And every now and then, something goes sideways, somebody yells, drops a flashlight, a kid runs, you hear a gunshot outside, something, and a kid who’s scared and pissed and has his M-4 off safe rips a burst in a back room, there’s chaos, confusion, people are yelling, running this way and that, and nobody knows if anybody’s hit, and there’s movement back in the shadows and the SAW gunner puts 75 rounds in it, muzzle flashes creating a strobe effect, heightening the chaos, the screaming fades behind the roar of the 5.56 on full auto, smoke drifts as the Lieutenant runs in and starts grabbing people while the sergeant takes a quick head count and slowly things get quiet again.

And in the corner, still clutching a small stuffed animal, looking oddly at peace except for all the blood spattering the wall behind her is a five year old girl. Next to her is some meat that used to be her little brother. Their mother breaks down in hysterical sobs while her father fixes the Ell Tee with a steely glare that says more than any curse could ever say. The Ell Tee shakes his head, tells the interpreter to tell the father that a Community Relations Liason Officer will be out in the morning to provide compensation and the squad goes outside into the night air for a smoke and a brief talk, then the next stop on the mission plan.

And those kids are your kids, your brothers, you dads, they are you, they are US and they are coming home and they are going to have to try to process all that, and understand, and find a box to put the guilt and the horror in, and lie about their lives, and drink a lot of cheap booze and one night, when the dreams won’t stop and the night is just too dark and too long and he just can’t get the vision of those kids out of his head, one night that’s just one night too many, he puts the muzzle of his 9mm service pistol against his temple, angles it back just right, wishes that somehow his life could have worked out differently, and pulls the trigger…

mikey

There’s a goddamn novel in you, mikey … I’d be honored to proof drafts if you ever get around to it.

I know someone with that same story stuck in his head Mikey. He almost pulled the trigger. I think the only thing that stopped him was realizing his wife was clued into some of what he went through,and he went to her instead of killing himself. They’ve been married and gone through all that shit for over 25 yrs now. It’s been an uphill slog.

THIS shit is why you don’t lie a nation into war.

Psst…proof the post title before mikey’s book…

Indeed. We haven’t seen the full echo of the war yet. Still in the ‘boom’ phase.

I wonder how many times we’re going to repeat this idiocy. Will every generation have to crash on the shoals of the horror, madness and waste of war, break on the inhumanity and hatred, only to come home and squander decades trying to figure out how to live with it?

The answer is simple. Find somebody you trust and talk to them. If you know a kid just home from Iraq or Afghanistan, don’t hurry them, don’t push them, but let them know, every chance you get, that you’re willing to listen. Eventually some of them will get it, and some of THEM will get better. The rest are casualties, just as sure as if they bled out on the rubble strewn streets of Diyala…

mikey

My printer ran out of ink printing that article last night and after reading this excerpt I don’t think I will read the rest of it.
Mikey: Reading your comment brought tears to my eyes. Peace dude.

felix

This midnight raid tactic is just a variation on the old Nixon axiom:

“Once you have them by the balls, their hearts and minds are sure to follow.”

It didn’t work in Vietnam, but what the hell, let’s try it again in Iraq!

Righteous Bubba – that’s embarrassing, ain’t it? Thanks.

and just to take a thread from mikey…

And that father goes on to raise another son and raise him on the bitter tears of vengeance. The boy is weaned on the raw and bloody meat of whatever strain of fundamentalist Islam suits the family best. Probably he is raised without his father- that man is nothing more than a cherished hero, having gotten himself killed by yet another squad of soldiers because the horror and the bloodlust were too much to bear.

A generation of Iraqis is born with burning hatred of us lodged deep in their hearts, where there was little or none in the previous. The blood-feud is begun.

On a lie.

It’s a miracle we don’t have Vietnamese terrorists coming after us, too.

You know, most people in the world understand that the old saying “The beatings will continue until morale improves” is a joke. Apparently, the folks running this war do not.

Speaking of assuming all dark-skinned people are guilty, one of our local wingnuts had an interesting day on Friday.

http://effinunsound.com/?p=417

That’s some vivid shit, mikey.

The phrase “Provide compensation” seems so horribly inappropriate. You can’t “compensate” something like that.

And those kids are your kids, your brothers, you dads, they are you, they are US and they are coming home and they are going to have to try to process all that, and understand, and find a box to put the guilt and the horror in, and lie about their lives, and drink a lot of cheap booze and one night, when the dreams won’t stop and the night is just too dark and too long and he just can’t get the vision of those kids out of his head, one night that’s just one night too many…

But, hey, it’s not VD Hanson’s kid, or Jonah Goldberg’s brother, or Simone Ledeen’s dad, so no problemy, or however you cast aside a few thousand lives in Chinese! Blue-collar warriors, trailer park heroes, they’re a dime a claim-denied-as-a-preexisting-condition dozen in our Brave New America, where the winners take all and the losers are collateral damage!!!!1!!….

Mikey, thank you for writing — I know it wasn’t easy — I just wish you could have the opportunity to tattoo the whole story on the hides of every stinking, cowardly, vile opportunist who’s shilling Dubya’s Operation Enduring FUBAR like it was another timeshare scam or pyramid Ponzi scheme to keep the slackjawed rubes voting against their own interests. I’d suggest a reasonably blunt needle, and a large font, because there’s plenty of room on their well-fed pasty-white hides.

the shame of what we have rained down on those people. I’m not sure we can ever recover our nation’s soul.

Mikey–

Well said. Hat’s off.

What’s also galling is that the men (yes, men) responsible for this obscenity will not pay a dime in discomfort, inconvenience, physical pain, or even shame. It would be enough to embed Bush, and Rumsfeld, and Rice, and fucking Kristol with that unit, make them go house to house and watch freedom on the march.

Well, not enough. But a start.

Righteous Bubba – that’s embarrassing, ain’t it? Thanks.

I have you beat with a one-word “That” comment today.

I had a guy demo a tactical light for me awhile back. This is the light affixed to the barrel during these night operations. Not an ordinary flashlight. You could jacklight deer with these little suckers … like getting kicked in the retinas. You’re certainly not putting up a fight, because at that point you’re effectively blind.

You wake up with one of these in your face and it’s probably about as close to an alien abduction experience as you can get … certain areas of South Carolina excepted.

I had a cop demo a tactical light on me in my sleep once. I’d been drinking with some friends and called it a night early, my girlfriend had seen them off. Apparently there was some drunken altercation later and they had left where they were and came into my apartment while we were sleeping and cleaned up. Someone had seen people covered in blood leaving my place and called the cops. I’m naked and blinded, and I have an *idea* these are cops in my house but for all I know it could be Patty Hearst and the SLA on a revival tour. My girls naked, there’s a vibrator sitting on the bedside table. I was beyond pissed, but hell at least I made a bad choice in friends (they had also bled all over everything in my place and it looked like a slaughterhouse), after I had some time to think about I almost felt bad for the cops.

It’s called the Picatinny Rail. It’s entirely useful. You can mount taclights, IR taclights, laser sights, grenade launchers, just about anything can be modded to work the rail. I have them on my G3 and my extensively customized Mini 14. As Martha might say, “It’s a good thing”….

mikey

Good thing these Iraqis have the natural right to blow the heads off trespassers.

