Ding dongs.............n Taco SAUCE

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jimboloco
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Post by jimboloco » November 26th, 2007, 10:25 pm

yes i have that one
one snippet where they were slogging around in a shit field
in the rain
boredom and the absurdity of being there

another one where they killed a vc courier
found that he was a math student at saigon u\
his photograph with his girl in a locket around his neck
killed him for what?

here is my woman heroine
debra k


My op-ed made the The Tampa Tribune today. This is the online version - it does not include the supporting photos used in the paper edition, which was in the front section (NATION/WORLD) , page 11. Photos were of soldiers in desert battle fatigues using laptops in a field command post-type operation in a tent. They wrote the headline.

Peace!

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TBO > News > Opinion > Commentary



Technology Trumps Media, Military Censorship
The Tampa Tribune

Published: November 26, 2007

Dade City's Les Rayburn says there is "one reason and one reason only" there will never be another draft ("It's Not Going to Happen," Letters, Oct. 29).

His one reason is that it will never be politically correct to draft women and it wouldn't be fair to only draft men.

I agree with Rayburn - there is only one reason that a military draft will never again materialize in this country, but it has nothing to do with forcing women to serve. Men and women who were in the armed services during the Vietnam War and Americans smart enough to have studied Vietnam postwar lessons know exactly what that reason is: technology.

An enormous sense of betrayal falls upon both male and female military members who enlist during wartime to fight for America's "freedom," only to have their eyes opened to the realities of the conflict once they arrive in the area of operations. Most of us who volunteer, however, accept our fate and carry on. Conscripted warriors are a different story altogether.

As history has shown us, betrayed warriors will use whatever technology they can get their hands on to keep others from experiencing that same betrayal. In Vietnam, the anger of conscripted soldiers forced to serve in a war they and their families were opposed to was channeled into the publication of more than 100 underground antiwar military newspapers that became collectively known as "the G.I. Press." The earliest underground newspapers were handwritten from foxholes and bunkers and distributed from soldier to soldier at great risk.

By the time I enlisted in 1972 at the height of the Cambodian bombing raids, photographers, artists and radio operators were adding resources to the antiwar communications network. In Thailand we listened to the "Cowpie Net," only it was called by a more colorful name that would not be allowed in this newspaper. It was broadcast on field radios by soldiers operating in fighting conditions, then recorded and transported across the theater on reel-to-reel tapes delivered by war-weary aircrews flying from base to base.

We also used the Dept. of Defense's Military Affiliate Radio System available at most installations in Southeast Asia, to call our families. This system relied on a network of volunteer amateur radio operators that provided phone patches across the globe to eventually connect us to our family's home phones.

During my assignment in 1991 at U.S. CENTCOM's rear headquarters right here at MacDill AFB during Operation Desert Storm, we discovered that members of a National Guard unit deployed to Kuwait were rewiring mobile car phones they found in civilian vehicles partially destroyed by U.S. airstrikes, and they were using them to call their families in the United States to beg them to contact their congressional representatives for help in getting out of there.

Their unit had been left there without enough rations atop an abandoned rendering plant reeking of animal carcasses. The rest of the troops in that region had already been redeployed. Many were sick from breathing the smoke of the nearby burning oil wells.

In recent times the Operation Iraqi Freedom Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal was exposed by a young soldier with a cell phone camera.

Today's warriors have been keyboarding since childhood. Now just imagine what conscripted soldiers could do with laptops, Blackberries and iPhones!

Lots of Vietnam veterans wish we could return to a military draft because we know that the truth about what really happens in war zones is distributed and broadcast by angry conscripted soldiers unafraid of being kicked out because they did not want to be there in the first place.

This truth trumps military and media censorship, eventually affecting world opinion. This was a deciding factor in ending the Vietnam War.

With today's advanced personal communication technologies available to every young warrior forced to fight, I for one will not hold my breath waiting for a military draft of American citizens of either gender.

Maj. Debra K. Hedding is retired from the U.S. Air Force.




Debra Kay Hedding
"THINK GLOBALLY, ACT LOCALLY"
DebraKay@"Be who you are and say what you feel, because those that matter don't mind... and those that mind don't matter."


[color=darkcyan]i'm on a survival mission
yo ho ho an a bottle of rum om[/color]

Totenkopf

Post by Totenkopf » November 27th, 2007, 6:35 pm

"Levity is the hole of It"

Zipponius IX

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the flaming ace
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Joined: May 1st, 2006, 12:02 pm
Location: san pedro, playa de nada

Post by the flaming ace » November 30th, 2007, 9:16 am

i'll survive this
never mind the sludge in my brain
it's going dowwwwnnnnn! :!:
[b][color=darkgreen]one more for th road[/color][/b] :mrgreen:

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