Posted October 9, 2002

Brainwash Them Early!

Regarding "J.C. Penney Catalog: GI Joe Commandeers Barbie's Dream House," by Eric Garris:

This one [World Peace Keepers Battle Station] is choice! How about an alternative and more truthful and accurate name like the "For Those About to Die for Oil, We Salute You Battle Station"?

~ William B.

Too Witty for Conservatism?

Regarding "The Lie Machine," by Justin Raimondo:

In this article, Raimondo remains true to form: brilliant, irrefutable, too witty for conservatism and enjoyably readable. I wish he had a spot on the tube. I'd watch. And guess what? Things would change.

~ M. Johnson, Hawaii

Call Congress?

Regarding "Call Congress!," by Justin Raimondo:

If I call Congress, as Mr. Raimondo suggested, should I ask to speak with Bonnie or Clyde? Or Capone or Lansky?

~ Michael Chapman, Alexandria, Virginia

Politicians Aren't Born

We have heard very little since the announced formation of Saddam's "Jerusalem Army" -- an army purportedly comprised of 7,000,000 volunteers. Since this army will not be waiting in the desert, as per Desert Storm, one might expect these soldiers to hunker down in Baghdad, and other cities and towns in Iraq, waiting for American and British boys to arrive for their slaughter.

Thank you for your courageous stands against the attempts of the Fiddle-de-dees, the Democrats, and Fiddle-de-dums, the Democrats-in-a-hurry, who soil Congress. As Cicero once famously said, "Politicians are not born, they are extruded." Some things never change. Maybe the time is near when the Generals should side with "We, the People" and restore the Constitution before it becomes a quaint, forgotten anachronism, and before the cabal of whores and criminals in Washington complete their coup d'etat against the country.

~ Ed M.

Congress Can Do What They Want

Regarding "A Hunger For War Criticism?," by Alan Bock:

Just came across your article of October 1, subject above, in which you spoke of criticism by Lewis Lapham of Harper's magazine.

Alan, I'm older than both of you. I spent the best years of my life fighting and defending this nation of which you speak.

I didn't know until I was middle aged with a wife and three children that this nation would abandon me and my colleagues. First they kept us uninformed, compartmentalized us until there were no two military retirees that were in the same boat, so now we seek to push our own little wagon to no avail. In fact we don't trust each other. ...

In 1957 as a junior master sergeant I wrote a two-page letter to the Army Times, which was redacted and used as "the editorial" in all of the service publications. The SOD had requested of the service publications to find out why career NCOs -- the intermediate grades -- were not staying in the service. ...I witnessed two Reductions in Force (RIFs) following World War II and Korea when they had so goddammed many officers they didn't know what to do with them and I can write a book about them alone -- and privates E1 since they could simply draft enough to fill the lower two or three ranks.

Simultaneously we still had such a huge carry over of master sergeants -- E7s -- from World War II that only a "few" promotions to E7 were being made each month. Hell, we still had World War II E7s running golf courses, NCO clubs, mowing lawns, etc. As an early 1944 draftee combat engineer I made E7 in 1950, and it was the only E7 allocation for the entire Frankfurt Military Post District. There simply wasn't any place for E4, E5 and E6, to go except home. They couldn’t get promoted.

My letter to the Army Times resulted in a commission being held in Alexandria, VA, that fall, and out of it comes the E8 and E9 grades. To get promoted to these grades one had to be in a "combat unit." I think the first allocation was for only 31 E8s and E9s, worldwide, for all of the services. Regardless, in short these promotions were "strictly limited," and, phased in, but that left the door open for the mid-level grades to move up -- a wee bit.

In 1964, at age 41, a high school graduate, no civilian skills, a wife and three children, no pay raise in over five years, I had to call it quits and "get a life."

By staying in the service, at no less than a general's urging (when I had planned on getting out with about 17 years service he said, "Sgt Gray we can't operate a military without men like you. You are serving a grateful and generous nation") I lost all but 27 days of my World War II and Korean GI educational benefits so my wife had to go to work to pay for my college education. (My wife is a World War II veteran of General George S. Patton's Third Army Field Hospital serving in France, Germany and Austria. Before that she was buzz-bombed in merry ole England. ...)

Simultaneously, as I retired in 1964 Congress and the administration changed a 170-year-old law concerning how retirement pay would be factored and paid in the future. I had done my time under the old law. Volumes can be written about this. Suffice to say 430,000 of us got screwed. Of the remaining near 30,000 still living we have witnessed our successor cohorts -- traitors -- drawing upwards of 25% more per month than we do. My wife of over 53 years and I have endured this "discrimination" for over 38 Years.

Medicare did not even exist when I retired. Under the auspices of CHAMPUS, which had it's limitations, I moved my family and business to my childhood area in 1969 only to see the goddamed USofA emasculate this, and then they took it away from me on attaining age 65 when we are longer subject to recall to active duty. So for 32 years my wife and I have paid most or all of our health care, which I suspect is in the range of $150.000.00, which came directly out of our pocket.

I paid into a suit back in the 1960s which went all the way to the Supreme Court concerning the betrayal on pay in which they said in essence, "Congress can do what they want to do with the military." ...

Presently I'm writing a book about Vietnam and its impact on families. My oldest son spent two years and 18 consecutive days there as a combat medic and the U.S. Government destroyed him. We ain't seen him in over 18 years. ...

~ Willard D. Gray

The Internet

Websites like your are making a huge difference. Even as little as five years ago, it would have been difficult to find information about the atrocities being committed by the Western world and their allies under the auspices of 'spreading democracy'. The internet has been a saviour to those who cannot, for moral or practical reasons, take up a gun and fight for what they believe in. It has allowed me, a resident in the UK, to read about the views of Americans or Israelis I have never even met. It has allowed me to make my opinion known to maybe countless thousands with similar concerns around the world. People no longer require detailed knowledge or special skills to find out about what is really going on in the world outside their borders. They must simply want to learn more and have access to a computer.

I hope that you can spread the word faster than they can build their 'smart' bombs!

~ Neil Lowrie, Loughborough, UK

Islam

Christians probably know about as little about Islam as can be known. ... About all we've ever heard has been the very negative and uncomplimentary propaganda by so-called Christians and Christendom and the Western enemies of Islam. Religious wars are very, very sad things. They show how little real religion the people have who are fighting, how little of God some have and how little love....

I think the horrible impression that most people have had of the Arabs stems from the Crusades. That's the attitude of some Christians', so dogmatic in their own mind, the typical fundamentalists, evangelicals. ... They get so right that they even split up into little tiny fractional factions with differences of opinion, because they've got to be so hard and fast and every little tiny doctrine has got to be exactly perfect and exactly right, so that hardly anyone agrees with anybody else, like Falwell! ...

I believe that Mohammed was a sincere man who was sick and fed up with the corruption, wickedness and idolatry of his day and who had heard the truth about the Bible, about the one true God, and about Jesus. He came back wanting to proclaim this truth to his people. After all, it's one of the world's greatest religions, widespread amongst hundreds of millions of Arabs and others throughout the world....

It is amazing how little we know about them, and it shows you the effectiveness of the Anti-Arab propaganda -- and the very unChristian Christians who hated them for selfish and political as well as religious reasons. ...

~ Ted Rudow III, MA, Menlo Park, California

Editor's note:

Backtalk editor Sam Koritz is profiled in the Real World section of October's Smart Money magazine (print version only, not available online).