And those kids are your kids

Remember: Right Blogistan is all over this one. If you call them “kids,” you get accused of “infantilizing” them in an effort to make them seem helpless and incompetent. I’ve been attacked for it more than once–it doesn’t seem to matter that I have underwear older than some of the troops we have over there.

I’d suggest a reasonably blunt needle, and a large font, because there’s plenty of room on their well-fed pasty-white hides.

I’d suggest they come down here to the trailer park and explain their policies over a couple twelve packs. Then we’ll decide how to address those policies….

mikey

When I read shit like this, I just have to ask myself and anyone who’ll listen: what the fuck is the point? Life is too short to be doing this to each other. Doesn’t mankind have better things to do than terrorize everyone else into madness?

But if you say that, they say it’s because you’re a woman and you just don’t understand the manliness and glory of war and conquest. Yep, and I don’t want to.

The sickest thing is thinking about all the War-Whores getting huge boners reading that (and you know they did). Yeah, we’re not creating more terrorists or anything. Fuckin’ hell man.

So you’ve just humiliated this man in front of his entire family and terrorized his entire family and you’ve destroyed his home. And then you go right next door and you do the same thing in a hundred homes.”

But heh, look on the bright side disillusioned and demoralized soldier, at least you’re making war porn for the 101st fighting keyboard brigade who grab cheesies with their left hand while their right hand…

“But, hey, it’s not VD Hanson’s kid, or Jonah Goldberg’s brother, or Simone Ledeen’s dad”
Don’t you know that what they’re doing over hear is just as important, maybe even more so! They are fighting the “War of Ideas!” Blogging about how great this war is, well that’s pretty much the same thing as fighting it. See, they’d love to go over there and win glory, but the work here is just to important. It’s a sacrifice they make willingly.

mikey, I’d shake your hand and buy you a beer if I could. A good beer too, mind you.

And you’re right, Picatinny rails are pretty damn useful little widgets.

Hey, good one, D. A. I was going to link to the L.A. Times’ excerpt from the Nation article in the VDH item just previous. And if, like Felix Moronia (a stupid cat?) you haven’t the ink or the stomach to read the whole thing, it’s worth a peep:
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-hedges14jul14,0,2778178.story?coll=la-news-comment-opinions
Not as long as the Nation’s, but seems to have all the basics. (And your busy lives don’t allow for all that reading, anyway.)
P. S. to D. A.: How was the weekend’s baseball? [Smirks superiorly, but realizes the season is far from over.]

I’ve been attacked for it more than once–it doesn’t seem to matter that I have underwear older than some of the troops we have over there.

Hmmm…

My cousin died in Haswa from an IED at 29, in 2005. I’m 33, I don’t consider him a kid, just someone who died way, way, too young for a bunch of idiocy.

I’ve got another friend who I believe was 24 when he enlisted in 7/01, he was 101st Air Assault and got stuck through the meat grinder in Afghanistan and then Baghdad, and then some till they finally let him out. I want to call him a kid, but he really wasn’t. He still came back fucked up beyond belief. If there is a bush, or a cardboard box or whatever on the side of the road ahead, he’s driving in the other lane and hitting the gas and it doesn’t matter who the hell happens to be in front of him. It took about three times driving with him to tell him “hell no, I’m driving”. I was positive he was going to kill himself on the road, but his girlfriend tried to wake him up one night and he stabbed her with the knife he kept under his pillow. He was up on attempted murder and it eventually got brought down to aggravated assault and after that he attempted suicide.

These *arguably* weren’t kids and the end doesn’t differ much.

MB – I’m actually rooting for the Giants to lose, so management will have no option but to change their moronic strategy from signing “veteran” talent (read: retreads 3+ years from being above average, if they ever were) to going young.

But the funny thing about the Giants-Dodgers this year … neither team can beat the other at home.

maybe we should give up Viet Dinh’s —riot act.. & go back to having the right to be secure in one’s persons and effects.

Forced search may look good on TV crime drama, but after the show is over and the commercials start up, it’s time to go back to obeying the supreme law of the land. That’s the U.S. Constitution.

Young people need to know our way of life. We must reassure them of our values, and support them.

Fucking hell, Ed. Sorry to hear about your cousin and here’s hoping your buddy has made it through the worst of it, though that may be something even you don’t know.

Slight digression, but the other day I was asking the HUD women (they’re located two floors below at my work) about Afghanistan/Iraq vets and if they were starting to apply for housing. They said the VA was still taking care of most of them, but they were expecting a big “surge” in a couple years time.

It’s going to be a huge thing, and a huge mess for the first-responders to deal with, for years to come … this fucking war.

Not to mention that you are rooting for the Americans to lose, Gavin (aka Aristrophanes). Good Lord, you paint mike’ys hitpiece on our great people in uniform as novel worthy?

That’s just sick.

Guess you’re not a fan of James Lee Burke, eh Kevin (aka Pie)?

Can’t say I am, but mmm, pie!

On the pornography of violence, check out Benjamin DeMott’s “Battling the Hard Man: Notes on Addiction to the Pornography of Violence” in the August 2007 issue of Harper’s.

kevin, you ignorant pig, mikey WAS one of our great people in uniform.

Until you’ve served like he has, you’re not fit to clean the shit-stains out of his underwear.

And that’s the last time I’m poking the troll. sorry fellow Sadlies. Fucking wanker pissed me off.

Yeah, there will be some chickens coming home to roost, & I’m afraid suicides will be the least of the problems.
Kev: If you won’t even link to your own blog so we can troll there, why don’t you just not link at all, or just go away…
Mikey: You the same Mikey who used to (& maybe still do, haven’t been there in a while) post @ Newshounds? And why do you need a Picatinny rail on your G3? (either a Mac Powerbook or Gulfstream private jet, I’m assuming)? Just kidding, I know what a Mini 14 is, what’s a G3?
D. A.: Yes, it has a been a weird G-D year. We’ll see what happens when y’all come visiting @ the end of this month.

Not to mention that you are rooting for the Americans to lose, Gavin (aka Aristrophanes). Good Lord, you paint mike’ys hitpiece on our great people in uniform as novel worthy?

You don’t know a damn thing about anything. You don’t have a clue about our “great people in uniform”, you’ve never gotten within touching distance of them, or if you have they are the REMF types that worked a base in Kuwait and lied when they came back.

Hi! I’m Kevin’s blog. Come play with me!

Ed Marshall, it is obscene that men like your friend continue to fall through the cracks because the military is still too goddamn blind, cheap, and riddled with machismo to care. What in God’s name are they thinking? You’d think they would have gotten a shred of sense after the psychological casualties of Vietnam. PTSD is not psychobabble crap.

I’m sure the military does offer free professional counselling – hopefully by doctors who specialize and have experience in treating war vets and PTSD, not generalists. But such help should be extended to every single soldier and his or her family (whether they appear to need it or not). It’s probably hard for soldiers to ask for such help. It should be offered as soon as they return.

An old flame of mine deserted the army during Vietnam when he found out the work he was destined to do (scouting enemy communication lines) had a 95% mortality rate. He fled to Canada after boot camp in Georgia and never returned to the US. Many of his friends’ lives were irreparably damaged by their experience in Nam, and they were simply abandoned by the State. Here we are decades later seeing the same thing go on. It is unforgiveable.

