UNC-TV Channel 4, located in the Research Triangle Park of Central NC is not airing the Frontline show on Haditha, "Rules of Engagement"! That means I don't get it. PBS' website claims that no Frontline show is scheduled for the next two weeks!
Well, it's not as though Haditha hasn't been mentioned and talked about a lot on PBS.
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Monday, February 18, 2008
National Geographic on the Vietnam War
Just got this in an e-mail. Don't know times and dates, but that it is a three hour National Geographic special it will no doubt run several times. Check your local listings. From the forwarded e-mail:
George Keegan was the DCS/I under Spike Mommyer.
Desi Arnaiz"
"Last night about 300 Vietnam Vets were invited guests of the National Geographic channel, for a special viewing of the documentary movie. It was both gut wrenching in its clarity and honesty. The footage is interspersed with vets who were on scene at the time and very well done. I met several of the them, especially the great visit I had with POW Navy Cdr. Paul Galanti. Met some great folks as well. Only Charley Schwab took me up on the offer to request an invite. I can assure you the drinks and food were equally as good. Terry Moran, host of ABC's NightLine was our host and did a spectacular job - no kidding!
I hope and pray that you will pass this notice on to all your friends to watch this documentary. It will help to explain the WAR to loved ones and friends. All agreed it was very well done since it is from the Capt/Private level - not the political level, except as politics led to battle actions. While the movie starts at the beginning with the "advisors" it really gets started with the battle of Id Drang Valley. Good focus on TET which I happened to participate in and thence on to the final stages. One word of warning, if a loved can not stand looking at battle casualties in the raw, maybe they should not watch. The documentary is real war where real people are getting wounded and killed. HP Smith was my boss in Vietnam and I do not have his E-mail address and I hope someone will pass this on to him.
George Keegan was the DCS/I under Spike Mommyer.
Desi Arnaiz"
IVAW: Enough Already With "I was told...", "I didn't actually see..."
So, having the #$%^ flu, I am not my normal pleasant self. Well, actually I am never really a pleasant self, but whatever I am or have been - I’m now much worse.
A good friend just apprised me of a post at HuffPo by a person who claims to be IVAW, and IVAW’s membership page does show a member by that name.
Before I let rip on this one, a quote from Mackubin T. Owens, Vietnam Vet:
“I always agreed with the observation of Harry Summers, a well-known military commentator who served as an infantryman in Korean and Vietnam, that the story teller’s distance from the battle zone was directly proportional to the gruesomeness of most atrocity stories."
This comes from SGTHogg posting at HuffPo:
“When my unit came home (I was not sent with them because mechanics were deployed as infantry, and as a female I was barred) one of the older guys told me a story. He said they would arrest Iraqi's in night raids and turn them in only to be later asked to go get them again after they were released, as they were now wanted. He told me (E-6, in his 40's, pro-war) that they would just shoot the guys when that happened. He said this as if it were normal and ok.”
Anyone else getting sick of “I actually didn’t witness...” (Aidan Delgado) or “I was told...” (Michael Blake) or “I saw enough to figure out...” (Camilo Mejia) from members of IVAW!!!!!!
There is a lot that doesn’t pass the smell test in that one short paragraph. An E-6 in his forties is what, an exceptional over achiever or a version of my invisible friend? Night raids are very risky and involved operations requiring intense specialized training. Anyone else doubt that mechanics from an engineering battalion are sent on those? The military is all about task specific training.
Sgt. Hogg was indeed a mechanic, from her HuffPo profile:
“Served as a mechanic in the Army National Guard from 2000-2005 and was activated for 9/11. Left the military due to my disagreement over the Iraq war, the treatment of gays and lesbians in the military as well as other minorities. I am now in Iraq Veterans Against the War (www.IVAW.org) and working to end the war in Iraq as well as call out sexism, homophobia and racism where I see it.”
Pardon me, but if Sgt. Hogg was so opposed to sexism, wouldn’t she have insisted on being deployed to Iraq?????? Sorry, it's the fever!
