ORA Update
May 13, 2008
Hello Eagles!
Operation Recruiter Appreciation is in full swing and WE are well on our way to a great success! A couple of things to remember for your follow-up reports. Please remember to send me the following information after your last visit: your name; your city and state; the number of stations you visited. (If several branches are represented at one location, please count the number of branches NOT the number of locations. For example, if AF and Marines are at one location then the number is 2); What happened! TELL US THE STORY OF THE VISIT!!! (What was the reaction of the Recruiters? How did you feel about your visit? What you would do the same or differently?); and send pictures of your visit. Also, be certain to send a follow up report to your state coordinator (if you have one).
I am eager to hear all about the visits and I know all your fellow EAGLES will feel the same way.
EAGLES UP!
Mary-Sheba Graves
2008 ORA Coordinator
Fort Worth, Texas
A Hero Who Now Belongs to the Nation
May 13, 2008
In a driving downpour, with wind gusts up to 60 mph, 8 motorcycles, 65 private vehicles and a 54 passenger bus departed suburban Pennsylvania to transit a true American hero home to Arlington . Cpl. Michael J. Crescenz, Medal of Honor recipient, was escorted by three hundred of us. There were a couple minor glitches. Two members of the Leathernecks Motorcycle Club went down at 50 mph, but were only banged up and bruised. One of them even got back on the bike and finished the ride. At another point 5 vehicles and the bus were separated from the pack by inconsiderate drivers who cut in on the funeral procession. Everyone made it to the grave site in time though.
The Old Guard did their normal stellar job and Mike now belongs to the entire nation, as is fitting. Kudos to the PA and MD State Troopers and the Special Events section for DC Metro. They did an above average job of shepherding a truly unwieldy convoy across bust highways in the most inclement of weather. I was afforded the honor of safe guarding Mike’s Medal of Honor all day. I literally carried it on my shoulder in a leather bag for about six hours. Just having it in my possession made me feel like… well, I’m not sure I can fully explain what it felt like, but you get the idea. It was, without a doubt, the highest honor I have ever been afforded.
Finally, in a day replete with awesome experiences, special praise must go out to Inspector Tony Boyle of the Philadelphia Police Department. He rode a Philadelphia Highway Patrol bike with a Medal of Honor guidon flying. He rode directly in front of the hearse through all manner of bad weather and unruly drivers, even functioning as an extra road guard when the need arose. Tony is a Vietnam vet who told me a couple weeks ago that nothing would stop him from helping to take Mike home. He is a man of his word and I personally wish to offer him my thanks. As the rain poured down on us just seeing the lights flashing on that bike, with the guidon flapping in the wind, caused my chest to pound with excitement. Mike belongs to the nation as a whole now, as is fitting. Sleep well brother. You are finally home. Manchu.
Chris Hill
A Father Keeps the Faith
May 13, 2008
PFC Byron W. Fouty, 19, of Waterford, Michigan and Spc. Alex R. Jimenez, 25, of Lawrence, Massachusetts both of the 10th Mountain Division have been listed as POW/MIA since their patrol was ambushed on 12 May, 2007. In Michigan, Byron’s stepdad has refused to accept anything but that Byron and Alex will one day come home. I have spoken to him on numerous occasions. He is a salt of the earth type. To honor and remember these men a Ride and Rally will be held 17 May, 2008. We can only keep the faith that we will, eventually, get to welcome these brave warriors home. Brothers Byron and Alex, you are not forgotten. Manchu.
Chris Hill
National Director of Operations
Gathering of Eagles Read more
Operation Jersey Cares
May 12, 2008
Check out this project! The man running this is Bob Yuzuik A good percentage of these shipments go to overseas hospitals for our wounded. Last year they collected and shipped 13 tons!