It’s the military that should be on trial in that court room.

[…] Nation has just published a major report (via Sadly, No) that proves it’s […]

Come back, Original Gary Ruppert. All is forgiven.

The pathology of the troll laid bare, ladies and gents. Talk about a cry for attention.

Mikey, under another name I blog for the Huffington Post. If you’d like to reprint (or write anew) your description, above, for them, I guess ask Gavin or Brad for my email address. If nothing else I can say, “Here. Read this,” and just quote you en toto. It’s a less sharp and astute audience than the S,N! crowd, but it gets something like 3.2 million hits a month. Like the man who prescribed chicken soup for the guy who just had a heart attack said, “It couldn’ hoit…”

Billy, apology accepted. But I’m inclined to disbelieve your assertion that Mikey is or was one of our great military men. The ones I know (whom I believe to be typical) would not disrespect their brothers so.

“Kev: If you won’t even link to your own blog so we can troll there, why don’t you just not link at all, or just go away…”

Troll away! I don’t link to it out of respect for you guys. I want you to know that I’m not trying to enlighten you just so I can get hits. But you are welcome there, as long as you can handle not swearing. I’ll let posers do the linking to it though, so I come out smelling like the good guy :).

Ed said:“You don’t know a damn thing about anything.”
Yeah, I do.
“You don’t have a clue about our “great people in uniform”, you’ve never gotten within touching distance of them”

We live 10 minutes from Fort Polk. Almost all of my friends are military. It is rare that I’ll take a flight and NOT be next to someone in the military, the whole town is designed around the base. Don’t pretend to know my history, Ed. You don’t. It belittles us both.

And I continue to contend that berating them such as mikey did is sick. And now I’ll add ‘sad’.

or if you have they are the REMF types that worked a base in Kuwait and lied when they came back.”

I see kevie, the dingbat bitch fraud is back. Hey Kevie do the evangelists know you are going to hell because you don’t believe in Jesus? You are living a lie, kevie.

And those kids are your kids, your brothers, you dads

Oh hello instant preview button, how ya doin’? Anyway, *sigh* my poor dad. Hideous alcoholic dad who beat the snot out of his mom and terrorized him and his two siblings, he fled to the military to escape the hell that was his home life in the early 50’s. He ended up flying transport planes in Viet Nam for four years, at which point he got grounded because of hearing loss.

*That* was really bad news for my mom and us 5 kids, because he was home all the time now. *shudder* If he wasn’t terrorizing us with his mood swings, he was out doing things like skydiving and racing fast cars in suicide-by-proxy bids. It wasn’t until 10 years after he flew his last mission in ‘Nam that he was even close to being something resembling a human being. How utterly ghastly to be terrified of your dad and to dread him coming home.

I hope, Bill Kristol, that you die a hideous and painful and undignified death, you human blight.

We live 10 minutes from Fort Polk. Almost all of my friends are military. It is rare that I’ll take a flight and NOT be next to someone in the military, the whole town is designed around the base. Don’t pretend to know my history, Ed. You don’t. It belittles us both.

So what?

I’m a Marine kid. “Fort Polk”, don’t make me laugh.

Kevin, add “inability to read English” to your long list of eHarmony negative traits. If it’s not your native language, apologies in advance.

Mikey describes a tragic mistake – dropping a flashlight – in a charged situation in the midst of a house-to-house search during an urban guerrilla war. Nowhere in that passage does he “berate” or “disrespect” his brothers in uniform. It is not a “hitpiece”.

I defy you to find any condemnation of the soldiers in Mikey’s narrative … you won’t, because it isn’t there.

It is a description of the sort of fucked-up and absurd tragedies that inevitably occur when armed people are placed in confusing, claustrophobic environments where all that exists is fear and rage, exhaustion and mutual unintelligibility.

There is no judgment issued in Mikey’s post, save perhaps the unspoken ones about the powerful architects of such situations, and in a larger sense, about us all.

I wonder what would happen if everybody just ignored the troll?

Watch out, Ed. Kevin lives ten minutes from Fort Polk. I think that qualifies him to be a warblogger, doesn’t it?

I lived in Oceanside, right next to Camp Pendleton. That makes me an honorary Marine.

(Actually, it makes me an expert in getting drenched in spittle when I walked down the sidewalk under the windows of the beachside motel where the ladies of the evening plied their wares. Stay classy, Oceanside!)

I wonder what would happen if everybody just ignored the troll?

Jesus, Lesley – do you realize how depressing it is to go poking around the wingnutosphere every day to find jackasses to make fun of?

It’s like a Christmas bonus when they show up in these threads and do our work for us!

Hey! look at me!

I’m such a coward I don’t even post under my own URL!

But, you friggin’ Hippies don’t know a bunch of Gulf War I Superman heroes who never saw combat know what heroism is… or something–like I do! They’re the REAL men!

Not those pussies like Mikey, Combat vets are all a bunch of friggin’ hippies!

And, I can’t enlist–cuz Momma needs her pubic mound to be mowed!

One aspect of this tragedy that the wingnuts constantly exploit is that it will get worse if the occupation ends. Iraq has been a nation for about 70 years. They weren’t at each others throats during most of that time. Why would it be any different after the US withdrew?

“I’m a Marine kid. “Fort Polk”, don’t make me laugh.”
It’s was not intended to make you laugh. It was only meant to refute you misstatements. And it did, huh :). NOW we should laugh about it.

Gavin, I grok inglés. But your apology is accepted. I’m easy that way. But Mikey (do you mind if I call him Michael? It just seems wrong to me to call a full grown man ‘mikey’) is in fact berating our troops by suggesting that a fumbled flashlight by one of America’s best is all it takes to make them triggerhappy. It’s ridiculous to even suggest that a gunshot down the road would make them kill innocent people. You’re talking about the best trained military from the best country in the world for goodness sakes!

“I defy you to find any condemnation of the soldiers in Mikey’s narrative … you won’t, because it isn’t there.”

Defy all you want. I just did find condemnation. And condemned it. I don’t care if you rag on Bush, or really ANY politician, but when you slight our military, filled with people who only want to protect us, you’ve crossed me.

No wonder the Iraqi PM is asking us to leave.

These guys maybe aren’t working for the resistance THEN, but after they raid your home, trash it and threaten you and your family at gunpoint, they’re not exactly inclined to be helpful afterwards. Any human being would carry a mighty big chip on his shoulder after soldiers ripped through their home like a hurricane. So much for hearts and minds.

This whole war, though, is a mistake. A mistake made of smaller mistakes, interwoven into each other like a fine mesh of stupid. You can examine any part of this occupation in any fine detail, and it just keeps being stupid, like a fractal maze we can’t get out of. To gaze at any piece of it reveals new levels of stupid. To gaze at it in it’s entirety is to stare directly into the Abyss.

I see where you’re coming from now, Kev.

Our troops are equal parts Superman and James Bond. None of them are ever tired or scared. Hairy situations never morph to haywire in an instant and all the bullets arrive at one destination and one destination only – squarely between a terrorist’s eyes.*

Shit, don’t even talk about how these guys never even accidentally take an innocent human life … they carefully clear out all spiders and moths in a suspected insurgent hideout before opening fire!

