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

We talked about Aaron Hughes the other day. He was a truck driver stationed in Kuwait and drove supplies into Iraq in the early months of the war and now he’s the head spokesperson for IVAW in Chicago based on his unique view of the war in Afghanistan.

Tom sends us this video from Democracy Now! in which Aaron is interviewed by Amy Goodman and Nermeen Shaikh because he’s threatening to throw his GWOT Medal and his Army Commendation Medal at NATO this weekend in Chicago. If you’re having trouble sleeping tonight, this is the video you need. It’ll put you right out.

He starts out spewing out the little speech with all of the same talking points of his previous video and he doesn’t stray from those talking points through the whole interview. When ever the interviewers ask him to stray from his points, he says he doesn’t know.

He complains that as a truck driver he was only trained to kill, not to build democracies;

There’s a real moral disconnect between the idea that our military can build a democracy and the idea that our military is trained and designed to control, dominate and kill people. … Occupations don’t build democracies, don’t extend individuals’ freedoms.

Yeah, Aaron, I know you weren’t in Afghanistan, so you wouldn’t be able to ask those Afghan school girls if the Americans haven’t helped them any, what with girls just recently being allowed to go to school, in the school houses that we built. But I’m sure if look far and wide through the ranks of IVAW, you might find someone who has been there and can explain it to you.

Aaron also explains that the only people who are qualified to bring democracy to Afghanistan have studied the problem for years. Yet here is Aaron, with his degree in Art Theory telling us how to run our foreign and defense policies. I guess in Art Theory they don’t teach the word “irony” to their students.

PS: Aaron loves birds!

Former3c0 sends us a link to a Fox News article which tells us that gays weren’t a monolithic pro vote in the discussion whether naming a Navy ship for the murdered gay activist is such a good idea. This is about a vote that took place at the San Francisco Board of Supervisors subcommittee vote;

[Supervisor Christina Olague], the dissenter in the 2-1 vote this week, was joined in opposition by the city’s gay Democrat club named after Milk and other activists. She told the San Francisco Chronicle she prefers a national holiday honoring Milk.

Activist Tommi Avicolli Mecca wrote in a recent blog post: “The Milk who served in the Navy and the Milk who, less than two decades later, defied the taboos of his day to have sex with men, grow his hair, smoke pot and oppose the war in Vietnam, were completely different individuals.”

I guess they can be considered bigots, too.

I think it’s funny that there seems to be a tiered system of activism on the Left. Apparently, “anti-war” takes precedence over “gay issues”. Anyone want to play to play rock-paper-scissors for it?

My editor at Business Insider, Eloïse Lee, just posted an article about what she took away from the Milblog Conference this year from the perspective of a real journalist.

A common theme we encountered at the conference was that bloggers were surprised people were reading their content. We couldn’t reiterate enough how civilians are interested in the military and defense issues — and whatsmore, milbloggers offer an authentic, fresh perspective on the stories that are reported, misreported, or even unreported in the traditional media.

Eloïse also put together a slide show of some of the people she met there. You’ll see StrikeFO and Doc Bailey in the mix, well, and me.

I really enjoyed my weekend with Eloïse and her editor, Robert Johnson, I learned more from them than they learned from me, I’m sure. But mostly I was just glad to see some non-bloggers who were interested in what we do. Unlike the Old Media who were there and preached to us about how we were only interfering in them doing their jobs, and the service New Media people who were telling bloggers we had been replaced by Facebook and Twitter, Robert and Eloïse actually asked us questions and tried to understand the unseen intricacies of blogging.

I feel lucky that they approached me and found some value to their bosses in my mindless prattling. So, click over and read the rest of Eloïse’s article.

CI sends us a video of an interview on Fox News with wounded warrior Colonel Greg Gadson, who could end up being the only redeeming quality of the upcoming movie “Battleship”;

From NJ.com an interview with Col. Gadson and his connections to the World Champion New York Giants (I had to rub that in, TSO);

Col. Greg Gadson, a double amputee who lost his legs in Iraq, was introduced to the Giants in 2007 by his friend and former Army football teammate Mike Sullivan. For the four seasons since he gave a few speeches to the Super Bowl XLII champs, he’s been an inspiration for the Giants’ players and coaches.

He’s also the Director of the U.S. Army Wounded Warrior Program.

COB6 sends this link to an Associated Press article about the Army’s discussion whether they’re going to let women in Ranger School;

Gen. Raymond Odierno, Army chief of staff, says he’s asked senior commanders to provide him with recommendations and a plan this summer. He says if women are eventually allowed to serve in the infantry, they would have to go to Ranger school in order to be competitive with their male counterparts as they move through the ranks.

Going to Ranger school does not automatically mean they would be allowed to serve in one of the Army’s three elite Ranger battalions, which are Army special operations forces. Women are not allowed to serve as special operators.

COB6 says “Every time we put a tanker in charge Rangers get f*cked!”

You may have heard that yesterday, Iran hanged an alleged “Mossad spy”, Majid Jamali Fashi.

Today, published reports indicate that Wikileaks may have been responsible for exposing this individual to Iranian authorities – and thus for his demise.  From the linked article:

The Times of London reported Wednesday that a document from the US Embassy in Baku, Azerbaijan, seemingly drew attention to Fashi. The September 2009 US diplomatic document — identified by the code 09BAKU687 — quotes an Iranian source who was a licensed martial arts coach and trainer as describing to his American contacts pressure from the Iranian regime to train soldiers and militiamen in martial arts.

