Neo-Contentions VIII

NEO-CONTENTIONS VIII-

“Porter’s Complaint”

Neo-Con Republicans Circulate Soldier’s Story

Of Obama’s Snubbing U.S. Troops in Afghanistan

You’ve Gotta Read This One!

Story Capsule: DW Foreign Policy Editor, Dusty Schoch received an e-mail last week in which a conservative friend forwarded him a letter of an Afghanistan-Stationed U.S. Soldier. We are all receiving election-inspired things like this on the net these days and need to study this story as we need to study history—in order to keep it from repeating itself.

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In the following exchange, you will read first the message forwarding me the message of Captain Porter claiming that Obama—on this past Tuesday– had insulted U.S. servicemen in Afganistan in a way McCain certainly would not have. 

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This is followed by my reply “to all” Captain Porter’s complaint had been sent wherein I contend that if Porter had any legitimate complaint, it would be against the ones who sent him into Halliburton hell without a handbasket (which would be McCain and his Neo-Con Republican oil-war hawks).

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This in turn is followed by a barrage of heated hisses and damning disses from the Neo-Con wild bunch of indignant Republicans accusing me of everything from being disrespectful to their hero Republican soldier to being lunatic for taking issue with him. Several of these responses will be published verbatim, with only the profanity disguised by cryptic encodings such that words that might  rime with duck come out f- – - . The Neo-Con part of this section will be in red and Dusty’s responses will be in blue.

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Finally, as DW anchorman, Len Carrier weighs in with both his opinion of the soldier’s story and finally a shot of truth serum that I think you will all find most entertaining and

enlightening.

The moral of this story as it unfolds is that, when it comes to Neo-Con rantings in your e-mail and on the bloggosphere, don’t take anything for granted…until you double check the story with Urban Legends and other clearinghouses for truth in politics.

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Richard L. Tucker writes:

UNBLIEVABLE MESSAGE SCROLL DOWN……….FROM A SOLDIER (KEEPING YOU SAFE) ACTUALLY IN IRAQ—BABYLONIA.

FOLKS, WE CAN DO BETTER THAN THIS.

THAT’S EASY TO UNDERSTAND……THIS CLOWN HAS NEVER HAD A REAL JOB OR MET A PAYROLL DEADLINE A FEW HUNDRED TIMES WITH BORROWED MONEY OR ACCOMPLISHED ANYTHING. YOU SHOULD NOT BE PREZ. UNLESS YOU HAVE WORKED IN PRIVATE BIZ IN A FACTORY OR BEEN A CPA OR BEEN A SOLDIER OR FARMED OR WHATEVER. HE RUNS FROM SOLDIERS BECAUSE HE DOESN’T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT ANYTHING; HE KNOWS THAT WITHOUT CUE CARDS HE CANNOT SPEAK WITH YOU SOLDIERS IN EVEN HALF WAY SENSIBLE MANNER. HE IS LIKE A PUPPET AND FEARS HAVING A CUT STRING.

WHAT A STORY THIS IS BELOW. SHOWS YOU THE REAL MAN. AMERICA DOES NOT HAVE A CLUE WHAT THIS GUY IS ABOUT. BE VERY AFRAID.

VOTE FOR A WAR HERO AND STANDUP GUY. VOTE FOR McCAIN !!!

Richard L. Tucker

I don’t know each of your personal political convictions, and apologize if anyone finds this offensive.  I thought it was important enough to share.  This is Jeff’s first hand view of Senator Obama. 

                                      ———- Forwarded Message ———-

Hello everyone,
As you know I am not a very political person. I just wanted to pass along that Senator Obama came to Bagram Afghanistan for about an hour on his visit to ‘The War Zone’. I wanted to share with you what happened.
He got off the plane and got into a bullet proof vehicle, got to the area to meet with the Major General (2 Star) who is the commander here at Bagram.
 
As the Soldiers were lined up to shake his hand he blew them off and didn’t say a word as he went into the conference room to meet the General. As he finished, the vehicles took him to the ClamShell (pretty much a big top tent that military personnel can play basketball or work out in with weights) so he could take his publicity pictures playing basketball. He again shunned the opportunity to talk to Soldiers to thank them for their service.
 
