This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here …but you can see it from here

The New Hampshire Union Leader reports that at a rally in Concord, gun grabbing advocates included Boston Marathon bomber, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, in their symbolic reading of names of victims of gun violence since Sandy Hook. The advocates were sponsored by Nanny Bloomberg’s Mayors Against Illegal Guns. Of course, it wasn’t their fault the murderer was included, they say;

The Mayors Against Illegal Guns campaign put out a statement Wednesday saying rally organizers relied on a list compiled by Slate.com of people killed by guns since the Dec. 14 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., “and his name was on the list.”

The gun control group’s statement said the rally, which began last Friday, features volunteers, survivors of gun violence and family members of those shot and killed reading the names of “victims since the Newtown tragedy to show the very real and personal cost of gun violence, and to help prevent more names from being added to a list that tragically grows longer each day.”

Tsarnaev “was absolutely not a victim, his name should have been deleted before the list was provided to a family member for reading and his name should never have been read. It was a mistake, it should not have happened and we sincerely apologize,” the statement said.

Dinguses…or is it Dingi? I guess none of the names meant anything to them, they just read the names out without thinking about who the people were…only the number of dead people mattered to the little kool-aid guzzlers.

By the way, Organizing for Action, which spun off from Obama For America had an anti-gun rally in San Bernardino, CA which attracted almost more than three people;

The protest drew three members of Organizing for Action, a nonprofit group that supports President Barack Obama’s agenda, to the National Orange Show Events Center.

“It’s three people today, but it will be 23 next time, and we’ll see the time after that,” Lewis said.

Yeah, 23 would be overwhelming, too.

In 2009, Marine Alex Minsky lost his leg to roadside bomb in Afghanistan. He was in a coma for nearly two months and fought his way back upright. Then understandably, turned to alcohol and fought his way back from that, too. From ABC News;

“I was down,” the Calif.-based Minsky told ABC News. “I was numb and I was running away from everything…especially myself, my own head.”

Minsky suffered from depression and turned to alcohol to cope until he decided to fight back by stopping drinking and starting to work out.

“I didn’t want to run anymore,” he said. “I wanted to face my problems instead.”

It was at the gym that Minsky got his big break when he was spotted by a photographer.

“He approached me and said, ‘Have you ever modeled? Like what are you? What are you doing?’” Minsky recalled.

So now he’s an underwear model and he wants to be a role model for other victims of trauma. Thanks to Andy and Ex-PH2 for the links.

The above picture was sent to us by one of our old blogging friends and it’s the post headline and photo from Little Green Footballs (yeah, I know, I had forgotten about them, too) and the guy in the hat is supposed to remind us of the Confederate South, somehow. But, just like everything else The Pony-Tailed One writes about the military, he’s just wrong. The rest of us recognize it as a Stetson, still worn in some cases by cavalry troops today. The line that was edited by Charles Johnson as a result of him being corrected by his commenters, before I could get there and get a screen shot of it, was that this gentleman was dressed as a Confederate General. No, a US Cavalry Lieutenant Colonel.

Back in the good old days, I used to help ol’ Chuck out on his military issues, but now, since he’s thrown us under the bus and decided that Janet Napolitano is right in her agency’s assessment of veterans, I get to sit back, point and laugh at his ignorance. Charles, stay in your lane.

ADDED: Our friend got a screenshot before I missed it;

And Charles still thinks that it’s Confederate;

The Shane Ladner discussion goes on in the pages of the Atlanta Journal Constitution where reporter Bill Torpy sat down with the Ladners and their lawyer the other day. Shane & Co. are still clinging to the lie that he was awarded a Purple Heart for some secret squirrel operation in Central America;

Now, he and his lawyers say that was all a cover story. They say he actually was wounded by shrapnel during a classified drug interdiction action in Honduras in 1991.

Ladner entered the Army in 1990 and by December, records provided by his lawyers show, was in Honduras. Three months later, those records show, he was granted “top secret” classification. Another document with his name, a “classified information nondisclosure agreement,” says he can be charged criminally if he discloses such information.

“We cannot go into detail where he was or what happened when he was wounded; he cannot discuss this publicly,” said Cook. The lawyer then paused to anticipate the disbelief generated by the “can’t-tell-you” story. “Why is a kid fresh out of boot camp given top secret clearance? Because they are exposed to things not to be discussed in public. That’s the oath he took. He can’t even discuss these things with me.”

Ladner said the medal was lost when he sent it home from Central America. His lawyers also say they cannot find the citation that says he got one.