There are 10 retired or former veterans doing all the work. Most are Vietnam era guys. They collect donations outside storefronts and purchase the required items. Then they pack it all up and ship it to DoD distribution points in the combat AOs. Ten days ago they sent out 250 plus of these 30 lbs care boxes. BW provided cash for the shipping costs and will probably do so again.
Definetely worth a look!
http://www.operationjerseycares.org/
America’s Favorite Mom
May 12, 2008
Pasadena, CA 91104
(615) 676-0239
For Immediate Release-
SOLDIERS’ ANGELS FOUNDER WINS!
Patti Patton-Bader Named “America’s Favorite Mom”
May 11, 2008, PASADENA, CA –Soldiers’ Angels founder Patti Patton-Bader was named “America’s Favorite Mom” in a primetime television show Sunday night on NBC. Sponsored by Teleflora and hosted by Donny and Marie Osmond, the show highlighted fifteen outstanding mothers who had distinguished themselves in categories ranging from Working Moms to Military Moms and “Non-Mom” Moms. Read more
Taking Our Brother Home
May 10, 2008
Eagles!
Chris Hill, our National Director, has been coordinating this from the git-go, and I asked him to write up a synopsis of the mission and how it has developed. It is a fine example of what Eagles do, and I want to say, “Well done!” to Chris for his initiative and personal involvement in this event.
It was due solely to Chris’ persistence that the Maryland Transit Authority waived the tolls for the procession and for which GOE thanks the MTA. Again, good work, Chris.
Any Eagles and friends who desire to attend the interment are encouraged to do so.
Larry Bailey Read more
USCG GRADUATION Congratulations Class of 2008!
May 8, 2008
IVAW “Presents” to Congress??
May 7, 2008
An Artist Who Gets It
May 7, 2008
Recently, GOE’s Chairman, Captain Larry Bailey USN SEAL Ret, was in an airport when he happened upon a work of art made from clay consisting of desert boots, goggles and helmet arranged as if quickly removed by the soldier. We have all come to expect some anti-American message from such items. How wonderful then that this was not the case.
The artist, L. Heather McMahan, created the statue “Welcome Home” to honor the service of all those who have worn the uniform. Heather originally paid the airport to display the statue. That’s how much she wanted it known that there is support for our brave men and women in uniform. The statue will be donated to the 4th ID at Ft. Hood so that those who inspired it may see it, and consider it their own.
I have emailed back and forth with Heather, and have visited her site. The statue is nearly as powerful in that venue as the CO tells me it was in person. I suggest all of you visit her site at www.artforsoldiers.org and leave her a note of thanks. Bless you Heather for recognizing that all veterans want is for our country to love us as much as we love it. Manchu.
Operation Recruiter Appreciation Update
May 6, 2008
“The Sedition Report”
May 2, 2008
Dear Pro-Troop Supporters:
I have some great news to share with you!! Please also pass along this information to others who will appreciate the good news.
As you know there has sadly been an increasing campaign of violence against military recruiting centers across the nation - conducted by anti-military radicals (who are erroneously referred to as “peace activists” by a sympathetic media). We at Move America Forward researched the vast array of these incidents and compiled them together in “The Sedition Report” which we provided to members of Congress and law enforcement.
Today Move America Forward’s legal team received an official response from the U.S. Department of Justice criminal division:
“This is in response to your letter to the Criminal Division dated April 3, 2008. on behalf of your client, Move America Forward, Inc., recounting a number of incidences of vandalism and other activities at military recruiting stations.”
Much to our delight, the letter went on to say that they had agreed to direct our formal request for an investigation (and appropriate prosecutions based on the results of those investigations), “to Federal Bureau of Investigation headquarters for review and appropriate action.”
We at Move America Forward will keep pressing forward on this issue. We will not allow our troops to come under attack here on home soil from those who express a seething white hatred towards our military men and women.
Over the past several weeks thousands of patriotic Americans provided the financial support that has paid for our legal team to press forward with these efforts. You and other patriots also paid for a television commercial that documented these attacks that has already aired across the nation.
