Berkeley Goes to War - San Francisco Chronicle editorial
Berkeley Disrespects the Marines - Debra Saunders, Real Clear Politics
Berkeley vs. America, Again - Michelle Malkin, National Review

For, it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that
An' "Chuck 'im out, the brute."
But it's "Saviour of 'is country!"
When the guns begin to shoot.
An' it's Tommy this and Tommy that
An' anything you please.
But Tommy ain't a bloomin' fool -
You bet that Tommy sees!

Berkeley Eases Anti-Marines Stance


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Feb 13, 7:11 AM (ET)

By MICHELLE LOCKE

Deborah Johns holds a photo of her son Sgt. William Johns of the Marines, who will be serving his fourth tour in Iraq, at a rally supporting troops outside of Berkeley City Hall in Berkeley, Calif., Tuesday, Feb. 12, 2008. The Berkeley City Council drew a deluge of disapproval nationwide in January when it voted to advise the Marines that their downtown recruitment office was not welcome and that they would be considered "uninvited and unwelcome intruders" if they chose to stay. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)




BERKELEY, Calif. (AP) - City council members who were criticized for telling Marine recruiters they don't belong here have moderated their position, saying they oppose the Iraq war but support the troops.

The Berkeley City Council voted two weeks ago to send a letter to a downtown recruitment station advising the Marines they were not welcome.

After a marathon session that stretched into early Wednesday, the council decided against sending the letter, saying it recognizes recruiters' right to be in Berkeley. The council members say they still strongly oppose the war and the recruitment of young people, but "deeply respect and support" the men and women of the armed forces.

Some on the council had pushed for issuing an apology. Others rejected that, saying they just wanted to clarify their position.


(AP) American Legion Veterans Service Officer Robert Cacy sits at a rally supporting troops outside of Berkeley City Hall in Berkeley, Calif, Tuesday, Feb. 12, 2008. The Berkeley City Council drew a deluge of disapproval nationwide in January when it voted to advise the Marines that their downtown recruitment office was not welcome and that they would be considered "uninvited and unwelcome intruders" if they chose to stay. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)
Full Image


Councilwoman Linda Maio said the council opposes recruitment, not the military. "It's behavior that we oppose, not the people," she said.

The meeting drew hundreds of people on both sides of the issue who rallied outside City Hall from dawn until well into the night.

Inside the chamber, scores of speakers addressed the council, some decrying its earlier action.

"You owe our military an apology," said Kevin Graves, a San Francisco Bay area resident who said his son died serving in Iraq.

Others applauded the council's stand.


Roberta Allen, from San Jose, Calif., wears American flag contact lenses at a rally supporting troops outside of Berkeley City Hall in Berkeley, Calif, Tuesday, Feb. 12, 2008. The Berkeley City Council drew a deluge of disapproval nationwide in January when it voted to advise the Marines that their downtown recruitment office was not welcome and that they would be considered "uninvited and unwelcome intruders" if they chose to stay. The Council was scheduled to consider a second resolution put forward by two council members that would rescind the letter and draw a line between opposing the war in Iraq and "our respect and support for those serving in the armed forces." (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)



Medea Benjamin, co-founder of the anti-war group Code Pink, said her group supports the troops - "we support them so much that we're desperate to get them back home."

In rallies outside, pro-troop group Move America Forward sponsored one protest, holding signs that said "Stop Bashing Our Boys." On the other side, anti-war group Code Pink held bouquets of flowers and waved signs saying "Peace Now" and "Bring Our Troops Home."

Police estimated the crowd at about 2,000 at its height. A handful of people were arrested for scuffles between protesters, police spokeswoman Sgt. Mary Kusmiss said.

The recruiting office opened in Berkeley in late 2006. It operated quietly until four months ago, when Code Pink began holding regular protests.

---

Might a also been the fact that the California legislature was considering cutting off all forms of state funding to the drips too.