So the medal and all of the documentation has disappeared, but somehow it shows up on his DD214? It reminds me of the mysterious Bronze Star that magically appeared on Paul Rieckhoff’s DD214 which also didn’t have any supporting documents, but somehow the clerk knew to type it into his DD214, I guess using a Vulcan mind meld with the subject. The thing is that the NPRC can’t find the DD214 that Ladner is flashing around, but the VA has a copy;

We don’t sleep, we can’t eat, this just hangs over us,” said Ladner.

Ladner’s lawyers say they are still pushing to get records and have received many from both the Department of Defense and the Veterans Health Administration. The V.A. records included a copy of the newest DD214 denoting a Purple Heart but the DOD has not released that copy.

Well, yeah, the VA has a copy because Ladner gave it to them. When I filed my claim with the VA I had to give them both of my DD214s because they didn’t have one.

I spent some time with Torpy on the phone the other night and told him what you guys told me;

The report of possible fraud and later arrest has stoked widespread anger among many vets. An Internet site called “This Ain’t Hell” looks to “out” vets claiming medals they didn’t earn. Jonn Lilyea, who said he served in the Gulf War and who runs the site, said it’s implausible that a green soldier like Ladner would have been sent overseas for a covert operation. He said the anger will subside if “he and his lawyers come clean. But if they keep clinging to his story where will be no sympathy.”

The Associated Press reports that Afghan President Zarzai threw a tantrum yesterday when it was reported that the US will conducting peace talks with the Taliban in Qatar.

“In view of the contradiction between acts and the statements made by the United States of America in regard to the peace process, the Afghan government suspended the negotiations, currently underway in Kabul between Afghan and U.S. delegations on the bilateral security agreement,” Karzai’s statement said.

I’m guessing that Karzai is afraid that if the US strikes a deal with the Taliban, it will affect his retirement plan. Karzai has made himself irrelevant in the process – he takes in bags of untraceable cash from the US & the UK and doesn’t hold accountable the Taliban for the violence in his country. He makes excuses for the green-on-blue attacks that are incoherent and ridiculous and has called the US the only terrorist organization in Afghanistan. Screw him. Withdraw yesterday.

And, oh yeah, now that the Afghans are responsible for the security of our troops there, it looks like four US troops were killed on Bagram airbase yesterday by some sort of indirect fire.

Chief Tango sends us a link to the final chapter of Mustafa Sheffield’s story which ended on the floor of the Top Dollar, a cash for gold store in Newark, NJ, after his nine year incarceration in East Jersey State Prison. Apparently Mustafa, who was turning his life around, entered the store and tried to help them reduce their inventory when the store’s owner fired his gun at young Mustafa;

Sheffield threatened to shoot several of the owner’s relatives and ordered the man to fill a backpack with money and gold around 3:30 p.m., Murray said.

During the course of the robbery, the store owner pulled out a weapon from behind the counter and shot Sheffield once, Newark Police Director Samuel DeMaio said. Sheffield died a short time later at University Hospital in Newark.

Criminal charges have not been filed against the store owner, whose identity was withheld, but Murray said the matter will likely be presented to a grand jury. Two law enforcement sources told The Star-Ledger today the weapon the store owner used was a legal, registered firearm.

So businesses in Newark are marginally safer today with Mustafa’s passing.

I had to think a couple of times before I posted this link that James sent us because I didn’t want it to sound like I’m being the big bad infantryman bashing some Air Force chick, but, ya know what, she’s asking for it. She’s Senior Airman Stacy Fogarty and she says she served in Iraq, which is honorable enough, but I’m guessing that as an expert on women in combat, her experience is somewhat lacking. But that’s not what she tells the reporter dude;

“The enemy is not looking at us and say oh, they’re women. Let’s not do what we were going to do. They just see us as Americans and we should see each other as Americans not broken down by male and female,” she said.

“Do you feel that you had combat experiences when you were in the Air Force?” I asked.

“Absolutely. Yeah,” she said. “Civilians are throwing bombs over to the base. So at any time we could be hit. You’re not segregated out there as to who is combat and who is not. The minute you hit the AOR (area of responsibility) that’s a combat.”

Fogarty acknowledged there is a difference between being “in combat” and being in an infantry unit where you have to pull a trigger.

“Do you think you could have been on the front lines pulling a trigger?” I asked.

“I do. In the military you’re trained to do what needs to be done for the greater good,” Fogarty said.

“As soon as I asked that question I thought I’m not sure I’d even ask that question to a man,” I said.

“It’s interesting isn’t it?” she said.

