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"The New Republic" Supports the Troops (or maybe not)
Townhall.com ^ | Thursday, July 19, 2007 | Posted by: Dean Barnett

Posted on 07/19/2007 8:29:29 AM PDT by .cnI redruM

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To: .cnI redruM

Clifton Hicks has written a LOT of stuff. The more I read, the more it sounds like Scott Thomas:

http://www.alternet.org/asoldierspeaks/40431/


21 posted on 07/20/2007 10:12:48 PM PDT by cookcounty (Famous Quotes: "I have not yet begun to fight!! ...and I'm so terribly exhausted!" --Capt Harry Reid)
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To: .cnI redruM

Look at this comment by a Hicks sympathizer and journalist:

Laufer: They all got me. They’re just emotionally wrenching. [But] there’s one guy that I’m particularly fascinated by and find inspirational: Clifton Hicks. Clifton Hicks is a fascinating guy because when he speaks about his experiences, it’s a combination of this harsh military lexicon of crude language and images with a poetic understanding and interpretation of the events that he experienced. He’s from the backwater of the Southeast and he was sending reports home that his father put up on the family blog. He was harshly critical of the war and the command in these blogs, and that got back to his commanders. He was sentenced to hard labor, as I recall, reduced in rank and fined, and applied for conscientious objector status, [which] eventually he did get.

But he tells stories on himself, and that’s one of the things that’s amazing to hear — these guys who are indicting their own actions. He tells these ghastly stories of the things he did or experienced that helped him realize the war is wrong, and two things in particular always stand out in my mind. One is that, due to confusion, and seemingly not malicious confusion, a wedding party was shot up and he was involved in the cleanup after it. A young girl, I think she was six, was killed. There was no report filed, according to him. The U.S. troops just saw that they’d killed her and kept on going because it was not a factor of consequence.

Hearing stories like this puts into context the atrocities that we’re hearing about, not to in any way suggest that the majority of the troops over there or even a consequential number of them engaged in this sort of thing, but it allows one to see how an immoral policy and resorting to violence to solve political problems can lead to individuals doing horrific things that they would never consider. Bad enough that this girl was killed and left, and his compatriots would defecate into the containers for MREs, the meals that are distributed to the troops, and then offer them to hungry Iraqis, because this was a way for them to get back at the Iraq that they learned to hate. And he talks about learning to hate Iraq and learning to hate Iraqis even though it’s contrary to his personal beliefs and upbringing.”

Does this not sound like a review of “Scott Thomas”?


22 posted on 07/20/2007 10:27:19 PM PDT by cookcounty (Famous Quotes: "I have not yet begun to fight!! ...and I'm so terribly exhausted!" --Capt Harry Reid)
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To: cookcounty
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1869542/posts?page=1

Another FR post that is more comprehensive. TNR has obviously intentionally published made up garbage. They should be sued for John Edwards money.

23 posted on 07/21/2007 4:14:31 PM PDT by .cnI redruM (Memo to M. Vick: Your money will never pinch-hit for your personal integrity.)
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To: cookcounty; All

So I guess you guys/gals heard where he stole the skull story from already?

http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,445133,00.html

Putting this out so the info’s upfront:

Does “Scott Thomas” Really Exist?

http://weeklystandard.com/Weblogs/TWSFP/TWSFPView.asp#2034

More from men at FOB Falcon. According to this soldier, it is highly likely that “Scott Thomas” is describing real events.

Franklin Foer has stood by his story, but has yet to deliver a single bit of evidence supporting his story. Not a shred. He is trying to do two things: Downplay the incidents, calling them mere practical jokes - and claiming that he is getting reports corroborating Mr. Thomas. If so, show us. It is very weak to publish things and then claim that you have gotten full corroboration, but no one can be revealed.

Remember Dan Rather’s behavior on being caught. “The story is true” he said. He stonewalled, said everything was fine, and that we should trust him. Turns out nothing was true. That seems to be the case here as well. Support your story, hope they get tired and go away. But an officer from FOB Falcon has more details:

Hey Matt:
Here are the facts as best I have established them, along with the actions I have taken here at Falcon.