For, it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that
An' "Chuck 'im out, the brute."
But it's "Saviour of 'is country!"
When the guns begin to shoot.
An' it's Tommy this and Tommy that
An' anything you please.
But Tommy ain't a bloomin' fool -
You bet that Tommy sees!

Berkeley at the First Amendment Brink
By Kyle-Anne Shiver
As a Southerner, I have watched the Berkeley vs. U.S. Marines brouhaha with a very keen interest. I'm not all that sure those people in Berkeley know what can happen to people who decide to mess around with the United States government.


Somebody really ought to clue those folks in with a little reality check.


So far, I haven't seen any official calls for their little bayshore city to be surrounded by an armed force of Navy, Marines, Army and National Guard and blockaded from the rest of the country. But they should take a lesson from the likes us whose ancestors tried stunts like this in the past, and do a more hasty and substantial retreat before they have to find out for themselves just how hard it can be to face off with the Union.


Right now, they seem to be thinking that their little scuffle is with George W. Bush, the man, and not the President of the United States of America. They seem to be thinking that the Marines are a bunch of unattached mercenaries, and not the constitutionally formed fighting force of the United States. They seem not to understand the meaning of the courtroom phrase: John Doe Vs. the People of the United States of America.


The people of the United States of America don't take too kindly to those little independent jurisdictions that fool around with the constitutional rights of plain ole' ordinary citizens, much less the Marine Corps.


What can the Berkeley City Council be thinking?


The Controversy
In October 2006, the United States Marines opened a small recruiting office in the center of Berkeley, California within blocks of Berkeley City College, UC Berkeley and Berkeley High School. The recruiting office operated quite peacefully until about 4 months ago, when the ladies of Code Pink decided that the Marines do not have the same free-speech rights as other citizens. Code Pink decided to daily protest the recruitment office in an attempt to get the Marines out of town. This protest has taken various forms, aggravating perhaps, but for the most part peaceful.


Things began to heat up last week when the Berkeley City Council passed a resolution calling the Marines "unwelcome intruders" and asserting that the council would support all citizens who "volunteer to impede, passively or actively, by nonviolent means, the work of any military recruiting office located in the City of Berkeley." In addition, the council decided to give Code Pink a parking space across from the recruiting center, in which to hold demonstrations without paying a permit fee. Code Pink was also granted a sound license to blast loud messages aimed at the recruiters and those entering.


Emboldened by city support, activists with World Can't Wait last week donned the orange jumpsuits, symbolic of Guantanamo detainees, and chained themselves to the door of the Marines' office, thereby preventing entry. For five hours, Berkeley police watched as people were blocked from going in the recruiting office, and refused to intervene. Then, at the insistent behest of Marine Corps officials, three misdemeanor arrests of demonstrators were finally made.


In response to the Berkeley City Council's actions against our Marines, Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC) made the decision to introduce legislation stopping $2 million in federal earmark funds intended for various Berkeley projects, saying "This is a slap in the face to all brave service men and women and their families. The First Amendment gives the City of Berkeley the right to be idiotic, but from now on they should do it with their own money."


By 5:00 a.m. Tuesday, the developing controversy reached fever pitch when at least 2,000 protestors convened on both sides of the issue.


For the Marines, over a thousand volunteers from Move America Forward and Blue Star Families convened in Berkeley, carrying American flags and singing patriotic anthems like America the Beautiful and God Bless America.


Against the Marines, Code Pink and World Can't Wait garnered hundreds too, waving banners proclaiming among other sentiments:


"Join the Marines. Travel to exotic lands. Meet exciting unusual people. AND KILL THEM."


"No Military Predators in Our Town."


First Amendment Battle Ensues


By 6:00 a.m., things began to heat up and get downright ugly.


Two Blue Star moms were threatened with violence and one was shoved by a Code Pink lady, and when the mom called the Berkeley police for help, they hung up on her. Another call to the police was made by someone else with the same response.


