If you are reading this, thank a Teacher. If you are reading it in English, thank a Soldier
The first is a Marine from 3/5. His name is Corporal Yeager (Chuck Yeager’s grandson). As the Marines cleared an apartment building, they got to the top floor and the point man kicked in the door. As he did so, an enemy grenade and a burst of gunfire came out. The explosion and enemy fire took off the point man’s leg. He was then immediately shot in the arm as he lay in the doorway. Corporal Yeager tossed a grenade in the room and ran into the doorway and into the enemy fire in order to pull his buddy back to cover. As he was dragging the wounded Marine to cover, his own grenade came back through the doorway. Without pausing, he reached down and threw the grenade back through the door while he heaved his buddy to safety.With a full head of steam up he goes back in..
The grenade went off inside the room and Cpl Yeager threw another in. He immediately entered the room following the second explosion. He gunned down three enemy all within three feet of where he stood and then let fly a third grenade as he backed out of the room to complete the evacuation of the wounded Marine. You have to understand that a grenade goes off within 5 seconds of having the pin pulled. Marines usually let them “cook off” for a second or two before tossing them in. Therefore, this entire episode took place in less than 30 seconds.More here
The Sheepdogs Most humans truly are like sheep Wanting nothing more than peace to keep To graze, grow fat and raise their young, Sweet taste of clover on the tongue. Their lives serene upon Life?s farm, They sense no threat nor fear no harm. On verdant meadows, they forage free With naught to fear, with naught to flee. They pay their sheepdogs little heed For there is no threat; there is no need. To the flock, sheepdog?s are mysteries, Roaming watchful round the peripheries. These fang-toothed creatures bark, they roar With the fetid reek of the carnivore, Too like the wolf of legends told, To be amongst our docile fold. Who needs sheepdogs? What good are they? They have no use, not in this day. Lock them away, out of our sight We have no need of their fierce might. But sudden in their midst a beast Has come to kill, has come to feast The wolves attack; they give no warning Upon that calm September morning They slash and kill with frenzied glee Their passive helpless enemy Who had no clue the wolves were there Far roaming from their Eastern lair. Then from the carnage, from the rout, Comes the cry, ?Turn the sheepdogs out!? Thus is our nature but too our plight To keep our dogs on leashes tight And live a life of illusive bliss Hearing not the beast, his growl, his hiss. Until he has us by the throat, We pay no heed; we take no note. Not until he strikes us at our core Will we unleash the Dogs of War Only having felt the wolf pack?s wrath Do we loose the sheepdogs on its path. And the wolves will learn what we?ve shown before; We love our sheep, we Dogs of War.Russ Vaughn 2d Bn, 327th Parachute Infantry Regiment 101st Airborne Division Vietnam 65-66 I enjoyed it and I know a lot of my readers will as well. For me it says it all.
The first inquiry in early 2003 was a whitewash that found members of the 1RAR Delta Company were not racist and only engaged in occasional “jovial banter“and
The inquiry is likely to be run out of Canberra, making it more difficult for middle-ranking officers to protect their matesWhitewash…middle-ranking officers protecting their mates..heavy stuff Luke. Fairly libellous statements. The great thing is of course you are not required to prove anything. You can say what you like and trust that the less than discernering readership that your bylines attract will read the article and accept it as gospel. The photographer takes up the story. He says the image was simply a joke.
“It really and truly is nothing but a storm in a tea cup,” Mr Fraley said. “I have been with the Army taking their photos since Vietnam. I have never, ever, seen any racism.” Mr Fraley said the soldiers had been competing for who could take the best “fun photo”. “That’s all it was, there was no ceremonies, and the whole thing took two to three minutes.“Stupid, yes, ill advised yes – but I’m not sure the blatant racism is proven. Arch (and I know him) may be trying not to rock the boat but I do know he wouldn’t cop blatant racism. In an old piece titled “How I became a journalist: Luke McIlveen explains why he doesn’t concern himself with hard facts.
I’m biased though. Owing to my inability to count and distrust of anything you can’t prove in less than a minute, a career as an actuary or physicist was never really going to be an option.Maybe some wise old hack should have told him he needed to look longer ‘than a minute’ before publishing anti-army beat ups’. Luke goes on about being a copy boy.
