The Fables of Deserter Joshua Key: Why Milblogs are Needed.

UPDATE: If you need a good laugh to wash this nonsense away, there is an AWESOME, AWESOME, AWESOME video tribute to Joshua.  YOU MUST GO WATCH. It’s like dirty hippie meets A Mighy Wind.  Only they met at special ed schol. 

Ed Note: Dear Grove Press, please include this quote on your next edition of the book.
“Joshua Key and his book are more full of fecal matter than the honey wagon trucks sucking out the port-o-johns at Ft Polk. I’d rather have a suppository applied with a tomahawk missile than read this book again.”

I mentioned a week ago that I had purchase the book The Deserter’s Tale: The Story of an Ordinary Soldier who Walked Away from the War in Iraq, by Joshua Key as told to Lawrence Hill. I owe IVAW a big apology. They are not the phoniest of all phony veterans, this no-talent assclown traitor is.

First off, you should start by reading the excellent work of a milblogger from Korea at ROK Drop who absolute demolishes Key’s story. I am going to avoid rehashing everything that that blogger did, and stick to some other elements that stood out to me. Part I of this post will cover some absolute absurd crap in this book, and errors that no one in the military would ever make unless they were such a shitbag that they really didn’t even know what they were doing. For instance, would a real troop refer to a “gunny sergeant” in the army, or to a “M-16 Grenade Launcher” instead of a M203? Nah, I don’t think so. Some of the quotes are just hilarious. Like the dude allegedly trying to commit suicide by shooting himself in the leg with the grenade launcher. What dipshit doesn’t know that 40mm rounds have an arming distance? And, how about a hospital where needles and fetuses are scattered on the floor? And some Hollywood type pyrotechnics stuff that I believe he saw on Die Hard II.

Part II of this post will detail the lavish tongue bath that this piece of work received from the media, and such literary luminaries as Daily Kos. A future post will go more in depth on the book itself, but anyone with a modicum of military training or common sense would see how much fertilizer this dude is spreading. As I see it, the job of milbloggers is to set these stories right.

As we stabbed the dummies with our bayonets, one of our commanders stood on the podium and shouted into a microphone: “Kill! Kill! Kill the sand niggers!” [Ed Note: According to Key, 1/3 of his basic class at Ft Leonard Wood was African-American, and yet seemingly no one felt that this was inappropriate. Maybe because it never happened. It should be noted that Key is mighty prolific in his use of the SN phraseology.]

My sergeant let loose with his .50 cal Machine Gun. Blasting away with bullets about 6 inches long, he shot the car and brought it to a halt. I saw a trail of gas leaking from the car. The sergeant shifted his gun, aimed at the trail of gas, and shot again. The line of gas caught fire, and flew back toward the truck, and when it hit the gas tank, the truck exploded in a ball of fire.

I shuddered at the thought of needing treatment in such a filthy place. Needles were scattered all over the floors and by toilets, and I spotted blood and fetuses. I imagined that the tiny, half-formed bodies had come from miscrarriages, and I stopped to think about how hard the war had to be on the women of Iraq. Given that the hospital lacked the equipment to properly dispose of needles and fetuses, it gave me the shivers to imagine the conditions in which the living were treated. I wondered to what degree our occupation of the country had caused all these problems in the hospital, and admired Muhammad and the other doctors and nurses for trying to save the lives of diseased and injured children.

We knew one man who had already done it [committed suicide] and another who had spoken openly of suicide. Shortly before coming to al-Habbaniyah, a Specialist named Love loaded his M-16 Grenade Launcher [Ed Note: No such animal, vegetable or mineral exists, must be referring to an M203] while he was standing on guard duty at our compound. I was changing the oil on our armored personnel carrier at the time, only about 50 yards away when I heard the thump of the grenade and the soldier screaming. Sgt Fadinetz, a few other soldiers, and I ran over to Love. “What happened?” we asked him, but he would not say. We could see that Love had shot himself in the ankle and we called for help. He was taken away for medical care, and we never saw him again. It was a good thing the grenade had not exploded or he could have been killed.

For the rest of my time in Iraq I was not able to forget the scene of the decapitated bodies and the heads being kicked by American soldiers. Sometimes, in my dreams, disembodied heads plagued me with accusations. They told me what I was slowly realizing; that the American military had betrayed the values of my country. We had become a force for evil, and I could not escape the fact that I was part of the machine.

Regarding Timothy McVeigh:

It was an American – a former gunnery sergeant in the 1st Infantry division in the First Gulf War – who had blown up his own people. [Ed Note– The army does not have “gunnery sergeants” which is E7 in the Marine Corps, McVeigh was an E5. You’d have thought a graduate of Basic/AIT would fricken know the rank structure, no?]

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So, on to the Media reaction:

Ultimately, Key and his family made it to Canada, where they are awaiting word on whether they will be legally accepted for asylum. But the questions he raise, coupled with the Washington Post stories about treatment of veterans, will not go away. Why does the flesh-price of war always fall disproportionately on those with lower income? How much ingenuity and promise of these young men and women are being wasted on destruction? How much longer can we sweep the damaged under the rug so the American public doesn’t have to see the consequences of the actions of its leadership? And even for those not wounded, and not officially handed a PTSD diagnosis, how smooth a transition back into civil society can reasonably be expected from those who have been ordered to perpetrate atrocities – or bear silent witness to them? How many lives and souls will we squander as a nation before the madness ends? — Daily Kos [Ed Note: Kos was a cannon cocker in the Army, shouldn’t he be bright enough to know this story is bullshit?]

Keys personal crisis is also the crisis of his nation. – The Age, Australia

An exceptionally clear sighted and brave testimony. – Bokavisen, Norway

Stark and compelling…it caused me to re-assess my notions of duty…The Deserters Tale ought to be required reading for soldiers heading overseas. – The Globe and Mail

Destined to become part of the literature of the Iraq War…a substantial contribution to history. – the LA Times

Scenes of Apocalypse Now insanity [Ed Note: I know I was chanting “The Horror, The Horror” just reading this crap]…Key does the math, as should the reader: if this is what one soldier saw in seven months, imagine the sub total of the inhumanity being perpetrated in Iraq. – The Toronto Star.

Explain to me again why we pay these people to give us their opinions….

The must see Ballad of Joshua Key;

Category: Politics