COLORADO SPRINGS, COLORADO- You thank them for their service. You support them, they're only following orders. You know they're not at liberty to divulge everything they do or WHERE. As their supporters you are complicit, but whatever. Now your soldiers are keeping a HUGE secret from you. They're GOING TO WAR. You'd think that would be too controversial to be a state secret. If you leave in a military town, near a base, fort or camp, you need only ask around. Pawn shops and car dealerships seem to have their finger on the pulse of troop movements for some reason. In Colorado Springs, everybody knows. Friends and neighbors have already deployed overseas to establish contractor services. Others in readiness training. Of course the big secret for awhile has been Africa. American soldiers have been involved in covert operations across Africa which none are still allowed to talk about. Those aren't undeclared wars, just police actions. This time, again, it's Iraq. Going back. I shall return. Are they waiting on Spring? Summer weather? The election? Commander in Chief Clinton? Likely. It used to be soldiers didn't talk about mobilization. "Loose lips sink ships" etc. Of course in those days the public knew the nation was at war. War had been declared on us, or a fascist belligerent attacked. Today when the US launches offensive wars, illegal wars they're called in the Hague, its troop movements have to be extra covert. Or not, actually, when mobilization is prelude to Shock and Awe. Troop sneakiness seems to be all about sneaking past the American pulbic. Sneaking past us to unknown conflict zones in Africa and Asia, sneaking past us to redeploy to Iraq. At some point those soldiers have to understand what they're doing is not only unpopular, it's likely wrong.
Tag: Support the Troops
Because you supported the troops, today we have to f-ck the police
If there's a chant that unites protesters across America it is "FTP!" No matter the issue, from BLM to GMOs, excessive use of force by police against dissenting citizens is the common grievance. The UN has even condemned US human rights abuses, this time police violence and racial discrimination. Our emergant police state may be the business end of the New World Order, but its troubling conduct is directly traceable to US military rules of engagement. These violent cops are our vets! Stuck with PTSD, no marketable skills, and a taste for blood, American soldiers are transitioning to law enforcement jobs where they're already familiar with the militarized equipment and the shoot-to-kill MO. The irony of course is that many of America's homeless are veterans who could not live with the acts they were made to do in Afghansitan and Iraq and elsewhere. Those that could are the cops beating them! When American soldiers shot first and asked questions never, overseas, at vehicles or at civilians whose needs they did not understand, you shouted SUPPORT THE TROOPS. Now they've brought the war home with lethal force and indescriminate brutality. You asked for it, you got it.
US Right Wing pushes their militarism on us like it was a drug, and it is
???--- 'When militarism is squeezed into the small cultural spaces of everyday life, we are subtly reminded, again and again, that war and violence and soldiering are normal. We are thus being taught that war and violence and soldiering are not political matters subject to contention or debate. The message is that war and violence and soldiering are normal parts of who we are and what we do as a people, and anyone who questions this is beyond the pale—unpatriotic, a traitor.' ...an excerpt from Behind the "Support the Troops" Rhetoric- Micro Militarism So is it cowardly to support Peace and Socialism while living in the US as the Right Wing military man/ woman would tell us it is? No, they are the real cowards here! It is in fact cowardly to go into the US military to obtain benefits denied the rest of the population and to the people the US military might have you go out and kill for the rich corporate interests that run the government. As usual, the Right Winger has it all ass backwards though. All they are really for is War and more destruction of the Planet Earth. We all deserve to have human needs met and an end to constant warfare. For those looking for how way out stupid the 'support the troops' Right Winger mindset can actually get to, check out today's LA Times article about what they call 'canine PTSD'. It's a big problem the commentator says and supposedly effects 10% of our military's dogs! See Military's dogs of war also suffer post-traumatic stress disorder Conclusion? ...'Some dogs, like 5-year-old Cora, just need to be treated as honored combat veterans and allowed to lead less-stressful lives.' Meanwhile let's make it illegal in places like Colorado Springs, to ask a person for loose change? Coddle the veteran dog and jail the civilian destitute? The Right Winger's logic is so out of whack with reality that it boggles the mind sometimes just reflecting on how bizarre and idiotic they really get at times. And at the core of their mental illness is seeing the military as somehow being center of all the nation's virtue. Too bad the liberal Democrats coddle this mindset as well as the Right Wing churches do. 'Canine PTSD is now recognized by military dog specialists as a combat affliction, and they're learning to treat it.' Oh GAG US with all your militarist crap, Pentagon propagandist! It's making our nation, the USA, a totally sickening place to ever want to be associated in being a part of.