Fashi was reportedly in Baku for an international martial arts competition only days before the US Embassy document was written.

The suggestion is that the Iranian authorities identified Fashi as someone who was in illicit contact with the West on the basis of the document. He was arrested days after the publication of the document by WikiLeaks in December of 2010 and charged with carrying out the January 2010 assassination of nuclear scientist Masoud Ali-Mohammadi on behalf of the Mossad.

I don’t have any idea whether or not Fashi was working for the Mossad, or what exposed him if he was indeed a Mossad agent.  But the above theory is plausible.  Whether it’s the truth or not, I don’t know.

But it damn sure could be true.

Congratulations, PFC Manning.  You may now literally have blood on your hands.

And the next time anyone asserts that Manning giving those quarter-million classified documents to Wikileaks was “no big deal”, refer them to Fashi’s family.  I’m sure his parents and siblings will agree wholeheartedly that Wikileaks was “no big deal.”

This post has been about four years in the writing, since one of the Tea Party rallies when Uncle Jimbo and I were bemoaning the trials and tribulations of trying to blog about the Left vs. Right politics and we both said that we’d rather blog about the military without involving politics for a change.

Today, I looked through my inbox today which has 6,514 “important” emails in it. Going through it, I see campaign crap from people I’ve never heard of – no offense to the folks who live in Utah, but I really don’t think I’ll be supporting a candidate whose name I’ve never heard or read a word about their position just because they think I’m a Republican.

And I really don’t care that Obama rewrote all of the presidential biographies on the White House website – yeah, OK, I care, but I expected it from him. But, I didn’t elect him. And do you really think that Romney wouldn’t do the same thing? In fact, looking at the two presidential candidates, are they really all that different?

For the first time in my lifetime, neither candidate has military service. So who do I support – neither are going give a tiny rat’s ass about veterans. Do you think Romney has the guts to roll back veteran health care cuts?

In that interview I did last week, they had to go back to 2008 to find a quote on this blog about Romney – and the quote wasn’t even mine. Because I never thought about him, good, bad or indifferent. I had an inkling years ago that he’d be the Republican candidate this year. I’m not happy about it and I won’t vote for him.

If you come right down to it, voting for Obama is the same as voting for Romney. There’s not a bit of difference between the two of them. Not. A. Bit. Either one of them would take my guns without thinking twice about it. They both want an expansive government that sticks it’s nose in my business. Both would raise my taxes on a whim. Both want to balance the Defense budget on the lives of the next generation of trigger pullers.

And don’t get me started on Congress….

From this point forward, this blog is about nothing but the troops, national defense and veterans. Yes, I’ll still criticize the candidates…but only as far as it effects those issues. Screw politics…no one is listening to me anyway, because I said I was going to do this when Gingrich got into the race.

So if you work on a campaign and you’re currently sending me press releases about your idiot candidate, please STOP! I haven’t endorsed him in the last three years you’ve been sending your crap, so why would you continue? If you belong to a think tank and you think I’m interested in your crack pot theories about taxation and social engineering, please STOP! If it doesn’t have to do with the troops or veterans, stuff it. I don’t fricken care.

I’m partisan in that I think all of you politically-connected geeks are in this for yourselves and don’t care about anyone who doesn’t work at your bank.

I’m not giving any money to any political party – my money is going to the VSOs who have proven in the past to be concerned about my issues. But the Republicans in Congress act like Democrats, so why would I give either of them any money?

Will I still blast VoteVets and IAVA when they act like partisan hacks? Yes, most definitely. I hate blatant hypocrisy.

I can already feel the burdens lifting from my aging shoulders.

You may remember that TSO and I went to the Colors casing ceremony when the 3rd Sustainment Command (Expeditionary) prepared to deploy to Afghanistan from Fort Knox. They’ve been sending us updates from their work there, and I’ve been delinquent in telling y’all about their doings. So let me catch you up.

First of all, they uncased their colors when they arrived and sent us this picture;

Their commander, Kristen French, made her star over there;
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Day 3: Village People Biker.

[EDITOR'S NOTE: Seriously, this is so fricken gay I am putting it after the jump. How Gay is it? Imagine Liberace, the N'Sync dude and A-Rod all in a hot tub naked listening to Elton John. Now, raise that by 10 to the power of 57, and you're within a few orders of magnitude. A guy who watches Thelma and Louise with a gallon of icecream and tears streaming down his face would look at this and tell me to man up. This picture makes Andy Dick look like Chuck Norris. You have been warned.]
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Old Trooper sends us a link to a local news report that says that Trayvon had injuries on his knuckles;

WFTV has learned that the medical examiner found two injuries on Martin’s body: The fatal gunshot wound and broken skin on his knuckles.

When you compare Trayvon’s non-fatal injury with Zimmerman’s bloody head wounds, the autopsy evidence is better for the defense, Sheaffer said.

“It goes along with Zimmerman’s story that he acted in self-defense, because he

So, coupled with Zimmerman’s injuries we talked about earlier this morning, I just can’t add one plus one. I wonder what it means when one participant has injuries to his knuckles and the other has injuries to head. It’s truly a mystery. I’m sure Insipid or Joe will be able to spell it out for us so we won’t be racists.