4 Mile Creek

A Very Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas to everyone!
To all my friends, in every corner of the world, and Wyoming too.....may this Christmas be truly blessed.

A Real Shocker on CNN

As I'm typing, CNN is doing a "report" on war photos.  I missed what they showed for WWI, saw a couple of the Pearl Harbor attack shots for WWII, they didn't have anything for Korea that I noticed.  For the Viet Nam war they showed, you guessed it, the shot of the burned girl running from the napalm attack on the South Viet Nam village she lived in.  Of course there was no mention that it was a mistake made by the South Viet Nam Army, not the US Army.  As for that great picture from Viet Nam of the bandaged soldier, comforting a more grievously wounded soldier, no mention.
Now here's the real shocker.  They get to the Iraq War, and what picture do they show?  The great shot Michael Yon took of the soldier cradling the mortally wounded girl?  The picture of the statue of Saddam coming down, with Iraqis dancing around slapping the statue's face with their shoe?   Nope.  They show the pictures from Abu Ghraib.
There must be some sort of interval that CNN has set for itself, a time limit of sorts, where Abu Ghraib has to be mentioned at least once during that time.  The producers must have been coming up very close on that time limit to come up with such a stupid lead-in to showing those pictures once again.  Classic shots taken by world recognized war photographers, some having won Pulitzer prizes for their shots.  Then on to the Abu Ghraib pictures, which don't fit into that category at all.

Eason Jordan would be proud. 

He Really Is Crazy

Iran is going to pull out of the IAEA?  Why?  The IAEA has given Iran their best cover so far, and you can't possibly find a "watchdog agency" that is more lapdog than watchdog. 

Imam, the Muslim Cleric

IMAM THE MUSLIM CLERIC
(sung to the tune of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer)

Imam, the muslim cleric,

Had himself and IED.

From the Iranian republic,

Soon to bury in the street.

All of the other clerics,

Used to laugh and call him haram,

They never let poor Imam,

Quote a sura from the Q’ran.

Then one day in Ramadan,

Allah came to say,

Imam with your IED,

Kill some infidel for me.

Then how the clerics loved him,

Claiming that they always had,

Imam the muslim cleric,

Blown up in his own jihad.

Just Buy the CD

Blue Christmas.
Sing it, Elvis. 

And My Challenge Back to Al Gore

Al Gore is asking me (and you, too) to join him to help solve the climate crisis.  What a dork.  But it's good to see that Lefties worldwide are dropping the "global warming" terminology, and going with "climate crisis".  It's so much more threatening terminology than "warming".  Heck, "warming" almost sounds good, like getting a big fat Christmas hug!   With climate crisis, they not only needlessly agitate, a Lefty trademark, but also, every weather event fits, including the really cold blizzard we just went through! 
Summer too warm? Climate Crisis!
Winter too cold?  Climate Crisis!
Polar bears drowning, even though they can swim effortlessly for miles, and their scientific name, Ursus maritimus, means "sea bear"?   Climate Crisis!
Hurricane season too harsh?  Climate Crisis!
Hurricane season too mild?  Climate Crisis!
Anyway, it's all good to the Enviropaleans (or Envirodoxists, whatever) when it comes to demanding other people do with less. 
Okay Al, I'll bite.  It's a crisis, and we all need to pitch in.  So in order to save the world from climate crisis, I gave up driving my vehicle for one year!  From November of 2005 to November of 2006.  Not one mile.  Not one single carbon molecule exited my exhaust pipe for an entire year.  For one entire year I parked my Subaru Outback, and I walked to work.
So, there's my contribution to saving the world.  One full year with my vehicle parked. 
Al, forget the friggin' worthless emails to Congress, let's see you match that.

(Note: anyone wishing to buy my personal carbon credits for that year, let me know.)
 

Stolen Valor

What is it with Lefties claiming military service that they don't have? 

Here's another one from Niagara Falls, I guess.   He joins the hallowed ranks of Micah Wright, Jessie MacDeath and the many others who claim veteran status with no reason whatsoever to do so.  Look at the photos from a march at any of the current batch of anti-Iraq War veterans groups, and you'll see at least a handful of marchers in DCUs who have the uniform so dicked up you know they can't possibly be veterans. 