Melanie Morgan, spokeswoman for Move America Forward, was in the middle of her morning KSFO radio program, called in from the scene in Berkeley. She told me yesterday that she honestly could not believe what was happening, and might not have believed it if she had not seen it with her own eyes.


The scene she encountered was one of "near mayhem," she told me. Cursing, shouting, profanities being hurled at moms and dads waving small American flags in support of our armed services.


Then high school students showed up. The students donned yellow and black "Palestinian" masks and t-shirts emblazoned with the charming slogan: "F*** Bush." Riding skateboards, they rammed into Move America Forward and Blue Star Families' peaceful protest. Some of the teens grabbed American flags from the hands of soldiers' moms and dads, and set them afire right in front of the startled parents. Police did nothing.


When I spoke today with Mark Coplan, Director of the Public Information Office for the Berkeley Unified School District, he was just as upset about the teen participation as was Melanie Morgan. These teens, he said, were recruited by World Can't Wait to "disrupt the peaceful protest."


According to Mr. Coplan, this teen recruitment has been a common strategy of World Can't Wait agitators, who have clashed with school authorities repeatedly in the past. Mr. Coplan was onsite at the demonstration himself, to make sure that students and teachers who had permission to observe the demonstration from a distance were not breaking the district's admonitions. He told me that he himself heard World Can't Wait demonstrators tell the students they had brought that they "did not have to listen to or obey any police instructions," that "they were participating in democracy at work," and that he personally saw older adults using teens as shields to harass and shove the peaceful counter-demonstrators.


World Can't Wait is an organization started in 2005 to actively thwart the American war effort. Its founder, Charles Clark Kissinger, is a Maoist and longtime leader of the Revolutionary Communist Party, who has stated his intention to organize "people living in the United States to take responsibility to stop the whole disastrous course led by the Bush administration." By "disastrous course" he means the war, specifically.


And of course, Code Pink's most visible spokesperson, Medea Benjamin, says her idea of heaven on earth is Castro's Cuba. Benjamin, readers may remember, is the patriotic American who spearheaded the effort in 2004 to hand over $600,000 in cash and supplies to the terrorist "insurgents" in Fallujah, Iraq. Why isn't that an act of treason? I must be too unsophisticated to understand.


So, we shouldn't be surprised when shameful un-American tactics are used by these people, as they were Tuesday in Berkeley.


But when a civil authority, such as the Berkeley Police, stand by while people are abridging the First Amendment rights of other citizens, then there is a huge problem.


Move America Forward has an attorney. He has written a formal protest letter to the City of Berkeley, citing numerous infractions of his client's First Amendment Rights, with the appearance of help from the police, and a lawsuit against the city is being considered.


Even though the Berkeley City Council went through the motions Tuesday night, listened to both sides of the Marine debate, and agreed to soften the language of its request to the Marines to vacate, not much has changed.


Code Pink gets to keep their parking space next to the recruiting center. They get to keep their cost-free permit to continue their agitating activities. And since Code Pink has posted a photo of Berkeley's mayor, Tom Bates, sporting a nauseatingly pink beret while he himself demonstrates with Code Pink at the recruitment office, I really don't think Berkeley has gotten the message.


So here's a clue from the whole South to those brazen folks in Berkeley:


The people of the United States of America do not possess unlimited patience with those who feel themselves above the Constitution that protects us all.


And y'all don't want to feel the wrath of Uncle Sam when he's had enough.


For, it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that An' "Chuck 'im out, the brute."
But it's "Saviour of 'is country!" When the guns begin to shoot.
An' it's Tommy this and Tommy that An' anything you please.
But Tommy ain't a bloomin' fool - You bet that Tommy sees!

Whose Side Are They On?
By Alan Fraser
From the beginning of the War on Terror, the mainstream media has been working to bring home the bad news on the war, virtually to the exclusion of any good news. Even if they've had to fabricate it on occasion.


Do you remember the "Mai Lai Massacre of the Iraq War?"