To say anything else about our troops is treason.

*Actually, check that – the bullets just knock the guns out of the bad guys’ hands. Then the Super Soldiers trot them off to Supervillain Jail (they always escape, but that’s what sells comix)

I’ve never been in the military ‘cuz I gotta mow my Mom’s lawn every damn day-unlike you welfare collecting friggin’ hippies.

But, I know more cuz’ my uncle Cletus was a soldier once’t.

And, you friggin hippies hate our soldiers–especially you soldiers who have been soldiers.

God, I hate soldiers who have been combat soldiers!

But, I loves me some alcoholic VFW desk jockies!

you’ve crossed me.

Just curious. Why should anyone care? You gonna straighten mikey out? How?

Kevin you wouldn’t know the military if it bit you in the ass. All you have is hologram of the military planted in you dhimmiwit deluded skull. They are just toys for your dhimmiwit masters to play with in your sick world.

I lived half hour walk from Camp Parks in my child hood. My brother joined Army Reserve in 1989, one of my best friends is ex-army, and one of my oldest friends from high school is currently in Army Boot Camp, preparing for Iraq. He may very well end up doing one of these sweeps someday. He enlisted at the age of 40, which means that many of the asshats blowing hot air on TV about how we are winning with this surge have no real excuses to fail to enlist.

This war needs to end.

“Our troops are equal parts Superman and James Bond. None of them are ever tired or scared. Hairy situations never morph to haywire in an instant and all the bullets arrive at one destination and one destination only – squarely between a terrorist’s eyes.*”

Cool, we are on the same page! More Supermen than Bond though The SAS are the Bond people. Big fan of putting bullets between terrorist’s eyes though!

“Shit, don’t even talk about how these guys never even accidentally take an innocent human life … they carefully clear out all spiders and moths in a suspected insurgent hideout before opening fire!”

Gavin (or whatever you’re calling yourself today), I’m willing to admit that this might happen from time to time. Are you willing to accept that I don’t care? War’s not a pretty thing, and sometimes (quite often really) innocent people die in them. Sucks, but it doesn’t discount why we needed the war in the first place. I think it was the brilliant George Orwell who said something like “War is evil, but it is often the lesser evil” (don’t quote me, I’m guessing). Blaming the politicians is fine if you want to whine about things, but blaming the troops? Disgusting! These people lay down their lives for us.

B*tch and moan about the people in Washington who put us here if you want, but don’t blame our troops!

M. Bouffont; not a stupid cat, rather something from H.L.(not html)Mencken. It was his term for the southern US: Felix Moronia=Happy Land of Idiots. Covers the 26%ers also. *g*

Kein go pander your wares to the evengelicals, you prostititute. No one is falling for your BS.

Abanter, thank your friend for serving from ‘some crazy conservative’.

Do the libs on this blog support our efforts in Afghanistan? If so, why haven’t they used their own logic and enlisted to go there? Could there be something more to making life changes?

And Kevin’s neighborhood!!

Blog, as much as it pains me, I’m turning you off. I hate to silence you since I’m a big fan of freedom of speech, but you’ve got that ‘stalker’ sound to you so I’ve got to put you on ‘ignore’. Please don’t visit our house late at night and kill us. Thanks in advance!

Buh bye.

There’s a whole wide chasm between (on the one hand) spitting on soldiers and calling them babykillers and (on the other hand) admitting that they’re human and that they can sometimes fuck up, be scared, act like they’re immature, make a bad decision, and so on. Reasonable people believe that there’s room in this world for the latter position.

Righties don’t see any daylight between those two positions–for a lot of the yahoos you find taking up bandwidth in Right Blogistan, if you question anything that any member of the military does, then you might as well be bayoneting puppies.

You may have noticed that there’s this weird little cult of playing army on the Internet–learning all about all the kewlest guns and pretending to be a Gathering of Eagles rather than a Bunch of Blowhards and debunking AP wire photographs because, in your expert Cheeto-fueled opinion, the kind of bullet the Palestinian doctor pulled out of the child’s chest is deformed too much to be a titanium-jacketed 5.754 caliber round issued by the blah blah blah. They really love this stuff. The result is the uber-mythologization of the military.

“If you insult a soldier by not worshiping the ground he walks on, then you are insulting me, for he and I are brothers, even though he’s a soldier and I’m not. But I do subscribe to ‘Soldier of Fortune.’ That should be enough.”

Jeez, it’s depressing.

That’s real tough of Kevin. Now we all see what a bitch he is. Can’t take the truth. Stalks this blog like a psychopath. Shits in his pants when someone gives him his own treatment.

I think it was the brilliant George Orwell who said something like “War is evil, but it is often the lesser evil” (don’t quote me, I’m guessing).

Whoops, sorry. I quoted you. Anyway, Orwell was talking about Hitler, jackass. Read “Burmese Days” for his thoughts on stupid colonial occupations. And while we’re cherry-picking Orwell quotes on war, here are some more:

“War is a way of shattering to pieces… materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses… too intelligent.”

“War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.”

“War is war. The only good human being is a dead one.”

“War against a foreign country only happens when the moneyed classes think they are going to profit from it.”

“The quickest way to end a war is to lose it.”

“The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labor.”

“Probably the battle of Waterloo was won on the playing-fields of Eton, but the opening battles of all subsequent wars have been lost there.”

“Oceania was at war with Eurasia; therefore Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia.”

“Every war when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac.”

“All the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting.”

I’m beginning to wonder if even the war in Afganistan was a neccesity. The war in Iraq was definitely a war of choice. But this whole GWOT is becoming suspicious. The chicken hawks are too stupid to grok the distinction though.

I’m beginning to wonder if even the war in Afganistan was a neccesity. The war in Iraq was definitely a war of choice.

Wasn’t it the case that most of the September 11 hijackers were Saudis? And didn’t the Administration just leak the fact that most of the mexislamonazis we’re fighting in Iraq are Saudis?

So Iran it is, then. Then France. We can take all their trained surrender monkeys and turn them loose on Canada. Fuckin’ hosers.

U-S-A! U-S-A!

The problem with Afghanistan was: Will these fuckers in the White House actually see this thing through? The answer being a resounding, “Fuck, no!” … but that was more difficult to discern at the time.

The pros for war were: 1) For the first time in a long time we had a legit casus belli (several, in fact, if we count the embassy bombings, the Cole, the first WTC bombing etc. … as we should) and 2) 9/11 woke the sleeping giant and it was gonna lay a smackdown on somebody whether you liked it or not, so might as well be the fuckers who did it plus the Taliban.

“There’s a whole wide chasm between (on the one hand) spitting on soldiers and calling them babykillers and (on the other hand) admitting that they’re human and that they can sometimes fuck up, be scared, act like they’re immature, make a bad decision, and so on. Reasonable people believe that there’s room in this world for the latter position.”

Not sure I agree with you Doc. Reasonable people might indeed agree with the latter position, but would people who cared about their country admit as much? Prior to Vietnam, the answer was a solid NO. Now that we are embarrassed about how awesome our country is compared to the rest of the world, the answer tends to be ‘YES’, but how many lives does saying ‘yes, we make mistakes’ cost? Even a liberal must admit it’s more than zero, right?