And it's not like most of them claim to be simple veterans (got in, did three years, got out).  Micah Wright claimed to be a snake-eatin' Ranger who jumped into Panama; when in fact the closest he ever was to being in uniform was when he talked to someone in ROTC. Jessie MacBeth claimed in front of anti-war audiences nationwide that he was a stone-cold killer who thought nothing of brutally murdering women and children in Iraq, when in fact he was never in the Army, and would likely piss his pants if he tried to tackle anything tougher than a GED.  And this Mike Hudson says he's a member of the VFW, when he's written elsewhere that he was in the Army for a few months and then got released.  The only people I know who served only a few months and then left the service, left under the "failure to adapt" clause, a catch-all discharge that obligates the VA to nothing since the servicemember never gave anything.  I guess one could call themselves a veteran if they served only a few months and got kicked out...but why?   

I have a lot of people write to me, and when they are sympathetic to servicemembers and the military in general and are themselves not veterans, that is almost always stated within the first few sentences.  The military is not for everyone, and there are hundreds of millions of Americans who have contributed to the greatness that is America without once serving in uniform.  And there will be millions more in every generation.  So what is it that these Lefties have missing in their life to make such a claim?  I don't get it.   

C;mon Lefties, stand up, be proud of the fact that you have never honorably worn a uniform.  I know that I am pretty damn proud of that fact.  And remember, Senator "second-place to a chickenhawk moron" Kerry himself says that you are the smarter for it. 

(update - I stand corrected on Jessie "mcdeath" Macbeth's military service.  It appears he was in for a month.  Having seen the picture of him that he tried to pass off as his ranger photo, and how dicked-up that was (sleeves folded wrong, wrong flash on beret, beret out of shape, etc) I didn't think he could have possibly spent any time in the Army.  I'm wrong on that, but clearly, if it was only a month, he couldn't cut it even in basic, never mind in Ranger School.)      

Just Too Funny

So...I've been back to CONUS for about a month now.  I occasionally turn on the Comedy Channel and catch a stand up comedian.

You know the joke they all tell about Bush saying "new-cue-lur" instead of "new-cle-ar"?  Like every single comedian.  And comedienne. It's just so hilarious!  I mean honestly, the first three or four thousand times I heard it, it got fresher and funnier every time. 

New-cue-lur.

New-cle-ar. 

Now that's funny! 

Unemployment statistics are bound to skyrocket in Jan 2009 just based on the number of comedians who will be out of business when they can't do their "new-cue-lur/new-cle-ar" routine.   

Merry Christm...uh, I mean Happy Mohammed Day?

Imagine being so stupid, that you think it's appropriate to write a Christmas greeting to a muslim. 

Lefties...is there nothing they aren't ignorant of?

Thanks Eric, Very Enlightening

Eric Boehlert, "A senior fellow at Media Matters for America, and a former senior writer for Salon, Boehlert's first book, "Lapdogs: How The Press Rolled Over for Bush," was published in May" apparently has a real problem with warbloggers because we aren't professional journalists, like him, and so we aren't able to be trusted when we write about the Iraq war. 

Warbloggers, who have virtually no serious journalism experience among them, announced that what's coming out of Iraq today is not news at all, but simply terrorist press releases -- "a pack of lies" -- regurgitated by reporters (or "traitors") who want to see the insurgents succeed.

Well, he's right about that, I have no serious journalism experience.  I spent most of my working years doing something else: three combat tours, five tours to the middle east, working directly with five different national armies, and almost 22 years as a professional soldier.  But because I don't write for the Huffington Post, I guess I have to take his word on the Iraq war because, he's a true journalist!

He's also got a problem with us warbloggers expecting reporters in Iraq to...well...do the job of reporting. 

Specifically, warbloggers claim that American journalists, too cowardly to go get the news themselves, are relying on local Iraqi news stringers who have obvious sympathies for terrorists and who purposefully push propaganda into the news stream -- the way Hussein did with the Burned Alive story -- to create the illusion of turmoil....

The notion is demented, but given their wild online rants, I don't think it's out of bounds to suggest that warbloggers want journalists to venture into exceedingly dangerous sections of Iraq because warbloggers want journalists to get killed.

