Prelim Analysis - Mutiny Story is Set Up - call for a Post 47

Various - Daily News, Salon, ^ | 10/17/04 | Self

[Phsstpok]

The earlier thread about the October Surprise "Mutiny" hit piece on this mornings Today show prompted me to do some Googling to try to see if there were any connections of note.  I felt that even the little evidence I found warranted a quick heads up and (forgive me) a separate thread as a call to action.  I have no particular standing to do this, but this concerned me enough to fire off a flare.

It looks like the extreme left is orchestrating an October Surprise propaganda campaign against the war in Iraq and President Bush by staging a "mutiny" of reserve troops (appears to be 5 of 'em, when you get down to it) and playing it the way they played Abu Gharib. 

First, the basic story.  Reports surfaced on Friday, the 15th, that troops in Iraq had refused a "suicide mission" and were under arrest and held in close guard.  A small handful of "frantic" family members began reporting "unfair practices" and "unsafe conditions," desperately calling on (the usual suspects) politicians to save their loved ones from cruel fate.

Some excerpts:

Daily News, October 17, 2004:

'All of us refused to go'

Calls, E-mails explain troops' alleged mutiny

The military has begun punishing some of the 19 Army reservists who balked at what they called a "suicide mission" and a "death sentence" in Iraq last week.

Some members of the South Carolina-based 343rd Quartermaster Company refused to transport fuel between the Iraqi cities of Tallil and Taji Wednesday morning, saying they had no protection for the dangerous trip.

now here's the kicker from the Daily News piece:

Citizen Soldier, a New York-based, nonprofit military rights group, has offered ... its help.

Citizen Soldier is not a "military rights group."  It is a virulently anti-American and anti-Military extreme left front group.  Their motto on their web site is: "Prepared to Challenge U.S. Militarism in the New Millenium."

Citizen Soldier also has close ties to John Kerry, as it's director Tod Ensign, was one of the organizers of Kerry's discredited Winter Soldier propaganda event in 1969, along with Jeremy Rifkin.  This connection is the one that set off my alarm bells.

I couldn't figure the Mississippi angle till I found this in The Clarion-Ledger of Hattiesberg, Mississippi:

Platoon with Mississippi soldiers defies orders 17 soldiers placed under arrest in Iraq

A 17-member Army Reserve platoon with troops from Jackson and around the Southeast deployed to Iraq is under arrest for refusing a "suicide mission" to deliver fuel, the troops' relatives said Thursday. The soldiers refused an order on Wednesday to go to Taji, Iraq - north of Baghdad - because their vehicles were considered "deadlined" or extremely unsafe, said Patricia McCook of Jackson, wife of Sgt. Larry O. McCook.

and again, buried in the piece, is the clue to the source and spin:

U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson said he plans to submit a congressional inquiry today on behalf of the Mississippi soldiers to launch an investigation into whether they are being treated improperly.

Bennie Thompson is one of the more radical members of the Black Caucus.  He is a leader in the "fair play for Fidel Castro" movement in Congress.  He is often the designated "hit man" in attacking minority members of the Bush Administration, particularly Dr. Condoleezza Rice.  He was a rabid Deaniac, but shifted his loyalty to Kerry when Dean fell on his own scream.

The Salon hit piece ties this squarely to the Washington/DNC/Carville slime machine:

Revolt in the ranks in Iraq

The inside story of the Army platoon that refused to carry out a "death sentence" mission.

is by Mary Jocoby, Salon's Washington Correspondent.  Jacoby is one of Salon's "reliable" writers who can always be counted on to spew hate at George Bush, in particular, and Republicans in general.  She rates Seymour Hersh as a "crack investigative reporter" and has authored anti-Bush hit pieces such as  "The Dunce," "George W. Bush's Missing Year" and "Swaggering toward Election Day."

What is truly amazing about these pieces on the "mutiny" is that they appear to have been ready to go before the incident took place.  These folks had their stories straight and remarkably consistent in record time, even before the news had reached the regular news cycle on CNN, who jumped on this in record time. 

Folks, this is a set up.  But it's a set up that, like many of the Kerry camps dirty tricks, they've had to fire off prematurely to try to distract the news media from a Kerry gaffe.  Pulling the trigger on this was timed to try and keep the disastrous Mary Cheney attack off of the Sunday morning talk shows.  These soldiers are pawns who were told that they would be used to unseat a sitting President (with undoubted hints of vast rewards from a Kerry administration) but they are being sacrificed, just like pushing a pawn, to protect the dims' king.

[Codedog]

ping

[MistyCA]

Thanks for the ping! :)

[harpu]

bumped for later...

[rit]

It is odd that Kerry's PAC is called "citizen soldier fund" (formed in Dec 2001) and the group providing free legal aid is called "citizen-soldier.org" (registered 25-Oct-2000).

[quietolong]

To me this sounds like there pulling a kerry on these troops!

[rit]

Citizen Soldier.org is a project of "ALTERNATIVES TO MILITARISM INC" a non-profit located at 267 FIFTH AVE STE 901, NYC. Citizen-solder.org has same address. Look at their yead end statement with the caption "boy george pretend pilot".

