USO Canteen FReeper Style Welcome Warriors Veterans of Foreign Wars September 17,2002

FRiends of the USO Canteen FReeper Style and Snow Bunny

[Snow Bunny]

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If you know a Veteran, someone in your family,
friend of the family, neighbor, who served their
country, take a brief moment of your day to thank them.
Thank them for the sacrifice they made
for the better good of their country.

We at Free Republic, and the USO Canteen FReeper Style,
are thankful for every service member
in our military, who has served our great nation.

So, to the men and women who answered the call,
in both times of war and peace, thank you.

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Message from Snow Bunny to all those who visit the Canteen.

This is how I think of the USO Canteen Freeper Style.
It is like a cottage down a road,
a place where a weary veteran can spend the night.

Since it opened, it is magical how so many
Freepers who post here, feel it too.
It has been so dear how the Freepers
kept making it a cottage - a home-type of place
that had a huge living room
for them to visit in and a dance floor, a library, etc.

Many Veterans have written to me,
saying that the Canteen is like home
to them for the first time since they served.

This is your Canteen -
a respite from our busy
and sometimes troubling world.
Make yourself at home.

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VETERANS OF FOREIGN WARS

The Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States
came into existence in 1913 as a result of amalgamations
over a period of years since 1899 of five separate foreign
service organizations that had the same ideals and similar
requirements for membership. These organizations came
into being entirely independent of one another and without
the knowledge of one another at the time of their origin.

A brief resume of these unites is as follows:

September 1899,
AMERICAN VETERANS OF FOREIGN SERVICE
organized as a national body in Columbus, Ohio.
Were chartered by the State of Ohio October 10, 1899
and elected J. C. Putnam as their first Commander-in-Chief.
They were organized through the efforts of James Romanis.

December 1899,
COLORADO SOCIETY OF THE ARMY OF THE PHILIPPINES
organized at Denver, Colorado by General Irving Hale.
Became NATIONAL SOCIETY OF THE ARMY OF
THE PHILIPPINES on August 13, 1900 with
Francis V. Greene as their first Commander-in-Chief.
At their Encampment in August 1909 they changed the
name to ARMY OF THE PHILIPPINES. July 7, 1901,
H.O. Kelley organized PHILIPPINE WAR VETERANS in
Altoona, Pennsylvania. In July 1902 reorganized with
C.O. Knighton as President.

October 1901,
PHILIPPINE WAR VETERANS
organized at Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania with G.H. Smith
being elected Commander. On April 27, 1902 reorganized
as FOREIGN SERVICE VETERANS with Jacques La Belle
as Commander. July 24, 1902, AMERICAN VETERANS OF
PHILIPPINE AND CHINA WARS organized at Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania by Captain Robert S. Hansbury.

The PHILIPPINE WAR VETERANS-Altoona
, PHILIPPINE WAR VETERANS-Pittsburgh, and
AMERICAN VETERANS OF THE PHILIPPINE AND
CHINA WARS-Philadelphia met together
September 10-12, 1903 at Altoona, Pennsylvania and formed
the Eastern society of the AMERICAN VETERANS OF
THE PHILIPPINES, CUBAN, PUERTO RICAN & CHINA
WARS organization. In 1903 the name was changed by plebiscite
to AMERICAN VETERANS OF FOREIGN SERVICE-Eastern Branch.

During the period of September 13-15, 1905,
at Altoona, Pennsylvania, the Eastern Branch of the
AMERICAN VETERANS OF FOREIGN SERVICE,
which was formed in 1903 at Altoona, Pennsylvania,
amalgamated with the original AMERICAN VETERANS
OF FOREIGN SERVICE of Columbus, Ohio to become
one society known as the AMERICAN VETERANS OF
FOREIGN SERVICE. Herbert O. Kelley, of Altoona, was
elected Commander.

