Posted on 10/17/2004 6:56:37 AM PDT by Phsstpok
These names probably won't surprise you either then! I'm surprised Dellums isn't with this gang. This is all out of the same playbook as Vietnam. All of our accommodating representatives help create the propaganda for these anti-war activists to spew.
http://www.citizen-soldier.org/draftchatter.html
Saying the D-word
Three months before Bush invaded Iraq, two Black lawmakers, Democratic US Representatives Charles Rangel of New York and John Conyers of Michigan, introduced the Universal Service Act. Fellow Democrat Fritz Hollings of South Carolina introduced a companion bill in the Senate. This would require every able-bodied male and female between ages 18-26 to perform two years of mandatory public service, either in the military or the public sector. The president would decide how many were needed for military duty. Deferments for college or "critical skills," which caused so much controversy during the Vietnam war, would not be allowed.
Real War Stories. Comic book about the work of Citizen Soldier. 48 pages. $5.00Metal of Dishonor. How the Pentagon Radiates Soldier and Civilians with Depleted Uranium Weapons. 240 pp. $10.00 plus $2.00 postage
Gassed in the Gulf: The Inside Story of the Pentagon-CIA Cover-Up of Gulf War Syndrome. $10.00 plus $2.00 postage
Against the Vietnam War: Writings by activists Dave Dellinger, Joan Baez, Eugene McCarthy, Noam Chomsky, Tod Ensign, etc. 317 pages. ($24.95 retail) $10.00 plus $2.00 postage
Video: No Longer Enemies: Healing Wounds in Vietnam. VHS color, 19:30 min. $14.95 plus $2.00 postage
How to Help Citizen Soldier
Please complete and print-out this form. Then return it along with a check made payable to Alternatives to Militarism, Inc. to:Citizen Soldier
267 Fifth Ave., Suite 901 · New York, NY 10016
Phone (212) 679-2250 Fax (212) 679-2252
page 96fIn the February 6, 1973 edition of the "New York Times," a daily NY newspaper, there was an article headlined "AMNESTY STRATEGY PARLEY SET FOR PARIS." This article reported, among other things, that TOD ENSIGN, a lawyer for the Safe Return Committee (SRC), announced at a news conference on February 5, 1973 in NYC that representatives from CALC [Clergy and Laymen Concerned About Vietnam] would be present at a strategy meeting to be held in Paris, France from February 19-February 22, 1973. The purpose of this meeting was to form strategy to move Congress to pass legislation calling for exiled military deserters and draft-dodgers as well as fugitive anti-war protestors, to be allowed back into this country without reprisals.
Safe Return Committee (SRC) is composed of Citizens Committee of Inquiry (CCI) activitists who plan to assist some of the many self-retired veterans (deserters) who wish to return home.CCI has been characterized as an anti-war group with a New Left political orientation seeking a national inquest into the war crimes question.
(snip)November, 1969 -- In response to a public call from the Bertrand Russell foundation in New York, Jeremy Rifkin and Tod Ensign launch a new organization called Citizens Commissions of Inquiry (CCI) to publicize American war crimes in Indochina.
(snip)
August, 1970 -- VVAW Executive Secretary Al Hubbard asks Tod Ensign and Jeremy Rifkin of the CCI to join with the VVAW, the Reverend Dick Fernandez of Clergy and Laymen Concerned about Vietnam (CALCAV), Jane Fonda, Mark Lane and others to organize national hearings on war crimes. Lane suggests calling the hearings "Winter Soldier," a play on the opening lines of Thomas Paine's The American Crisis: "These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink for the service of his country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman." By the end of the month the Winter Soldier Investigation has been planned as a simultaneous event featuring "Vietnamese victims" in Windsor, Canada, and Vietnam veterans in Detroit, connected by closed-circuit television.
As for CCI, the New York-based committee was founded by Ralph Schoenman in November 1969, just after the revelation in the US press (twenty months after the fact) of the infamous My Lai massacre. Schoenman had been a principal organizer of the Bertrand Russell War Crimes Tribunal--an unofficial panel of prominent world figures who assembled on two occasions in Europe, heard testimony and judged as “genocidal” the US conduct of the war in Vietnam. By early 1970, CCI had come under the sole direction of two New Left activists, Tod Ensign and Jeremy Rifkin, who refined and implemented the strategy originally conceived by Schoenman, to organize veterans and publicize their firsthand knowledge of the routine and widespread nature of US atrocities in Vietnam, thus arguing that My Lai expressed the logical epitome of such practices and was not merely the isolated, aberrant act of a few deranged GIs.
(snip)
Omitted from Nicosia’s recasting of the Agent Orange story, among other things, is the political alchemy of a handful of New Left activists, some around Citizen Soldier, the organization founded by Tod Ensign and myself [Michael Uhl], that transformed a local expose televised in Chicago into a national crusade. The feature distinguishing those players whose efforts are central to Nicosia’s reportage from those whose historically critical activities he ignores is the political agenda of the latter, who insisted that responsibility for Agent Orange-related illnesses could not be separated from responsibility for the war itself. Those vets, myself included, were struggling to keep Vietnam alive as the best means of preventing future Vietnams. We were--and continue--fighting for a historical interpretation that applies the word “aggression” to the US intervention in Vietnam, not the word “mistake.” But as Nicosia’s narrative quite accurately reveals, the potential for the Agent Orange controversy to embody that political objective for long was pre-empted by a litigation strategy against Dow and the major herbicide manufacturers. When settled, the class action did not come close to providing adequate compensation for those who required care, but the effort was by no means without value for political education on the effects of commercial toxins on human health. Nor did it lack historical significance, for attacking corporate prestige.