Thank you all so much for your continued support of our troops and helping us at Move America Forward to make great progress in our pro-troop efforts.
Fondly,
Melanie Morgan
Chairman, Move America Forward
www.MoveAmericaForward.org
The Killing Fields
May 2, 2008
Democrats and the Killing Fields
By ARTHUR HERMAN
May 1, 2008; Page A17
Most people have never heard of Operation Frequent Wind, which ended on April 30, 1975, 33 years ago. But every American has seen pictures of it: the Marine helicopters evacuating the last U.S. personnel from the embassy in Saigon, hours before communist tanks rolled into the city. Thousands of desperate Vietnamese gathered at the embassy gate and begged to be taken with them. Others committed suicide.
Those scenes are a chilling reminder of what happens when a great power decides to cut and run. Two of the three presidential candidates are proposing to do just that in Iraq. We need to remember what happened the last time we gave up on an unpopular foreign policy, not only in humanitarian terms but in terms of American power and prestige.
Actually, the U.S. had won the war in Vietnam on the battlefield, just as the surge has done today in Iraq. Over Easter 1972, South Vietnamese forces, backed by U.S. airpower, crushed the last communist offensive, killing nearly 100,000 North Vietnamese troops.
The North was forced to sign peace accords in Paris recognizing the Republic of South Vietnam. The last 2,500 U.S. support troops went home. What they left was a fragile but sustainable peace, and an elected government in Saigon that was growing stronger every month.
But with 160,000 North Vietnamese soldiers still in South Vietnam, keeping the South free was going to require continued U.S. help, especially air support and military equipment if the North ever attacked again.
Democrats and American public opinion, however, had had enough. Much like Iraq today, the vast majority of South Vietnam had been pacified. Its government was taking on difficult but essential political changes, including land reform. The Democratic-controlled Congress, however, did not want to hear about success. They assumed failure in Vietnam would complete their rout of the hated Richard Nixon, who was already out of office thanks to Watergate, and position them for victory in the 1976 presidential election.
Meanwhile, the American public had been conditioned by the media to see Vietnam as a failed policy, and taught that America had gotten itself in the middle of a “civil war” which the Vietnamese had to sort out themselves. Once the last American troops left Vietnam, public opinion would never tolerate re-entry into a war widely seen as a blunder and endless quagmire.
In early 1975 the communists launched a massive attack. President Gerald Ford asked for $1 billion in supplemental funds to help the South Vietnamese, and Congress refused. They had already pulled the plug on the U.S.-supported government of Lon Nol in Cambodia. Ford had no choice but to order the evacuation of remaining U.S. personnel.
After nearly two decades of devastating war and 58,000 American combat deaths, the U.S. left Southeast Asia. As the last helicopter lifted off from Saigon, the New York Times’s Sydney Schanberg wrote an article with the title, “Indochina Without Americans: For Most, a Better Life.” And the Times’s columnist Anthony Lewis asked, “what future could possibly be more terrible than the reality” of a war that had cost so much in lives and treasure?
With the North Vietnamese Communists and the Khmer Rouge taking over, the world was about to find out.
At least 65,000 Vietnamese were murdered or shot after “liberation” – the equivalent in terms of Vietnam’s population at the time, of killing three-quarters of a million people in today’s U.S. The new communist regime ordered somewhere between one- third to one-half of South Vietnam’s population to pass through its “re-education” camps, where perhaps as many as 250,000 died of disease, starvation, or were worked to death (the last inmates were not released until 1986).
That number does not include the thousands of “boat people” who tried to flee the totalitarian nightmare of communist Vietnam, and perished at sea.
Cambodia’s fate was even worse. At least one and a half million innocent Cambodians were butchered or starved to death in the Khmer Rouge’s killing fields and re-education camps, put to death by a fanatical regime that believed that anyone who wore eyeglasses must have “bourgeois intellectual tendencies” and be shot.