No, I'd like journalists to venture into exceedingly dangerous sections of Iraq if that's the section of Iraq that they say they are reporting on.  Otherwise, report from the Green Zone what you can about the Green Zone.  Is that really too much to expect?  For Boehlert, yes.  And Ernie Pyle is now truly dead.

So I guess he's suggesting that it's okay to report about things that you've never seen, quote people you've never interviewed, include pictures you've not taken, all because getting out and doing "journalism" is dangerous in Iraq?   Isn't that really the classic definition of a coward?  "A person who shows fear or timidity."  It's not cowardice to avoid bad sections of Iraq if you are a stock broker in New York, because your job doesn't require you to go to Iraq.  In fact you should get your head checked out if you are a butcher in Des Moines and you take time to stroll around Sadr City.  But as near as I can tell from the definitions I find online, the very essence of a reporter is that they investigate, then report on, events or things.  To look at it logically, the investigation must come first, then the reporting.  But Boehlert thinks it should go the other way around, report first on what you hear as rumor or second-hand info, then if something comes amiss, or is hard to believe, i.e. the burning sunni AP story, the flushed Q'ran story, then you go out and investigate, because original investigation is just too dangerous!  So Boehlert is advising, even defending, cowardice on the part of reporters in Iraq.  Not accuracy, the very foundation of good reporting.  That's too dangerous.  If it's dangerous, then for Boehlert, it's okay to use gossip and a good dose of "fake but accurate".  That's what a "professional journalist" has come up with for a recipe on good reporting in a war zone.  Thanks Eric, your defense of the AP is astoundingly clarifying to me, and hopefully to thousands of other Americans, on what we can expect in terms of reporting from Iraq.

And it's never too much for a Lefty to defend cowardice as a virtue, then call others he disagrees with cowards. 

Honestly, is there any irony sharper than members of the 101st Fighting Keyboardists, blogging comfortably from their air-conditioned stateside offices while obsessively googling AP dispatches in search of phrases, sentences, and paragraphs that don't meet the right-wing standard of excellence, lecturing on-the-ground news reporters about the need to witness the Iraq conflict up close?

....For today's right-wing warbloggers, whose contempt for journalists is matched only by their unbridled hatred of Arabs and Muslims...

Unbridled hatred?  Uh, how about if Eric acknowledged that many, if not most, of the warbloggers out there are in Iraq, sometimes those same dangerous parts of Iraq he says it's okay to be afraid to go.  Some are not in Iraq (yours truly) but have served in Iraq, often multiple times.  No, that would be too...hmmmm....accurate, I guess.  Besides, he doesn't really know that we were in Iraq, does he (I've been accused at least five times in the last year of writing from someplace other than Baghdad, I'm sure most coward Lefties would love to believe that we are all as scared of making personal sacrifices as they are)?  Leaving that fact out shows a bit more about Eric's hatred of warbloggers than any post I've ever seen showing a warblogger's hatred of the press. 

I know some of the soldiers who risked their lives to save the lives of Bob Woodruff and Kimberly Dozier so I can't let that statment stand uncontested.  I can't speak for them, but I can speak for me.  Boehler can disparage the 101st Airborne all he wants because members of the 101st have died in five wars to protect his right to do so, and it took no courage on Eric part to take advantage of that fact.  I think he's a bit confused...it takes courage to defend freedom of the press like a soldier does, not use it like a journalist does.  There are 18 year olds right now this very Sunday (the kind of 18 year olds that Kerry, Conyers, Schumer and Boehler like to make fun of and disparage) lined up on Zero Day of Air Assault School, ready to extend the wartime heritage of the 101st Airborne (Air Assault) Division.  Some will blog while they are at war because going on line is what some 18 year olds do in their down time to relax.  But if they comment on the war they are fighting, Boehler doesn't like it and thinks it is wrong because they don't have his journalism degree.  They don't meet his minimum requirements for commenting on the war they are fighting so Eric wants them to shut the fuck up.  Eric Boehler is disparaging them when he has never once had to face the kind of enemy that they do every day in war.  Boehler may be a professional journalist, but if this column is a good indication of the moral cowardice of professional journalists, then they deserve every whack they get.