|
|
Soldier Interrupted
by Bryan Hannah | Thu, 03/27/2008 - 4:31pm
 This is a mirror of my blog. You can also view it at: www.hoodgi.blogspot.com Thursday, March 27, 2008 The Mainstream media might not think that 1 trillion dollars of unaccounted funds is a legitimate story, but Tom Abate from the San Francisco Chronicle does and I do too, so here are just some of the highlights of the DoD's largest accounting fiasco in history a.k.a. OIF/OEF. Among the wasteful splurging of no bid, good 'ol boy contract awarding, the military payed $640 for a single toilet seat, "lost track" of 56 airplanes, 32 tanks, and 36 Javelin missile command launch-units. Oh, and $1,000,000,000,000. I can see it already: Associated Press:Soooo...where did the Colombians get Javelin missiles? GW:"Iyono!" If you want a real slap in the face, the main article was written in 2003. An interesting excerpt for the New York Times: "In the days before the war almost five years ago, the Pentagon estimated that it would cost about $50 billion. Democratic staff members in Congress largely agreed. Lawrence Lindsey, a White House economic adviser, was a bit more realistic, predicting that the cost could go as high as $200 billion, but President Bush fired him in part for saying so." This type is waste is insane. With a trillion dollars you could: -Give a million people a million dollars or more productively: -1.6 Trillion could repair our infastructure i.e. roads, bridges, levies. This may not surprise troops who have been forced to witness this fraudulence firsthand, but if these statistics aren't staggering and don't rock your world, congratulations, you're a fucking moron. Or you're Ann Coulter. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Thursday, March 27, 2008 "God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion. Now that that's out of the way, I am sick and tired of confused, undereducated, single-minded people, who muddle the difference between supporting the war and supporting the troops. IVAW is made up of patriots who love our country, who live and breathe the values this country was founded on. We are pro troop, obviously, because all of us were troops! Some of us ARE troops! I very rarely speak for others, but I am perfectly safe in saying that most people in IVAW are not active duty and they could leave this country anytime they wanted, but instead they stay here and try to make it a better place. We're the people with the courage to stick our necks out while you drive daddy's H2 to the mall and forget the war is even happening! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Wednesday, March 26, 2008 So I woke up today, groggy from the Vicodin and I had cottonmouth, so I went and brushed my teeth. As I wiped the sleep from my eyes and sat down to my trusty dusty laptop, I saw a little something that interested me. After I watched the video of the waterskiing squirrel, what do I see, but Dick Cheney. Weren't you just here Dick? Didn't you rouse a couple thousand soldiers out of bed 2 hours early just to be voluntold to go listen to you blow smoke up our asses? I wish that everyone booing yourself and your butt buddy would have made the news. I wish the 2 high stacked connexes (shipping containers) had made the news, or the soldiers that got kicked out of the barracks adjacent to Cooper Field. How would Americans react (people, not soldiers) if you kicked them out of their homes? Fort Hood should be the safest place in the world to you. We're your soldiers right? Aren't we? Anyways I'm getting off track. When told that "over 2/3 of Americans say it's not worth fighting." in reference to the war in Iraq. His response was "So?" followed by a direct slap in the face to 300,000,000 people "You cannot be "blown off course" by the fluctuations of the public opinion polls" and went on to say that we're making progress in Iraq. Maybe I should translate. "No, You cannot be blown off course, because I like the fluctuations in my bank account." I would like to thank Dick Cheney one more time, because I just wanted to get up and go get some milk and he gives me another reason to blog. If my HTML serves me correct, the video should be just below. Enjoy. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Tuesday, March 25, 2008 If you're active in politics, watch the news, or at least don't live in a cave; you probably know that the death toll in Iraq hit 4,000 yesterday. This isn't even including the dead from Afghanistan or the estimated 600,000 to 1,000,000 Iraqi civilians dead. 4,000 people. With those numbers you could replace the mile markers on the highways with crosses all the way from El Paso, Texas to Washington, DC. If anyone has seen a unit deploy or been in one, you know that they ship you to the airport in school buses. If you took all these men and women, they would fill 83 jam packed school buses and some change. Just imagine 83 school buses full of people burning to the ground. Call me extreme, call me out of line. Good morning America, what I'm saying is the cold, hard, truth. This should be a wakeup call to the millions of Americans who don't even care enough to register to vote, let alone get off their asses and protest. This war will not end itself. Congress will not write itself and Washington, DC will not fill itself with people against this immoral, illegal war, and the "man" who started it. Don't throw your voice away! Don't wait for this November to come around. If our ancestors had this "wait it out" mentality, we'd all have a bunch of British soldiers sipping our tea living in our houses. Wake up America! Demand accountability for what has been done to our country and impeach the president and vice president. Blog, vote, protest, be free, before it's illegal! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Monday, March 24, 2008 I am an American Soldier who has great plans of flying and going to college, maybe living a normal life one of these days (before I'm fucking 30), but all of my plans have been put on hold due to a little thing called stop-loss. Stop-loss is the military denying a soldier the termination of his contract at the original agreed upon date. Stop-loss was created by congress after the Viet nam war. Title 10, United States Code, section 12305(a)* states, "the President may suspend any provision of law relating to promotion, retirement, or separation applicable to any member of the armed forces who the President determines is essential to the national security of the United States" Contractually, soldiers agree to stop loss. In your contract it looks like so: "In the event of war, my enlistment in the Armed Forces continues until six (6) months after the war ends, unless the enlistment is ended sooner by the President of the United States." Many recruiters, mine included, will point this out, just to write it off as BS. My recruiter, Sergeant Ryan Simms, from the recruiting station in Crawfordsville, IN as well as the people at the Military Entrance and Processing Station(MEPS) in Indianapolis, IN all told me that this never happens. They likened it to a draft, to be used only in cases of extreme emergency. This is excluding the fact that this oversight often occurs when young, often poor, people are dazzled, by a $20,000-$40,000 bonus. What would you do? I will have to go to Iraq one more time for what is projected to be 12 months. The last time they told me that it was 15 months. I am tired of this war. I never agreed with it, but I need the money for college as I was never raised in a "well-off" family. I also love the Army and what it is supposed to stand for when it isn't being used as a corporate puppet. In this blog I will cover past, present, and future highlights in both my personal life and the "war on terrorism". I am an active member of Iraq Veterans Against the War. *Thanks Wikipedia |