It was good fun though – we drank together, wrote anything to get a byline and berated conservative columnists under nom de plumes in the letters pages. At the same time I completed my unfinished Arts degree by correspondence.Nom de plumes…wrote anything to get a byline – wow, I am impressed. Very undergrad – must have made for some great giggling over drinkies. Always the truth…always balanced…always signing your own name to letters to the editor. Honourable Luke and oh so liberal – Not like the soldiers at all. The one unguarded moment of those soldiers lives would have been well and truly balanced by months in East Timor where they risked life and limb to help the East Timorese. Tell me Luke do you have any positive articles about how these same troops, or their mates, helped the natives of Afghanistan, Iraq and a dozen other foreign countries. Have you ever submitted a positive article about the military? You have traded more than a hundred years of honour and service for 5 minutes of unguided, unwise activity. Oh, by the way, correct terminology is Delta Company, 1RAR and it’s not a regiment, it is a battalion of a regiment. I take the care to research correct nomenclature only to find professional journalists don’t. Luke, it’s like saying Mail News Courier Paper – ask someone or can’t you even bring yourself to talk to a soldier. Update: Similarly moved friend and fellow ex 1RAR officer Kel puts pen to paper to the editor and includes it in comments. Update II: The Road to Surfdom has an article covering this same point. Of course, Tim’s perspective is different from mine but the comment thread has some good thoughts.
At first, Palestinian police and soldiers fired off entire magazines in an attempt to keep the mourners from enveloping the helicopters. Then they seemed to do it for the celebratory effect.Totally lacking in any form of discipline others join in the decidedly dangerous practice.
Masked gunmen joined in the manic gunfire which only ceased two hours later.
Palestinian officials later said that nine people were wounded, one critically, from the gunfire. Hundreds more were treated for various injuries, including falling off walls, trampling, and dehydration ? aggravated by a blazing sun and the widely-observed Ramadan fast.Nine people wounded! Hundreds injured! Masked gunmen! At a funeral, for God’s sake Remember the pomp and ceremony of Churchill’s funeral; The heart felt sadness and that little boy saluting his father at Kennedy’s funeral; the reverence of Menzie’s departure and then witness the stampede of primeval adulators and idolaters of the murdering thug Arafat at his final circus. These people have a very long way to go to statehood.
Victorian MP David Hawker today promised to be firm but fair after winning the coveted job of Speaker of the House of Representatives ahead of former minister Bronwyn Bishop.Well he would, wouldn’t he?
The wheat farmer and grazier from rural Victoria beat Mrs Bishop 42 votes to 32 for the $200,000-a-year job of maintaining order in the lower house.David Hawker has a personal website here and his government website is here
His personal fortune has been estimated at between $2 and $3 billion, most of it in Swiss bank accounts. He would have been worth a lot more were it not for the hard times in exile from 1982 until 1993, when Arafat was worth up to $5 billion, mostly through drug trafficking in Lebanon.I Googled arafat+stolen money and got 95,000 hits. Must be something in the theory. Can you imagine, for a moment, Howard or Bush being accused of slipping two to three billion dollars of their nations riches into private swiss bank accounts! There would be battalions of pro-bono lawyers struggling to pick up the chase. MSM would go beserk, The ABC would even replace The Bill and SBS a soccer match with talking heads screaming for blood. A nainstream terrorist does it and Annan Koffee sends a sympathy card, and at one stage, where his stolen wealth was about 5 billion dollars, he even received the Nobel Peace prize. Jesus! JEFF JACOBY in the Boston Times writes a piece called Arafat the monster and gets straight to the point
In a better world, the PLO chief would have met his end on a gallows, hanged for mass murder much as the Nazi chiefs were hanged at Nuremberg. In a better world, the French president would not have paid a visit to the bedside of such a monster. In a better world, George Bush would not have said, on hearing the first reports that Arafat had died, “God bless his soul.”God bless his bloody soul!…
God bless his soul? What a grotesque idea! Bless the soul of the man who brought modern terrorism to the world? Who sent his agents to slaughter athletes at the Olympics, blow airliners out of the sky, bomb schools and pizzerias, machine-gun passengers in airline terminals? Who lied, cheated, and stole without compunction? Who inculcated the vilest culture of Jew-hatred since the Third Reich? Human beings might stoop to bless a creature so evil — as indeed Arafat was blessed, with money, deference, even a Nobel Prize — but God, I am quite sure, will damn him for eternity.Reuters, with Agence France-Presse quotes French President Jacques Chirac:
“With him disappears a man of courage and conviction who for 40 years embodied the Palestinians’ struggle for recognition of their national rights.”Can’t any world leaders say – We are glad the murdering swine is dead? It’s too early to tell whether his demise will herald in a more civilized PLO leader but I hope so. If they managed to get some of his stolen blood money back they might be able to help their own people with schools and decent medical services. Nah – more semtex, assault rifles and RPGs would be the PLOs answer. Update: This obituary in the Times Online is worth reading
….the “no school, no pool” system to reward school attendance by stopping children from visiting the community swimming pool if they do not attend classes.The rewards system includes a DVD player for the community to run movie nights for children who attend school, and a pool of bikes to be ridden by children in the afternoons after they have attended school Predictably Aboriginal leader Pat Dodson angrily condemns the plan thus headlining one of the major problems Australia has with fixing the indigenous problems.