In August, 1913, at Denver, Colorado, the
ARMY OF THE PHILIPPINES and the
AMERICAN VETERANS OF FOREIGN SERVICE
united under the temporary name of ARMY OF THE
PHILIPPINES, CUBA AND PUERTO RICO with
Rice W. Means as the first Commander-in Chief.
During the year the organization's name was changed
by plebiscite and General Order No. 1 to the present day
VETERANS OF FOREIGN WARS OF THE UNITED STATES.

At the Encampment in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1914,
the name
VETERANS OF FOREIGN WARS OF THE UNITED STATES
and a constitution were formally adopted.

On May 28, 1936, Congressional Charter incorporated the
VETERANS OF FOREIGN WARS OF THE UNITED STATES.

History shows that the Cross of Malta,
the emblem of the
Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States,
is 1,000 years old.
Nearly ten centuries ago the Maltese Cross was
made the symbol of fighting men who were united
by a solemn pledge of comradeship to fight for freedom
and to aid the sick and the needy.
Those ancient obligations are still symbolized by the
Cross of Malta today, for the more than two million former
servicemen who are the Veterans of Foreign Wars.
The Cross of Malta is the symbol of their battles in time of war
and of their campaign to defend the God given rights of human
beings in time of peace. The Cross of Malta symbolizes the
compassion, or sympathy, of those men and women for the needy.
It is the sign of services which our contemporary veterans render to
help make living a little better for everyone.

The Knights of St. John represented all
walks of life. They were noblemen and priests,
artisans and laborers. Regardless of those
differences, however, they were united by a
solemn pledge of unwavering courage and
compassion. Together they fought against
oppression.

The Cross of Malta had a religious origin
but the Knights of St. John also made it
their battle standard for the liberation of all
men, women and children who suffered
oppression. The ideals for which the original
Crusaders fought parallel the principles of
democracy today, freedom and justice.

Why did the Veterans of Foreign Wars
select the Cross of Malta emblem?

What has been added to the Cross
and what does the symbol mean?

Upon the Cross is superimposed the
Great Seal of the United States,
encircled by the name,Veterans of
Foreign Wars of the United States.
Within the circle is the American eagle,
the emblem of a proud nation whose
warriors of many generations have fought
and sacrificed to preserve the free mans
way of living.

Between the four arms of the Cross,
the Veterans of Foreign Wars has added
the suns rays to emphasize the vigor and
warmth with which the present day
brotherhood defends our ideals.

The Veterans of Foreign Wars is the
worlds oldest and largest overseas war
veterans organization.
It is chartered by the Congress of the
United States.

That charter states specifically that the
objects of the VFW shall be;
fraternal
patriotic
historical educational
that its members shall preserve and
strengthen comradeship
that they shall maintain allegiance to
the government of the United States
and fidelity to its laws
that VFW members shall foster true
patriotism, extend American freedom
and defend this nation from all enemies.

There are 2.1 million members of the
Veterans of Foreign Wars

The VFW is also joined by 750,000 members
of our Ladies Auxiliary.

~Honor the Dead by Helping the Living~

The VFW was the first veterans' organization to adopt the poppy
and develop a national distribution campaign. For more than 75
years, the VFW's Buddy Poppy program has raised millions of
dollars in support of veterans' welfare and the well being of their
dependents. From the very beginning, Buddy Poppy has received
the support of the Veterans Administration and the endorsement
and cooperation of all presidents since Warren G. Harding.

Today, VFW Buddy Poppies are assembled by disabled,
needy and aging veterans in VA Hospitals and domiciliaries
across the country and are sold at VFW Posts and their Ladies
Auxiliaries.

In Flander's Field" describes a battlefield of crosses dotted
with red poppies. The poem deeply touched the nation and
the world, and, from that point on, poppies became known
throughout the world as a memorial flower,
a reminder of the lives lost in wartime.

"In Flanders Fields"
~ by John McCrae~

In Flanders Fields the poppies blow, 
Between the crosses, row on row, 
That mark our place; and in the sky, 
The larks, still bravely singing, fly, 
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the dead. 
Short days ago, 
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, 
Loved and were loved and now we lie, 
In Flanders Fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe
To you, from failing hands, we throw, 
The torch, be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us, who die, 
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow,
In Flanders Fields.