[rit]

Studs Terkel is one of the folks involved with citizen soldier.org. When asked about Kerry, Studs Terkel said:

"Here’s Kerry. Long ago when he came back from the Vietnam war I interviewed him. I had a whole series on Vietnam, including officers who returned and he was one of them. I have a tape with him but I can’t find it now. He was one of the officers opposed to the Vietnam and he was good. He was very good. But then he comes out for [Bush’s resolution after] 9/11. It’s a matter of guts. That’s the big thing, whether you have the guts. He didn’t."

[rit]

Prior post was about story line in early 2004, but then, like Kerry comes "On September 14, 2004, nearly 80 leaders out of 113 who backed Nader in 2000 signed a petition urging people to vote for John Kerry. Many are luminaries of the left—Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Susan Sarandon, Studs Terkel and many others."

[MistyCA]

What is the source of that information? If this is true, it should be publicized more!!!! I wasn't aware of that link.

[rit]

Specifically, what info are your referring to?

[BagCamAddict]

There is a "black" dating website that took a poll recently, and something like 79% of respondents said they were voting for Kerry.

[quietolong]

Baseplate Baghdad: Convoy in the Kill Zone
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1248457/posts

[rit]

Fedora: Can you help to explain the relationship between Kerry and Tod Ensign? Tod's Citizen-Soldier.org is providing the legal aid and I understand that he and Kerry go back to their good old days. It seems strange that Kerry's PAC is called "Citizen Solder Fund". I do not know of any specific links between the two, other than Kerry's relationship with Ensign.

[lainde]

bttt

[lainde]

Sooo enlightening. Great work!

[MistyCA]

I saw the stuff about Citizen-soldier.org, but I don't see a link to Kerry. Where is that?

[MistyCA]

In answer to your question, specifically what info are you referring to?....

I am trying to find a link between the Citizen-Soldier.org site and Kerry's Citizen Soldier Fund. I don't see one.

[Fedora]

Ensign led the group that started what became the VVAW's Winter Soldier Investigation. Ensign's group was called the Citizens’ Commission of Inquiry into War Crimes in Indochina (CCI) and was inspired by European Communist groups promoting the idea of holding a "war crimes investigation" of US troops in Vietnam. The CCI was headquartered across the street from the VVAW in New York and its leaders knew some VVAW leaders, so they invited the VVAW to join its war crimes inquiry. For a time in 1970 the CCI and VVAW investigations were formally joined, but after a dispute over Jane Fonda's associate Mark Lane the CCI split off to form a separate, parallel investigation called the National Veterans’ Inquiry, while the VVAW conducted the Winter Soldier Investigation. Despite the formal split the CCI and VVAW continued to have periodic contact at events such as Dewey Canyon III. More details in Part 3 of my series on Kerry:

Hanoi John: Kerry and the Antiwar Movement’s Communist Connections

Scroll down to the section titled "Operation RAW and The Winter Soldier Investigation". There's also a bit in the section on Dewey Canyon III:

Joining the activities would be other antiwar veterans groups, including a group of active-duty GIs supported by the CCI and Mark Lane, the Concerned Officers Movement (COM), who had been working out of the office of Congressman Ron Dellums and were scheduled to hold ad hoc war crimes hearings before members of Congress at the same time the VVAW would be demonstrating.

[HuntsvilleTxVeteran]

bttt

[Fedora]

This isn't a direct link to Kerry, but I notice Ensign's Citizen-Soldier.org is using a lawyer from a Communist legal assistance center that used to defend the VVAW, the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR):

http://citizen-soldier.org/CS07-Camilo.html

Efforts by Camilo's defense lawyers to introduce evidence about his legal duty, under international law, not to return to Iraq, were rejected by the military judge. After listening briefly to the proposed testimony of international law professors Jules Lobel and Francis Boyle, the judge ruled that he wouldn't allow the military jury to hear any evidence of international law violations.

Center for Constitutional Rights

Jules Lobel, Vice-President

The other lawyer mentioned, Francis Boyle, has a similar background with Amnesty International and the American Friends Service Committee, and also appears to be anti-Israel/pro-Palestinian:

Israel's Crimes Against Palestinians by Francis A. Boyle

There is more on the CCR in my article. Their founder William Kunstler had a background defending terrorist groups:

Upon returning to the US, the delegation was met by William Kunstler, a lawyer who specialized in defending Communist and terrorist clients (including Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, convicted of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing).

Old VVAW lawyer and current antiwar leader Ramsey Clark also turns up in this context:

Who Is Behind Lynne Stewart?

At Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman's trial, what we saw in both FBI and CIA files, and this is their phrase, 'the greatest threat to the international and domestic security of the United States is Islamic fundamentalism.'. . .It was Ramsey Clark who urged Lynne Stewart to become the blind sheik's defense attorney. Clark's two previous choices, Center for Constitutional Rights attorneys and noted defenders of criminals and terrorists — including the Palestinian assassin of Meyer Kahane — William Kuntsler and Ron Kuby, had recused themselves.