“This is not mutual obligation — nothing like it,” he said. “It’s fascism gone mad. It’s crazy stuff. Two hundred years of enlightenment and this is the best they’ve been able to deliver.Any plan that even hints of paternalism is labeled fascism. You?re no help Pat. Always critical but never, ever suggesting an alternative plan for debate. I don’t know all the answers but I do know a plan, an idea, always beats just more of the same. Community members can scream fascism all they want but that only amounts to doing nothing and obviously something has to be done. Pat goes on to say
… the plan had all the hallmarks of a government short on ideas. Having rejected the big picture — constitutional change, a treaty, land rights and reconciliation — and having questioned the validity of the stolen generations and minimalised native title, the Howard Government now planned to use welfare payments as a weapon for change.Dead right, Pat. Constitutional change, treaties, land rights and reconciliation, stolen generations and native title are not answers to real life problems. Cool over coffee in Military Road, Cremorne but meaningless in remote communities. Sober up and get your kids off to school is a good first step to racial pride and a long way ahead of whatever constitutional change your looking for. We have tried grog bans but life isn’t that simple. As I commented in a previous blog, while the locals have the cash they will buy grog. If the town is dry, they will consume it on the outskirts. ATSIC regional commissioner Michael White, who was invited on to the Government’s new indigenous advisory council, questioned why Aboriginal people should be the “only ones forced to do this.”
“It sounds like blackmail to say that if you’re not a good enough mum or dad, you won’t receive any payments and won’t be able to feed your kids.”You may have a point Michael, but making it doesn’t help your people. Plenty of white families have similar problems but that isn’t your worry. You either accept the plan man, or come up with a better one. You’re there to help the blacks, not to cry – ‘but they do it, why can’t we?’ Smart-card push to ensure payments not wasted headlines another suggested solution. Dole money to be accessed through smart cards that have implanted father chips saying no, you cannot buy grog – try buying food, school clothes for your kids or pay your electricity bill. While accepting Aboriginal communities did have problems with children’s school attendance rates and alcohol abuse, Mr Yeatman and fellow councilors at Yarrabah, south of Cairns, felt the proposed welfare reforms would do little to get people working. Councilor Josephine Murgha said the reforms were yet another example of the Howard Government pushing policies on Aboriginal communities without consulting them. Wrong, The moves were first laid on the table by Aboriginal leaders
Since Mr Quartermaine raised their potential benefit for child protection, Tasmanian ATSIC commissioner Rodney Dillon, Australia’s first indigenous woman MP Carol Martin, child health expert and former Australian of the Year Fiona Stanley, and Cape York lawyer Noel Pearson have backed smart cards as an option worth exploring.She goes on to say
“We would rather sit down with Yarrabah people and develop strategies and ways to deal with kids who are not attending school,”Councilor Murgha, the problem has existed for a long time now. ATSIC have had the chair and the chance for years and haven’t improved on the situation. Bad plan too date, let’s try another one.
If we build a school or clinic, they destroy it. They would rather deny medical care or education for the children of the citizens who live nearby than to have any symbol of the West in general and America specifically among them. It is hard to comprehend. Frankly, we are done trying. For eight months, we have been on our chain.The chain has been let loose. Go for it guys.
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