“Righties don’t see any daylight between those two positions–for a lot of the yahoos you find taking up bandwidth in Right Blogistan, if you question anything that any member of the military does, then you might as well be bayoneting puppies.”

Schwoosh! Right over my head. But I’m against bayoneting puppies. Regardless, we should argue against war (if that’s our thing), though once we’ve committed our bad*ss troops, we should all wholeheartedly align behind them, which is what I’m accusing Michael of not doing.

This isn’t a game people. Real lives are at stake.

Doc, don’t mispell cool as ‘kewl’. It makes you look like a World of Warcraft kid. Just a head’s up.

The giant wasn’t sleeping though. It was meddling everywhere and blowback was inevitable.

“Whoops, sorry. I quoted you. Anyway”
It’s why I despise you, Gavin! But in a good way.

“Orwell was talking about Hitler, jackass.”
And you are incapable of extrapolating the implications of this statement? C’mon, I bet you aren’t.

Hey, I’ll read your stuff tomorrow night (gotta frickin work! Yeah, I hate it too, but SOMEONE has to support you guys), but other than the democratic ideal of “The quickest way to end a war is to lose it” I’m not seeing much interesting!

Not sure I agree with you Doc. Reasonable people might indeed agree with the latter position, but would people who cared about their country admit as much?

August 12, 2005 – 2 injuries

A soldier named `Marine of the Year’ for his Iraq service was arrested after firing upon a 15 year old girl and 20 year old man leaving a Massachusetts night club. The soldier’s wife told police that her husband had been drinking and they’d been arguing shortly before the shooting.

That ‘Marine of the Year’s’ wife clearly doesn’t care about her country, what with telling police that one of our badass troops had been drinking and arguing.

“Wasn’t it the case that most of the September 11 hijackers were Saudis? ”

Isn’t it the case that Bin Laden is a Saudi? Why be so racist?

“Wasn’t it the case that most of the September 11 hijackers were Saudis? And didn’t the Administration just leak the fact that most of the mexislamonazis we’re fighting in Iraq are Saudis?”

This is what makes me really suspicious. Why is Bush protecting the Saudis? The House of Saud is basically a terrorist front group. Is there any collusion between the Bush admimistration and the Saudi terrorists?

Exactly my point Gavin! Why would you bring up such a horrible thing if you supported our troops?

So, Kevin’s gone from “anyone suggesting our troops are fallible and capable of making mistakes is obviously penning a hit piece about them” to “War is hell, shit happens, innocents die but it’s for the greater good”. Okay, show of hands, who else saw that coming?

The giant wasn’t sleeping though. It was meddling everywhere and blowback was inevitable.

Yeah, well, good luck convincing the Toby Keith crowd on that at the time.

Not saying you’re wrong, mind you, just that one thing to consider is that right after 9/11, the US was gonna kick somebody’s ass, there was nothing you could do about that … and trying to steer the rampaging berserker in the general direction of a regime as loathsome as the Taliban wasn’t the worst thing you could do.

Just sayin’, is all.

No, Skullhunter, my position hasn’t changed. It’s “Support them no matter what.” I know that’s complicated for liberals looking for ‘deeper issues’ or ‘root causes’, but can’t you cut them a break? They’re frigging saving your lives.

“Not saying you’re wrong, mind you, just that one thing to consider is that right after 9/11, the US was gonna kick somebody’s ass, there was nothing you could do about that …”

That WAS pretty cool, huh 🙂

The House of Saud is basically a terrorist front group.

I don’t think that’s really accurate. I think the House of Saud is more a Machiavellian operation that’ll play both ends against the middle to preserve its power. I don’t think it actually gives a shit about jihad or even sharia law, it just wants the oil money to keep flowing into its coffers.

‘night.

Yeah, the propaganda machine had implanted the hologram in all our heads. The people paying attention knew it was a setup though. If their voices could have been heard, we would have gotten to the real culprits.

Kevin, your boss on the graveyard shift at the donut store called. You’re fired, you fucking slacker.

“I don’t think that’s really accurate. I think the House of Saud is more a Machiavellian operation that’ll play both ends against the middle to preserve its power. I don’t think it actually gives a shit about jihad or even sharia law, it just wants the oil money to keep flowing into its coffers.’

I just make this observation. The Saudi royals support Wahhabism as the state religion. That is the most extreme virulent totalitarian hate inducing sect of Islam. They do this to keep themselves in power. So whether they intend it or not they are a de facto terrorist front group and they are sheltering this sect and its extremist adherents who make up the bulk of Al-Qaida.. Also I think Saudi intelligence has direct connections to Al-Qaida.

Darnit! Then I guess I get to keep commenting! Nah, seriously, I’m tired. Gotta get up and look for a new job at a donut store. They’re hard to come by.

Hey you guys. I’ve been out eating carbonara and drinking scotch. You’ve been doing the heavy lifting. Don’t sweat kevin. He’s an asshole. Don’t mean nothing. I’ve humped jungle with guys like him. See, most of us, we had NO idea what we were getting into. It was all new, and crazy, and fucked up, but you did what the sergeants told you and you learned. Some of us even turned out to be pretty goddam good at it, for whatever that’s worth. Guys like kevin? Oh, they read about war. While we were building motorcyles and surfing, they played war. They thought about war, the glory, the medals, the brief visits home and all the girls.

When you experience war, it’s fast, hard brutal and totally fucking unfair. One second you’re trying to adjust your ruck and find a more comfortable way to carry a couple belts of 7.62, the next second rockets are going off, machine guns are raking your column, people are screaming, bleeding, crying, firing, running. More explosions, more rounds snapping past your head and tearing up the ground. Sergeants going from man to man, getting them set up, putting rounds downrange. Medics, covered in blood, throwing a fast tourniquet on a severed leg, and telling you to hold it tight for forty five seconds, then let off for a bit, then tight again. Meantime you’re still responsible for your PDF, so you bang out rounds left handed while you wait for somebody to come get this guy. But he dies while you’re trying to get rid of him. Fuck.

So now mortars are falling, Ell Tee is calling for arty, you’re behind an anthill with a dead guy AND YOU DON’T EVEN KNOW HIS FUCKING NAME!! The PKMs and AKs are only twenty meters out, and your company’s fire has slackened to spit. And you’re scared, and there’s nobody to tell you what to do.

This is where guys like Kevin break down. They stumble off, crying, because for gods sake IT’S NOT SUPPOSED TO BE LIKE THIS. And that leaves a hole in the perimeter, and five gooks come through with satchel charges and there’s nobody to hold the line.

And people die. Good people. Brave people. They die hard, and they die alone under the grey skies with the sound of B40 rockets in their ears and the last thing they see is NVA inside the wire, killing your friends.

Nope. Know what, Kevin. Stay home, and be a professional asshole. Army don’t need any more of you…

G’night, sadlys. I’ll sleep just fine tonight…

mikey

The Guardian

http://www.guardian.co.uk/video/page/0,,2125978,00.html

“You go up the stairs. You grab the man of the house. You rip him out of bed in front of his wife. You put him up against the wall. You have junior-level troops run into the other rooms and grab the family, and you’ll group them all together. Then you go into a room and you tear the room to shreds and you make sure there’s no weapons or anything that they can use to attack us.”

