The single dumbest thing I have read in a long time.
Here is another article about the Occupy movement and how the IVAW are taking part. It is titled “At Occupy Camps, Veterans Bring the Wars Home” It gets to the crazy in short order.
In Zuccotti Park, Army Specialist Jerry Bordeleau, 24, was sitting next to a table of IWW (Industrial Workers of the World) literature. On his sweater were two buttons: an Iraq Campaign metal and one from the IWW. He served two tours in Iraq and now says he’s unemployed and can’t find work for over $10 an hour. And he can’t live on $10 an hour. When I asked him why he’s at Occupy Wall Street he says, “I went and fought for capitalism and that’s why I’m now a Marxist.”
At Occupy Baltimore, I met 21-year-old Justin Carson, who tells me he served in the Army National Guard in Iraq from 2009 until this February. His nickname is Crazy Craze. He says he has PTSD and is bipolar but won’t “do pharmaceuticals.” Then he told me I should look into the Illuminati since I’m writing an article.
I had to double check to make sure that I am not reading the onion. Because for a movement that is desperate not to be linked to socialism or communism that Jerry Bordeleau’s comments are exact opposite of this. Not to mention that Justin Carson’s comments are very damaging to the image of veterans today. It is bad enough that Veterans are fighting against the craze war vet meme of old, but worse when people are actively trying to bring it back. This is how you want to open your story?
At Occupy DC, a painting of Scott Olsen in uniform is draped on the side of a tent. He’s become a symbol of the Occupation Movement — he fought overseas only to be injured when exercising his “freedom” of peaceful assembly at home. His name has become a shorthand to talk about why so many vets are at Occupy Wall Street.
Ok that is creepy, I thought the picture of him in a stain glass artwork was bad enough but this is just weird. Also considering how he spoke out against the Marine Corps image, but the people have no problem doing for his uniform that he was never suppose to wear in the first place. Also I thought that he had a non-combat MOS. If so how much “fighing” did he really do? Moving on.
Patterson still sports a military haircut and a bit of the Army swagger. He also has a touch of that telling hyper-awareness war vets sometimes display; he’s a little twitchy, a little intense. He tells me he has PTSD and has been self-medicating with weed. He says it helps. What’s also helped is being a part of this protest movement. “This is the only peaceful solution,” he says. “If this movement doesn’t work, our country is not going to make it … We’re just not going to make it.”
Great, so your third Vet is a self medicating with illegal drugs. Still trying to push the “Crazy War Vet” meme. Also I promise you that the Country will carry on without your movement.
Patterson became an interrogator in Iraq straight out of high school. His mother had to sign his enlistment papers. He turned 18 in Basic. “We’re an industrialized nation who’s a third world country. The super wealthy elite pretty much control our democratic process and everyone here is pretty much fighting for scraps and that’s not right,” he says.
What? Are you kidding? I promise you people who live in real third world nations would jump at the change to live here. Because I promise you that there is a drastic difference between the two.
I ask him what was the switch for him and when. He explained that it was WikiLeaks. It was the footage of the Apache helicopter gunning down Iraqis released by WikiLeaks in April of 2010.
This is a dead horse that Doc Bailey has handled nicely. I am sure that he can rehash all the fallacies in anything that follows the statement above.
He interrogated people who were later put to death in Iraq with no appeals process, he says. It haunts him. He didn’t fulfill his contract so he’s not eligible for the GI Bill. Even if he were, he explains, he still couldn’t afford to go to school without loans. He’d be wracked with debt just like so many other students who are down at their city’s Occupations. “I just want to go to college and teach high school,” he says
Then stop taking about it and go do it. I hate to break this to you but sooner or later your going to have to take out a loan. Be it for school, house, or car. Also call BS on his Iraq interrogations as well.
I say again, with this listed above is it any shock that most Veterans do not associate themselves with the occupy movement?
Category: Antiwar crowd, Iraq Veterans Against the War, Occupy, Protests/Rallies
“He didn’t fulfill his contract so he’s not eligible for the GI Bill.”
Being a puss is cause for not fulfilling his contract?
He can’t handle interrogations, but he’s up for teaching 9th Graders?
I’ve taught 9th Graders, and thought my time in A-stan was mild, mild, mild compared 9th Graders in the last period of a Friday.
