Greetings All:
I guess there is a personal cost to refusing to lose in Iraq. I can tell you without reservation that I met the best of America while I was in Iraq during my two tours. Between our soldiers who rucked up, busted their ass and didn't bitch when the entire political and intellectual establishment was ready to quit, and many civilians who supported us through thick and thin, no matter what
exaggerations the mainstream media reported about how we were violent headcases, inferring our guilt of virtually every war crime imaginable. Well, after winning an "
unwinnable" war, our own Department of Homeland Security had this to say about my soldiers:
(According to Scott Johnson at Power Line Blog)
One of the report's most offensive features (the DHS Report) is its casual defamation of servicemen and veterans:
A prominent civil rights organization reported in 2006 that "large numbers of potentially violent neo-Nazis, skinheads, and other white supremacists are now learning the art of warfare in the [U.S.] armed forces."
The "prominent civil rights organization" is the left-wing Southern Poverty Law Center. But what support is there for SPLC's assertion that there are "large numbers" of "white supremacists" serving in the armed forces--as opposed to, say, a "tiny handful"? The SPLC's full report is entirely anecdotal; the closest thing to data is this:
[Scott] Barfield, who is based at Fort Lewis, said he has identified and submitted evidence on 320 extremists there in the past year.
But even this alleged statistic appears to be false. Barfield was a gang investigator, and what he actually said was: "I have identified 320 soldiers as gang members from April 2002 to present." So we now have the Department of Homeland Security defaming our servicemen on the basis of a press release by a left-wing pressure group that misrepresented the principal empirical support for its claim. Nice.
The Homeland Security report further supports its suspicion of returning veterans by referring to an FBI report released last year:
The FBI noted in a 2008 report on the white supremacist movement that some returning military veterans from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have joined extremist groups.
So, how many are "some"? You can read the FBI report, titled "White Supremacist Recruitment of Military Personnel since 9/11," here. Notwithstanding the deliberate vagueness of the Homeland Security document, the FBI was actually very specific:A review of FBI white supremacist extremist cases from October 2001 to May 2008 identified 203 individuals with confirmed or claimed military service active in the extremist movement at some time during the reporting period. This number is minuscule in comparison with the projected US veteran population of 23,816,000 as of 2 May 2008, or the 1,416,037 active duty military personnel as of 30 April 2008. ...
According to FBI information, an estimated 19 veterans (approximately 9 percent of the 203) have verified or unverified service in the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
There you have it: a whopping 19 actual or alleged veterans of Iraq or Afghanistan have joined the "extremist movement." (The FBI notes that some of these "may have inflated their resumes with fictional military experience to impress others within the movement.") (Courtesy www.powerlineblog.com)For the record, nearly one million Soldiers, Marines, Sailors, Airmen and
Coasties (Inclusive of Reserve and National Guard forces) have served in Iraq, Afghanistan or in adjacent countries. I would like to compare the number of Police, Firemen, Paramedics and other civilian security personnel (including, by the way
DHS members) to the number of suspected extremists who have served in Iraq either on active duty or as members of the Reserve and National Guard. Besides the huge number of civilian law enforcement personnel who did tours as reservists and national guardsmen, I know for a fact that returning service members leaving active duty were heavily recruited by organizations as diverse as the FBI, the
NYPD, Border Patrol, ICE, the CIA, the
Broward County, Florida
Sheriffs Department, the New
Orleans Police Department, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, the Phoenix Police Department, the El
Paso Police Department, The US
Marshall's and the Ohio Highway Patrol. Seems
strange to me that there is such a demand for Disenchanted White Supremacist Veterans among the nation's intelligence and
public safety agencies.
Needless to say, these accusations trouble me. That, with a drug war raging less than four miles from the house Louise grew up in and a little over two miles from the Church I got married in; Drug gangs controlling entire neighborhoods in large cities; an international border you can infiltrate with a semi truck; so-called port security that permits thousands of unmonitored ships and boats access to America's coasts; a home-grown
Jihadist threat among some Muslim immigrants and American-born converts, as well as the environmental wacko movement that torches car dealerships, lumber mills and subdivisions,
DHS worried about US. The American Solder!
Sorry for the Rant, but I needed to get this off my chest. I will not stand by silently while my soldiers, some of the most courageous men and women I have ever met, are slandered by some gutless bureaucrat. If the author of this report had any testicular fortitude whatsoever, he would get off his dead ass and run down the few dozen bad apples out there instead of slandering gun owners and an entire generation of combat veterans. Of course, that would require taking personal risks and getting your hands dirty. Way too much like what members of the Armed Forces do on a daily basis.
Rick
