Allow Me to Retort...

About a week ago I was asked for my opinion on this article. 

Cooking Up a War, Don't Forget the Piss.

So here goes...

A little preface, apparently everyone is up in arms and shitting themselves over a video of Marines supposedly pissing on the corpses of Afghans. 

First things first I ask you, who were they pissing on? Taliban, al Qaeda, insurgents, or whatever we're calling the guys that keep shooting at and blowing us up. Because if they were confirmed then I say this, whichever one of these assbags let this video out needs to be castrated so that he cannot defile the earth with his moronic seed. So far as I can gather, this video was uploaded to youtube and then took off from there. 

Now if you're dumb enough to do something that you KNOW will get you fried and you not only videotape it but you allow the videotape to get uploaded to youtube and shared with the google using world, then  you really do deserve whatever happens to you. Because you are too stupid to live.

But that's not what I was asked. I was asked for an opinion on this Rob Delaney cat. Kinda went through it and picked out the main ideas...and we'll knock them down one at a time.

1. Soldiers piss on corpses in every war.

Most likely true. Can't say for sure because I haven't been in every war. All things considered in the grand scheme of things pissing on a dead guy, while reprehensible, isn't that big of a deal. I mean does anyone think that the dead guy gave a shit? The problem in this case is that these dipshits let this one get out and be seen by people who can make your life difficult.

2. Soldiers rape civilians, as a rule. Rape is a weapon of war.

Disagree. Soldiers do not rape anyone. Degenerate, disgusting, animals rape civilians. They might be dressed up as soldiers but there's an existential divide between a soldier and anyone who would rape another person. 

3. War is the very worst thing there is.

Nope. Wrong again. John Stuart Mill is about to make you his bitch Rob...

“War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.”

Now regardless of all this noise there's a few things that people are not going to hear or think about because this thing is already way out of control for any kind of sensible justice to come out of it. These Marines are going to cook for this one. How badly? I suppose that's a question of how long this story keeps its steam. (Which I am obviously not helping.)

This happened for a reason. These Marines hated these men enough to piss on their dead bodies. Now that kind of hate doesn't just materialize out of thin air. It came from somewhere, a firefight, an IED, a wounded or killed Marine, something.

Its not like these Marines will be able to plead innocent to this one. Sorry bub, there you are with 8 million youtube hits. So tell me why you did it. Tell me what pissed you off so badly that you were willing to go against everything that the US military stands for. And maybe, once you tell me, maybe I can have some mercy or pity for you.

I really hope you've got a good reason for this. You're gonna get fried for this fellas, your careers are over, you might even do a little time, you gave Mr. Taliban Man a little extra ammo, you're reputations are shot, but you can give us something. Give me a reason. I'm a fellow warrior. It'll make sense to me. You tell me that you pissed on them because you thought they were the ones that set the IED. Then I get it.

And if you give me that, regardless of what happens to you, at least I'll be able to enjoy that video again!

Later,

I love you Mom...

Now What To Make of This...

So I ran across this tonight surfing through the endless piles of slop that make up the internets. (No I did not spell it wrong.) And I've been reading, re-reading and pondering, and questioning this for about the last 2 hours. Some Lt. Colonel decided to start telling truth to power, or at least that's what he says he's doing. And his article got an article written about it in Monday's New York Times. Now first of all, if your article has its own article that's pretty fucking impressive. And I have a special place in my heart for the New York Times due to our shared history and despite its hippy leanings.

I'm not quite sure what to make of it yet, but rest assured my opinion will bubble to the surface sooner or later. Hopefully, sooner.

In the meantime, check out these two pieces for your reading pleasure.

Armed Forces Journal Article

New York Times Article about the Armed Forces Journal Article

Please, comment. Need some meat for the grinder!

God Damned Dirty Hippies, Gave me Pneumonia...

Well, they didn't actually give it to me. But they certainly didn't make having it any easier.

Allow me to explain. Bunch of anarchists demonstrated outside of my place of employment last night. Kinda fun to watch, a bunch of kids who are only about 15-20 minutes older than the boots I'm wearing saying that all government is evil and all the world should be a love farm and all the prisons should be demolished and all the prisoners released.

I'm not going to lie, a part of me wanted to let one or two of them (prisoners) out and direct them to this crowd of hippies. After that experience I do believe that these children would be changing their thoughts on incarceration.

But I digress, so I caught pneumonia the other day. Couldn't hardly breath. Gasping and weezing all while trying to get a good deep breath. Until my girlfriend stood up, basically smacked me in the head and said, "Get your ass out of that bed, we're going to the hospital."

So, to make a long story short.

We went.

They made it so I could breath again.

X-rayed me.