The scale of moral collapse and suffering went beyond Indochina. The pullout had a ripple effect on U.S. power and prestige, just as the proponents of the so-called “domino theory” had warned. American foreign policy, crippled by remorse and self-doubt, stood helplessly as others rushed into the power vacuum.
Marxist-Leninist regimes emerged not only in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos, but in Ethiopia and Guinea Bissau (1974), Madagascar, Cape Verde, Mozambique, and Angola (1975), Afghanistan (1978), and Grenada and Nicaragua (1979). Soviet troops were welcomed in Fidel Castro’s Cuba for the first time since the 1962 missile crisis. Cuban troops traveled freely to Africa to prop up Marxist regimes there.
In 1979 the Ayatollah Khomeini was able to establish his brutal theocratic rule over Iran, confident that America, having learned “the lessons of Vietnam,” would never intervene.
The judgment of history, as Raymond Aron once remarked, is without pity. History will judge how America and its leaders handle global responsibility in Iraq and the Middle East in the next decade.
As Winston Churchill said of the appeasement of Hitler at Munich, in 1975 Americans were “weighed in the balance and found wanting.” We have a responsibility to the Iraqis – and to the memory of those we left behind – not to let that happen again.
Mr. Herman is the author, most recently, of “Gandhi and Churchill: The Epic Rivalry That Destroyed An Empire and Forged Our Age,” just published by Bantam.
THE VALUE OF MILITARY ANALYSTS
May 2, 2008
From: jcash1
To:
Subject: Emailing: THE VALUE OF MILITARY ANALYSTS
Date: Mon, 28 Apr 2008 20:34:20 -0600
My friends, the New York Times and Ike Skelton (D-Mo) have stepped over the line on this one. I refer to the irrational attack from the Times and supported on the floor of the House by Skelton on our retired Military Analysts. I know many of these men, and they are the most professional patriots in the country today.
Yes, there are a few Wesley Clarks out there, but an eel is slippery, and a few slip through.
Attached is my answer to this far-left attack, and several other retired military have written the Times. I ask that you forward this to as many as you can to include Congress and talk show hosts. The story from the Times has gotten legs, and it definitely needs to be rebutted.
Thank you,
Jim Cash
THE VALUE OF MILITARY ANALYSTS
The most patriotic group of individuals found in this country today has just been assaulted by the New York Times and Representative Ike Skelton (D-Mo). I refer to the recent article in the New York Times concerning Military Analysts attempting to convey what is going on around the world from a military point of view. These men have spent their lives being schooled and living these issues. They are an invaluable source of information to the American public. Modern day issues are so complex that it is impossible to define them in a two minute TV segment, and these analysts normally follow up with articles which give greater depth and understanding. Who in this country is more qualified? Everyone I know is grateful for their efforts to add perspective.
The Pentagon realized long ago that news networks valued input by retired military professionals, so information was provided to these individuals. This effort was never meant to sway their opinion, but to insure they had accurate and current information to convey to the public. How many of you have ever tried to sway the opinion of a retired military member who served 20 or 30 years defending this nation? Try it sometime. I think you might be surprised, and maybe even entertained.
I am personally a good example. Altogether, I served over 35 years combined duty in the Army National Guard, Army Reserve and on US Air Force active duty (29 years active duty). I learned early how lucky I was to be born in this country. I have never taken for granted the freedoms we have, nor the price we have paid for them.
When I retired from the US Air Force, I vowed to come back to Montana to fish, fly airplanes, ride motorcycles, and enjoy life as long as health permitted. I had no desire to become part of the Military Industrial Complex (whatever that is), nor to make money based on any ill-conceived plan that could remotely hurt this great nation in any way, as alluded to by master distorters from the New York Times.
I have never taken one penny for my writings, appearing on talk shows, speaking locally or otherwise. I have not been on an Air Force Base in over 10 years, and avoided the Pentagon like the plague, even while on active duty. Also, I initially vowed to remain very quiet, and worked hard not to influence local opinion. It is the American way to let the people decide on issues, based on their own merit.