It was a Time Magazine cover story in June of 2006. Christopher Matthews interviewed Congressman Jack Murtha (D-PA) on national television, and Murtha said that Marines, in cold blood, had executed more 20 innocent civilians in Haditha, Iraq.


The media's story has been falling apart ever since.


"No Murder Charges Filed In Haditha Case"


"The Haditha Libels Require Investigation"


"Is the Haditha Story Falling Apart?"


"Time Magazine Massacres the Truth"


"Tim McGirk Re-Invents Haditha Video Source"


Starting in mid 2007 things have been going our way a little more in Iraq. Because of this, the war has largely disappeared from the front pages of the nation's newspapers. In place of disaster stories from Iraq, we find stories about profound problems within the military or we read about our hapless soldiers/veterans caricatured as victims, a favorite theme of the MSM. These stories have covered such topics as the spike-up in suicide rates among our soldiers, to the Army being forced to lower recruitment standards in order to meet manpower goals; from the (by now notorious and utterly discredited) multipart New York Times series on our murderous Iraq War veterans to the Army's inability to retain its captains.


Each of these stories is at best highly misleading. At worst they're utter fabrications. Let's take a look at what passes for "journalism."


The Suicide Epidemic


"Soldier Suicides at Record Level - Increase Linked to Long Wars, Lack of Army Resources" was the Washington Post headline of January 31. Also check out "Suspected Army Suicides Set Mark -- Rate is Highest Since First Tracked in 1980" in USA TODAY. December 12, 2007.


The excellent blogger Gateway Pundit has been watching this junk-reporting like a hawk, and it is on his work that primaruily rely here. I urge reading "Sorry WaPo...More Soldiers Committed Suicide When Clinton Was in Office Than During the Bush Years" and "MEDIA MISINFORMS: Fewer Soldiers Commit Suicide During Bush Years"


The Washington Post article states:


"[l]ast year, 121 soldiers took their own lives, nearly 20 percent more than in 2006."


Gateway Pundit makes the obvious point that you can't look at a one-year time frame of any phenomenon for the purposes of discerning a trend; you must look at many years and then compile a rate. During the Clinton years the average number of suicides in the military was 190/year; during the Bush presidency the average number has been 160/year. That's a 16% decrease in the number of suicides. Gateway Pundit notes the military suicide rate is measurably lower than that of the general public, (17/100,000 versus 20/100,000), 15% lower than the general population.


Army Forced to Lower Standards... Soldiers More Stupid Than Before


A recent ostensible exposé on the military's manpower crisis appeared in a January 22, 2008 Associated Press article "Army Gets Fewer High School Grads in '07" A similar story appearing in the Washington Post drew the notice of James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal.


Both the AP and Washington Post articles rely on data cooked-up by the National Priorities Project (NPP). In a 2005 article covering the same topic, the Washington Post was forced to acknowledge that the NPP had an anti-war bias and that its study was incomplete and misleading. They confessed because the Heritage Foundation in "Who Are the Recruits?" demolished the NPP's study. If you take a look at the Heritage piece, you'll learn:


"As support for the war in Iraq has declined, criticism of the war has translated into criticism of our nation's troops, at least by way of criticizing the quality of wartime recruits. The current findings show that the demographic characteristics of volunteers have continued to show signs of higher, not lower, quality. Quality is a difficult concept to apply to soldiers, or to human beings in any context, and it should be understood here in context. Regardless of the standards used to screen applicants, the average quality of the people accepted into any organization can be assessed only by using measurable criteria, which surely fail to account for intangible characteristics. In the military, it is especially questionable to claim that measurable characteristics accurately reflect what really matters: courage, honor, integrity, loyalty, and leadership..." (emphasis supplied)

The Heritage piece points out that the high school graduation rate found in the four branches of the military is actually significantly higher than that of the general public.


Taranto's title suggests that the Washington Post didn't learn from its earlier mistake, hence the title to his piece ("Fool Me Twice, Shame on Me...") This is in keeping with what is a growing national impression that the media do slipshod work. Taranto's title is too generous. They printed the same story again because they wanted to; they intentionally ignored what they had learned the first time around. The troops in Iraq use the phrase "agenda media" to refer to the MSM.