I’ve sent an inquiry to the 42nd ID PAO asking about whether female unit members like mechanics in support groups like the engineers were ruled out of deployment because those support units were to be used as combat infantry in things like night raids!
Back to SgtHogg at HuffPo:
“You know that if you were to report something like that there is a chance the guys involved would get very mad at you, and we all know anger and guns don't mix. Not to mention, you don't betray your fellow soldiers or marines, right?”
Nice touch, that! Speak the “truth”, your fellow soldiers with guns might do something to you, but the Sgt goes on to say:
“IVAW isn't trying to make war criminals out of service members, they are trying to expose what is normalized.”
Mensa is not calling Sgt. Hogg! Back to her:
“So if we as a service we normalize things that are wrong and place having your buddies back over what may be right (when not in war) as more important, do you think it is impossible to have things go wrong?”
Except the Sgt. supposedly heard this from one person and therefore concludes it is normal!
Real high bar for credulity, that, unless one is predisposed!
Here is former Sgt. Hogg's member page at IVAW, in which she says of the Army:
"...there is no real honor in an organization whose history is so tragic to those who have served in its ranks and to multitudes of those that have been murdered, been raped and pillaged in its tracks."
Well, to paraphrase Bogie, at least the Army will always have Paris!
And maybe some other places:
UPDATE:
Over at the Helen Benedict site, some words from Sgt. Hogg who is now calling out sexism in the military:
"Jennifer Hogg, 25, who was a sergeant in the Army's National Guard, said her company treated her well because she had a commander who wouldn't permit the mistreatment of women. But another National Guard soldier, Demond Mullins, 25, who served with the infantry in Iraq for a year, from 2004 to '05, told me that although there were no problems in his unit he heard from his commanders that there were rapes in other units in his camp. 'One time a woman was taking a shower late, and guys went and held the door closed so she couldn't get out, while one guy went in to rape her,' he said."
So the one calling out sexism was treated well, and the guy who didn't see problems in his unit heard about bad things in others, right down to the "how to" details! Oh, as though I had to tell you: Desmond Mullins is also IVAW!
Surprised?
A good friend just apprised me of a post at HuffPo by a person who claims to be IVAW, and IVAW’s membership page does show a member by that name.
Before I let rip on this one, a quote from Mackubin T. Owens, Vietnam Vet:
“I always agreed with the observation of Harry Summers, a well-known military commentator who served as an infantryman in Korean and Vietnam, that the story teller’s distance from the battle zone was directly proportional to the gruesomeness of most atrocity stories."
This comes from SGTHogg posting at HuffPo:
“When my unit came home (I was not sent with them because mechanics were deployed as infantry, and as a female I was barred) one of the older guys told me a story. He said they would arrest Iraqi's in night raids and turn them in only to be later asked to go get them again after they were released, as they were now wanted. He told me (E-6, in his 40's, pro-war) that they would just shoot the guys when that happened. He said this as if it were normal and ok.”
Anyone else getting sick of “I actually didn’t witness...” (Aidan Delgado) or “I was told...” (Michael Blake) or “I saw enough to figure out...” (Camilo Mejia) from members of IVAW!!!!!!
There is a lot that doesn’t pass the smell test in that one short paragraph. An E-6 in his forties is what, an exceptional over achiever or a version of my invisible friend? Night raids are very risky and involved operations requiring intense specialized training. Anyone else doubt that mechanics from an engineering battalion are sent on those? The military is all about task specific training.
Sgt. Hogg was indeed a mechanic, from her HuffPo profile:
“Served as a mechanic in the Army National Guard from 2000-2005 and was activated for 9/11. Left the military due to my disagreement over the Iraq war, the treatment of gays and lesbians in the military as well as other minorities. I am now in Iraq Veterans Against the War (www.IVAW.org) and working to end the war in Iraq as well as call out sexism, homophobia and racism where I see it.”