So really he was just here to make a showing for the American’s back home that he is their candidate for President. I think that if you are going to make an effort to come all the way over here you would thank those that are providing the freedom that they are providing for you.
 
 I swear we got more thanks from the NBA Basketball Players or the Dallas Cowboy Cheer leaders than from one of the Senators, who wants to be the President of the United States. I just don’t understand how anyone would want him to be our Commander-and-Chief. It was almost that he was scared to be around those that provide the freedom for him and our great country.
  If this is blunt and to the point I am sorry but I wanted you all to know what kind of caliber of person he really is. What you see in the news is all fake.

          
In service,
CPT Jeffrey S. Porter
Battle Captain
TF Wasatch
American Soldier

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DUSTY TO RICHARD TUCKER:

Richard-

No offense to either you or brave Captain Porter intended, but I’ve gotta say this:

I am not an “Obama supporter”.  I’m foreign policy editor for Democratswrite.com which is a communicative extension of a peace-oriented think tank (The B.E.A. – “Barristers et al”) I founded shortly after 9/11.  Since 9/11/01 I have researched the causes of (and crusaders for) U.S. military involvement in the Middle East.  I’ve written and published news articles, essays, made speeches, debated issues and written a short book on the causes for the war in Iraq (and Afghanistan) in the theater of which Captain Porter is presently on duty and under fire and constantly in harm’s way.  I am grateful for his commitment to and sacrifices made for his country and ours. At the same time, I know he is a young man and can glean with some degree of confidence from what he writes that his attitude toward Obama is tainted by his belief in the administration (Republican) party line– that our presence in Iraq is justified and in the best interests of America and the world. I believe, in fact, that he believes somehow, that he’s risking his life every day to help preserve for Americans their freedom (from terrorism).  In that belief, I believe he is—very unfortunately—mistaken. He is mistaken because, as we were in the aftermath of 9/11/01, grossly and egregiously  misled.

Fighting “for freedom”?  Nothing could be further from the truth.  I won’t belabor the abundantly and  long-established (even admitted by the Neo-Cons who started the war on false pretenses) facts that America and the world were lied to by Bush, Powell and the neo-con run Pentagon in order to gain Congressional nod to invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Since our preemptive invasions, we’ve caused in one way and another the deaths of over a half million non-military humans (civilians)  in those countries. The only logic presently justifying our presence in Iraq today is that an immediate and total withdrawal of troops would endanger those troops. There will be havoc among the warring Islamic factions upon our departure in any and all cases, just as there has been for hundreds of years, although under the reign of Saddam H, a totalitarian tyrant held that havoc in abeyance with tactics of rule by fear and fierceness.

Our presence in Iraq today is as criminal (under international law, from the ambit of which Bush shrewdly exempted the US—and himself as an otherwise chargeable war criminal– prior to the invasion of Afghanistan). Don’t take my word for it – read the sources summarized and cited in my on-line (free) book on the Iraq war and how a stealthy group of crazy Zionist Jews and fundie Christians combined to pull off a coup of the Pentagon that precipitated the mess in which  we’re now boxed in both those theaters (Afghanistan) wherein we have accomplished precisely zero of our declared causes de guerre (finding bin Laden and reducing “terrorism”). The project has bankrupted America, led us into the present depression (it ain’t simply a “recession”), and perhaps worst of all for many of us we hold dear, has jeopardized and cost the lives of thousands of innocent and patriotic Americans.

The book outlining both the facts and the time-lines of all events resulting in our invasion of Iraq is available at HERE.   We can all choose to either read and master the history or watch it repeat itself.  Your choice.

For any of you who want to more thoroughly educate yourselves on how and why the war in Iraq happened, and who was behind it, and thereafter want to hear what an independent foreign policy writer has tendered to his government as a solution to the problem of international terrorism (of which the U.S. in its waging of unprovoked and preemptive war is part and parcel),  one proposed “solution” for this so-called “war on terrorism” is outlined in another article which I’ll link here, entitled “The Onion of War: Peeling it to the Core and Declaring Peace” – Click HERE to read it!

