Winter Patriot Community Blog

...especially when you offer these kinds of What? Huh? Hey wait a minute! moments --

I'm not a writer. I'm just doing what we would normally call writing. And you're not a reader. You're just doing what we would normally call reading. Really. No exaggerations. It's all highly specialized.

and of course the concluding remarks about it all being theater, the pretense of adversarial relations between Donkeys and Elephants... the natural truth, the truth that almost nobody wants to confront.

Hope you're feeling better. Hope the ear has healed. That sounded extremely, immeasurably painful.

Great post WP - you have such a talent for exposing the bullshit and spin.

"American commanders in Afghanistan rely on the commando units to carry out some of the most delicate operations against militant leaders,"

What exactly is delicate about this work? This quote makes it sound like they are doing some kind of brain surgery. Their results seem to indicate it just plain old fashioned blood and guts mass murder.

"The most unpleasant truth in the long run is a far safer travelling companion than the most agreeable falsehood." Emerson

Welcome back WP, great to read your posts again!

Ain't it funny how naive our "high profile" journalists pretend to be : "we lost our innocence then". I guess they quickly got it back so they could lose it again for the next war. Talking about "murdered children and women" and calmly wondering whether this is murder or not is a good indicator for the moral bankrupcy of our times...

Shortly after my mother passed away back in December, my younger brother and his wife held a memorial service for her. I've got 2 olders brothers also. Anyways, for various reasons, I wasn't really in touch with any of them, and as for the oldest one, that was fine by me, but I did miss my other brothers. See, my oldest brother is a member of our military, and has been for quite some time. One strike in my book. But my reasons for not wanting anything to do with him came long before 9/11 and were mainly based on my belief that he had abandoned a child of his, a belief I still hold to this day despite his claiming otherwise after the memorial service. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

When I heard that my older brother was in town to attend the memorial service, I almost considered not going. I had this picture in my head of my oldest brother showing up to the service in full military uniform and I knew that would set me off. But I went anyways. And as we accidentally drove past the site, sure enough, I caught a glimpse of someone standing outside in a military uniform. WTF!?! Here we have our mother who just died, bringing a lot of pain and sorrow to many, and he fucking shows up representing the wonderful killing machine that is our military!? FUCK! FUCK FUCK FUCK!!

So, by the time as turn around and make it into the parking lot, he'd finished his cig and gone inside. Still thought about turning around and going back home, but out of respect for my dad, we went in. There is was, strutting like a peacock in his uniform, and as we walked in he stretched out a hand to shake. "I'm not shaking your fucking hand asshole. You're an idiot showing up in that fucking uniform..." He and my other brothers just laugh it off. Service eventually gets started, and the peacock isn't done strutting his stuff, because he has to get up and say something, acting like he was the closest to my mother when he was the most distant. Of course, he had to read off a card, and had included all the pauses for effect, etc. Service eventually ends, and we're getting ready to leave when my younger brother's wife comes outside and asks if we'll join everyone at a restaurant for food and drink. I wasn't going to go, because as I said before, I hadn't talked to them for some time (since the day of their wedding rehearsal, when my older brother decided he needed to lay his hands on me once more and I decided I better leave because I didn't want to ruin his wedding). I always felt bad for doing that but things could have been much worse. Anyways, we went to the restaurant, and afterwards we were invited to their house for more drinks and social activity.

My oldest brother kept trying to make peace with me, but I kept refusing until I eventually decided to just let it all out. I confronted him about all the bullshit our military has done and continues to do, and he basically just said he'd never killed anyone so wasn't a part of that... LOL. By the time I was done, I was in tears and he could see it meant a lot to me. So, before the night was over, we were talking again, and I told him about WP's site and maybe one or two others, and said if he ever wanted anything to do with me again, to go and read them and then give me his argument. Game him my email and told him I'd like to hear from his soon, to which he promised I would. Needless to say, I haven't heard a damn thing from his and don't really expect to. I suspect that the next time I see him will be at another memorial service, and I swear, if that prick shows up in full uniform again, there's going to be more than words exchanged.

p.s. For those that might remember, I wrote about my mom's situation some time back, but as it turns out, I was completely wrong about the circumstances. Contrary to my original belief, my mother DID have cancer. Whether my Dad is just going senile or whether they just decided not to tell us, I don't know. I would have liked to have known as we would have tried to visit more often and we would have said a proper goodbye. As it was, my younger brother went to see her and gave us a call saying she wasn't expected to last the day, but they'd said this before, so we didn't go see her. I wanted to remember my mother as she was anyways, but I would have gone and said goodbye had I known it was real. My Dad was a short distance away in another medical facility, recovering from his hernia surgery and hadn't been able to visit my mother for a week or so. Apparently though, my mother knew she was dying and asked for my Dad and somehow they arranged to get him over there. According to my brother, she kept telling them to hurry up and get him there and then shortly after he arrived at her side, she passed away. Oh, it was also her youngest son's birthday.

Sorry again for another rambling post. I wish I had just a smidgen of WP's writing talent.

If you're reading Winter, I'd love to hear how you would have countered my Navy brother's statement that he's never killed anyone. What came to my mind was that he needs to take the fucking blinders off and take a look at the 'standards' our govt. uses for tagging people as terrorists or terrorist supporters.