Captains Leaving Army in Droves


On Saturday, January 26, the Wall Street Journal carried two disturbing military articles. On page 7 there was "Army Effort to Retain Captains Falls Short of Goal" It explained that:


1) captains form the backbone of the officer corps and the pool from which senior officers are eventually pulled;


2) the Army is finding it increasingly difficult to retain its captains; and


3) the reason for this is the multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.


Of course, there is nothing new about this phenomenon. If you take a look at the following studies on this subject, the first thing you'll notice is that they were written prior to the invasion of Iraq.


Tillson, John (1999). "Reducing the Impact of Tempo." Institute for Defense Analyses. October 1999.



Matthews, Mike (1999). "Why are Captains Leaving the Army?" Army Research Institute, Infantry Forces Research Unit.October 1999.


Suro, Roberto (2000). "Captains Exodus Has Army Fearing for Future." Washington Post. October 16, 2000.


Lewis, Mark (2000). "Time to Regenerate." Defense and the National Interest. November 2000.


Carter, Phillip (2002). "Exodus: Why Junior Officers are Leaving the Military." Soldiers for the Truth. April 19, 2002.


Lewis, Mark (2003). "Army Transformation, the Exodus, and the Cycle of Decay." First Annual Graduate Student Conference on Security, January 2003.


Rand Research Brief (2003). "How Does Deployment Affect Retention of Military Personnel?" Rand Corporation.


For the past two decades, the rate of attrition of Army captains has been as follows:


1989 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001
6.69% 7.2% 8.4% 10.6% 10.9% 11.6% 10.9%

(see note below)


This phenomenon has been a concern of the Army from midway through the Clinton administration. If one can believe a Washington Post article, the attrition rate for captains averaged 12.2 percent from 1999 to 2007. This means that, for each year from 2002 through 2007, the rate was on average 12.4%. That is less than 1 percentage point higher than the peacetime rate that occurred in 2000. Hardly the wartime induced catastrophe that's implied in the Wall Street Journal article.


It's very much worth excerpting here a study by Greg Reeson:


"Since the end of the Cold War, there has been a considerable increase in the attrition rate of Captain-level junior officers from the United States Army. Because the Army slowly develops its leaders from the ground up, this loss of junior officers becomes critical in reducing the number of future commanders and leaders available to guide the Army in future decades. Following the Persian Gulf War (Operation Desert Storm), an Army-wide draw down lasting until 1995 deliberately decreased the size of the Army without regard to rank. However, from 1996 until 2001, the number of Captain-level junior officers voluntarily leaving the Army did not stabilize. In fact, the attrition rate for these officers doubled during the period from the end of the draw down until the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks (Vest, 2003). Following the attacks on the Pentagon and New York City, the attrition rate for Captain-level junior officers decreased considerably due to programs enacted by the Army to prevent the loss of personnel during the ongoing Global War on Terrorism." (emphasis supplied)


He concludes by writing:


"Based on the data...there is no reason to believe that a causal relationship exists between the Army's increased deployment tempo [DETEMPO] and increased rate of captain-level officer attrition between 1996 and 2001...The consistency in deployment tempo does not correspond to the increase in captain-level officer attrition for the period from 1996 through 2001. The data contained in this study do not support the hypothesis that there is a causal relationship between the Army's deployment tempo and increased captain attrition." (emphasis supplied) "Deployment Tempo and Captain Attrition,"


How Can We Best Demoralize The Nation?


On the front page of the January 26th Wall Street Journal appeared: "The Waiting -- Just Four U.S. Soldiers are Missing in Iraq. For Their Parents, it's a Lonely Vigil." This is a depressing and heart-rending story about the lives of those families whose solider sons are missing in Iraq. It's a subject especially disturbing to military families.


