Iraq and Afghanistan veterans to return their medals to protest war on terror at Chicago NATO summit

reply to post by DaTroof


Change happens and guess seeing is believing, so once they got a first hand look at the situation for themselves, as saw what was going on, they knew the real deal and what was up...worse than the underground has been reporting, oh so much worse...such a sham...shame on those who still support it

Originally posted by beezzer
They are free to do so.

I just have one wee issue with this.

They are awarded the medals due to individual acts of bravery which illustrate character, not political ideology.

If they believe the war is wrong, then they are free to protest. But by denying their individual actsof heroism, well, it seems dichotomous to me.

The pilots of the Apache that gunned downed the Reuters journalists and the van full of Iraqi children also got medals for their courageous acts, and kept them after the alternative media blew the case wide open a year later. It's more like a token of your service to TPTB.

Originally posted by beezzer
They are free to do so.

I just have one wee issue with this.

They are awarded the medals due to individual acts of bravery which illustrate character, not political ideology.

If they believe the war is wrong, then they are free to protest. But by denying their individual actsof heroism, well, it seems dichotomous to me.

These serving men doesn't believe its wrong, they believe the war on terror was a fraud, and thanks for your support for the war, that you knew it was a lie...

Originally posted by beezzer
They are free to do so.

I just have one wee issue with this.

They are awarded the medals due to individual acts of bravery which illustrate character, not political ideology.

If they believe the war is wrong, then they are free to protest. But by denying their individual actsof heroism, well, it seems dichotomous to me.

Not all military service medals are based on individual bravery or individual effort at all. Many medals are awarded on the basis of your unit, and insofar as you are part of that unit, you rate a certain medal. Military records trace which units you were assigned to as well as any individual awards, like a bronze star or a Naval Achievement Medal, etc, and on the basis of those records, you "rate" to wear certain awards on your dress uniforms.

However you are not required to wear any of them with your uniform, even in active service. Thus even in active service, you are permitted to be selective in which awards you display on your chest with pride. Most military people wear all of them simply because they want to build a "fat stack" of medals for the same reason that narcissistic wives want huge diamond rings when they get married.

When a unit is deployed to Iraq, Afghanistan, etc., it is awarded the Global War on Terror medal or the Global War on Terror Service medal, and anyone assigned to that unit thereby rates that award. I imagine that this is the particular medal that they will be returning, since they are specifically protesting the War on Terror. If it was feasible for me to be in Chicago to return my GWOTS medal, I would also do it because wearing a medal that glorifies my involvement with a despicable war is "dichotomous" to me.

Here is a link to the wiki pages for the medals, so when they do this, you will be able to see if the NATO generals end up with a big pile of these.
en.wikipedia.org...
en.wikipedia.org...

reply to post by Blackmarketeer

If they hate war so much they should have never joined the military in the first place. And if they had a problem after joining the military the should have refused the order to fight. I get tired of military personnel complaining about the war. When you join the military they should expect to have to go to war

Originally posted by beezzer
They are free to do so.

I just have one wee issue with this.

They are awarded the medals due to individual acts of bravery which illustrate character, not political ideology.

If they believe the war is wrong, then they are free to protest. But by denying their individual actsof heroism, well, it seems dichotomous to me.

Not every medal is the Medal of Honor or Distinguish Service Medal. Many are 'awarded' just for being deployed or in theater for a period of time. I'm not discounting individual acts of heroism in any way, but not a few medals & ribbons are handed out like condoms when in port. If you're there, you get one.

Returning the Global War on Terrorism Service Medal Ribbon or the Iraq Campaign Medal Ribbon would be more than likely what these guys are going to do & i think it is perfectly fitting. I applaud them for their act.

Originally posted by beezzer
They are free to do so.

I just have one wee issue with this.

They are awarded the medals due to individual acts of bravery which illustrate character, not political ideology.

If they believe the war is wrong, then they are free to protest. But by denying their individual actsof heroism, well, it seems dichotomous to me.

Killing is always bad, you can't justify it by giving one a glorified piece of metal... When the face of the people you killed in a war that you realized too late wasn't yours keeps coming back to you whenever you shut an eye.

I'm so happy to see our men and women in arms are doing the right thing, and using the rights we were all allotted as citizens of the united states. The only problem is that because of the bill that passed about what they can do as far as locking up and/or detaining indefinitely "anyone who they deem a terrorist," makes me believe that when these vets show they no longer support this global war on terror by turning in there medals, that they must in turn be terrorists.
I hope this gets national attention, all the way to the local newspaper level. I hope men and women of our armed forces will gather in the streets and march for whats really right. Then civilians joining them. We can show them that we stand united, and we stand STRONG.

Give em' hell.

Originally posted by kevinski
If they hate war so much they should have never joined the military in the first place. And if they had a problem after joining the military the should have refused the order to fight. I get tired of military personnel complaining about the war. When you join the military they should expect to have to go to war

Well, they arent complaining about war in general. They are making a statement about a specific type of engagement.

Originally posted by kevinski
If they hate war so much they should have never joined the military in the first place. And if they had a problem after joining the military the should have refused the order to fight. I get tired of military personnel complaining about the war. When you join the military they should expect to have to go to war

What a total blob of nonsense...