We support the troops when we bear responsibility for their atrocities
TROOPS KILL KIDS- You'd think the statement was so obvious it didn't need saying, but it does, everyone is in such denial about it. Other people's kids die everyday by airstrike or at the hands of our marauding soldiers, yet Americans still pretend no one's done it.
The troops don’t want your support, they want you to enable them
In protesting war, it's not enough to say you "support the troops", even as you advocate to "bring them home". Soldiers see criticizing war as directed at them because it underminds the purity of spirit they want to go about their destructive missions. Don't expect to get anywhere with trying to explain legal or moral issues. Their military indoctrination omits understanding war crimes like collective punishment, disproportionate force, massacre, murder, and by the looks of it, even rape of your fellow female soldiers. No, today's soldiers want enablers to help them "embrace the carnage" so they can "do what they have to do" wherever they're deployed. Even stationed stateside, they're unencumbered by critical thought, they certainly don't want to hear yours.
36 Gigabucks in fraud? Dig harder or dig in another place…
Cause there's a much more massive gap between what was reported to us as the cost of the war as late as oh. let me see... Last Week, where the cost of the War on An Amorphous Emotion Peopled By Shadowy Dark Skinned People In Far Corners of The Empire was "set" at being somewhere more than a Trillion dollars.... and the amount that doesn't seem to be accounted for. Which is estimated at between 5 and 8 trillion. How does 8 Trillion anything just up and piss-a-deer? I published an analogy of what a trillion dead mosquitoes would look like in one place, it would be a hill of mosquito meat about as tall as the Capitol Dome. Perhaps one reason the money is "unaccounted" is because the accountants work for the Thieves. Such as one Richard Cheney, who recently as in a couple of days ago did another interview on NBC. Regarding him being not responsible for the massacre of the poor known as the "response to Hurricane Katrina". Irresponsible? yes. NOT responsible? Hell to the no. His company, Halliburton, from which he didn't divest at all when he became the President of Vice, took the greatest share of the funds sent into the Magic Hole Which Makes Money Disappear. Using no-bid contracts administered by... Vice President Richard Cheney. Halliburton, by the way, is a company organized strictly for theft. It's what they do and they're very good at it. I know using the word "good" while describing that particular nest of snakes (my appologies to real snakes and other reptiles) makes it Instant Oxymoron, but that's one of the gaping holes in the Modern English Language. They have sucked America dry and built themselves a private island resort off the coast of Dubai, UAE. Let's break momentarily from Trashing The Trash, in other words talking smack about the thieves, and remind our audience what the term Trillion means as opposed to Billion. When you multiply anything by a thousand, that's when the name changes. "Mil" as in million means "a thousand" and in that case means a thousand times a thousand. A Billion is a thousand times a Million. A Trillion is a 1,000 x 1,000, x 1,000 x 1,000. A thousand times a billion, A MILLION millions. Bill Gates had at one time 80 billion dollars in his personal stash, that's less than 1% of a trillion. And approximately 5 trillion is missing. The largest circulating bill in U.S. currency is the $100. Each weighs a gram. It takes ten kilograms of $100 bills to make a million dollars, and that's the smallest physical pile of currency that would possibly make a million dollars. It wouldn't be like in the movies where somebody carries a briefcase full of money and it's valued, for the sake of poetic license, as ten million bucks. Not so. Ten million would weigh about what I do, 220 pounds. You would need a suitcase so big you would have to check it at the airport, not carry on luggage,
Corporate Supreme Court backed Mall-Wart in Anti-Worker decision
Again. How much did it cost the Walton Empire to have the Supremes sing for them? I should shut up about that, I guess, I could be theoretically held in Contempt of Corporation. WalMart could sue ME for definition of character. Their pet monkeys at the Supreme Court would back them up on it. Nothing new there. Get back to work, Slave! Slaves have no rights that the WalMart Empire or the Supreme Court have to acknowledge! If you're not a Billion Dollar Corporation the U.S. Senate, House of "representatives", President and especially not the Police, Courts, or Military don't represent your broke ass. Tote that barge, lift that bale or however the song goes. Don't forget to say thank you to your Prison Work Gang Overseers errr I mean, Police and Military as you head away from the work area and toward your sleeping quarters at Gulag Walmart. Use that 2 1/2% employee discount that will be given to you in the next "fair and impartial" Court Decision to purchase a cheap flag and cheaper Magnetic Yellow Ribbon at $1.88 apiece instead of $1.93, plus tax, cause you'll pay taxes but your Owners "employers" don't. Remember, they gave you the freedom to be exploited by the Rich Bitches. Freedom is defined by your Slave Owners.