Told me I had pneumonia.

Gave me some prescriptions and kicked me out the door.

However, since these dumb ass kids were protesting today I had to work a 16 hour shift which included me outside (in Chicago in February) in a parking garage, watching all of this. Not fun, and certainly not a great idea for a guy with pneumonia.

Needless to say I got angry. Which is kinda like my go-to emotion. I was pissed at these kids, at my boss, at my job, at myself, at pneumonia, at cigarettes, at my medicine. Pretty much if you could name it, I was pissed at it. It was one of those afternoons.

Here's the question I have. Since, for all intents and purposes, the angrier I got, the warmer I got, what an unholy powerful emotion anger is. I'm not even sure that I want to minimize or extinguish my anger anymore.

How the hell do you harness it? If it can warm a Chicago winter, then I can only imagine what else it could do. Now, how do you make it do what you want it to do?

That's not rhetorical, I want an answer please???

Later,

I love you Mom....

You Like Me, You Really Like Me...

A couple people threw my name out there for a Liebster Award.

At first I didn't know what the hell it was and to be perfectly honest I kinda thought it might be some spam nonsense.

But appealing to may vanity, as any award does I couldn't help but look into it.

I got two so far, one from Christina Fawn and one from Paxford. You can click their names to see their blogs, plus they're now on my blogroll. Check them out.

1. Copy and paste the award to your blog. You can either yank it from just above this sentence or you can get it from the side panel of my blog. Or you can get it here. Whatever you want to do.

The rules of the blog-fest are as follows:

1. Copy and paste the award on our blog.

2. Link back to the blogger who gave us the award.

3. Pick our five favorite blogs with fewer than 200 followers, and leave a comment on their blog to let them know they have received the award.

4. Hope that the five blogs chosen will keep spreading the love and pass it on to five more blogs.

So with no further adieu. Here are my top 5.

1. Airman Mom - how can a year in the suck get any better than to pick up an extra mom along the way. I will never be able to tell her how meaningful everything she did for me was, nor will I ever be able to express how much fun I had with her at US Cellular Field.

2. Coffeypot - a funny and grumpy old fart who never fails to get me laughing. Don't care that you exceed the number of followers.

3. Bag Blog - A great lady, and blogger who's been commenting a encouraging my bullshit for quite some time now.

4. Joe at Fobbits Need Ice Cream Too - Gotta love a loud and proud Fobbit.

5. CI-Roller Dude - Great old guy, a throwback who managed to stay in long enough to see Iraq.

That's it. All these bloggers have been with me since the start and I know at least two of them have read every word I ever wrote. And for that I am grateful. Wouldn't mean a whole lot if no one ever read it.

So the way I see it this award is better than most because we are chosen by those who read us. And its personal, no voting, no test to take. Just one blogger to another, and I like that.

Anyway, time to go let them know.

I love you Mom...

The Committee to Re-elect Barack Obama...



First of all, when I saw the picture that was quartered and in each box was a picture of one of the Republican presidential hopefuls and right across the top was scrawled, "The Committee To Re-elect Barack Obama"

I'm not gonna lie, I laughed my ass off.

Now given the fact that this is a milblog (Actually, I'm not quite sure that's true anymore.) Most would expect me to be Republican. Why not? Most of the military is. Last I heard it was something like 90%

My personal political beliefs are a lot baser than that. I don't really even get as far as being Republican or Democrat. My political philosophy boils down to a simple fact that hasn't been proven wrong yet. My idea is as follows...

You have to be an asshole in the first place, just to even think about becoming a politician. And to actually become one you have to be an epic asshole. And then in order to be successful enough to become a contender for the highest office in the land, you have to be a colossal asshole.

However, that doesn't change the fact that we've gotta pick one of these choads, so the least we can do is pick the best of the worst, or the sweetest smelling turd if you will.

So let's run it down,

Barack Obama: Well, I always tell everyone the same thing, first of all Obamacare hasn't brought the sky down, and just so everyone knows (or remembers) when you say the President did this or did that (referring to the passage of some law or program) you sound like a fucking idiot because guess what...no laws make it to his desk without getting passed by Congress, which is controlled by...? Sorry that always bothers me. When people blame one guy for the actions of the government. Now I'm certain he's done more than his fair share of stupid shit. I just don't really want to spend any more time researching this because I found so much fun stuff for the Republicans...

Other side o' the aisle:

Newt Gingrich:

I don't know, nor do I care if all of that is true. I just thought it was funny. Now here's why I can't vote for this guy. I can say that its because of all the crazy shit he's done with his wives, open this, and cancer that, and whatever. Or I could say its because that wife he's got right now scares the living dog shit out of me (which would be true), but I'm not going to say any of that.