I'm live on WYDE radio in Birmingham right now discussing this...
Hope it helps
I think the fuel taint was supposed to do two things. First, the dangerous delivery was a waste of time anyway. Second, emphasize how messed up things are over there. People in charge of running the show are at best, incompetent. At worst, they are dangerous & don't care about the safety of those they are put in charge of.
Making their refusal "noble" would be icing on the cake. They were trying to prevent harm to some of their fellow service people.
Wish I could listen! I hope it helps too! Knock 'em dead!
I was just a guest (last 30 minutes) on the Lee Davis radio show out of Birmingham, AL (I've been a regular guest since spring, when I became involved with Vietnam Vets for the Truth).
I talked a little about my letter to Nightline (you can find on www.powerlineblog.com) as well as this latest attempt of the left to sway public opinion of our military.
I outlined how this type of negative press (the trumped up mutiny story) is a goal of groups descended from VVAW, and talked about how the group Citizen Soldier is connected to known leftists with connetions to Kerry going way back to the '70s.
I questioned whether this group had offered to help or was in fact orchestrating some of the negative press in a desperate attempt at an October surprise, and outlined how the group is an offshoot of Alternatives to Militarism, Inc.
Coming of age during the Reagan years and the Shining City on the Hill, I spoke of my disgust for these throwback groups and their attempt to re-generate themselves from the ashes of the '60s. I talked about how good people needed to be aware of this fifth column within the U.S. and continue to see the global war on terror on its own merits, and not be gullible when reading or watching mainstream media. I mentioned Free Republic, www.swiftvets.com and www.powerlineblog.com as sources of information for people who wanted the truth.
Check this out.
So why isn't Congress confronted on some of this? I still think Congress should be shut down and the Representatives can meet for limited time periods. How can they represent the states when they don't even live there anymore? All they do is cost us a ton more money and headaches!
More like disobeying a direct order, and cowardice in the face of the enemy. Firing squad is the remedy.
Wonder how it would have turned out if the troops, that invaded Normandy,without body armor, had decided it was a suicide mission, and didn't show up?
I forget myself, wrong generation.
There won't be a firing squad. And I'm with ya on Normandy -- you haven't forgotten yourself.
I know I'm burnt on drama queens -- be they male, female, or undecided.
Ping-thanks-bump.
I would also encourage freepers to read Fedora's research on Kerry. Hopefully a book will be published.
After election 2000, Sure enough will r&ding online.. not only did I find the usual leftist groups, marxist and socialist and communist, but the so-called "vets" you refer to. What I found utterly intriguing were all these groups connections to pub education nationally and internationally.
I think that would only apply in a declared war. Any UCMJ JAG experts out there?
My Dad went in (on day 2) on Omaha Beach. No, they didn't have body armor, or at least what they had available (steel flak jackets, created for bomber crews) were totally unsuitable for a beach assault, even if someone had thought about issuing them.
Having said that, since we do have Kevlar, lightweight impact resistant armor plates, etc., I think we should do our damnedest to equip our troops with all that we can think of, so long as it doesn't hinder more than help.
Remember, we're the military that, unlike any other military in history, works from the premise that ammunition and other material, such as trucks or tanks, are cheap compared to trained soldiers.
And the best part is that the vehicle armor that these guys are talking about was improvised in theater. It didn't go through the Pentagon planning and procurement horror shows. Some grunts went out and bought some steel plating locally and started welding it on. When the brass saw that, they didn't blow a gasket about "procedures." They got behind it and started funding the work, using civilian contractors to get it done faster. I gather that had a lot to do with Rummy and the folks he picked to run the show.
They named the Bradley Fighting Vehicle after Omar Bradley, the "soldiers General." That committee designed track took an incredible amount of time to deliver and was a death trap as it originally rolled off of the assembly line (the armor wasn't strong enough to stop the standard Soviet rifle round on the way in, but would stop it from exiting the other side, so the bullets would ricochet around the inside of Bradley for a while - not good). It eventually did get "fixed" so that it is a quite capable vehicle when used correctly. I wish, however, that someone would bestow Omar Bradley's name on a process like this, by the troops, for the troops and accomplished with a minimum of interference from REMFs.
The Bradley Process.
We also have an order called "Fix Bayonets" It is used when a job has to be done, and there is nothing to do the job with. Of course there is the alternative "White Flag" course of action too. Nuts
http://homepage.mac.com/poorfessor/.Public/x.jpg
Yeah, but in today's military your as likely to get a "screw that" to a "fix bayonets" call, not because the troops aren't willing to fight, but because they want to pull out the (un-authorized) Mossberg they've got under the seat, or the (very un-authorized) Talon Tomahawk, or their (even more un-authorized) Katana.
At least that's how the Force Recon guys are teaching my son (shhhh, I'm not supposed to tell).
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