Wait . . . you mean this was about Baghdad? I thought it was about Baltimore. I’ve been watching too much of The Wire. Either that, or they hate our freedom, too.

Kevin, “support them no matter what” isn’t complicated, it’s simple. As in “stupid”. It’s not something you demand of a free people, especially not when you’re blathering on about how they’re saving our lives and defending our freedom. Part of that freedom is the freedom to speak our minds. Another part is the freedom to question. I’m not going to support someone just because they wear a uniform. Do I wish harm on them all? No. I want them to come home to their families and friends alive and undamaged both physically and mentally. I make exceptions to this on a case-by-case basis. Those that signed up so they could “burn some turbans”, those that signed up so that they can put their training to use in the service of racist causes or drug gangs or such when they return to the US, those that view every Iraqi as subhuman scum undeserving of their compassion or concern; well, they can all come home in fucking caskets. The rest of the poor slobs that are over there because they’re doing the job they signed on to do? I want them back here, alive and whole. Now. Not one more fucking second of putting their lives on the line for this stupidity, for creating another mess to replace the mess all ready caused by our government’s meddling in the region and its support of tyrants and dictators. Sorry if looking for root causes is too fucking complicated for you, but some of us think supporting the troops means making damn sure that their lives aren’t being squandered for nothing. I guess looking for deeper issues is uncomfortable when you consider that if the government you’re backing so blindly didn’t help create the mess in the first place, our soldiers wouldn’t be there getting maimed and killed. You wanna support the troops? Start by asking their commanders-in-chief, present and former, why we keep backing the bad guys when we just end up having to fight them later.

Maybe someday our government will realize that a murdering, torturing psychopath that’s friendly to US interests is still a murdering, torturing psychopath.

“Now that we are embarrassed about how awesome our country is compared to the rest of the world”

Yeah! It’s totally awesome to the max! Our infant mortality rate is only slightly worse than Cuba!*

FWIW, I’m embarrassed by jingos like Kevin; ashamed of ppl who blindly support torture and the suspension of habeus corpus because they’re afraid. You know what’s “awesome” you moldy-sounding 80s leftover? Democracy. The Bill of Rights. Separation of powers. Accountability. All those things that your leaders piss on daily. Have I told you to fuck off lately, Kevin?

*According to those dirty hippies who compile the CIA world factbook.

I’m not reading the comments, because when the counter goes past, say, 50, it usually means there’s been a troll infestation. But I’ll comment on an early one…

“mikey said,
July 17, 2007 at 1:35

I wonder how many times we’re going to repeat this idiocy.”

Naww, you got it all wrong, man. the NEXT war will be the glorious heroic epic Americans believe wars are! You’ll see! They’ll be singing our praises the next expansionist enterprise!

…but everyone looked so HAPPY on V-E Day.

“They’ll be singing our praises the next expansionist enterprise!”

Exactly. Let’s go to Iran! We’re sure to get that one right.

Yeah, Kevin wasn’t unintentionally funny like usual.

He was just disgusting.

Just disgusting.

Honorable, decent people can feel nothing but scorn for his kind.

Mikey, your post made me cry. Your writing reminds me of Riverbend’s: not in the style or the subject matter, but in the clarity and immediacy, and the ease with which both of you set the reader in the narrator’s seat.

Apropos of that, here’s a song that always gave me chills and tears for a similar reason. It’s I was only 19, by Redgum, a very Aussie band, and it started Australia discussing some painful truths about Vietnam, and helping the vets.

War’s not a pretty thing, and sometimes (quite often really) innocent people die in them. Sucks, but it doesn’t discount why we needed the war in the first place.

These days, about 90% of casualties are innocent civilians. Do they need war?

No, Skullhunter, my position hasn’t changed. It’s “Support them no matter what.”

Dipshit, “support the troops” doesn’t necessarily mean “keep them where they are so they can kill more innocent people, maybe get killed themselves, then come home to a government that doesn’t give a shit about what we’ve done to them”. It might mean giving them proper equipment. It might mean giving them adequate recompense and care when they return. It might mean getting them the fuck out of there before they’re killed or driven past breaking point.

They’re frigging saving your lives.

No they’re not, doofus, they’re endangering your lives. Each innocent who dies has family and friends. Each one of those may become overwhelmed by hate against the US, the country that’s attacked their country for no good reason, shattered their infrastructure, imprisoned, tortured, and humiliated their people, and intends to continue doing so until the fucking oil companies get an oil law that they like.

And who can blame them? What would you do if it was your country, Kevin? Would you settle down and let the invaders kill whoever they wish and not hate them for it? Would you let them crush your country and steal your wealth without hating them for it? If you wouldn’t tolerate it, why should they?

Jesus H Christ on a bicycle, Kevin, you are such an arrogant, ignorant, weaselly, bigoted, stupid complete cunt of a human, I’m ashamed to be part of the same fucking species as you.

Maybe someday our government will realize that a murdering, torturing psychopath that’s friendly to US interests is still a murdering, torturing psychopath.

Hunter Of Skulls, I’d like to think so, but 50-odd years of history haven’t shown a sign of that yet.

Thank you, Meester Bush! [Drunkenly waves purple finger].

Damn, mikey. Just… damn.

What drives me to blind rage about the Kevins of the world is that all of their Teh Most Awesomest Troops Evar rhetoric doesn’t have shit to do with the men and women actually serving. Its all about them; their fantasies of power and glory and super-humanity. Those fantasies don’t line up with the realities of what war inevitably does to those who fight and so, when those with bodies and minds broken by war begin to return home, it’s predictably the Uberpatriots who work the hardest to make them disappear.

Kevin should be forced to spend every day for the rest of his life volunteering at the nearest VA hospital. In the burn ward.

Or maybe he should be forced to talk his fucking utter bullshit to the faces of combat vets and their families.

I watched young men I loved and cared for come home from Vietnam completely wrecked. A couple weeks ago at the store I watched parents struggle with their son’s wheelchair,getting it out of the van. Their son was home from Iraq,where he left a leg and part of his brain. What can you say to people after shit like that happens? I just offered my help,but it ain’t even a dent in things. That young man in the wheelchair had the prettiest eyes I’ve ever seen,and now when I close my eyes I can see his face clear as a bell.

That shit is why you don’t lie a nation into war.

Now that we are embarrassed about how awesome our country is compared to the rest of the world,

Good God. Do you in fact have any actual experience with the rest of the world, Kevvy? There’s a lot of pretty “awesome” shit out there too, you know. And admitting that in no way denigrates the USA.

the answer tends to be ‘YES’, but how many lives does saying ‘yes, we make mistakes’ cost? Even a liberal must admit it’s more than zero, right?

First of all, I’d love for you to explain how admitting mistakes were made will cost lives. Second, regardless of your explanation / rationalization / whatever, it’s almost guaranteed to cost *more* lives in the long run if those mistakes are not addressed. But then again, since those lives are more likely to belong to brown people who don’t speak English, what the fuck do you care?

can’t you cut them a break? They’re frigging saving your lives.