The military is not about war, but about the prevention of one ... The reason the rest of the world, like China is building their miltary. Is because of people like Americans. So, that in case such maniacs show up .... they have the means to defend themselves. Who wants a fat pig, who grew up in America, beating women and children, pepper spraying bistanders ... to come into their country. Ask the people of Vietnam how it felt to have them in Mai Lai. It's understandable that the Chinese remember shanghai, and the pinkertons ... and who can blame the Iranians wanting nukes ... if I watched fat pigs raping men in prisons, and saw children being born deformed from their general bad breath ... I'd wanna nuke'em too.



And, don't EVER FORGET ... that you HUNG german soldiers, and starved over a million german soldiers to death after WWII. Merely for having "obeyed" orders. According to Nurnberg trials, it was the DUTY of every soldier to disobey orders they knew were wrong.

AS YOU JUDGE OTHERS, SO SHALL YOU BE JUDGED.

Don't ever forget it ... as the saying goes, what goes around .... comes around.

reply to post by Blackmarketeer


Very honorable of them and i can't agree more to them doing this. A real statement from the people who fought this false war!

I don't have any of my medals or uniforms from the 22 yrs i did. I got rid of them long ago. I just didn't make a big production of it or issue a press release. Only thing i have is my ID card and DD-214.

This returning the medals thing is symbolism at it's finest.

If they really want to make a statement they should renounce their veterans benefits, turn in their ID cards, and have a DD-214 bonfire.

But i don't see that happening.

Originally posted by beezzer
They are free to do so.

I just have one wee issue with this.

They are awarded the medals due to individual acts of bravery which illustrate character, not political ideology.

If they believe the war is wrong, then they are free to protest. But by denying their individual actsof heroism, well, it seems dichotomous to me.

Then returning the medals truly shows their character then doesn't it ?

That they would return medals which they don't even believe they deserve because of why they earned them.

They shouldn't have been over there to be put in a position to earn them anyways. that is the point I think you may have missed.

reply to post by 200Plus


"I watched this video and after yelling at my computer I have to say a few things:

1) He says he was trained to kill, then says he was delivering supplies from Kuwait to Iraq. That means he was not a combat troop, he was a truck driver.

2) He joined the national guard in 2000 and was called up for active duty for 15 months. Is HE suffering from PTSD? Is HE on any psychotropic medications? If yes then I wish him the best as I know how much both of those things can effect ones life. If not...............I won't get into my feelings on that."

So he can't talk about the failed war because he only drove a truck. He didn't say he killed people, he was saying that he was trained, in basic, to kill and not to bring democracy or understand their culture, but you already knew that. Also, if he doesn't have PTSD, he should shut up. Apparently, you're not qualified to advocate for PTSD victims unless you have it yourself.

Hope that helps with the brain damage!

Just think about it. Where would the US be today if the CIA or who ever didn't demolition the WTC!

reply to post by LightSpeedDriver


You beat me to the punch on this one. I'm glad I went through all the pages before posting. I am concerned that the group may be a communist front, from some of the stuff I have been finding on the Net. They have also been involved with the Occupy movement. They apparently show up at places where Code Pink show up .

I found this entry on a search
www.wintersoldier.com...

From March 13-16, 2008, members of the antiwar group Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) will gather in Washington, DC to "testify" against the US military at a protest event called Winter Soldier: Iraq & Afghanistan. The name "Winter Soldier" is taken from the infamous 1971 event at which members of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) related gruesome stories of crimes they claimed to have participated in or witnessed. The VVAW insisted that rape, torture and murder were standard practices for the US military in Vietnam. Organizers of the new IVAW tribunal, which is supported by several former VVAW leaders, say the 1971 conference was where "a courageous group of veterans exposed the criminal nature of the Vietnam War." In reality, it was part of a sophisticated, vicious propaganda effort designed to poison public opinion against the US military. Newly discovered records now reveal what happened when Army investigators asked VVAW activists for evidence of the hundreds of crimes they claimed to have seen.

In our book, To Set The Record Straight: How Swift Boat Veterans, POWs and the New Media Defeated John Kerry, Tim Ziegler and I trace the course of the anti-US war crimes propaganda campaign, which began in Europe with KGB-sponsored events that were organized before the first US ground troops ever arrived in Vietnam. In 1969, leaders of those conferences helped American radicals form the "Citizens Commission of Inquiry into US War Crimes in Indochina" (CCI), which set up a series of so-called investigations where US military actions in Vietnam were compared to those of Nazi Germany during World War II. The CCI soon joined forces with the VVAW, another leftist group created with financing and assistance from members of the Communist Party, USA, the Socialist Workers Party and the communist front Veterans for Peace.

An artricle relating to Occupy Wall Street

kleinonline.wnd.com...

And an article on the GI FIfth Column

rokdrop.com...

reply to post by Blackmarketeer


It will be interesting to see how many show up. 2 million have served in Iraq and Afghanistan, so for impact they would need to number in the tens of thousands. If it's under a hundred it won't be meaningful at all and I suspect it will be well under 100.

Since they all volunteered to go with full knowledge of what they were doing this is nothing like Vietnam. These people walked in and asked to go.

I support them, regardless of whether or not they returned their medals. Just hearing them saying they're against the War On Terror is good enough in my book, but I guess it doesn't hurt to go the extra mile either.

The War On Terror needs to end as well as the charade that this is all being done for our "freedoms".