CNN will run a one hour special on the Anderson Cooper 360 Degrees show entitled “Ambush at the River of Secrets”. This is a memorial to Jonathan Bowling, Karl Linn, Chris Weaver and Jesse Strong of the 4th Combat Engineer Battalion, Charlie Company of Lynchburg, VA who were lost 1/26/2005 in Haqlaniyah (near Haditha). According to the producer, Amanda Townsend, it will probably air on Tuesday, January 2nd. (It may show again, possibly on 1/26.)
(HT to USMCPop)
Marines should not have to worry about being charged with murder when they do the work they are trained to do, under combat conditions. That is what is happening to these Marines.
It's disgusting.
and before you moonbats and asshats start ranting, go eff yourself, because I'm declaring this blog a dictatorship and your opinions are not welcome.
From FreeRepublic.com (HT to RaceBannon and Freema):
December 29: Coverups and Corruption Written by Kit Jarrell 23 December 2006
It’s my first show on BlogTalkRadio, and it’ll be absolute, MUST-listen radio! If you’ve followed the saga of the Pendleton 8 cover-up at Euphoric Reality, then you’re well aware of the lengths that certain folks have gone to in order to keep their dirty little secrets buried.
But no more. We’re hitting the public. The story we’re telling is beyond important, because it goes to the heart of the problem in the War on Terror: Our soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines are being offered as sacrificial lambs for the political gain of those in power. Do I agree with the War on Terror? Absolutely. I support the mission. However, the military justice system is broken. Instead of being a system for justice and integrity, a place where the innocent are exonerated and the guilty punished, it has become a place where the end is known before the first witness is called; the winners are the generals and admirals and attorneys. The losers are the men who go out day after day and hold their fire when they’re shot at for fear that they will be charged with murder.
Just in case you still don’t think what I’m talking about is really happening, allow me to tell you a story.
In 1990, the executive officer of the USS Mars was court-martialed and convicted of dereliction of duty. It was just another court-martial, another win to chalk up for military prosecutors–who have a 97% conviction rate. But this case was different. Even the prosecutor is on sworn record as saying there was not enough evidence for conviction. We have hard copy proof of the following:
The admiral who started the investigation against the XO not only ignored all evidence proving the XO innocent, but he actively engaged in unethical conduct throughout the investigation, Article 32, and trial. In fact, this admiral named himself as the convening authority for the case and handpicked the jury from his own staff. The admiral’s Staff Judge Advocate, contrary to ethics and military law, continued to advise the admiral in secret throughout the case, even though he was the accuser against the XO. In one memo, he assures the admiral that “there is no copy of this memo” on his computer or in his office. The Staff Judge Advocate also complained about the prosecutor on the case, claiming that he didn’t want to “win” bad enough. The defense attorney forged the XO’s name to an official Response to the Letter of Reprimand after the court-martial. The XO never even knew this document existed for years after, and yet the Navy maintains that the XO’s signature is real and that the document is a true and legal one. A handwriting expert, however, says that’s not true. The NCIS is involved, as well, doing the bidding of those who stand to be embarrassed by the information coming out. Last year four NCIS agents showed up at the XO’s residence. The armed agents told him to leave the situation alone, to stop making waves or they’d have him arrested by the county sheriff. In the last few weeks, the Department of Homeland Security have been to the XO’s residence six times. What does all this have to do with cases like the Pendleton 8? I’ll give you a hint. The head NCIS agent outside the XO’s home that day last year just happens to be the same man in charge of the investigation of the Pendleton 8.
This story has it all: lies, betrayal, treachery, and dishonor. I’ll be talking about it on the 29th, live. I will have Tim Harrington from the Warrior Fund with me, going over the piles of evidence implicating everyone from the former head of Combat Logistics Group One, all the way to members of the current Congress.
And, we’ll be taking your calls.
This is not a show you can afford to miss…but if you do, the archive will be available both as streaming and download on
BlogTalkRadio and at Euphoric Reality.
Stay tuned…this is about to be a hell of a ride.
I am supposed to receive email notfication when a comment is submitted.