OK, over/under on how many of these guys never left the continental U.S.
Tina DuPuy roams US and Canadian urban garbage dumps (i.e., OWS sites) looking for military veterans to interview in order to write an article and then observes, “It was a surprise to meet Iraq war vets at these protests.” That’s credible, don’t you think? She also notes, “Random people, with children and families who care about them.” For a professional writer, that line says much. First, she is infected with Joey syndrome, a condition marked by the inability to use a subject and a verb in every sentence. Second, the people aren’t random ones. They are, perhaps, randomly selected by her but we know that’s not true. So, she meets with her random target, Patterson, and points out that the air is cold and he’s wearing shorts. He has a ready explanation: “I’m from Alaska.” You figure that one out. I can’t. (It seems to suggest that there’s something special about an Alaskan’s shorts or that Alaskans’ have a lower average body temperature than non-Alaskans.) Then DuPuy completes her little creative writing exercise with a couple of heart-wrenching quotes from Patterson. “I just want to go to college and teach high school.” First, on behalf of all of the parents of today’s grade school kids, please God, prevent him from realizing his dream. Second, Patterson is a quitter. Thus, if he ever enters college, he will never earn a degree. Finally, Tina Hemingway-Pulitizer-DuPuy ends with this tear-jerking Patterson quote: “I haven’t had one nightmare since I’ve been here.” To that, we can say much, but what’s the use?
So glad that others can articulate appropriate responses to this because mine is mostly, “Duh.” (Maybe there’s an “Ahem” and a choking sound or two thrown in there as well.)
It’s the old saying about folks who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it. This is the “Vietnam Tripwire Vets” story being recycled. BG Burkett wrote an amazing book where he demonstrated so many of these guys who jump in front of a microphone to tell their story were either nowhere near any fighting, if they were even in the service at all. So we’re supposed to believe that a first-term junior enlisted man was conducting high-level interrogations that resulted in executions? REALLY? OMG can we please get some “journalists” who have an ounce of common sense when it comes to military operations!
AvgNCO: They aren’t journalists, they are propaganda peddlers. They don’t have an interest in objectivity, just their own agenda. What they do is have an idea of what they want to report and go out in search of anything that will qualify their preconceived story line.
I had a boss that did that, once. He had already put down the conclusions of test analysis and conclusions of a test that hadn’t even been performed, yet. Once I had finished the testing and did my analysis, he changed the analysis and my conclusions to fit his own and sent it in. When the big shots came back and asked me to explain how I came to the conclusions I did based on the test data, I looked at what was there and that my name, not his, was on the report and I pulled up my copy of it off of my computer and showed it to them and they saw that my conclusions fit the data. My boss didn’t last long after that.
“Patterson became an interrogator in Iraq straight out of high school.”. What? Did he go to basic, AIT? He must have been something really, really special to go straight to Iraq from high school. And,he has PTSD? From all of those “interrogations”? Or from watching the video? And, is he “twitchy” from the crabs he may have picked up at Occutard Central, or is it from the shit he’s smoking?
And, like AirCav said, please, on behalf of parents of school-age kids everywhere, don’t let this Occutard ever get a teaching degree.
“He interrogated people who were later put to death in Iraq with no appeals process”
I fucking WISH! I have WETDREAMS of putting two rounds in the head of some of the sociopathic fuckstick detainees we were made to release.
It’s enough to make me want to give back some of my metals. Like tin and iron and magnesium…
[…] This Ain’t Hell: The single dumbest thing I have read in a long time. […]
I love how all these people “don’t believe in pharmaceuticals” but they will use weed. That’s is just another drug that isn’t backed up by years of research. Fucking idiots…I don’t trust people who have devoted their lives to treating people with problems like mine, but I’ll trust the dude that grows this shit in his shed? Some fucking logic there. Oh wait its easier to be a failure because of someone else…
being a veteran doesn’t protect you from being a dumb-ass, Nor does it prevent you from having your head stuck up your 4th point of contact. However I bet anything if you delved into these guy’s backgrounds they were REMFs who never became NCO’s. Nothing against rear echelon types but they often are the ones that make up the most outlandish stories, because if they’re FOBbits they could have tours where literally NOTHING happens.