I actually debated the Wurmsers*** (co-authors of “A Clean Break”) on the tenets espoused in that peace proposal.  As a bottom line, let me again stress that I mean no offense to Captain Porter.  It is our duty to support and defend our troops abroad, risking their lives every day under the command of our elected statesmen. The best way to do this is to get rid of the lousy leaders who put our troops there  in harm’s way without just (or rational) cause. Obama is in the process of doing just this. The sooner he’s elected and the sooner, after his empowerment, he succeeds in getting American troops out of that hell hole where, as in Nam, they are dying for reasons none of them can understand, much less articulate, the better. And I know Captain Porter will immediately and reflexively react to what I just said by saying “I am here following the orders of my commander according to the oath I took to defend America against all aggressors.” And he will likely add, that he is there, as are all his comrades in arms, watching each other’s backs.  And I will commend—and defend– him on both those accounts.  However, this time, his commanders—all the way to the chief– are dead wrong.  Iraq was not an aggressor nation in our regard and we became one in regard to it. We invaded and currently occupy two nations on entirely false and unjustified pretexts. There was reason to seek out and destroy bin Laden, but no justification for presently occupying Afghanistan as in-control imperialists. On the practical side, not even their giant next-door neighboring country (Russia) with 10 times the dedicated (and strategically local) ground and air power could conquer that clandestine conundrum of Islamic mountain beast. There was no reason for the invasion of Iraq. There we remain as internationally-despised invaders, for the first time in American history. We are, by way of natural resident reprisals (called “insurgents” instead of “resistance” or “underground” as French nationals were called when they chose to resist Nazi occupation in WWII) fueling  terrorism by our presence in Iraq rather than quelling it.  Captain Porter has—understandably– bought into false propaganda. No one wants to believe he is risking his life for something entirely lacking in noble purpose. But the fact remains – - U.S. troops are in fact not fighting for “freedom” of anyone in the Iraq theater. They are fighting to stay alive and to keep one U.S. corporate-selected sect of Islamic zealots (those who are more willing than others to keep Iraq’s oil reserves pledged to support American corporate game plans) in power. This is the game of regional hegemony, the game plan of which was concocted  (in 1998)  by a couple named David and Mayrev Wurmser *** in a document entitled “A Clean Break”,  the story of which is outlined in the free book first linked above.  My compassion and gratitude go out to Captain Porter for his brave and loyal service to his country. My never-ceasing support and Kudos will go out to the first politician who succeeds in getting Captain Porter out of that hell hole and back in the U.S.A. with  his family where he belongs. Every minute he is there, in harm’s way, they must suffer the unceasing angst of his endangerment. And they too—as he—crave to find purpose in his perilous mission.  It is my present intention to post Captain Porter’s letter about Obama on our website along with the present (as an open letter) e-mail.  The exchange and communication of ideas about these issues is vital—and I contend healthy—for America about this time when we are facing a much needed changing of our domestic and foreign military guard.  I invite any of you—including Captain Porter—to respond to the present letter with any views you want to express and have included in the article before it posts.  Please send your responses to me personally at the trailing e-mail address ([email protected]) instead of the contact link on the website.  I will wait a week (through Friday , August 1) to receive anything you want to express to me and have published along side Porter’s and my own (present) letters.  We censor out nothing except vulgar profanity and essentially-personal (ad hominem) attacks on people (including ourselves) contributing ideas to the site.  We invite all to critically attack (or agree with)  our ideas and issues we raise, but refuse to print attacks on people (by essentially unkind name-calling and the like).  Wishing you all the best, and with heart-felt gratitude and compassion, wishing for the safe and soon homecoming of Captain Jeffrey S. Porter, I remain sincerely yours, in  Peace. Dusty SchochJuly 25, 2007

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From: Jim Krauss [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Friday, July 25, 2008 2:01 PM
To: R Schoch;  

What a pathetic and gushy gushy bleeding heart unrealistic disconnected evolutionary believing global pacifist LINE OF PURE S- – -  that I’ve ever heard — take this guy out and shake some sense into his retarded ass—PLEASE

 From: R Schoch [[email protected]]
Sent: Friday, July 25, 2008 2:35 PM
To: ‘Jim Krauss’
Why don’t you do it?  (The retarded ass).  From: Norwood Jackson [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Friday, July 25, 2008 3:15 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: modern day fairy tale  

Holy mackeral Kingfish, where did you get this fella? Is his middle name ostrich?