About two years ago, this attitude changed. I began to see the local, Socialist-Leaning, Far-Left types in our beautiful valley begin to dominate our local newspaper. You know who they are. They write almost daily, and are basically country hating, military hating, Bush hating, haters. Many of you read my articles, and write telling me that you refuse to read their stuff as soon as you see their names.
I woke up one morning and decided that someone had to at least attempt to set the record straight. The far-left diatribes were hurting the country and our state, especially when the country is being threatened to the degree it is today. I wrote an article, and it received such a positive response it was overwhelming to me. The people wanted to hear the truth, so I wrote another. FOLKS, THE PENTAGON HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH MY DECISION TO SUPPORT WHAT IS RIGHT WITH AMERICA!!!!! I take real offense to the far-left comment, “B/G Jim Cash, whose columns are loaded with dire statistics that only a fool would believe he carries around in his head.” What he means is that the Pentagon is feeding me the statistics, so that I might influence you.
This is criminal in my opinion. These statistics are available from a multitude of different sources, and I simply put them together in, hopefully, an easy to read format. In fact, I do carry most of them in my head, as I was personally influenced negatively every time I served under a Democratic President. In this short article, I cannot convey to you how difficult it was to serve under Jimmy Carter. The Clintons like to tell you how terrible it is that our young men and women are serving 15 month tours in Iraq, when Bill Clinton’s downsizing of our military is the direct cause of those long tours. Retired military, as well as active duty, attempted to deter that massive downsizing, but Clinton was Hell-Bent on capitalizing on the non-existent “Peace Dividend” after the collapse of the old Soviet Union.
My friends, someone has to get the truth out to the American people, and the only group I see doing that right now is our retired Military Analysts. All others are wrapped up in petty squabbling and trying to win elections. Now, the far-left has sunk to the level of attacking the most patriotic group in America, our retired military. That is unforgivable.
On a personal note, I know retired M/G Paul Vallely and LTG Tom McInerney very well, and I am proud to call them friends. I would put my life, and the life blood of this country, in their hands any time. Combined, these two patriots have devoted nearly 70 years to defending this nation. If money had been their aim, they could have easily gone into industry to become CEOs of major companies. To make an insane insinuation (as the Times did) that these two men, acting as puppets for the Pentagon, would distort what is happening during wartime is beneath contempt.
It is my considered opinion that the far-left has reached a new low. We have seen all the far-left radio and TV talk shows fail, or suffer low ratings that are leading to failure. This certainly includes the mainstream media. We have seen a few retired military members like Wesley Clark attempt to curry favor with the far left in an attempt to secure Cabinet level appointments should the Democrats win the Presidency this year. We have also seen the Democratic Party take control of our Congress and fail miserably.
On the other hand, we see the Conservative talk shows grow stronger, due in part to their use of military professionals committed to the welfare of this country. I would guess that well over 90% of retired military members are conservative in nature, and they are not reluctant to speak out. First, we recently saw the Left attempt to pass laws that would force radio talk show hosts to give equal time to the Left, as the left-leaning shows could not make it on their own. That effort failed. Now, the far-left, New York Times has convinced Missouri Democrat and House Armed Services Committee Chairman, Ike Skelton, to attempt to silence retired military members though congressional action.. It is as if he feels they are not worthy of the First Amendment’s right to free speech. Like most Democrats these days, he was foolish enough to bite on this nonsense.
My question to the nation is simply, HOW FAR WILL WE LET THESE FAR-LEFT LOONEY-TUNES go, before we vote them all out of office and stop buying their propaganda. I am in great hope that the good Americans of this country can see through the fog created by the far-left in an attempt to win elections, even though logic and truth are, and never have been, on their side.
Jim Cash
B/G, USAF, Retired (and proud of it)
