Originally posted on 10/26/2006 -- Scroll for update.
John Kerry pics from www.wintersoldier.com
An Army to be proud of -- NOT!
They're baaaaaaaaaack! It is 1971 all over again. This is warmed over Kerry and his "Winter Soldiers" and 1971 testimony. Fox is reporting that it is a Soros funded group. (Borrowing a phrase from Wizbang describing another Soros fumded group: "one of the George Soros-backed groups with lofty names that keep springing up like cockroaches, and that will be struggling for a purpose to exist once George Bush leaves office.") Whatever it is, you can count on it being made up of screw ups and discontents, just as Kerry's rag tag great unwashed were in the 70s. Back then, at least, we were dealing with draftees, guys that never wanted to be in the military in the first place. But today, these guys knew what they were signing up for, they volunteered. Get rid of their butts, kick them out. They do not deserve the honor of wearing the uniform. I would not be at all surprised to learn that John Kerry is behind this along with the Code Pink crowd. These guys are allowing themselves to be used. I can not express the disgust and disdain I feel about them and their actions.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - More than 200 active duty U.S. armed service members, fed up with the war in Iraq, have joined an unusual protest calling for withdrawal of U.S. troops from the country, organizers said on Wednesday.
The campaign, called the Appeal for Redress from the War in Iraq, is the first of its kind in the Iraq war and takes advantage of Defense Department rules allowing active duty troops to express personal opinions to members of Congress without fear of retaliation, organizers said.
"As a patriotic American proud to serve the nation in uniform, I respectfully urge my political leaders in Congress to support the prompt withdrawal of all American military forces and bases from Iraq," states the appeal posted on the campaign's Web site at www.appealforredress.org.
"Staying in Iraq will not work and is not worth the price. It is time for U.S. troops to come home," it adds.
The Web site allows service members to sign the appeal that will be presented to members of Congress. Organizers said the number of signatories has climbed from 65 to 219 since the appeal was posted a few days ago and Wednesday when it was publicly launched. There are 140,000 U.S. troops in Iraq.
Active duty service members are restricted in expressing personal views publicly. But rules governed by the Military Whistleblower Protection Act give them the right to speak to a member of Congress respectfully while off-duty and out of uniform, making clear they do not speak for the military.
In a conference call with reporters, a sailor, a Marine and a soldier who had served in the Iraq operation said American troops there have increasingly had difficulty seeing the purpose of lengthy and repeated tours of duty since the fall of Saddam Hussein.
Their misgivings have intensified this year as the country has edged toward civil war, they said.
"The real grievances are: Why are we in Iraq if the weapons of mass destruction are not found, if the links to al Qaeda are not substantiated," said Marine Sgt. Liam Madden of Rockingham, Vermont, who was in Iraq from September 2004 to February 2005 and is based at Quantico, Virginia.
"The occupation is perpetuating more violence," he said. "It's costing way too many Iraqi civilian and American service member lives while it brings us no benefit."
The campaign's sponsoring committee includes the activist groups Iraq Veterans Against the War, Veterans for Peace and Military Families Speak Out.
Navy Seaman Jonathan Hutto of Atlanta, stationed at Norfolk, Virginia and the first service member to join the campaign, said a similar appeal during the Vietnam War drew support from over 250,000 active duty service members in the early 1970s.
This is their appeal from their website:
Many active duty, reserve, and guard service members are concerned about the war in Iraq and support the withdrawal of U.S. troops. The Appeal for Redress provides a way in which individual service members can appeal to their Congressional Representative and US Senators to urge an end to the U.S. military occupation. The Appeal messages will be delivered to members of Congress at the time of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Day in January 2007.
The wording of the Appeal for Redress is short and simple. It is patriotic and respectful in tone.
As a patriotic American proud to serve the nation in uniform, I respectfully urge my political leaders in Congress to support the prompt withdrawal of all American military forces and bases from Iraq . Staying in Iraq will not work and is not worth the price. It is time for U.S. troops to come home.
Patriotic soldiers proud to wear the uniform DO NOT lend their name to this type of B.S. Do not be fooled.
Sponsoring Organizations
Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) is a group of veterans who have served since September 11, 2001 including Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom. We are committed to saving lives and ending the violence in Iraq by an immediate withdrawal of all occupying forces. We also believe that the governments that sponsored these wars are indebted to the men and women who were forced to fight them and must give their Soldiers, Marines, Sailors, and Airmen the benefits that are owed to them upon their return home.
Military Families Speak Out is an Organization of people opposed to the war in Iraq who have relatives or loved ones in the military. Formed by two families in November of 2002, we have contacts with military families throughout the United States and in other countries around the world. Our membership currently includes over 3,000 military families, with new families joining daily.
Veterans For Peace is a national organization founded in 1985 that includes men and women veterans from World War II , Korea , Vietnam , the Gulf War, other conflicts and peacetime veterans. Our collective experience tells us wars are easy to start and hard to stop and that those hurt are often the innocent. Thus, other means of problem solving are necessary.
Veterans for Peace has a national office in Saint Louis , MO and members across the country organized in chapters or as at-large members.
UPDATE 10/29/2006:
Blogs for Bush is running the following:
A Phony Appeal for RedressWe had our doubts about the "Appeal for Redress" as soon as it came up - it just stood so clearly athwart military voting patterns and re-enlistment rates. Certainly there are veterans of the War on Terrorism who think it has gone wrong, isn't being done correctly or what have you. Soldiers, like all groups of people, have a wide variety of opinions about things. It wasn't the possibility or anti-war soldiers which put us off, but the timing of this effort: less than two weeks before a midterm when Democrats and the left are ever more clearly running on an anti-war platform. Just too convenient for leftwing purposes. Well, now we know who is behind it all - and it is the usual leftwing suspects - from the New York Sun via Greyhawk:
Yesterday, a company that does public relations for the liberal activist political action committee MoveOn.org, Fenton Communications, organized a conference call for reporters and three active-duty soldiers to unveil the soldiers' anti-war group Appeal for Redress.
<...>
A staff member at Fenton Communications who requested anonymity said his company was approached last week by a longtime peace activist and former director of the anti-nuclear proliferation front known as SANE/Freeze, David Cortright, to publicize Appeal for Redress. Mr. Cortright is now president of an Indiana-based nonprofit group, the Fourth Freedom Forum, and his biography on the organization's Web site says he helped raise "more than $300,000 for the Win Without War coalition to avert a preemptive attack on Iraq in 2002–03."
SANE is rather old in the so-called "anti-war" movement - getting its start during the Eisenhower Administration when it fronted for the USSR in its attempts to disarm the United States of nuclear weapons. The "Freeze" part of it all comes from the 1980's when the USSR created front groups in the US to try and stop Reagan's military buildup which eventually bankrupted the Soviet Union. What we've got here is a group which has half a century of anti-American agitation behind it; this bogus appeal for redress is just the latest in a long line of attempts to destroy the United States.
It is too bad that a few soldiers have been hoodwinked by these leftwing cretins - it is a shame they are dishonoring themselves by associating with people who seek the defeat of the United States, but it is to be hoped that as time goes on their eyes will be opened to the sort of people they've fallen in with.
HAT TIP: Dean's World
Sweetness and Light asks: "How come this interesting fact about George Soros' latest efforts to undermine our war effort has to come to us from an Australian news outlet?"
Are you saying that Kerry was a draftee or that we should have "stayed the course" is Vietnam? Have your read "In Retrospect"?
Posted by: Pete | 26 October 2006 at 04:35 PM