1. I was notified of the New Republic blog entries yesterday (Friday) by documentarian JD Johannes, who had spent time with us as an embed in May. He was concerned about the reports, but also expressed doubt in their veracity. He provided the New Republic and Weekly Standard response to the blog entry links.

2. I was able to immediately refute the assertion that a mass graveyard of children’s skeletons was found; an event such as this would have been reported during the construction of Coalition Outpost Ellis, the only such COP that exists in the area the blogger described (rural, south of BIAP).

3. The stories of the burned woman and hitting dogs with Bradleys can’t be as decisively disputed, however, I have not encountered a woman matching that description at any time on Falcon since arriving here on 17 Feb. You would think that someone with such visible wounds would stand out in memorable fashion. This doesn’t mean that she wasn’t a visitor at some point, but I find the account of Soldiers mocking her dubious at best.

4. I immediately notified MAJ Lamb of MND-B PAO, who advised me to send him the link and pertinent information on the New Republic’s blog posts, which I did. He informed me of his intent to engage the CENTCOM blog team to see if they could take action, and at the very least, make them aware of the situation.

5. I contacted the only unit in our brigade that has Bradleys, 1-18 IN, and advised their XO of the situation, recommending that they talk to their Soldiers about Army values and the Warrior ethos, reminding them of the rules for blogging in uniform and also reminding them of integrity and telling the truth. The bottom line: If you put something out there you should be willing to put your name next to it and stand by it. That he and New Rpublic are insisting on anonymity is very telling here.

Per COL Boylan’s request, I have prepared the following:

1. There was no mass grave found during the construction of any of our coalition outposts in the Rashid District at any time. Such a discovery would have prompted an investigation and close attention paid at levels higher than ours to making sure that the victims were properly interred and attempts would have been made to determine their identities. It is difficult to fathom that a unit’s leadership would condone Soldiers disrespecting the remains of anyone in the fashion described.

2. Due to the threat of IEDs, our combat vehicles are driven professionally and in control at all times. To be driving erratically so as to hit dogs or other things would be to put the entire vehicle’s crew at risk and would be gross dereliction of duty by the noncommissioned officer or officer in charge of the vehicle. Drivers aren’t allowed to simply free-wheel their vehicles however they see fit, and they are *not* allowed to be moved anywhere with out a vehicle commander present to supervise the movement. Therefore- claims of vehicles leaving the roadways to hit animals are highly dubious, given the very real threat of IEDs and normal standards of conduct.

3. As for the alleged woman with severe burn scars, we have nobody matching that description here at FOB Falcon. As Soldiers, we practice the value of Respect: “Treat people as you want to be treated.” If the blogger and his friends can’t live the Army value of respect, I have little doubt that someone around them who does would have made an on-the-spot correction. The Falcon dining facility is not a spacious one. Anyone being rude, loud or raucous calls immediate attention to himself. It is hard to fathom that anyone would be able to get away with such callous behavior without somebody intervening and stopping it from happening.

Major Kirk Luedeke
Public Affairs Officer
4th IBCT, 1st ID

It still could have happened. Officers are not around all the time. But it is very, very unlikely. It sounds more like a soldier with a gift for writing has exercised his imagination. And he knew to go to the New Republic to print his fantasies.

http://www.penraker.com/archives/009410.html


24 posted on 07/22/2007 11:54:16 AM PDT by AliVeritas (I'd rather be in Gitmo under Bush, than a Davidian under Clinton. - Media Tycoon)
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To: sono; MNJohnnie; rodguy911; HonestConservative; eeevil conservative; holdonnow; All

Research Call. Need confirm re: Middle Initial

This the guy?
http://www.ivaw.org/user/286

Read this... scroll down some:
http://thecommonills.blogspot.com/2007/06/iraq-snapshot_11.html