As was long suspected, then reported, and the reporters mocked..
Like when Dr Laura's son was using MySpace to boast of war crimes in which he participated or fantasized about committing, denounced by Ms. Schlesinger and others on the RightWing Lunatic Fringe as being "hacked" onto his account... along with his bits about worshiping Satan... But now it appears there are still more stories coming out of VietRaqiStan of soldiers, good old Red--blooded American Boy Scouts, killing for nothing more than the fun of doing it. But it's true patriot Bradley Manning who's facing a Life Sentence for exposing it, not any of the Murderers. Had there been no war crimes to expose there would have been no exposure. But of course, telling impressionable very young adults, older children actually, that killing is necessary, and fun, training them to do it effectively and to ENJOY the thrill of putting a gun to somebody's head and removing his brain from the skull violently, some way, somehow, would NOT and could not possibly lead to some of them doing it for fun. Especially since the normal Rules of Engagement, the Geneva and Hague Conventions, and the laws both of the United States and the UCMJ (at least the ones which prohibit Murder and other deliberate War Crimes) circumvented by a presidential executive order of non-prosecution, that wouldn't lead anybody to do what they're commanded to do and allowed to do. Laissez-Faire in the battlefield would work just as splendidly as laissez faire in the Marketplace. Well, I'll concede they've had equivalent results. Especially as the former is done to promote the latter. Soon, if the Capitalist BigPigs get anything approaching Victory in Afghanistan, they'll be using the same Killers and the same Killer Methods to indoctrinate Americans into the subservience they demand of Afghans, and Iraqis, and Guatemalans, and Costa Riquenses, and Panamanians, and anyone else living under the "enforced liberty" of the Free Market, backed by Military might if the people object to being treated as "free" market slaves. They already do it at Union actions. Either the Military or the Deputized Constabulary PIGS show up with guns to intimidate the workers to get back in Corporate Line. De Oppresso Liber, Ad Oppresso Ultimo. Which unless my Latin is WRONG that would be the Greenie-Beanie Motto "free from oppression" with "unto greater oppression". Kiss it, SF. It's what you really stand for. That's right, boys, make your Mommas real proud. Just like Dr Lauras son did.
Operation Home Front = fake patriotism
Enough already. If you "support" the troops or the war, then why don't you actually "support" them? Dig down deep and pay your God-damn taxes to fund it. Can't afford the war under the current Tax Scheme? Too GOD-DAMNED BAD. You should have protested George Bush and his Corporate Thieves when they STARTED the bitch. You should have protested THEN and you really need to protest it NOW, the tax-breaks given to the Wealthiest People On The Planet so they don't have to pay for the "troops" to go out and rob one of the poorest nations on the planet, Afghanistan, on their behalf. Those Corporate Murderers who are benefiting from the war are getting their blood money essentially for FREE because STUPID PEOPLE or LAZY PEOPLE wouldn't ever stand up to them. Some of you who have influence in the major parties, maybe people with military titles in front of your names? The kind of name-and-title combinations politicians drool over when it's election time... YEAH, YOU! Get off your Fat Uniformed Butt and make Congress aware that THEIR bribe-taking and favoritism to the Blood-sucking Corporations have NOT gone un-noticed. TeaBags, you bitch and whine about a health care plan that might stop the rapidly accelerating bleed-off of American Health Care money, or even just maybe slow it down? Get off your Racist Butts and start protesting the Pentagon giving away TEN TIMES as much to a bunch of Parasites who don't even Pay God-damn taxes! Do it NOW! Instead of waving a piece of cloth and a plastic magnetic yellow ribbon at ME. And stop putting up signs at the grocery stores begging for money to go to the families of the Troops, if you're too God-Damned stingy to pay them for the war YOU support. It's also very worthy of note that Operation Home Front and the USO and other such organizations give you a Tax Credit for your donations. That means, in plain English, that the people who practice the FAKE patriotism of "donating" to these organizations are getting THE DONATIONS RETURNED TO THEM, courtesy of other people who ACTUALLY DO PAY THEIR TAXES. Such Love! Such Caring! Such Generosity! Such Goddamn Chutzpah! Pretending to give anything, giving nothing and hitting other people with the bill for YOUR "warm fuzzy feeling". Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, Ollie North, y'all taking any notice? Especially you and the rest of the Fox News Pukes. You make YOUR ENTIRE FORTUNE spreading propaganda for the wars, but you want to shirk on paying taxes... instead investing it in your War Profiteering industries like the Oil Companies. You're a bunch of nauseating lying SLUGS in dire need of a bag of salt. You feast on the blood of Soldiers and "enemy" Civilians alike, then take a tax break for making yourselves look pious and Patriotic about it. Closer to home, Michelle Malkin, Doug Lamborn, "Gunny" Bob, YEAH, YOU!
