WHEN DID ARMISTICE DAY BECOME VETERANS DAY?

I have always wondered with each passing year why returning combat vets don’t pound their fists and scream about getting killed for nothing. As the corruption expands with each passing decade, the soldier suicide rates just rise……and nothing. Never got that, still wonder why.

JTB
You present a false dichotomy as rationalization for your Faustian bargain with the government. You claim to have had only two choices, military or deal drugs. That’s bullshit. The reality of your situation was you had lots of other choices, however difficult and full of unknowns they may have been, you did have other choices. You just saw them as being too difficult and you chose what for you at the time was the easier path that didn’t require any great amount of thought or initiative or real struggle on your part. You just chose to allow the government to do all you’re thinking for you in exchange you just did what you were told.

the truth will set you free…most choose slavery of the mind.

Thanks, Mr. Quinn.

What’s even worse are the TV commercials with the disabled vets. I guess now medicine has progressed to the stage where they just about save anyone with a heart beat. People missing 2 – 3 limbs / half the side of their head – you name it – they are the wounded vets that we will paying for their entire lives.

Billy – do you think there’s a correlation to the suicide rates and the obviousness of the bullshit? I know a guy who went there twice, play men’s hockey with him……pity the lilly white manager playing badass with him in the corners……he’s getting better, calmer, more real – but there were a couple of years where I just wanted to know where he was so I could go the other way.

@ Tommy,

I think it has to do with a couple things…

First would be the age of those entering the military and being sent into some Sandland shithole. No offense, but 17 and 18 year olds are not mentally and emotionally equipped to deal with folks being blasted to pieces or being shot dead. They are not mature enough. You go through enough with the same group of guys, they become family. Seeing one of them cut down fucks you up…

Second would be the operational tempo. The dickheads in charge – the “do more with less” assholes – those guys keep recycling our guys into the same shitholes over and over… I know one guy who has gone through 6 cycles over there… They are not allowing our guys the time to decompress properly and process what they’ve been through…

Third would be our guys just getting kicked to the curb. Did your time? Seeya! Oh, you’re having nightmares? Cold sweats? Jumpy? Agitated, with borderline paranoia? Here, talk to this almost-a-doctor…. I swear, if I had one more person ask me “How I felt about that” one more time….

Each of us has to find that which heals them best… for me, it was moving out into the middle of nowhere and literally cutting myself off from civilization for a few years… just digging in the dirt, planting things, watching things grow, listening to the wind in the trees… watching the seasons cycle..

Talking to some almost-a-doctor for 50 minutes every 4 weeks does Jack Shit…

If I hit the lottery… not some chump 1 million or whatever, but the BIG MONEY – I would buy up a few square miles of back country and establish a peaceful place where guys could come and decompress for free… stay as long as you like, do what you think heals you the most… no damn “How does that make you feel” assholes… just peace… go horseback riding, plant some trees, go fishing, whatever makes you feel human again… and if you want to talk about stuff, we’ll be there when you’re wanting to talk…

I served….myself, like all the rest.

“The putting on of a uniform allows morality to be put off. The cult of the uniform is the national religion. It turns atheists into religionists, Jews into warvangelicals, and Christians into idolaters.”
— Laurence Vance, ‘American national religion, cult of uniform’

I feel bad for a lot of the kids who sign up. Many of them aren’t college material (how much has been posted on TBP about bogus for-profit online colleges, out of control student loan debt, and lack of marketable skills in most of the lib-tard B.A.s people get now?).

Ok, so what’s left? Manufacturing in America has gone to shit (Llpoh is a rarity, and he has stated many times he prefers not to hire Millennials, and especially not the non-bright kind).

You can get a job in the service industry like McShits or Walmart or Starbucks and still have to go on food stamps and Medicaid because you are piss poor.

What other option is there? Government drone. The government is the “best employer out there”. The slimy, clever, corrupt, and evil types of government drone become politicians and beurocrats. If you are a dumb 18 year old kid, who doesn’t have great grades, doesn’t understand geopolitical workings of the military industrial complex, and has some vague football & beer feelings of American patriotism, and then perhaps also have knocked up some girl with a baby on the way… Guess what, you will sign up with the military thinking a lot of things, but the least of which is reality of how we are empire building and how corporations are using our military as a private world police force. Many, many, many join this way completely naive and stupid. Alternately, some are going to college and need ROTC to afford it. They get sucked into the military in a different but similarly naive way. The human brain is not even fully mature until +/- age 25.

I don’t want to thank them for their service, so much as apologize to them for the corrupt clowns in DC and NYC running the show with the American people’s blessing (as expressed by general lack of dissent for the status quo). It’s sad how many young, dumb kids sign up not fully understanding what they are signing up for, I have some empathy for the stupidity and immaturity that is behind so many enlistees motivation for joining.

Hey llpoh,

I agree with one thing – my kids are never going to join the military.

Teachers (and police, fire, library, state government etc jobs are also government union drone jobs).

But let’s face it, even when we had a draft, the rich and elite didn’t serve like the poor and unconnected. It’s no different today, except instead of the draft, the poor and ignorant will sign up because it’s the best job they can get. It’s sad and pathetic.

I’m around now and then lurking and reading, but mostly busy working for $. Someone has pay SS and Medicare taxes to fund the Boomer retirement time bomb… +all the government union drones etc. *sigh*

Would any of you fight if America was attacked like it was at Pearl Harbor?Have you lost all love for country. My grandfather volunteered ,my Father was drafted .I have never been in the military. I would fight for country but Fuck this government .Not sure if you can separate them.