Norwood JacksonFirst Coast Realty/Realty WorldPOB 2829 (Crow’s Nest Shopping Center)Atlantic Beach, NC 28512

From:] [email protected]
Sent: Friday, July 25, 2008 3:15 PM
To: Norwood Jackson [mailto:[email protected] Subject: modern day fairy tale

Given that brief excerpt from the company’s corporate minutes, it would appear that the mailroom boy fell into a presidential spot by workings of the proverbial “peter principle” – i.e., that sooner or later, on most American corporate ladders of ascension,  a given worker gets promoted to a level beyond his level of competence. In this case, that was not the case. Examining the “rest of the story” one learns that the entire presidential promotional predicament was the result of a polarization within the company’s board that resulted in an evitable deadlock. The “liberal” side came up with the green candidate from the mail room; whereas the conservatives came up with their single candidate. The board therefore had only two choices and this resulted in the choice of the lesser of arguable evils.  The conservative candidate was an over-the-hill has been of a politician who nearly ran out of gas running for the conservative side’s endorsement. He had far more experience in the corporate business than his green counterpart, but most of his decisions in the past were—for the company counter-productive. He had voted in favor of his company’s backing a proxy fight  initiated by some foreign Jews who wanted to take over the board to expand their personal portfolios (they code-named “the promised land”) that had led the company to virtual insolvency. Moreover, the conservative candidate was still preaching the same sermon—in favoring the hostile takeover even if it took another 100 years. To cap it off, the Conservative candidate ran his election campaign on the sole strength of having –as a pilot---been shot down by corporate enemies and held captive by them for years (during which he admits saying and signing false things about the corporation that damaged the corporate image and PR considerably.)   Finally (and most saliently) it was discovered that the conservative candidate —at the unprecedented age of 72 was going to be statistically dead in his second year of service as corporate president.   So, when you read and understand the “rest of the story” it turns out the appointment of the green mailroom boy made really good sense. You know- in corporate America, it’s never easy….being green.

 DustyJ

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From: Leonard Carrier [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Saturday, July 26, 2008 12:37 AM
To: R Schoch
Subject: Re: fyi  Dusty,  

I read Capt. Porter’s letter with interest.  I’m sorry he was disappointed that Barack Obama didn’t shake hands with soldiers at Bagram.  But that is not what he was there for.  He was there to get briefed on the military situation in Afghanistan and the Middle East by  top commanders in the field. He is running for President, and his priority is to gain as much foreign policy knowledge as he can.  His stated goal has always been to get our troops out of Iraq, and, hopefully, out of Afghanistan as well.  There will be plenty of time for hand-shaking when Capt. Porter and his fellow soldiers are again on American soil.  What was really curious, though, was Mr. Richard L. Tucker’s introductory disparaging comments about Obama and his praise of John McCain.  In Tucker’s eyes, McCain is a “war hero and a stand-up guy.”  Tucker’s claim is certainly false.  John McCain, the son of two Navy admirals, graduated fifth from the bottom of his class at Annapolis.  His fellow midshipmen remember him as a reckless rule-breaker.  His flying record shows him to be a mediocre pilot who crashed five U.S. aircraft, including he one in which he was shot down over Viet Nam.  According to his own book, McCain revealed information to the enemy that was used for propaganda purposes.  His claim that he was tortured to reveal it was disputed by his Vietnamese interrogator who claims that merely the threat of withholding medical attention was enough to get McCain to talk. The fact that the Vietnamese knew that McCain’s father was CINCPAC ensured that he would be kept alive. Many other POWs suffered more and said less.  So much for McCain’s being a war hero.  As for being a “stand-up guy,” this is a phrase that is often used by Republicans to refer to George W. Bush.  Whether it applies to Bush is highly dubious.  That it doesn’t apply to McCain is certain.  After several extramarital affairs McCain divorced his crippled wife to marry a billionaire beer heiress. It is a matter of record that he used the ‘c’ word to refer to his new wife in public.  That doesn’t translate into being any sort of  “stand-up guy.”  I conclude that when it comes to a question of character, it is Barack Obama–someone with a law degree who opted to work with poor, inner-city youth, someone who has always been married to the same woman, someone who has consistently said that he will get our troops out of the Middle East–who stands head and shoulders over John McCain.  