[Kathy in Alaska]

Love the stealth aircraft. I hope Otto doesn't get lost trying to find it.

[Militiaman7]

Another Thread on CONCURRENT REPEIPT. CONCURRENT RECEIPT

All misspelling and puncuation mistakes are mine.

Transcript of NBC Nightly News broadcast article on Concurrent Receipt.

16 September 2002

_________________________

Broken Promises

Brokaw: Our series “Broken Promises”.

Brokaw: As American Forces are fighting a war against terrorism and planning is underway for another war against Iraq, American veterans wounded in other wars are in their own fight. After their military careers they expected full retirement pay, but they didn’t expect their wounds would be a penalty.

NBC News’ Fred Francis on the latest phase of this continuing battle.

Francis: In the small Alabama town of Ozark, Hank Nix is honored as a hero, yet he and Mrs. Nix will have to move from their home on Hank Nix drive . He says, because of a broken promise. The government reducing his retirement pay.

Nix: I’m about to have to sell this place. I’m not able to keep it up anymore.

Francis: Korea, 52 years ago. Nix took a bullet leading his platoon, earning him the Silver Star.

Nix: Yeah, I got hit in the chest in a fire fight. In fact my platoon leader was killed that day.

Francis: He was captured, spent three years as a Prisoner of War. Watching 1600 GIs die there.

Nix: It’s disease, cold, starvation. You name it.

Francis: Now 100% disabled because of his service injuries he expected to collect both his retirement and disability pay. Or so he thought, but Nix and a half a million disabled veterans learned of a nineteenth century law that reduces their retirement pay by the amount that they get in disability compensation. A quirky law that applies only to disabled soldiers and no other Federal workers.

Nix: If I were a civil servant if I was anything but what I am, retired military, I’d be drawing it.

Francis: You would be drawing disability and retirement.

Nix: disability and retirement. Yes

(Fleecing of America logo on screen with Tom Brokaw ready to speak)

Francis: We told you about this three times in the last year and a half.

Brokaw: (cut in) ...it involved veterans who felt they were fleeced because Congress...

Nix: Now Congress has overwhelmingly voted to change the law. To give disabled veterans both sets of benefits. But the Bush Administration threatens to veto the legislation. Arguing, changing the law would be to costly.

Dr. David Chu, United States Department of Defense: ...a private who’s facing orders to Afghanistan, We cannot do for him or his colleague what we need to do if the monies are diverted by the Congress.

(I am inserting this comment) Militiaman7: David Chu is lying though his teeth.

Francis: Disabled Vietnam Veteran, Brook Outland said: It is those very soldiers he’s worried about, not simply his own generation.

Outland: If they stand and they happen to get injured during this upcoming war. They are going to be in the same boat as we are.

Francis: Back in Alabama Hank Nix remains hopeful.

Nix: I pray for this thing to be settled.

Francis: Praying that a promise he believes that will finally be fulfilled.

Fred Francis, NBC News, Ozark, Alabama

[Aeronaut]

Yeah, but it flies differently than the Hurricaine. We'll both be glad to be back in "old Faithful."

[Mr_Magoo]

Off to work, see everyone tonight.

[Militiaman7]

Outland: If they stand and they happen to get injured during this upcoming war. They are going to be in the same boat as we are.

Should read:

Outland: If they stay and they happen to get injured during this upcoming war. They are going to be in the same boat as we ae.

[Militiaman7]

Outland: If they stand and they happen to get injured during this upcoming war. They are going to be in the same boat as we are.

Should read:

Outland: If they stay and they happen to get injured during this upcoming war. They are going to be in the same boat as we are.

I apologize, my fingers are getting the best of my thumbs. Sorry

[Kathy in Alaska]

I for sure want you and Otto to be comfortable as you do your flyovers. Awaiting "old Faithful". Hi Otto, , hang in there.

[Kathy in Alaska]

Have a good day, Radix.

[Kathy in Alaska]

Lawrence Taylor RIP

Thank you for your service to our country.