He's a sore loser. He's a grown adult (won't say man, that's a title you earn.) And when he gets stomped fair and square he gets up there and cries like a little kid. Which is what he did recently after Romney gave him a right proper spanking.

Secondly, he doesn't strike me as a fair guy. He goes on and on about all this shit with the poor and how they need to learn to work, so he's going to get them cleaning up their school so that they learn about labor and earning a check.

I'm fine with that. But the rich kids should have to do it too.

Rick Santorum: On the front page of his website he's got a "Rock the Vest" (for $100). First of all, well that's bad enough all by itself. You should probably get donkey punched for that.

But here's a quote that throws Santorum off the proverbial cliff for me.

"One of the things I will talk about, that no president has talked about before, is I think the dangers of contraception in this country.... Many of the Christian faith have said, well, that's okay, contraception is okay. It's not okay. It's a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be." You can check it out HERE

Got news for you Rick, contraception is a wonderful thing. Now we could argue for days about this, but the fact is it stops sex from being a life destroying event for certain people (to be read: "teenagers") Get over it, be realistic. Kids and stupid people are going to have sex, and they're going to have lots of it. Now lets not make the rest of us suffer because you're trying to lock down the religious wackos vote.

Mitt Romney: When I was a kid I got a job caddying at a country club not too far from my house. I started this when I was 10 or 11 I think. Anyway, very quickly I learned who was who and how to tell the difference.

You had two different kind of guys there (yeah, only guys. No women allowed.) those who made their money, and those who inherited their money.

Romney inherited his. He's a corporate douchenozzle.

''Corporations are people, my friend... of course they are. Everything corporations earn ultimately goes to the people. Where do you think it goes? Whose pockets? Whose pockets? People's pockets. Human beings, my friend.''

—GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney to a heckler at the Iowa State Fair who suggested that taxes should be raised on corporations to help balance the budget, Aug. 11, 2011

Anyone who believes this monkey spunk, and yeah I know its part of a Supreme Court decision from way back, but still. You believe shit like this and you certainly should not be running the entity responsible for providing for the public good. On top of which he said this,

''[Obama's stimulus program is] one of the biggest peacetime spending binges in American history.''

—Mitt Romney in April 2011, while U.S. troops were fighting wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and involved in airstrikes against Libya

Ron Paul: No chance, love the libertarian ideas but he doesn't have a shot so why bash the guy.

Now a question I've been pondering about this whole debate, about the only difference I can really ascertain is that Democrats want to tax rich people, while Republicans don't because they say they are the ones who create jobs. So every time someone brings up raising taxes the rich, or raising the taxes on investment income, or an estate tax, all of which contribute to bringing their effective tax rate all the way up to EXACTLY WHAT THE MOTHER FUCKING REST OF US PAY!!! They start throwing around words like 'socialism''redistribution' 'job creators' 'marx' 'anti-American' and they use them as weapons to bludgeon to death whoever dared to bring up taxing the living shit out of the rich.

Kiss my ass, there is no way that a guy who makes and/or has millions should pay a lower percentage than me, or you, or his secretary. Fuck all that.

I could get into a rant about taxes and what I think we should do, but that would take up too much space. Next post we'll do that. [Preview: 10% of every dollar that changes hands in any way/shape/form will be automatically deducted/confiscated by the US Government. No deductions, no loopholes, and most importantly NO IRS]

So out of this field of shit...who would you take?

Now moving on, interesting news. One of the MP companies from Illinois (not the one I'm in) is going to Afghanistan sometime in the future and they are currently looking for volunteers.

I'm thinking of going, but then I'm thinking of not. It'd be great to have another year or two of fresh material, but it'd be hell on wheels leaving my life again. Deployment cash is always nice, but then again I might get my eye shot out.

I don't know. We'll just have to see.

Anyway,

I love you Mom...

Where Have All The Milblogs Gone...

That's a question that was posed on the Thunder Run Here.

There's a special place in my heart for the Thunder Run because when I first started off with all this, they were one of the first sites to link to my posts. They were one of the first to start spreading Embrace the Suck all over the place until I got into trouble.

Somewhere around December 3, 2008. I was less than a month in country and I was already garnering attention. But that's in the past.

The question is, why isn't anyone doing what I and so many just like me were doing in 2008?

The rules were pretty simple back then. (Can I use the phrase "back then" for 4 years ago?) Anyway, you had to show what you were writing to your commander or his/her designee, and they would have to sift through it for OPSEC violations.

So basically, if you left out any and all names, any and all places, and any real hard and fast specifics, you were pretty much in the clear. At first I thought, "Well what the fuck am I going to write? They just took it all."