Best,  Len Carrier 

NEO-CON CROW EATIN’ TIME!!! (thanks to Len Carrier and Snopes.com)…

Dear “all” who have been deceived by that typically-rank Republican propaganda about “Captain Porter” ’s negative review of Obama’s ungentlemanly conduct in Afghanistan: Several of you gave me down the road for even questioning Captain Porter’s assessment of Obama and Richard Tucker’s taking the occasion to contradistinguish McCain as a war hero. The truth of the matter turns out to be this:  There is in fact a “Captain Porter” stationed in Afghanistan and he did write home (to his family) some falsely-reported rumors he’d picked up, not first hand, but through the military (mostly pro-administration, pro-ditto-headed Republican, pro-war) grapevine.  Having learned the truth, he has recanted his lies and asked that people quit circulating his letter on the internet both because of its gross inaccuracies and because sending such news along with his locale, name and rank violates military law. All in all, the Captain Porter story is what’s called in military  parlance a total “cluster f…”.  We have Democratswrite.com’s In-House Historian, Dr. Leonard Carrier, to thank for this factual wake-up call.  I will here trail his letter to me which supplies you to the link wherein you can read for yourself the history of the entire hoax. For those of you who don’t know, election-year propaganda like this blogger B-S can nearly always be checked for truth on the www.snopes.com website. The article link that Len furnishes us here makes it crystal clear how Republicans will grab up a sound byte (this time a paragraph from a soldier’s letter to his parents) and explode it into political mythology in order to counter the surge of popularity and sanity that is hopefully going to sweep the neo-con war mongers out of office.Porter totally regrets the careless lies he has told and asks all who have disseminated them to see that the truth of the matter gets told. That’s what I’m doing in writing to you all. Thanks, Len for the vigilance I can always count on you to maintain. This time, for some reason, I didn’t think to question the neo-con contrived crap. I’ll be much more watchful in the future. Now for those of you with the courage to admit you’ve been fooled, I give you Len’s letter which will supply you with the link to the truth of the Captain Porter story which  you need to (slowly, carefully and with reflection) read. The same people who 7 years ago convinced you there were WMD’s in Iraq are–with tripe like this–trying to steal another election through the corruption of truth in order to prolong two stupidly catastrophic wars and launch a third.  I have to say, finally- Richard Tucker said one correct thing in the letter with which he circulated the Porter myth…it was in fact an “unbelievable message” (his words).

 LEN’S LETTER: (AND LINK)

 Dusty,  

After my last email to you, I decided to scope out Capt. Porter and his letter.  It now turns out that what Porter said was false, and that he has retracted his statement and asked people not to forward his letter.  Check it all out on Snopes below.

 http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/afghanistan.asp  

 All those die-hard Republicans who were cursing you out should be eating lots of crow when they discover that Porter’s letter was a bunch of baloney.

 Cheers,  Len 

PARTING ADDENDUM 

The DW editors and staff want to make it clear that none of us blame Captain Jeffrey Porter for all this disinformation.  He made a careless mistake in quoting unsubstantiated (and it turns out false) press on Obama and, perhaps because of his own naïve politics, made a worse mistake in trusting his correspondents not to publicize a personal letter to his family. The lesson here is, however, a serious and solemn one, in spite of the Republicans-eat crow outcome. We are involved in a war in Afghanistan and Iraq because we Americans have been conned over and over again by the Neo-cons about the truth and realities of both foreign and domestic affairs.  We are seeing Orwell’s 1984 fiction enacted in nightmarish reality before our very eyes in the media and  on the internet where Republicans, frenetically fearful of losing their grip on the Pentagon and our tax dollars, are doing everything they and their propaganda spin masters can contrive to obfuscate the truth of their disastrous leadership with lies and slick-sounding talking points.I personally fell for this one until Len took the time to research the truth on Snopes.com.  Let’s thank Len for his vigilance on our editorial parapets and adopt his skepticism and resourcefulness as a paradigm for future considerations of and contentions with these soon-to-be sidelined Neo-Con Republican saboteurs of besieged American democracy.

 Dusty SchochJuly 27, 2008 It was a happy birthday btw.   

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