Now, my wife’s friend, a nurse, was killed in Iraq when she was out running around the Green Zone one day when a mortar landed near her, I’m pretty sure that if she had lived through that experience she wouldn’t admit that because she’d been blown up, she’d make a good infantryman. But Fogarty, somehow thinks that because she *could* have been blown up at some point in her tour, that makes her equal to any infantryman. Actually all that makes her is a potential target. I’m sure she did a fine job, whatever that was, because she doesn’t tell us what she did in Iraq, but I think if we knew what her job was, we’d think her bravado would seem even more ridiculous.

While I’m sure her Air Force training was the best they could give her, I’m also sure that none of it had much to do with pulling triggers, not that it’s a bad thing, the Air Force seems more focused on their specialties and less on the ancillary war-fighting stuff, mainly because they have people in the Air Force to protect their technicians from the war-fighting stuff, and they depend on the Army and Marines for extra layers of protection.

I’m also sure that Stacy joined the Air Force so she’d be back from the battle, otherwise, she might have enlisted in the Marines or the Army. but, that’s just speculation because I don’t know what her job was in the Air Force, but she’s not exactly forthcoming on that point.

On edit: MCPO NYC USN (Ret.) dropped a video off in the comments, and it turns out that she worked in a medical supply room, so yeah, she’s a hardened combat vet more than qualified to comment on women in combat.

So, Joe Bite Me, made his big statement about how he’s going to come after law abiding citizens to make the world safer from the White House today. According to the Washington Times, Bite Me referring to new background checks regulations said;

“We will get it. We will be back. And we will, in fact, improve the lives and safety of all the children in America who should look at school as the safest place in the world they can be,” he said.

Mr. Biden said the shooting deaths of 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School was “the straw that broke the camel’s back” in the gun debate, and that those who stand in the way will now pay a political price.

Now, if I remember correctly, before the vote in Congress for background checks back in April, Biden said that he was aware of the fact that legislation wouldn’t make a difference in whether we’re all safer or not, but now, just getting background checks for private sales will make schools “the safest place in the world [children] can be”. Doesn’t he have a couple of corpses of dead children he can drag to make his point yet?

Let’s be clear about something, enhanced background checks wouldn’t have prevented Adam Lanza, James Holmes or Jared Loughner from getting their grubby paws on weapons. Holmes and Loughner were both mental cases that no one wanted to report to the national background check folks, and Lanza killed his mother and stole her guns. There were no loopholes that those three slipped through, other than the fact that the Tuscon police knew Loughner was a mental case and Holmes’s head doctor was worried that he’d slip his gears sometime. There were no private sales involved in their acquisition of firearms.

So, how will Bite Me’s vaunted background checks make us safer. Were there any journalists in the room with the cojones to ask him? Apparently not. Maybe the Obama Administration can negotiate with criminals like they plan with the Taliban to get the criminals to promise to get background checks before they buy a gun out of some guy’s trunk in a dark parking lot.

The Washington Times reports that Jennings Lodge in Milwaukie, Clackamas County, Oregon has had it up to here (knife hand at forehead) with crime and they’ve declared themselves a “Glock Block” to fight off the criminals with the fliers pictured above and their CCW permits. Unlike Washington State, Oregon requires that a CCW permit applicant “Demonstrates competence with a handgun”, so it’s not like a lot of women similar to the one we read about yesterday are pulling over cops to learn about their gun after they’ve purchased it.

Community members have actually pursued conceal carry permits in order to fend off the crime wave, which includes everything from stolen lawn ornaments to vandalism, the Daily Mail reported.

“We’re starting a new group,” said Clackamas County resident, Coy Toloman, in a KOIN report. “We don’t feel neighborhood watch is sufficient, and we don’t feel the Clackamas County Sheriff’s Office is sufficient.”

Ms. Toloman, fueled by the theft of a favorite statue from her front porch – and subsequent failed chase of the suspect, who “got away” – has taken a class to obtain a concealed carry permit, KOIN reported.

The only thing that troubles me about the story is that it’s considered news that citizens are arming themselves against criminals

I’ve received a FOIA that I could use some help in evaluating.  It concerns a Marine who served during the early days of the Vietnam War.

The individual has made a couple of claims elsewhere that sound a bit odd – but it’s possible they’re legit.  I simply don’t have the USMC-specific expertise or historical background to evaluate either his claims or his FOIA well enough to determine if the guy is telling the truth.

If any of our regular TAH readers are current or no-longer-active Marines with (1) a strong personnel background, (2) excellent knowledge of the USMC’s history in Vietnam, (3) excellent knowledge of the history of USMC Recon, and (4) would be willing to help, please leave a short comment below so advising.  I’d also ask that you put a contact e-mail in the appropriate comment box (the one below the website block) and give me explicit permission to contact you via e-mail.  I’ll be able to see the contact e-mail address, but will not disclose it to others without your explicit permission.

Thanks in advance to any who are willing to help out.