Little drama queen was I. I learned my way around it. Leave out names, bullshit I'll just make them up! Leave out places, okay, half the time I didn't know where the hell I was anyway. Leave out specifics, ya know like number of guys, weapons, ammo, and the like. Well shiver me timbers, who in the hell would want to read a blog full of troop numbers, weapons statuses, and ammo counts? Well, sure the terrorists would, but honestly did they really think they were going to have a huge problem with this? I'm sure we've got a few terrorists in the military somewhere, but I figure they have other ways of passing information to their burqa wearing buddies. I mean you need to seriously reevaluate your social skills and standing if the first thing you want to write home is "MY WHOLE SQUAD IS GREEN ON AMMO AND WATER, MOM!!!"

Not to mention, and this is a question for all the GI's reading this. Did you ever find it humorous that they would pound OPSEC into our heads, and rip you a new one if they found out you told your mom what time you were flying to Qatar for pass, but they wouldn't let us do anything about the little T.I.T. (Taliban in Training aka "kid") outside the front gate watching and counting, then calling on his cell every time we rolled out the gate?

Now why aren't the soldiers doing it anymore? Or at least not in the same volume as before? Well, first of all the novelty of it all wore off, not to mention there's some pretty stiff competition out there. I mean throwing a few thousand words into the blogosphere is like chucking a grain of sand into space. Chances are pretty good it won't get noticed. So I think that might be a part of it.

Then they can get into more trouble, which is the theory posited by the Thunder Run. Makes sense, soldiers (for the most part) don't like stirring up unnecessary shit. My own proclivities notwithstanding, most guys figure its difficult enough over here, why make it worse.

And in the same vein, I'm sure they've either seen or heard about some poor schmuck getting hemmed up over something he wrote on the internet. The way I figured it, I could maintain at least a semblance of anonymity on a blog. Some of these guys are writing on their Facebook page that "Commander So and So is a douchenozzle!" First things first, morons. Your Facebook page um, well, it HAS YOUR FUCKING NAME ON IT!!! So I do in fact believe that guys in that situation should not be punished for disrespect or whatever, they should be sterilized and forced into 10 years of hard labor for being that colossally stupid. At least with a blog, unless you let it slip, you can keep a distance between you and your material. My name's Mud Puppy. Simple as that, unless I tell you different. Which I have, to some. But not all. Funny part is, I'll most likely keep that up after I'm out. All without even thinking about it, kinda like curling my fingers when I walk.

I'm also wondering if another reason the blogs are drying up is a lack of material coming out of Afghanistan. I've heard, now I don't know this for sure, but I've heard, that more and more of the mission over there is being run by Special Forces, or at least the Special Operations community. S.O.A.R., Rangers, Seals, PJ's, Green Berets, and all those guys. Now for the most part, they aren't going to talk, mostly because their op-tempo is so high I'm not sure they even remember how to sit down. So I figure a lot of the regular soldiers don't think that their experiences there are worth writing about. To which I say, "I managed to make a trip to Subway flipping hilarious! You've got plenty to write about."

You know what, that's all just beating around it. The bush that is. Here's why soldiers aren't writing, and this can be applied across the services.

Mother Army scared them. She threw up a little power point presentation that will scare enough soldiers to be worth making it mandatory part of mobilization. And then when they found a soldier or two that wasn't scared they took them and slapped them with an article 15 or two and that scared a whole bunch more soldiers, and the last few that weren't scared they found one and sent his ass to court martial and made an example of him. Sometimes all it takes is for a Commander to say in formation, "I catch anyone writing anything about this deployment and its your ass" Anyone think that doesn't happen? Good.

All I can tell anyone writing a blog now is this, just keep it vague. Don't use your name, it'll give them a reason to watch everything you do instead of paying attention to the writing. Don't use place names, I mean how hard is it really to describe Afghanistan, besides its mostly better to let your readers dream the landscape up in their head. Don't use any numbers. We've each got 7589 rounds. Yeah, bad idea. Oh and most importantly, if you're going to bitch about your commander, or your team leader, squad leader, platoon leader, or who the fuck ever, do NOT put their name in there. Do NOT put their name in there. Make something up. Sergeant Horse Face, Captain Cock bag, Lieutenant CAB chaser. (All guys in my unit by the way) Just make sure you can deny it and they'll have a hard time pinning it to you. I did that and I still had to take my blog underground for a while.

I don't think my little rant will make much of a dent. I think the blogs are losing their avante garde status. (I don't think I spelled that right but whatever) I wish these kids would show a little chutzpah and let us all know what's really going on.

But hey, I'm just some chucklehead who's only got 3 months to go. What the hell do I know?

Later,

I love you Mom...