[Kathy in Alaska]

Morning, Meekie. Does your friend have any hot chocolate, perchance?

[Kathy in Alaska]

Nice to see you this fine day.

[Kathy in Alaska]

to the Canteen. Hope you visit often while we honor our troops and allies each day.

[SAMWolf]

Mosquito - 633 Squadron Bump!

A tribute to all Mosquito aircrew of WWII. In a devastating attack a MkII Mosquito of 264 Squadron destroys an intruding FW-190 over London, 1943.

Leonard Cheshire prepares to dive his Mosquito and drop target marker flares as a guide for the following 617 sqdn. Lancasters.

The crew of an 8th Air Force Mosquito prepare for another reconnaissance mission that will take them deep into enemy territory, with only speed and stealth as their defence. The photographs they bring back will be crucial to the planning of future bombing missions.

RAF Mosquitos on a Day Ranger Mission attack a German fighter station shortly after D-Day.

[SAMWolf]

Three U.S. soldiers, talk in front of a hangar at the Incirlik air base in southern Turkey Friday, Sept. 13, 2002. US pilots who patrol the no-fly zones over Iraq say Baghdad is continually changing tactics in a high-stakes campaign to bring down an American pilot and score a huge propaganda victory for Saddam Hussein. Incirlik air base in southern Turkey is used to patrol the northern no-fly zone. The base is about an hour's flight from northern Iraq and was a key staging point during the 1991 Gulf War.(AP Photo/Burhan Ozbilici)

US soldier Spc. Sean N. Doughty, of Richmond, Virginia, stands in honor guard during the hand-over ceremony at US Eagle Base near Tuzla, Bosnia, on Monday, Sept. 16, 2002. The 28th Infantry Division (Mechanized), headquartered in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania took over the authority of the US run northern Bosnian sector from the 25th Infantry Division (Light), headquartered at Schofield Barracks, Hawaii. U.S troops have served in Bosnia as part of NATO led peacekeeping forces, since late 1995 and currently number about 3,100 soldiers. (AP Photo/Amel Emric)

United States Attorney General John Ashcroft, foreground, touches the marble gravestone of an unknown soldier, Tuesday, Sept. 17, 2002, at the U.S. Military Cemetery in Luxembourg were more than 3,000 US soldiers, killed during the Battle of the Bulge in the Ardennes during the winter 1944-1945, are buried. Ashcroft is on a two-day visit to Luxembourg. Others in photo are unidentified. (AP Photo/Jean-Claude Ernst)

United States Attorney General John Ashcroft, right, and Luxembourg's Minister of Justice Luc Frieden, left, pause at a white marble cross marking the grave of an unknown U.S. Soldier on Tuesday, Sept. 17, 2002, at the U.S. Military Cemetery in Luxembourg-Hamm. More than 3,000 U.S. soldiers killed during the Battle of the Bulge in the Ardennes during the winter of 1944-1945, are buried here. (AP Photo/Jean-Claude Ernst)

[SAMWolf]

So You Want to be an Activist

Are you bored? Looking for meaning to your existence? Are you an insignificant fish in the great ocean of life? Then do today what thousands of others have already done and enroll at Activist University!

Yes, at Activist University you will receive the training to become the uninformed, emotional antagonist you have always wanted to be, while elevating yourself above the humanity you will come to despise. Activist U trains its students in the fine art of fault-finding and victimization. Our AU grads crusade for pet causes that heighten the self-image and pay handsome financial dividends!

Located in Seattle, Washington, where brethren alumni recently took up the fight against the evil WTO, our campus is easy to find. Take the Ralph Nader Expressway from the center of town, then a hard left onto Greenpeace Way, and you're there! Students enjoy beautiful and environmentally friendly surroundings safe from the intrusions of the military-industrial complex.

Our animal friends are free to roam about the grounds (don't worry, the number of fatal attacks has dropped in recent years!). Dress warm! We burn no fossil fuels on campus.

