i got this email from a united states marine core major. One of my family members posted it to me so i thought i would share. i know this might turn into a debate so i put it in the war forum instead of offtopic.

Quote:

I intend on hand delivering it to each Television HQ personally.In memory of all who've fought and died or who were wounded in the defense of the United States of America,
Major Bill Donahue Jr. USMC Ret
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
To the Media:

I've read and I've watched and I've heard enough! American men and women are dying or sustaining grievous injuries daily so that others might live and freedom, and, so that we don't have to fight this many-headed enemy on our own shores.

Yet, that message obviously hasn't sunk into the hearts and minds of contemporary so-called "journalists" and producers. Every single (even though proven false in many cases) "instance" that could possibly put our young Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines in a bad light is amplified, distorted and then promulgated wide and far. The truth be damned! Patriotism be damned! Just so some journalist or producer gets his or name attached to a "headline."

Your self-ordained brand of "Patriotism" is tearing our nation - and our world image - to shreds. Why cannot you just take a deep breath, check ALL the facts, and then ask yourself, "will this harm or support our troops?" If not, what's wrong with just shutting up!?

In a world where a lie, a mis-spoken word or even a half-truth gets thrusted around the planet before the truth has a chance to get its boots on, it is because of you, "our" Media! Surely, you are smart enough to know the enemy hangs on every lie, every mis-spoken word, every half-truth...that you utter?

You continue to abuse the First Amendment...and our young men and women die because of it! You use the First Amendment as a weapon against the very men and women who die to protect your right to misuse and abuse it!

You have demonstrated, time and time again, that its all about "circulation" or "market share" of the viewing audience. Your collective egos and insatiable hunger for power are limitless!

I used to think politicians and lawyers were the real bottom feeders. Not anymore! You - the media - now hold that dubious honor!

I am asking all of my family and friends to immediately cancel their subscriptions to your weekly fish-wrappers, in every form, and to use their remote control to tune you out.

I am also asking every family member and friend to write a strong letter to your corporate sponsors telling them their products and services are no longer allowed in my home or place of business. In a word; BOYCOTT. Your "work" kills our young military men and women...so my "work" is to kill your financial life-lines.

This email is MY First Amendment right! Try to take it away from me!

Most sincerely,

Major Bill Donahue Jr USMC Ret
Greensboro, NC

<img src="http://registry.gmenthusiast.com/images/jiggaman/personal_pic.jpg">

i read most of it....

but once i got to here.....

Quote:

I am asking all of my family and friends to immediately cancel their subscriptions to your weekly fish-wrappers, in every form, and to use their remote control to tune you out.

this guy lost all credibility...


basically hes saying a contradiction:

"not get media in print form, and turn off the TV...."


but then above he states

Quote:

Why cannot you just take a deep breath, check ALL the facts, and then ask yourself, "will this harm or support our troops?"

where in the blue hell are you supposed to get FACTS from? ms cleo? is she even around still?

i mean comeon... for every soldier who has went over there, even people from here. some will say.... i hated it. others will say i liked it..... others will say its a job.



sounds like this guy simply wants the integrity of the military restored and doesnt want a bad immage, but yet we sent gomer pyles family over there who were posing with naked and headbagged prisoners in a pile like its the newest deliverance video and i dont mean bubba sparxx.



if you turn off your radio and tv and news, where do you get facts from? no where. you are now in the dark.

seemingly enough this guy, basically is expressing his first amendment rights, but then telling everyone else not to use theirs in gathering info... just sit there in the dark and then let the govt do the work, when the people should know stuff like this about their country.

and to top it off, this guys retired. he might have been in desert storm, but its like someone whos competed in the olympic knowing exactly what its like to compete in the superbowl.... similar events... different experiences.


now in his defense... true the media has a bias from station to station. stems from political parties and affilliations.


however if anything if one wants to know the truth, they should gather as many sources as possible, including world wide.



this guy is nothing more than a bleeding heart delusional:

Quote:

You continue to abuse the First Amendment...and our young men and women die because of it! You use the First Amendment as a weapon against the very men and women who die to protect your right to misuse and abuse it!

the men and women over there are dying cause of enemy fire, and people who dont want us there to begin with. i mean lets call it like it is. the media didnt bring down the towers, some delusional f--ks with hijacked planes did.

after that first span when 1000 soldiers were killed, well besides geraldos screw up, the media didnt put shrapnel and ammo into the bodies shipped back. crazy arse rebels did.

like said, call it like it is...



and in closing:

Quote:

I am also asking every family member and friend to write a strong letter to your corporate sponsors telling them their products and services are no longer allowed in my home or place of business. In a word; BOYCOTT. Your "work" kills our young military men and women...so my "work" is to kill your financial life-lines.

so boycotting a product means that less will buy this....

when demand goes down, people get downsized or FIRED.

so more people will be disgruntled and out of work.

then the economy is selling like it used to, so economy gets crappy.



boycotting is good, maybe when you do it to another country, but when you do it against your own country, sure you prove a point, but also hurt the place those troops have to come back home to.... and for what they do, they are already underpaid in my view. i sports athlete gets 15 million per 1-2 seasons, and you have people in the militart just trying to keep a bullet out their ass and ours here, and get paid less than the hustleman locally selling tires.


this guy need a priority check, isle 4 through 10.

Dam-it Muffins (Event) wrote:where in the blue hell are you supposed to get FACTS from? ms cleo? is she even around still?

come on now everyone knows the truth is on the internet.

and he may personnally deliver it to "every television HQ personnaly", but i doubt he makes it to the top floor with letter in hand. seems a half-cocked wack-job that has labeled TV as all media. more than like a repressed homophobic self hating homosexual like the father in american beauty. give him a year and he will shoot himself when all his delusions start to fade.