In a time of war, this could be a good story to run if it were written to, let's say, provide a little balance to what otherwise might be an overwhelming supply of gung-ho-support-the-troops kind of stories. You know, a little sobering counterpoint to a plethora of overly flattering articles about the troops and the war. But do you think that's what's going on here? Of course not. There is no balance because there are virtually no favorable stories being written about the troops. From the MSM to Hollywood the media have an overwhelmingly negative view of our troops and they make that clear to us every day as they portray them as stupid, pathetic, often victims, often murderers, or against the war. And boy do they ever love stories about the infinitesimally small number who have turned against the war.


The effect of such an article is to demoralize. Have you ever noticed in a football game that when there is a man injured, down on the field, that all of the other players get away and stay away on the sideline? That's good coaching and it's universally part of the game. The players are taught to do this because if they were to hang around, staring down at the injured player, they'd get demoralized. The fight would drain out of them and some wouldn't want to finish the game.


In November of last year U.S. Army LTG William Caldwell gave a speech before the Dole Institute on The Changing Face of Warfare in the 21st Century. He spoke about how in this war the enemy knows that they cannot defeat us militarily. He talked about the "information battlefield" and how the "weapon of information" is to 21st century war what the minie ball and the machine gun were to the wars of the 19th and early 20th centuries. He said our enemy is leveraging the use of information to influence public opinion in order to break the will of those who support the war effort. (ah...remember that expression..."the war effort"... how it now seems so passé) General Caldwell explained that the enemy is "employing a strategy of exhaustion," in order to erode the will of the American people.
(LTG William B. Caldwell, The Changing Face of Warfare in the 21st Century, Dole Institute, November 14, 2007)


LTG Caldwell said that the enemy is justifiably obsessed with the information battlefield and he referred to a letter written in 2005 by bin Laden's second in command, al-Zawahiri to the then leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, al-Zarqawi (later killed by U.S. forces):


"[T]he mujahedeen must not have their mission end with the expulsion of the Americans from Iraq, and then lay down their weapons, and silence the fighting zeal. We will return to having the secularists and traitors holding sway over us. Instead, their [the mujahedeen] ongoing mission is to establish an Islamic state, and defend it, and for every generation to hand over the banner to the one after it until the Hour of Resurrection...



"The Americans will exit soon, God willing, and the establishment of a governing authority-as soon as the country is freed from the Americans-does not depend on force alone. [while Zawahiri misunderestimated Mr. Bush, he nailed the Democratic candidates...they're having a contest to see who can retreat the fastest...and FDR, Harry Truman, and JFK are turning over in their graves].


"The aftermath of the collapse of American power in Vietnam and how they ran and left their agents is noteworthy. Because of that, we must be ready starting now, before events overtake us, and before we are surprised by the conspiracies of the Americans and the United Nations, and their plans to fill the void behind them. We must take the initiative and impose a fait accompli upon our enemies, instead of the enemy imposing one on us...


"I say to you: that we are in a battle and that more than half of this battle is taking place in the battlefield of the media. And that we are in a media battle in a race for the hearts and minds of our Umma. And that however far our capabilities reach, they will never be equal to one thousandth of the capabilities of the kingdom of Satan that is waging war on us." (emphasis supplied) Letter from al-Zawahiri to al-Zarqawi, July 9, 2005 http://www.globalsecurity.org/security/lib...er_9jul2005.htm


For the better part of five years, we've listened to the steady drumbeat of bad news on Iraq. Today, with the progress of the surge, there's some truly good news to report and yet there's a virtual blackout on it. In our upside-down culture, it seems that failure has a hundred fathers but success is an orphan, and we're paying an enormous price. Already the overwhelmingly negative articles about the military and the war have had a profoundly depressing effect on our society's ability to raise an army. The more difficult it becomes to raise an army, the more difficult it will be to protect ourselves and the less successful our military can be. It's a kind of negative feedback loop created by the media and the popular culture.