No they aren’t. They are putting every American’s life in greater jeopardy. The long-term consequences of this unwinnable occupation are going to be pretty fucking bad for us.

That’s more Bush / Cheney’s fault than theirs, though.

I found a redeeming quality for Kevin.

One, in that his presence wrings the most amazing narratives out of Mikey. How many, in just this thread? All of which make Kevin look ever more pathetic, as a bonus.

You know, it’s very interesting, the persona that Kevin displays in his role as troll – we all have a choice how we present ourselves on line; we can be whoever we want to be.

But Kevin deliberately has chosen to be a self-centered, gratuitously nasty, ignorant, xenophobic, manipulative braggart, in his role as Defender of the Right.

Puts quite a face on the Right doesn’t he? See, Kevin is showing us just exactly the kind of person he admires. It may be his true personality, or it may be a role, but it says everything about what he values in a human being.

I’m done with the little shit, he doesn’t deserve a response. I suggest y’all do the same.

The promo for “The Daily Show” last night encapsulated the situation in Iraq last night perfectly.

Iraq is not “satisfactory” – it is a “sadness factory.”

mikey,
thanks for sharing.

I’m one of the troops.

Kevin- why don’t you support me by shutting the fuck up and let grownups talk. ‘K?

In the Army we call guys like Kevin a douchebag. We’re not really creative – when a good word for douchbags is invented, that’s the one we use.

Kevin clearly has never been to Iraq. Otherwise he would understand that our primary mission there is force protection. In other words, we drive around trying to protect our troops who are also driving around. Then we have to provide route protection to the guys who are trying to bring beans and bullets to the guys who are driving around.

Once in a while we dismount and walk around.

When that happens, usually another group of guys drives around nearby, to make sure that the guys who are walking around don’t get ambushed. The guys walking around are looking for IED’s which are planted to blow up the guys who are driving around.

When we find an IED, we call EOD and they drive out in their vehicles to render safe the device and we all then look around for secondary and tertiary devices which are set out to get the EOD guys and their security element.

While the EOD guys are rendering safe the IED everyone else fans out and looks through the surrounding neighborhood for the triggerman or the bomb-maker. We always find someone, even if it isn’t actually the guy who laid out the device.

At that point QRF comes out to provide security for the force which is cordoning and searching for the bombmaker or triggerman.

Then when you go back to your FOB, sometimes you get mortared. That means you jump into a bunker and sometimes you have to go back out to look for the mortar guys.

If anyone here can see where any of this is protecting their freedom… let me know. Because all I can see us doing is driving around shooting shit up and getting shot at, mortared at and IED’d.

Oregon Guy –

Maybe you’re driving around over there so you don’t have to drive around over here?

Sorry, but that’s the best I can do right after lunch. Food coma and all that.

I’m one of the troops.

Kevin- why don’t you support me by shutting the fuck up and let grownups talk. ‘K?

I want Oregon Guy to appear on every national news outlet, every hour on the hour, just to say that. Well, he could substitute any one of a number of names for the “Kevin” part, but still.

Oregon Guy –

Maybe you’re driving around over there so you don’t have to drive around over here?

If he were Massachusetts Guy, that would be the safer option.

Hmmmm, In my humble opinion, attacking mikey is a ban-worthy offense.

I’m just sayin’.

Fishbone-

People in Colorado Springs, CO (FT Carson), Fayetteville NC (FT Bragg), Killeen TX (FT Hood), El Paso, TX (FT Bliss), Manahttan, KS (FT Riley), Victorville CA (FT Irwin), Tacoma WA (FT Lewis), Honolulu HI (Schofield Barracks), Louisville, KY (FT Knox), Clarksville, TN (FT Campbell), Anchorage and Fairbanks AK (FTs Richardson and Wainwright) and Watertown, NY (FT Drum) probably feel that way.

Army bases kind of have this strong correlation with DWI/DUI offenses, for some reason.

People in and around Leesville, LA (FT Polk) are either too stupid (Kevin) or too drunk (more likely) to notice.

I particularly liked that when mikey experience and attitudes did not line up with his immature and heated imaginings, the only solution was that mikey’s stories must be untrue.

As always, reality has that darn liberal bias. Dirty hippies!

Qetesh the Abyssinian said,
July 17, 2007 at 9:49
Mikey, your post made me cry.

Me too.

Why do you guys keep saying Kevin has no military experience? He’s a one-man lawn mowin’ army.

“If anyone here can see where any of this is protecting their freedom… let me know. Because all I can see us doing is driving around shooting shit up and getting shot at, mortared at and IED’d.”

Yup..

unlike Kevin, it can be said that our troops are human beings, and as such they are as fallible as any of us and can make mistakes, which was part of mikey’s broader point. it’s an imperfect world and sometimes things can go horribly, tragically wrong in ways that stretch out beyond just that moment

multiply those moments by a few dozen, or a few hundred or a few thousand and eventually the ripples touch everything in some way or other

Kevin, by his words, lacks that introspective sense of his own fallibility and comes off as being a walking sac of fermented mucus that belches idiotic talking points with every step and breath.

Michael said: “See, most of us, we had NO idea what we were getting into.”

Now I KNOW you are not military. You’re more like a guy who read books about Vietnam, and mostly the druggy negative ones, Mike.

Kevin, “support them no matter what” isn’t complicated, it’s simple. As in “stupid”. It’s not something you demand of a free people, especially not when you’re blathering on about how they’re saving our lives and defending our freedom.
Firstly, skullhunter, it’s not a demand, it’s a request. Secondly, you may remember Tokyo Rose and that Italian guy as people who repeatedly said “You have no hope, you’re going to lose, you’re going to die”, “you’re cause is immoral”, ‘You’re fighting a lost cause” etc. Those two had to go to jail for such horrible statements. But today, our Tokyo Roses are the mainstream media, and you guys. For a third time, I’ll repeat: It’s sick! There’s something wrong with people who are willing to forsake their own nation, their own TROOPS. I can’t understand you and hope I never will.

“Mikey, your post made me cry.”

Hah! I guess Quetesh and I aren’t as similar as I thought. Because it filled me with the giggles. I’m not calling you effeminate for crying though Quetesh. I giggles! That’s pretty girly too, right?

Angry chick said:”Kevin should be forced to spend every day for the rest of his life volunteering at the nearest VA hospital. In the burn ward.”

Agreed.

“Or maybe he should be forced to talk his fucking utter bullshit to the faces of combat vets and their families.”

I would probably prefer that, but I think your first penance was more appropriate. Consoling people is rewarding, and dealing with people in serious pain is tough, but the latter is more important.

“What drives me to blind rage about the Kevins of the world is that all of their Teh[sic] Most Awesomest[sic] Troops Evar[sic] rhetoric doesn’t have sh*t to do with the men and women actually serving.”

O
M
G

YES, IT DOES.

Now I KNOW you are not military. You’re more like a guy who read books about Vietnam, and mostly the druggy negative ones, Mike.

Kevin, you miserable piece of soggy shit, you have no idea of what you’re saying. How do we all know? Because we’ve got people who do know, you arsehole. Because mikey and others like him went to the wars that shitheads like you stirred up, for fucking profit, you ignorant sumbitch, and they got themselves killed and wounded and scarred for life.