So much for technology.
To everyone who posted a comment worth reading, or asked a question, or raised their hand, Thank You for taking the time to visit.
To the asshats who wrote the dumb posts, you should Thank God you live in a country that allows you to be as stupid as you want to be and no one can bitch slap you for it.
A bit of news to report;
Swampy will be reporting to Parris Island, South Carolina in June of 2007.
Thats right, friends and neighbors, the Marine Corps has finally come to it's senses and recognized the valuable asset those of us who know her have always seen.
I'll have a few observations regarding this young lady later this week.
Good Luck Swampy
SEMPER FI
We look forward to intermittent postings, interrupted by 10 mile runs at 0500.
We have a new contributor on our blog.
I have granted posting privileges to my son; (who also has a MySpace page, which is entitled, "How MySpace Will be the Downfall of Western Civilzation".)
4 years of high school, 4 years of college. A degree in psychology.
We'll see how this works out.
I will do better with this blog in 2007.
For those of you who asked, the PW websites (HQ & Main Page) appear to be back up and running. Never did hear what the problem was, if indeed there was a problem.
Wayne, you will be linked from this page, as will anyone who has a website worth our time.
Hope everyone had a really great Christmas, and I'm looking forward to 2007.
We'll try to make it as interesting as 2006.
SEMPER FIDELIS
By Kathleen Parker
Friday, December 22, 2006
WASHINGTON -- It all started with a Marine major general's widow, who wanted to donate her wheelchair to a Marine who needed it.
What would seem to have been a simple request became a daunting task. There were bureaucracies to navigate, regulations to untangle, privacy acts to plow through, and logistics to manage.
Leave it to the Marines to get the job done.
The wheelchair at the heart of this story came to my attention the day after Thanksgiving, when John Palermo, senior vice commandant of the Marine Corps League in Tamarac, Fla., e-mailed me for help finding a needy Marine. Palermo already had been storing the chair for three months and was bumping into military privacy restrictions that prevented his finding a recipient.
The chair had belonged to Jane Hanson, widow of Maj. Gen. Arthur Briggs Hanson. She wasn't using the chair and wanted to honor her husband by giving it to a fellow Marine. It wasn't any ordinary wheelchair, but a new Shoprider Medical Power electric model worth several thousand dollars.
Palermo's e-mail set in motion a search that has involved dozens of people, mostly Marines, and a series of frustrating fits and starts that would prompt most to surrender. There's no shortage of needy Marines returning from Iraq minus limbs, but military rules made it nearly impossible to get a name.
Moreover, the Veterans Administration, it turns out, does a pretty good job of taking care of the wounded. Most have wheelchairs and prosthetics made to order, though I've learned during ``Operation Wheelchair,'' as this effort came to be called, that the list of back-ordered prosthetics is long.
Cutting to the chase, I forwarded Palermo's e-mail to Russ Clark, about whom I've written before. Clark is a minister and former Marine who counsels veterans through Point Man International Ministries in Columbus, Ohio. He went to work.
For the next five weeks, Clark sent me periodic updates on what was beginning to seem like a futile search. Every day, he was getting closer, but then he'd hit a snag.
E-mails and phone calls crossed the country several times. I can't list the names of all who worked on this project, but the search eventually landed at Naval Medical Center San Diego (better known to veterans as Balboa Hospital), where a new amputee clinic recently opened.
The only one of its kind on the West Coast, the clinic is expected to serve about 50 amputees per year. The week before Christmas, recent arrivals included ``a new quad.''
That chilling phrase -- ``a new quad'' -- doesn't roll easily off the tongue, but Richard Williams has learned to say it without flinching. An attorney and former Marine, Williams coordinates the Marine Corps League-Injured Marine Fund in San Diego.
Amputees are part of his life.
They are also his vocation. When not practicing law, Williams raises money to help financially strapped families visit their wounded Marines at the amputee center.
Although the Marine Corps and other groups help families visit wounded veterans, most programs allow for only two family members for a limited time. Places such as Fisher House -- which provides temporary lodging for military families at major medical centers -- are almost always full and have long waiting lists.