Pardon me, but if Sgt. Hogg was so opposed to sexism, wouldn’t she have insisted on being deployed to Iraq?????? Sorry, it's the fever!
I’ve sent an inquiry to the 42nd ID PAO asking about whether female unit members like mechanics in support groups like the engineers were ruled out of deployment because those support units were to be used as combat infantry in things like night raids!
Back to SgtHogg at HuffPo:
“You know that if you were to report something like that there is a chance the guys involved would get very mad at you, and we all know anger and guns don't mix. Not to mention, you don't betray your fellow soldiers or marines, right?”
Nice touch, that! Speak the “truth”, your fellow soldiers with guns might do something to you, but the Sgt goes on to say:
“IVAW isn't trying to make war criminals out of service members, they are trying to expose what is normalized.”
Mensa is not calling Sgt. Hogg! Back to her:
“So if we as a service we normalize things that are wrong and place having your buddies back over what may be right (when not in war) as more important, do you think it is impossible to have things go wrong?”
Except the Sgt. supposedly heard this from one person and therefore concludes it is normal!
Real high bar for credulity, that, unless one is predisposed!
Here is former Sgt. Hogg's member page at IVAW, in which she says of the Army:
"...there is no real honor in an organization whose history is so tragic to those who have served in its ranks and to multitudes of those that have been murdered, been raped and pillaged in its tracks."
Well, to paraphrase Bogie, at least the Army will always have Paris!
And maybe some other places:
UPDATE:Over at the Helen Benedict site, some words from Sgt. Hogg who is now calling out sexism in the military:
"Jennifer Hogg, 25, who was a sergeant in the Army's National Guard, said her company treated her well because she had a commander who wouldn't permit the mistreatment of women. But another National Guard soldier, Demond Mullins, 25, who served with the infantry in Iraq for a year, from 2004 to '05, told me that although there were no problems in his unit he heard from his commanders that there were rapes in other units in his camp. 'One time a woman was taking a shower late, and guys went and held the door closed so she couldn't get out, while one guy went in to rape her,' he said."
So the one calling out sexism was treated well, and the guy who didn't see problems in his unit heard about bad things in others, right down to the "how to" details! Oh, as though I had to tell you: Desmond Mullins is also IVAW!
Surprised?
A Refreshing Perspective on Che Guevara
From Jeff Jacoby's op-ed at the Boston Globe in "What Would JFK Do?":
"The lionizing of Che, a sociopath who relished killing and acclaimed 'the pedagogy of the firing squad,' is not just 'inappropriate.' It is vile. No American in his right mind would be caught dead wearing a David Duke T-shirt or displaying a poster of Pol Pot...
What [Che] cherished was hatred and murder: 'Hatred as an element of struggle,' he wrote in 1967, 'unbending hatred for the enemy, which pushes a human being beyond his natural limitations, making him into an effective, violent, selective, and cold-blooded killing machine.' It was a sentiment he expressed repeatedly - and lived up to.
...As chief prosecutor of the new regime, Che oversaw the bloodbath, ordering hundreds of executions in the first months of 1959. Those he killed...included 'former comrades-in-arms who refused to abandon their democratic beliefs.'
...Che didn't scruple at the death of innocents. 'Quit the dallying!' he ordered Jose Vilasuso, a conscientious government lawyer who was seeking evidence against several prisoners. 'Your job is a very simple one. Judicial evidence is an archaic and secondary bourgeois detail. This is a revolution! We execute from revolutionary conviction.'
The Battle of Berkeley
I have the flu. I only get it about every seven or eight years. When I do, it's not so much the aches and pains, fever and headache that gets to me - it's that the mind simply stops working. I can't think clearly, which of course means that a grateful universe will be momentarilly spared any of my usual long winded monologues.
So for entertainment...
Zombie is the photographer at ZombieTime who so often captures the essence of the left in images. Of course, Zombie also shows the other side, and this one is a gem from Berkeley Marines Protest:
So for entertainment...