John, do not be such an imbecile. Yes, those young folks carry their share of blame. Stupid is a stupid does. Their parents carry an even bigger share of the blame.

If they are not smart enough at 18 and up to avoid that shit, they get what they get.

Vietnam vets were draftees, by and large. Big difference.

card802 says: Every time I hear “Thank you for your service” I throw up in my mouth.

I will thank you for never using the phrase ‘throw up in my mouth’ again. It means you are too dumb to spew out something your stomach refuses to keep.

SAH- has some vague football & beer feelings of American patriotism. +1000

Nailed it! And that is the extent of American patriotism…take away the herd poison of beer and football and what’s left? The sober reality of a mislead nation on a steep slide past purgatory and straight into a socioeconomic hell ruled by the incompetent and corrupt wherein the price of success is according to ones rank and not merit.

You can trust the Pentragram ,because all US criminals are locked up tight in the largest prison system in the world.

http://dissenter.firedoglake.com/2014/10/13/lost-iraqi-billions-found/

New information from the former Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGAR) Stuart Bowen, reported by perhaps the bravest journalist alive today, James Risen, shows that of the multi-billions of U.S. dollars cash literally shipped on pallets to Iraq in 2003, over one billion was traced into Lebanon (the other billions remain unaccounted for.)

Risen reports that in the first days after the fall of Baghdad and continuing for over a year, American proconsul Paul Bremer, on his own, somehow ordered $12-$14 billion (note the uncertainty factor of two billion dollars, itself a crime) to be sent to Iraq in the airlift, and an additional $5 billion was sent by electronic transfer. Some sources put the total as high as $20 billion.

“We did not know that Bremer was flying in all that cash,” said the head of the Treasury Department team that worked on Iraq’s financial reconstruction after the invasion. “I can’t see a reason for it.”

The cash was literally delivered shrink-wrapped, on pallets, enormous bundles of Benjamins. Exactly what happened to that money after it arrived in Baghdad became one of the many unanswered questions from the chaotic days of the American occupation. We’ll never know.

Except maybe Bowen, who claims to have tracked $1.2 billion to $1.6 billion (note the uncertainty factor of $400,000 dollars) to a bunker in rural Lebanon for safe keeping. An informant said the bunker also may have held $200 million of Iraqi government gold. “I don’t know how the money got to Lebanon,” Bowen said. “Billions of dollars have been taken out of Iraq over the last ten years illegally. In this investigation, we thought we were on the track for some of that lost money. It’s disappointing to me personally that we were unable to close this case, for reasons beyond our control.”

The Bush administration never investigated how that huge amount of money disappeared, even after Bowen’s investigators found out about the bunker. The Obama administration did not pursue that lead, either. Bowen’s team briefed the CIA and the FBI on what they found, but no one took any action. Even the Iraqi government has not tried to retrieve the money, and has kept information about the Lebanese bunker secret. When Bowen and his staff tried to move the search into Lebanon themselves, he met with resistance from the U.S. embassy in Beirut. Bowen himself was not allowed to travel to Lebanon, and two of his investigators who did travel were denied permission from the embassy to see the bunker. Bowen’s staff members instead met with Lebanon’s prosecutor general, who initially agreed to cooperate on an investigation, but later decided against it. In the words of one who has spent perhaps too much time in government, Bowen summed it all up by saying “We struggled to gain timely support from the interagency as we pursued this case.”

Of all the missing money, by 2011 the Pentagon and the Iraqi government claim to have accounted for all but $6 billion of it, as if missing the target by six billion spaces is an OK result. And even that assumes one believes the Pentagon and Iraqi audit.

How did all that money go missing? That, at least, is something we know. U.S. officials claimed in the early days of the war that they didn’t have time or staff to keep strict financial controls. Millions of dollars were stuffed in gunnysacks and hauled on pickups to Iraqi agencies or contractors, officials have testified. House Government Reform Committee investigators charged in 2005 that U.S. officials “used virtually no financial controls to account for these enormous cash withdrawals once they arrived in Iraq, and there is evidence of substantial waste, fraud and abuse in the actual spending and disbursement of the Iraqi funds.” Meanwhile, Pentagon officials contended for years that they could account for the money if given enough time to track down the records.

But repeated attempts to find the documentation, or better yet the cash, were fruitless. An inspector general’s report into the missing money in Iraq painted a picture of Pentagon officials digging through boxes of hard copy records looking for missing paper copies of Excel spreadsheets, monthly reports and other paper documents that should have been kept detailing what the money was spent on and why those expenditures were necessary. Apparently, there are no electronic records to back up the spending. It. Just. Went. Away.

So where did all that money go? Here and there on the web you can find a conspiracy theory or two, but the obvious answer is usually the correct one. There are no doubt Dubai-based bank accounts of current and former Iraqi government officials swollen with cash, perhaps some accounts of American contractors and various U.S. officials as well. As for that bunker in Lebanon, well, your typical third world crew knows that you can only trust banks so far, and everyone needs a stash in case they have to bug out in a hurry and lay low while international terrorists hunt for you. Perhaps following a few more battlefield successes for ISIS inside Iraq?

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Peter Van Buren writes about current events at blog. His book,Ghosts of Tom Joad: A Story of the #99Percent, is available now from Amazon.

Notice ron paul doesnt lay blame at the feet of the vets. He says speak truth to power. My point exactly, but worded better .