You like science? The Al Gore College of Junk Science is for you! We offer intensive studies in Global Cooling/Warming; My Friend the Tree; and the Bad, Bad History of the Internal Combustion Engine. Does the classical scientific method bore you? Good, because we ignore it! At AU we teach you the fine art of back-filling data and outcome manipulation guaranteed to support your favorite agenda. You will learn to present your results in a hysterical manner sure to garner you oodles of research money and make you the hit of the talk-show circuit.

Students can hone their math skills at the Paul Ehrlich Center for Math and Statistics. You will study how worst-case scenarios become dire predictions and why any risk (risk related to human activity, that is) is unacceptable. Dr. Ehrlich himself lectures on his 15-50 method of forecasting (make events occur 15 to 50 years into the future--soon enough to scare people, yet distant enough to forget when they don't come to pass).

You will learn to attach fictional causes to statistically insignificant changes -- a rise in E. coli deaths, for example -- while you declare the latest national emergency.

An aspiring news reporter? Our Geraldo Rivera School of Journalism is for you. We've kicked out dinosaurs Edward R. Murrow and David Brinkley, with their antiquated notions of careful, sober analysis, and replaced them with the free-wheeling, agenda-setting style you have come to expect. Learn to shape public opinion by the stories you carry -- and those you ignore -- by peppering your write-ups with irrelevant characterizations, and by playing tough with subjects you dislike while being a conduit to those more agreeable to your way of thinking. AU graduates can be found in news organizations across the country quashing critical thinking and educating the unwashed masses in their own world view.

Many AU grads go on to law school, attending our Peter Angelos Campus nearby. Mr. Angelos, who purchased the Baltimore Orioles with attorney fees from asbestos litigation, donated the land after he received another windfall from the tobacco industry settlements. We cleared some redwoods, tossed out the homeless living there and erected a beautiful marble building in his honor. In its hallowed halls, dedicated researchers are hard at work concocting new injustices, while students prepare for life-long battles against the most horrible aspects of human society, like manger scenes.

Caught the acting bug? Come visit the Meryl Streep Center for the Performing Arts near Martin Sheen Square! Our program will carefully insulate you from the workings of the real world, and fill you with the highest sense of self-importance. Your aura will grow! Your minions will hang on to every your word as you pursue the most recent Cause-of-the-Month. Polish those thespian skills, for your next Oscar nomination will give you more credibility than a nuclear physicist!

We offer other curriculums as well. Seminary students can dabble in New Age mysticism. Business students? Unfortunately, we have no business courses of any kind. We used to offer Economics 101, but its principles flew in the face of everything else we were trying to teach.

Our students love the AU grading philosophy. We don't give any! That's right! As an activist you will never be expected to actually accomplish anything, so why would we burden you with artificial measures of achievement? Simply feeling compassion about the subject is good enough for us!

And what about extracurricular activities? We have plenty!

Do you like football? Congratulations, you just made the team! Want to play quarterback? Sure, you can do that, too! Everyone will have equal time doing anything they like! We never discriminate. We may not win many games, but we sure feel good about ourselves once the season is over.

AU also offers a full range of placement, medical, and counseling services. Feeling happy, self-assured, motivated? Don't worry! A session or two with our fine counselors will have you back as a brooding malcontent in no time!

And do you know what the best thing is about Activist University? Tuition is absolutely free! Our institution is totally tax supported. We wouldn't have it any other way!

BSNN

[radu]

Good afternoon, y'all! I have to do a post-and-run today but will try to get back soon. One of those days. I wanted to at least stop in and say 'hello'.
Hello and "Thank You for your service!" to our troops, veterans, and allies. God bless America and watch over the troops!

[missycocopuffs]

Thanks, Tonk, for the lovely flowers and, of course, your wonderful posts/links. You've inspired me to get in touch with my cousin so I can get the addresses of her nephews and nieces (my second cousins) serving in the military--I can do my little part here :)

[Kathy in Alaska]

A funny piece of history today: Emperor Norton I!

[Kathy in Alaska]

Beautiful graphics this AM, Victoria. See you this evening.