Get behind our soldiers or get in front
For Memorial Day we've got a Stryker Brigade in Southern Afghanistan caught executing Afghan civilians and beating comrades who objected. They want our backing yet cannot support fellow soldiers who choose not to commit war crimes. Which should we? So long as our murderous GIs aren't wearing Nazi armbands, Americans stand behind them.
A few bad Nazis spoil the whole bunch
Were the atrocities committed by the Nazis found to be systemic, or were their brutal tortures ultimately credited to a few really bad apples?
Fog of War is not Fog for War Crime
No pictures have yet emerged of what the 595 A-team Fifth Special Forces did with the captured Taliban at the mass graves at Dasht-e Leili. The BBC documentary Massacre at Mazar reports that an Afghan who sought the reputed black market video evidence was beaten by Northern Allied warlord men and left for dead. In late November 2001 at the battle of Kondutz, several thousand surrendering Taliban promised amnesty, were loaded at Qala Zeini fort into thirteen unventilated shipping containers, bound and blindfolded, some hogtied, and transported to to Sheberghan prison where their dead bodies poured out like fish. US special forces directed the containers be taken to the desert where the bodies were spilled into trenches. Witnesses report that the dozen US soldiers killed those Taliban fighters who emerged alive.
Support Our Homeless Troops
COLORADO SPRINGS- I watched yesterday as a group of homeless men disbanded beneath an underpass. I remarked how their yet unbent frames and close-shaved heads made them appear more menacing than usual. Then I noticed one had a graphite prosthetic calf, and I thought about our vets who disappear themselves into being vagabonds. Homelessness is elective you could say, like despondency or suicide. If one in four of America's homeless are veterans, why not tell us what that fraction amounts to? They must know. Americans were just leaked the number of suicides among our soldiers and veterans. It's more even than have died in the Iraq war. We hear about the seemingly haphazard suicides, self-destructive acts and reckless endangerments, but who puts it together? Did you imagine the tally as a result of the war would be so high? Probably the incidence of PTSD, they say now 30%, is equally under-documented. Who will contravene with the VA, the DoD and the State Department to give us the real totals? Americans recently honored the 4,000th US casualty in Iraq. What was THAT milestone for? The American Friends Service Committee had been circulating a collection of army boots --Eyes Wide Open, before the number became unmanageable-- to correspond to the official US losses. It didn't occur to me how some military families might feel left out by that count. What about the non-combat deaths, or the wounded who expire stateside? What about the suicides, or the brain-dead? What about the broken bodies who would be over-represented by a pair of boots, who would need a single boot, or none at all? What is the real figure so far, of US lives sacrificed to the war? What fraction of a Vietnam wall memorial are they setting aside for the true casualty count? Enough for ten thousand? Is our tally of wasted-lives several times that? I want to know where are the yokels who make a big deal about supporting the troops? Where are they while homeless vets look for heat and food? Where is the support for young men haunted to the point of committing suicide? Is that yellow sticker on your car the furthest extent to which you support the troops? Do you hope your sticker remains obscured in the garage until the homeless vets pass? I hope the yellow ribbon Support the Troops sticker comes to mean you're good for a meal, a ride, a place to sleep, or spare change for a drink. I didn't support the troops, what they did and still do, or the trouble they find themselves in now that their killing duty is served. You encouraged them, you're still welcoming them home and cheering their continued deployment. You broke these young men, now support them.