Williams' group tries to fill the void. Significantly, they bring families out for second and third visits, not just when the wounded first arrive.
``That's when the Marine is getting depressed,'' says Williams. ``He left his unit in Iraq, his family is in Omaha or wherever. The poor Marine faces multiple surgeries and is left by himself again.''
Williams has been instrumental in getting Hanson's wheelchair from Florida to California -- no small feat. Because of FAA rules pertaining to things such as batteries, you can't just fly an electric wheelchair across country, he says.
After many calls and dead ends, a Marine recruiter was located in Delray Beach, Fla., who is picking up the chair and delivering it to FedEx in Fort Lauderdale for crating and ground delivery to San Diego.
Hanson's chair is expected to arrive at the medical center soon after Christmas -- a gift from one Marine home to another. It's not exactly a happy ending, given the circumstances, but ``Operation Wheelchair'' reveals yet again what semper fi means to the Corps.
It also puts holiday angst in perspective.
For more information or to make a contribution to the injured Marine program, go to www.leaguelineup.com/injuredmarinefund/ .
Kathleen Parker is a popular syndicated columnist and director of the School of Written Expression at the Buckley School of Public Speaking and Persuasion in Camden, South Carolina.
By Kevin McCullough
Sunday, December 24, 2006
The nation and economy known as the new Iraq is succeeding, and those who dispute this are simply lying.
Call it whatever you'd like - a quagmire, a country torn by violence, the next Vietnam, etc. - but it is dishonest to say is that this nation is not a success. Government corruption, uncontrolled militias, and (as the drive-by media likes to remind us) daily attacks using improvised exploding devices - but it is not an economy going under.
Take yourself back to the days following 9.11. Do you remember the near stand still our economy experienced? The airline industry down for days and the markets went into the tank. I can only surmise that similar bumps in our economic stability would be felt if we were seeing radicals crossing the borders from our neighbors (and who knows - they probably are), and decided once here they would blow up policemen, military check-points, and the passing civilians on a daily basis.Despite the violence the economic growth in Iraq is defying all expectations by nearly any observer
Want proof?
The leading cell phone company Iraqna is set to take in nearly $520 million in revenues in 2006. That follows a record year in 2005 of $333 million. The leading export of Iraq is producing nearly $41 billion in revenues. In 2004 there were only 8,000 registered companies with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce - today there are over 34,000.
While we in the U.S. are thrilled to hear about GDP (gross domestic product) coming in at around 4% (so much so that it begins to bring down our national debt faster than expected), imagine enjoying Iraq's GDP growth of 13% in 2006. Which followed a record year in 2005 of 17%.
Since 2003 the salaries of average Iraqis have risen in excess of 100%. In addition the Iraqi government has slashed the income tax rates from 45% to just around 15%. That has resulted in the average Iraqi family being able to develop long term nest-eggs (we call them IRAs).
Gasoline is only .56 cents a gallon. It wouldn't be that high except that Iraq decided to payoff some of its debt to the World Bank and are using energy profits to do so.
In addition much of the formerly centralized organization of the economy has been turned over to private sector endeavors and while some government sectors have seen a spike in unemployment, private sector unemployment is hovering around 30%. (High to you and me, but still better than in the Saddam era.)
There will be many who will read this latest round of good news and dismiss it out of hand. But thinking people will understand that this growth did not happen in a vacuum.
Are there still significant challenges before the Iraqis? Yes, and there will be for decades - but the violence so reported in the daily news grind does not begin to give one even a slight glimpse of the entire picture.
The militias need to be disbanded. Iran needs to keeps it nose out of the Shia population, and the Saudis out of the Sunnis. But while these debates are occurring don't miss what's happening behind the scenes. Every single day 25 million Iraqis are going to jobs, coming home, paying bills, putting some into savings, educating their children - and living in freedom.
Those who still disagree will argue that their freedom was not worth the cost in the numbers of lost American lives. And they do so dishonestly - knowing that we've lost fewer lives in the Global War on Terror than in any other armed conflict America has fought in (based on the numbers of American citizens and the percentage serving during war time).