Also covering the topic yesterday was Heather Wokusch (OpEdNews) who covers the cases of Kyle D. Huwer, Clifton F. Hicks and “John” (a psuedonym). John self-checked out and is back in the US avoiding his family (”avid Bush-supporters; his uncle works for a weapons manufacturer and his stepfather, for an oil company”) but has some contact with his girlfriend “Sarah” who notes the difference between media in Germany and in the US, “Watching the news here [US] really makes me angry, people are so detached from reality. They increse the troop deployments from 12 to 15 months, and no one besides the military families recognizes it. They are sending back national guard people for multiple deployments, no one recognizes it. You hardly hear anything about what that puts on the families, emotionally and financially. I’m deeply mad and sad about that at the same time.”
John explains to Wokusch the transformation he had while serving in Iraq and notes, “It was not what I was expecting at all. There are people in Iraq making HUGE sums of money profiting over poorly supervised and ill-run government contracts. When you hear about the cost of the war in Iraq, it’s this kind of thing that’s doing it, not the body armor, having to pay the soliders a couple of meager extra bucks, or armoring the humvees. It’s paying KBP $90 for every time I turn in my laundry while paying poor Pakistani and Filipino workers who work long hours with no days off for years at a time (and handling thousands of bags of laundry) $15 a day.” [Note: Heather Wokusch’s article also contains an audio-visual stream option.]

Clifton Hicks is now discharged and some may remember his story from Peter Laufer’s
Mission Rejected: U.S. Soldiers Who Say No to Iraq. In the book Laufer recounts how Hicks father posted one his son’s letters home (from Iraq) online and the military’s response was “a Field Grade Article 15” (p. 185) which Hicks learned after his woke him up one morning kicking his cot and, pay attention easily shocked Heather Hollingsworth-types, cursing at him. “They were going to throw me in jail for treason.” After he was demoted to private and fined $800, Hicks applied for CO status. Hicks told Laufer, “If I don’t get it? I have other avenues of approach to get home. I’ve told them I am not going back to Iraq” and would rather go to prison but “[i]t won’t come to that, though, because I think I’m too smart for that to happen to me. Civil disobedience is an option — just refuse to put the uniform on. Maybe a hunger strike. There’s all kinds of things you can do. It’s looking like they’ll approve it. But if they don’t, I have Plan B, Plan C, all the way up to desertion” (p. 187). Laufer’s chapter on Hicks ends with Hicks being told he will receive CO status and a discharge. [Reminder, Laufer now hosts a two hour program each Sunday morning on KPFA from 9:00 to 11:00 am PST. The program is not yet named — though it is airing — and Laufer’s program airs in Larry Bensky’s old time slot.]

Note: Ummm... Germany BTW, that site is full of traitors in the worst sense of the word. But now we know who a lot of them are and who they use. Sick.


25 posted on 07/22/2007 12:05:38 PM PDT by AliVeritas (I'd rather be in Gitmo under Bush, than a Davidian under Clinton. - Media Tycoon)
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To: .cnI redruM; All

Can we say Ops and friggin traitors yet?

Check this out: A GI against the war site... or so it seems

They bold this clip (3/4 down):

One was former US Army Specialist Kyle D. Huwer, who served for one and a half years before, as he puts it, “I finally came to my senses and realized that what I was doing was wrong.”

Another was former US Army Private Clifton F. Hicks, who served from the summer of 2003 to late 2005. Hicks says, “I joined to defend the people of the United States, and when I found our Army was not doing that, and that I was in fact being used to further the goals of evil men, I began to question my involvement in such an organization.”

Who’s this though? Have a clue?
http://www.albasrah.net/en_articles_2007/0607/GI%20Special%205F19_200607.htm

Go see:
http://www.albasrah.net/index.php


26 posted on 07/22/2007 12:25:44 PM PDT by AliVeritas (I'd rather be in Gitmo under Bush, than a Davidian under Clinton. - Media Tycoon)
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To: All

Oops... i’m behind. Still searching, don’t believe it.