Anyone like you, who refuses to see that war is an abomination, should be locked up for the good of the world. It’s not some Biggles adventure, you stupid twat. It’s real people, and real people get scared, they get hurt, and having to kill other real people close up is bad for civilised humans, dipshit.

Face it, Kevin, you’re not supporting the troops, you’re supporting a fucking sports team. You think cheering them on is all that’s needed? Think again, tossbag. War. Is. Serious. Innocent people are dying, innocent people are killing other innocent people by accident, and the whole thing will poison hundreds of thousands of lives for decades. You think that’s so fucking great? Why not go over there yourself, if you’re such a hero.

That’s right, Kevin: you want to support the slaughter, you think Mikey’s lying, so why the fuck aren’t you over there being a hero? You think it’s so fucking easy? You think Murrkins in combat don’t shit themselves like everyone else? You think it’s all a matter of looking brave and saying “Yes, sir!” and flying a fucking flag?

Answer us or shut the fuck up forever, knobsticke: why aren’t you in Iraq? You don’t believe what’s going on, so why the fuck aren’t you over there “supporting” the troops with your pathetic hide?

You think this war is so glorious and pure, go over and have some of it yourself. Instead of jerking your tiny dick at thoughts of battle and heroism that you got from John Wayne movies.

I can’t lie and tell you that your words don’t hurt, Quintesh. OUCH! Are we no longer friends or something?

“Anyone like you, who refuses to see that war is an abomination, should be locked up for the good of the world. ”

Again, I ask you to consider the possibility that it’s the lesser of two evils. Even a person like you must realize that attacking Hitler’s Germany was a good thing, right? We’re in the same boat with God-empowered jihad. And we didn’t declare war on al qaeda, al qaeda declared war on us. We’re just killing them for doing so.

War’s not the real ‘bad’, my friend. The need to go to war is. And any kind of ‘supremacist’ makes us need to go to war. Aryans, KKK crazies, the nation of islam, islamic supremacist jihadis… any one of these groups would end our freedoms, and that is flatly unacceptable. Which is why I’m completely for ‘kill enough of them so that the rest say live and let live’.

I too yearn for a utopian life where we can hug about our differences. But unlike you, I’m willing to admit that certain people (all with jihadi intent) are standing in the way of that.

“That’s right, Kevin: you want to support the slaughter…”

I don’t ‘want’ to. I do. Seems like I’ve been very open about that. Didn’t I call for fairly indiscriminate bombing of Iran and Syria? You’ve read me totally wrong Absynian. I’m ALL for peace. I just want to win at the same point we achieve it.

I wholeheartedly support the slaughter of jihadis. Does that help you guys avoid beating around the bush? I support killing them. I smile when it happens.

If you will kill for your god, I’m ok with you dying, and even support the idea. Can I make this more clear? These are NOT good people!

[…] Defiant @ 5:40 pm This is probably the single most depressing thing I have read in a long time (via Sadly, No!  Who are supposed to brighten my day, not ruin it.): Over the past several months The Nation has […]

Don’t be silly WHaM, SadlyNo is Always depressing. It’s their schtick.

Kevin, please shut your mouth… The stench of your mother’s feces that is emanating from it is rather sickening.

Monkey devoid of hair, no thanks! But it wasn’t my mother’s feces that smelled so badly, it was yours. Just to be safe though, I stopped eating both of theirs.

You guys are racking me up a huge list of horrors here! But this one’s my favorite.

Just wondering… how does it feel to call someone pointless names and have them not care?

Quetesh, I’m so angry with you I might even… nah, who am I kidding. I can’t stay mad at you! Your absynnian antics are endearing! Let’s hug. And kill jihadi scumbags of course.

Have you seen our latest murdalizing weapon yet? Scrapes them off the planet at a 40 mile distance. Two years in the making, but it’s there as of last week! Woohoo! Next up, robots! Yes, we are THAT bad*ss.

Root for the other side if you want, but we’re gonna take you. In a sick way.

Kevin is obviously the sort of limpdicked psycho who can only get semi-hard imagining people being killed.
Of course, he’s too chickenshit to enlist, just like the rest of the drooling retards that comprise the Keyboard Commandos.

Crud, I’ve got to go to bed AGAIN! I get that you don’t have jobs, but don’t you have to sleep?

‘night.

Kevin minced:
“Say something bad about our military, and I’ll be on you”.

Sorry, but I’m not gay.
And if I was, I’m certain you wouldn’t be my type.
Besides, the people actually hurting the U.S. military
are mindless flagsuckers such as yourself.
You talk a great deal about respecting the soldiers…
yet YOU are the one in favor of keeping them, overextended as the U.S. military already is, in the middle of a civil war with no end in sight.
So “support the troops” = Wear ’em down and let them die needlessly
for a war that the majority of the U.S. is against.
That’s some great “support” there, Kev.
If you are so convinced of the importance and righteousness of the war, then enlist.

Ah, didn’t see that about getting your arm blown off.
That must suck, since you can’t masturbate while typing your bullshit screeds, like the rest of the wingnuts.

“These people lay down their lives for us.”

No, you poor, deluded fool, our brave soldiers in Iraq die to support a government allied with the mullahs of Iran. Our brave soldiers die because our president and his gang of felons lied repeatedly about WMD, yellowcake uranium, drone aircraft, aluminum tubes, and a whole lot of other things they knew were nonsense. Our brave soldiers die for our illegal occupation of an Arab (and mostly Muslim) country, an occupation which makes more and more of our fellow humans believe that attacking ANY of us, anywhere, at any opportunity, looks justified. Our brave soldiers die because you stupidly continue to believe the same people who cynically lied to you, who now continue lying to you, and will lie to you again.

Mikey accurately described what happens when an illegal war, based upon cynical and blatant lying, leads to an illegal and extended occupation. Humans make mistakes, and in an occupation, a mistake by the occupiers can cause death for the local citizens. That’s another reality that the liars whom you continue to believe simply ignored, as they sent other, poorer people’s children off to die.

How badly do these people lie? They won’t honestly answer questions about Pat Tillman, the man who did, in fact, die for us.

Um, why are you all talking to Kevin?

Just let him wank away. That’s the kind of person he is. It’s not curable.

The Iraqis want us to leave Iraq.
The troops want to leave Iraq.
Generals want to leave Iraq.
The majority of the US wants us to leave Iraq.
George Bush wants us to stay in Iraq.
So, we’re staying in Iraq.
Because all those other people don’t count.

Kevin the fake troll is no longer amusing guys…but you seem to enjoy the whole wanking thing so…bye.

“Say something bad about our military, and I’ll be on you”.

Hey Kev –

I actually served in the military. The US military, even. Does that give me the right to criticize it, or will you still “be on” me if I do?

Sorry, didn’t see the three posts immediately above my last. Consider this a withdrawal of my question to the troll.

Kevin won’t enlist because deep down, he knows that he’ll most likely get shot by US troops. Probably in the back.

Kevin said: “I’m ok that I can’t serve my country.” Well, duh. As if you even had to confirm it.

Ah, didn’t see that about getting your arm blown off.

I call bullshit on that anyway. What, you can only mow the grass in a circle?