a single murder is too many!

Here's another idea: the Times' story on veterans' crimes repeatedly focused on the role of alcoholism, which the paper associated with the stresses of military service. How about a survey that compares alcoholism rates among reporters and soldiers? Just on a hunch, I'll wager a dollar that the alcoholism rate for reporters is higher.

It's bad enough that the New York Times smears our military personnel when they are serving overseas. Can't they at least leave them alone once they return home?

EXCLUSIVE:

New York Times 'Killer Vet' Story

Exposed as Erroneous by Pro-Troop Group

SACRAMENTO- Move America Forward (website: www.MoveAmericaForward.org), the nation's largest grassroots pro-troop organization, today announced that after vetting the numbers cited by The New York Times in their Sunday, January 13, 2008 story, "Across America, Deadly Echoes of Foreign Battles," it became clear that the Times had engaged in demonstrably erroneous and false reporting.

It took seven New York Times researchers to find 121 cases in which veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan committed a killing in the United States, or were charged with one, upon returning home to this country.

 The Times made the false conclusion that:  "Taken together, they paint the patchwork of a quiet phenomenon, tracing a cross-country trail of death and heartbreak."

 The Times documentation of 121 potential killings out of more than 1.5 million veterans of Operation Iraqi Freedom (Iraq) and Operation Enduring Freedom (Afghanistan), divided by 6 years of conflict results in a murder rate of just 1.34 incidents per 100,000 veterans per year.

 That murder rate is far lower than the murder rate for the general population, demonstrating that the experiences of military service – including having served in Iraq and Afghanistan – actually made it less likely for returning veterans to commit murder once they returned home, than the general population.

Given a census-estimated population of the United States of 300,000,000 persons in this country as of October 2006, and FBI-compiled statistics of 17,399 homicide offenders for  2006, the murder rate of the general population was 5.80 offenders per 100,000 on average – and a rate of approximately 7.67 per 100,000 for men.

 Since all but one of the veterans cited by the Times who committed a killing in the U.S. was male, the comparable rate is approximately 7.67 incidents of murder per 100,000 people among the general male population, compared to just 1.34 incidents per 100,000 returning Iraq and Afghanistan veterans (of both genders).

 "It's obvious that the New York Times has an agenda of undermining the missions of our troops in the War on Terror, so much so that they are willing to resort to demonstrably false statistics to support their anti-troop bias," said Melanie Morgan, Chairman of Move America Forward.

 "The slander of our troops and veterans by the New York Times is unfortunately all too familiar.  We heard this kind of nonsense about our returning veterans from Vietnam.  It's the same insult, different war.

 "Perhaps the shameful staff of The New York Times has run out of war-time secrets to publish for America's enemies to read, because now they've resorted to an all-out smear campaign of America's finest men and women, who have served this country bravely and with distinction," Morgan said.

 In place of hard data to support their premise, The New York Times was instead forced to devote almost the entire portion of 6,321 word hit-piece to anecdotes of wrongdoing by individual veterans.

 The New York Times even went so far as to trace back the phenomenon of murderous veterans to Greek mythology to back up their assertions of their report.

 "The real mythology is the reporting by The New York Times," Move America Forward's Melanie Morgan concluded.

NOTE TO REPORTERS/BLOGGERS: Melanie Morgan and a delegation of staffers from Move America Forward have just returned from a 10-day trip interviewing U.S. troops in Iraq and Kuwait.

To schedule an interview with Melanie Morgan or the other members who traveled to Kuwait and Iraq including: Gold Star Mom Debbie Lee (mother of first Navy Seal killed in Iraq), MAF Communications Director, Danny Gonzalez, and MAF Deputy Executive Director, Mary Pearson, contact Ryan Gill of Move America Forward at: (916) 441-6197 or via email at: mary@MoveAmericaForward.org

>> You can link to this report, which is published at the Move America Forward website, at this location: http://www.moveamericaforward.org/index.php/MAF/MAFNews

*** Note that the central statistical measure is how many instances of alleged killings take place per 100,000 Iraq/Afghanistan war veterans who returned home. The New York Times might argue that our statistics are incorrect since the 1.5+ million Iraq/Afghanistan veterans have not been home during the entire 6 years of the war (especially since in the early onset of Operation Enduring Freedom troops were just arriving into the war zone).

However, Salon.com reports that as of January 31, 2005 there were 1,048,884 Americans who had fought in Iraq or Afghanistan. One can then calculate statistics from that point onward. Let’s give the New York Times the leeway of saying their alleged 121 incidents of killings by veterans occured during just the three years that elapsed since that time to the present. The murder rate per 100,000 people would still be approximately 3.5 incidents of murder per 100,000 returning Iraq/Afghanistan veterans.