July 22, 2007
Response by Clifton Hicks to Ray Robison
letter to the editor

Ray Robison has recently published a blog entry wherein he claims that I may have authored a story in The New Republic under the false name of ‘Scott Thomas’.

Ray, I did not author that piece. Perhaps the reason you find so many similarities in my writing and that of Mr. Thomas’ is because we were both in Iraq, serving in the same awful war with the same impossible mission; thereby witnessing similar events! In the mean time Ray, I’ve a couple of bones to pick with you so allow me to set about correcting some of your errors here, I’ll start at the top.

1. “Hicks was granted conscientious objector status and a release from the Army after receiving administrative punishment for unprofessional conduct. Since then, and especially recently, he has tapped into the anti-war establishment for self-promotion.”
I was Honorably discharged (not “released”) from the US Army after serving some thirty odd trying months in a front line combat unit. My discharge had nothing to do with any “administrative punishment,” the nature of my separation from the military was completely honorable, legal, and professional. And I have not “tapped into” the anti-war movement for “self-promotion,” in recent months I have reluctantly accepted a couple of interview offers, that is all.
2. “Here Hicks expresses that “we... were happy to have killed” an Iraqi child. His own words!”
Please allow me to remind you, Ray, that you were not in that house in Baghdad in 2003, you did not see or feel what we saw and felt that night. You shouldn’t butcher other people’s quotations to piece together your own illegitimate excerpts. In other words, we did not kill that child, and we were not happy about it.
Ray, I don’t know if this Scott Thomas character is real or not, nor do I care. I sure as Hell don’t know if what he’s saying is the truth, and I admit I didn’t bother to read “Shock Troops”, it doesn’t interest me for obvious reasons. It could be fake, or it could be real, you and I will probably never know. All I can vouch for is my own story, and whether or not you or anybody else believes that story is of no consequence to me. Those who stood at my side every step of the way, those brave young comrades of mine, are the only men who might confirm or deny anything I have ventured to say in the past.

Clifton Hicks

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2007/07/post_59.html

-Dang, hope he caught the IP


27 posted on 07/22/2007 12:29:43 PM PDT by AliVeritas (I'd rather be in Gitmo under Bush, than a Davidian under Clinton. - Media Tycoon)
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To: .cnI redruM

You know it’s a shame that our troops even feel like they have to answer questions about this BS... here goes:

http://www.mudvillegazette.com/milblogs/


28 posted on 07/22/2007 1:08:53 PM PDT by AliVeritas (I'd rather be in Gitmo under Bush, than a Davidian under Clinton. - Media Tycoon)
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To: George W. Bush; SandRat; NormsRevenge; Grampa Dave; SierraWasp; blam; SunkenCiv; Marine_Uncle; ...

Just alerting some folks on this Scott Thomas story....and your note....


29 posted on 07/23/2007 4:40:08 PM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach (No Burkas for my grandaughters!!!)
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To: .cnI redruM
Here are my two cents. Almost no soldiers today call it a “chow hall.” It’s a “DFAC” (Dining Facility). The name “chow hall” is nearly unknown and archaic to our younger soldiers. If they know the word, it’s from their fathers and uncles. It would be as wrong as calling MREs Sea Rats.
30 posted on 07/23/2007 5:12:32 PM PDT by elhombrelibre (Who will Liberals shift the blame to if their retreat from Iraq turns into a disaster?)
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach
More here as well:

http://www.americanprowler.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=11769

31 posted on 07/23/2007 5:46:40 PM PDT by elhombrelibre (Who will Liberals shift the blame to if their retreat from Iraq turns into a disaster?)
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach; AliVeritas; elhombrelibre
Looks like AliVeritas may get to the bottom of it yet.

elhombrelibre has a good point about "chow halls". It sounds like some Dan Blather spin, straight out of some old WW II movie to me.
32 posted on 07/23/2007 7:19:14 PM PDT by George W. Bush (Rudy: tough on terror, scared of Iowa)
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