But some things are more valuable than life, and freedom is just such a treasure. Honorable people have always recognized this, and in turn expressed tremendous gratitude for the sacrifice made. Dishonorable people have always preferred tyranny to freedom, and the most dishonorable believe in freedom only for themselves.
The Global War on Terror has been and will continue to be a tough, log slog, in Iraq the news has not been the best in recent months. Yet there is good news, and it deserves to be noted.
Iraq will succeed. The terrorists will fail. And the longer the arm of freedom can reach, the more both statements will be proven true.
And in an economic sense - we need no greater proof.
Kevin McCullough's first hardback title "The MuscleHead Revolution: Overturning Liberalism with Commonsense Thinking" is now available. Kevin McCullough is heard daily in New York City, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware on WMCA 570 at 2pm. He blogs at www.muscleheadrevolution.com.
Getting Arrested 101: The Left's Strong Preference for Making Trouble
Posted Sep 28, 2006
"Like all the people in this tent and all the people on the stage, I have a strong preference for trouble-making.” So said a prominent participant at Code Pink and NOW “Women for Peace” Day at their encampment deceptively named “Camp Democracy” on the National Mall last week. The day included music, movies, speeches, panels and an appearance by leftist Howard Zinn.
I’ve sat in on a number of leftist conferences and this one seemed rather normal at first sight. There was a mock cemetery, using the deaths of our service members as political leverage against President Bush and the war. Quite typical. The tents were hung with anti-Bush banners and signs. Nothing new. Then came the “non-violence training.”
At first, the “non-violence” workshop seemed to be rather Ghandi-esque and benevolent, but I soon learned that the essence of “non-violent resistance” is not the actual sit-ins or protests themselves but the goal of getting arrested. Now, the organizers recognize that not everyone is keen on getting arrested but encouraged participants to reach out to those individuals anyway because you need a “support group” to help you be arrested “effectively.” You know, people you can count on to feed your cat while you are in jail, publicize your imprisonment, and so on.
Now any normal person would wonder, how does getting arrested help a cause? Evidently, it’s the left’s best hope for outreach and recruitment. Participants were encouraged to use their jail time to reach out to cellmates and the lawyers and judges in the court system and help persuade them to join their left-wing cause. The leaders explained that there are millions of people in jail in America and that activating them for their cause would be very powerful.
What’s another advantage in recruiting criminals? They aren’t afraid to break the law, which is exactly what these leftist activists are designing their movement to do.
Multiple participants gleefully identified themselves as “troublemakers” and proclaimed their goal of “taking the revolution to the streets.” Sound socialist? That’s because they are; and proudly, too. One panelist wore a shirt comparing the infamous hammer and sickle (the same that murdered millions upon millions) in shape to the dove universally recognized as the symbol of peace. That irony is deafening. Another panelist heralded that Americans should emulate the “revolution of the people that was Cuba” as democracy in America is dead because of the Supreme Court’s involvement in Bush’s election. By any traditional definition, that is treasonous.
Yes, America’s leftist leaders are out to cause serious trouble for us all. Col. Ann Wright, a former Army officer and diplomat who resigned her position in the Foreign Service because of her opposition to the war said, to wild cheers and applause, “We need people getting arrested. We need trouble-makers ... just voting in November is not enough!”
Even more worrisome is their acknowledgement of the need to appear normal and to outreach, even beyond those prisons, to the average Joe. Noted a panelist, “We need to think about the guy in the pick-up truck and not humiliate them or alienate them.”
Now why would they need to worry about alienating normal, American, pick-up-driving guys? Because their agenda and tactics are extreme enough that the average American would indeed find them distasteful and want nothing to do with them.
The wolf is wise to this and so he hides his true self with sheep’s clothing, appearing benevolent and normal to the other sheep in order to advantage of them. And we all know how the story ends for the unsuspecting sheep.
Let us not be fooled.
Miss Daugherty is program officer at the Clare Boothe Luce Policy Institute.
This article was first published in Human Events Online.
