Posted on 10/17/2004 6:56:37 AM PDT by 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:
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:
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.
Great minds think alike
The Army might be downplaying it, but the media sure isn't. Fox included, in case no one's noticed.
Now that you've said so, that makes a lot of sense.
Wow, "fair play for Fidel Castro"! Anybody remember the name of the group that Lee Harvey Oswald belonged to? Fair Play for Cuba.
See my reply about Post #47 in reply # 15 on this thread. There is a link to the actual post/thread.
My tv is off for a week, to save my sanity.
Is anyone in MSM noting the connections here.
It broke somwhere in Mississippi, Anyone from there able to help out?
You might try researching the names of those family members who initially called the press about the "emergency" phone calls home. They might be Dem activists of one sort or another.
that was the intent of my phrasing, and it is my phrasing, not something this congressman has ever said directly. He is, however, one of the leaders in calling for a dropping of sanctions against Cuba and he regularly pushes the virtues of Fidel as compared to the evils of the US.
I still say that Abu Grahib was a setup as well.
What I don't see is the character of the soldiers involved. Something or someone went very far awry, and against the ususal soldierly conduct for this to become public and not handled immediately by the military. I'm assumming a soldier has the right to refuse an illegal order. Was this done on proper channels?
So...do we have a political plant looking for a story? Do we actually have someone who would put other soldier's lives in danger by raising a ruckus? Who among the soldiers was promulgating this?
"because their vehicles were considered "deadlined" or extremely unsafe,"
Deadlined doesn't mean "extremely unsafe". While safety issues may lead to "deadling" a vehicle, that's not necesarily the case. A vehicle without certain safety features might be deadlined as "unsafe" but a commander may over-ride the deadline when he finds the cause to be unrelated to the mission. For example, non-functional windshield wipers can deadline a vehicle but if there is no rain expected, then a commander can remove the vehicle from deadline status. A vehicle without headlights is deadlined, but a commander can order the vehicle restricted to daylight operations.
What may be happening here is that these vehicles might be "deadlined" due to lack of armor upgrades but the commander could over-ride if he didn't think this mission was particularly hazardous or if the mission was of over-riding importance. IOW, you could be correct, this could be exploited by the dems.
As discontent within the Armed Forces over the war in Iraq spreads, more interest is being taken in how a soldiers rebellion during the Vietnam War brought the army to its knees. This book is a valuable introduction to that story, with photos and cartoons reproduced from soldiers' anti-war newspapers extremely difficult to find elsewhere in print today. The last 40 pages form a "Partial Chronology of Dissent, 1965-1970", calendaring important events in the development of the GI resistance movement. A second appendix brings together a list of GI Publications, by name, location, and dates of issue. I haven't seen a list like this currently available in book form elsewhere. Of course there are glitches. Vietnam GI, the leading anti-war GI publication of the day, is located in Miami when in fact it came out of Chicago. Compared to the contribution made, that's small potatoes. The opening two chapters are a bit heavy, "semiotics" and so forth, but once past the academic groundwork, a story begins to unfold that makes exciting reading in chapters like "Response and Repression," and "Envisioning Resistance." For example, the chapter "Envisioning Resistance" takes up a too-little known dimension of the soldiers rebellion: troops not only refused en mass to keep fighting in Vietnam, they frequently refused orders to be used to control unrest at home. Incidents where troops home from Vietnam simply refused to be deployed to control urban rebellions by blacks were the governments ultimate nightmare come true
Check out Bennie Thompson's website:
http://benniethompson.house.gov/HoR/MS02/News/Press+Releases/2004/Congressman+Thompson+Requests+Investigation+Into+Troop+Detainment.htm
He says he was "contacted" about this event. What I think is crucial is exactly who contacted him...he's got to answer that question. My best guess is that it was one of the leftist organizations or even the Kerry camp. It doesn't pass the smell test.
No dear, you beat me but I am carrying water for you by spreading the word. I am your humble assistant. This was a very good catch by you.
>What are their connections to the Democrats in general and to the extreme left and the Kerry campaign in particular?<
Bump.
Here's a link to the first time I saw the story.
Sgt. McCook, a deputy at the Hinds County Detention Center, and the 16 other members of the 343rd Quartermaster Company from Rock Hill, S.C., were read their rights and moved from the military barracks into tents, Patricia McCook said her husband told her during a panicked phone call about 5 a.m. Thursday.
I'd question whether they have barracks over there. The Air Force maybe, The Army, I doubt it. 5am. tenn. time is 9pm. Iraq time. How did they make a phonecall if they were confined to quarters that were not their own?
The story smells funny on it's face.
Post 47 Ping
Do our soldiers have cell phones over there? How did he call?
This reminds me of some of those VVAW files I read, the files from the FBI. It seems there was a group promulgating dissention among soldieers, going around telling them of their rights etc. Kerry was in on it. And Mississippi was a place they set up offices to help people, etc, poor blacks. I remember reading and thinking these were communists or a group trying to start a revolution amongst the poor. Kerry was into that if I remember right and went around with them. This was sort of the "charity" wing of VVAW.
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