Zombie is the photographer at ZombieTime who so often captures the essence of the left in images. Of course, Zombie also shows the other side, and this one is a gem from Berkeley Marines Protest:
Saturday, February 16, 2008
Haditha - What You and All of Us Didn't Know
I'm interrupting the posts on WSI topics for a bit of news that I just received from a good friend. Last August, after American Thinker published "The Haditha Libels Require Investigation", I had some contact with the folks at Defend Our Marines. Good people doing a wonderful job of tracking and disseminating all of the information on Haditha, a job the media would not do after it launched its big feeding frenzy with assist from John Murtha.
Few issues about the War in Iraq have gotten me as worked up as the despicable treatment those Marines got from politicians like Murtha, and it has to be said, people in anti-war groups like IVAW. They were found guilty and used for political purposes before, perhaps as Army Sergeant would say, they got to tell their story.
Defend Our Marines reports that FRONTLINE on PBS is to present a one hour show entitled "Rules of Engagement: What Really Happened at Haditha". The show will air on February 19th, at 9:00 pm EST on PBS.
UPDATE: Bruce Kesler of the Democracy Project had been given a pre-release screening and transcript of the show, and gives it a B-, while also stating that an A would be impossible due to time constraints alone. Read the preview.
That this is FRONTLINE and PBS is not a confidence builder. What is, however, is that someone finally took the time to talk to some of the Marines involved and further found that the story was NOT what everyone has been led to believe.
Read the interview with producer Arun Rath at Defend Our Marines. If the folks at DOM are hopeful, this will be worth seeing. Frankly, any more detail on what happened at Haditha cannot help but be better than the garbage, smear and crap that has been disseminated and used by so many.
And before I am countered or questioned on what I claimed about IVAW folks and Haditha, the original IVAW site statement on the upcoming WSI read:
"Once again, war crimes in places like Haditha, Fallujah, and Abu Ghraib have turned the public against the war."
Robin at Chickenhawk Express did a fine job last August of demonstrating how IVAW folks "wasted little time tossing the Haditha Marines under the Humvee."
That point, about presenting things, including real tragedies like Haditha, but also real problems like PTSD and veteran medical treatment, in a way that they are spun for political purposes does tie in, however, with what I will later post about WSI topics.
Few issues about the War in Iraq have gotten me as worked up as the despicable treatment those Marines got from politicians like Murtha, and it has to be said, people in anti-war groups like IVAW. They were found guilty and used for political purposes before, perhaps as Army Sergeant would say, they got to tell their story.
Defend Our Marines reports that FRONTLINE on PBS is to present a one hour show entitled "Rules of Engagement: What Really Happened at Haditha". The show will air on February 19th, at 9:00 pm EST on PBS.
UPDATE: Bruce Kesler of the Democracy Project had been given a pre-release screening and transcript of the show, and gives it a B-, while also stating that an A would be impossible due to time constraints alone. Read the preview.
That this is FRONTLINE and PBS is not a confidence builder. What is, however, is that someone finally took the time to talk to some of the Marines involved and further found that the story was NOT what everyone has been led to believe.
Read the interview with producer Arun Rath at Defend Our Marines. If the folks at DOM are hopeful, this will be worth seeing. Frankly, any more detail on what happened at Haditha cannot help but be better than the garbage, smear and crap that has been disseminated and used by so many.
And before I am countered or questioned on what I claimed about IVAW folks and Haditha, the original IVAW site statement on the upcoming WSI read:
"Once again, war crimes in places like Haditha, Fallujah, and Abu Ghraib have turned the public against the war."
Robin at Chickenhawk Express did a fine job last August of demonstrating how IVAW folks "wasted little time tossing the Haditha Marines under the Humvee."
That point, about presenting things, including real tragedies like Haditha, but also real problems like PTSD and veteran medical treatment, in a way that they are spun for political purposes does tie in, however, with what I will later post about WSI topics.
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