There are hundreds of positive, moving, up-lifting stories that have come out of this war (a few links are offered below). These are stories that would make compelling multi-part articles, television miniseries and movies. But if bravery, honor, duty, integrity, loyalty, and leadership are not important virtues to you, you'll never write about them. The MSM and Hollywood are incapable of writing about them because to them they are in fact foreign concepts. Thus, they are made uncomfortable by them and as result of this discomfort these virtues are no longer stressed in our society.


Many of the people who write the anti-military articles are trained professionals with degrees in journalism, so how is it that a little fact checking by non-professionals can reveal the stories to be so phony? Don't you think that if the press had a sense of ethics they'd be embarrassed by their work? And why the seemingly endless supply of these kinds of fallacious hit pieces? To rephrase James Carville, it's their agenda stupid.


We've been unable to deny the enemy the information battlefield in our own country because the American media is, consciously or subconsciously (it makes no difference, the effect is the same), in the tank for the him. It's the only way to characterize such uniformly consistent deceit. Our military is being methodically "Dan Rathered" by this powerful sector of our society. This is the presidential campaign season and the election is less than eight months away; do you think that al Qaeda will be denied the "battlefield of the media" Think Tet Offensive.


Zawahiri wrote about the collapse of American power in Vietnam and found it noteworthy that we ran and abandoned our friends. He emphasized that his is a fight with more than half of the battle taking place in the media. Of course he's right. Recently I a Marine captain told me, "Look, the book is out on how to beat the U.S military. All you've got to do knock off a few troops each week... set off a few IEDs... and by the time the American media has given the public a good working over, we'll be forced to pull out."


The American military will never lose a war. But demoralized and misinformed by the agenda media, the American people have been cutting and running for 35 years. How much longer can we do this and survive?


Alan Fraser is a father of a Marine. He can be reached at alanfraser62@gmail.com


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Good news you may not have heard about:


101st Airborne Division Sets Re-enlistment Record http://www.military.com/features/0,15240,104170,00.html


Corporal Dunham Corporal, USMC and Sergeant First Class Paul Smith U.S. Army - Medal of Honor Recipients - Iraq http://www.history.army.mil/html/moh/iraq.html


The Distinguished Service Cross (second only to the Medal of Honor in military decorations) http://www4.army.mil/ocpa/read.php?story_id_key=7794


Read about Eddie Wright, Jason Ramseyer, Travis Patriquin, Brennan Goltry and many other "people you should know" http://www.blackfive.net/main/someone_you_...know/index.html


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Note: 1989 is a fiscal year. Source: Matthews, Mike (1999). "Why are Captains Leaving the Army?" Army Research Institute, Infantry Forces Research Unit, October 1999. http://www.d-n-i.net/fcs/pdf/344_capt_attrition-Army.pdf


1996 - 2001 are calendar years. Source: Reeson, Greg (2006). "Deployment Tempo and Captain Attrition," http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/4...on.html?page=10


For, it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that An' "Chuck 'im out, the brute."
But it's "Saviour of 'is country!" When the guns begin to shoot.
An' it's Tommy this and Tommy that An' anything you please.
But Tommy ain't a bloomin' fool - You bet that Tommy sees!

Wherever leadership emerges to slow down the Militarization of Our culture, such Leadership
should be encouraged. The entire Human Social System is inflicted with a toxic form of Militaritis
that results in Our entire Economy and Internatonal Relationships being built arround a Culture of Death. The change we are experiencing now is more than a swing of the liberal-conservative
pendulum to the liberal side...it is a major paridign shift to reposition the Center. The, "Change" that
has taken over our political discourse is not about incremental changes on lots of dimensions...it is
about a major change of direction...it doesn't mean that we love our Marines any less, only that
we will need fewer of you, as you won't be called on to wage war, only to protect our citizens and
their property.

If you want to find militarism...look to the contractors...
the caterers...the port-a-potty suppliers...not the grunts.

The dog faces and devil dogs don't play contracts. They pay to play.