I am in no way defending the media in any form airwaves, radiowaves, print, or packets. you must all use your uncommon sense to filter through the trash.

Just goes to show that idiots can achieve a rank of major sometimes.

The truth is more important than anything else... and it's hardly what is shown or printed most of the time.

News networks aren't in it for the truth... they're selling you news. Some don't take time to check the facts, but it's hardly because of liberal bias, they've jumped right on up during the initial push for War in Iraq, for every 1 minute of dissenting commentary (none by anyone more notable than a man-on-the-street) there was 38 minutes of pro-war coverage.

Major Bill Donahue Jr. USMC Ret is either whining because the media has moved on to their inevitable back-biting phase, or he's whining because all the dirty little things that get aired out occasionally in times of war and occupation are getting aired out.

Frankly, I didn't bother reading past the first paragraph. He obviously hasn't heard about a free and unobstructed press.



Transeat In Exemplum: Let this stand as the example.

We have very restrictive Rules of Engagement in Iraq, due in part to the media. We can not shoot first, we can't even shoot back unless we have Positive Identification on who's shooting at us. Just as an Example, when I used to run convoys this is what we would have to do, in order, before we could fire on a vehicle coming up on the convoy:

1.Yell and wave off the vehicle, tell them to get away from the Convoy
2.Crack Open Chem Lights and chuck them at the vehicle
3.Shine the spotlight, if available, at the driver
4.Pop a Green Star Cluster at the Vehicle
Then and only then could we fire on a vehicle, and even then there were restrictions on where on the vehicle we could fire, and with which weapons.

The Major has a valid point, however his arguments do need some work.




Yella02-I promise I will return to you in one piece and this will stay up until I am safely home

I see the point, and a lot of people (crack-pots and sages alike) make valid points, but I'd give his arguments a lot more weight if he had put serious thought behind it, and prattled off like some Ann Coulter-ite.

Also, If the military (and Command authority) hadn't wanted the encumberance of the media, they could have just said to hell with it.

Saint: if that's the procedure for convoys, what is it for Check points? it seems to me that there have been more than a couple of misunderstandings with what's been happening in Iraq... Maybe it's different between Marines/Army, but then again, I'm innocent of those facts.



Transeat In Exemplum: Let this stand as the example.

Checkpoints are a whole different story, basically they're just sitting ducks. Convoys move at speeds ranging from 45-70 mph depending on vehicles and load, so a car has to be moving faster then that in order to enter the convoy from the rear, The Scout Escort vehicle will handle any vehicles coming from the front, and from the side, it's up to the individual gunners, but we still have to go through all of those steps, even if we're throwing a chem light as we're waving off a vehicle and popping a Green star as we flip on the spotlight, but we still have to go through the steps, we just can't shoot.

At a checkpoint a Suicide Bomber can just drive slowly up to the checkpoint then detonate the bomb, when they get there. Every unit has a slightly different ROE, the ones I listed were for my Unit, but it didn't differ much when I ran convoys with other units. As far as what exactly happens at checkpoints, I don't know, I'm on the Support side of the Ground War so we don't stand at checkpoints, that's mostly Divison or the MPs. However they do have to do some sort of Escalation of Force, usually Flares, followed by shooting at the Engine, then going for the driver.




Yella02-I promise I will return to you in one piece and this will stay up until I am safely home

I figured there would be differences...

I also wonder if there have been any successfully foiled bombing attempts at a check point?

On the darly comical side, how do you delicately brooch the fact that you can't let someone with 40 bricks of Semtex into the Green zone? In Farsi no less!



Transeat In Exemplum: Let this stand as the example.

There have definitely been attempts that are foiled, because the Insurgents aren't smart enough to just calmly drive up to checkpoints, and we were told that if someone drove like a maniac and we didn't physically have time to defend ourselves then we could shoot, but we were also warned that there would be an investigation, and we still had to make a serious attempt to go through all the steps of Escalation of Force we could, we still couldn't just shoot.

All the steps are started from a ways off, A Marine can hit a man-sized target from 500 yards with an M16, so we can start yelling from a ways off, and if all the measures fail then they are authorized to shoot. It's kind of a touchy subject because a lot of it has to do with the person that pulls the trigger, but there are steps that will be carried out no matter who is pulling the trigger. We are also trained on the usual signals that someone is a suicide bomber so that we can recognize one before they get close enough to do damage.




Yella02-I promise I will return to you in one piece and this will stay up until I am safely home

So basically Saint what you're saying is, the Marine Corps (possibly Army too) are willing to place the lives of their personnel in great jeopardy, knowing the enemy that they deal with, just to make vague attempts at keeping the already ruined image of the US from being further stained because of this immoral war?
I find it hard to believe...that a command would tell their soldiers that they have to ask questions first, and then shoot...all while sitting behind their comfortable desks out of harms way. Pitiful...I pray for the innocent lives being placed in harms way by the idiots who are more worried about image than force protection.


"Speak the truth, and leave immediately after"
"The urge to save Humanity is almost ALWAYS a false front for the urge to rule"
"He who knoweth things as they are and not as they are said or seem to be, he truly is wise, and is taught of God more than of men."

There are few innocents in war, none that carry a weapon.

Either way, there has to be some form regimented escalation I agree, but most of the time I'd think that people that are somewhat with it and see a column of humvees on the move will keep their distance.



Transeat In Exemplum: Let this stand as the example.

Chamillionaire wrote:So basically Saint what you're saying is, the Marine Corps (possibly Army too) are willing to place the lives of their personnel in great jeopardy, knowing the enemy that they deal with, just to make vague attempts at keeping the already ruined image of the US from being further stained because of this immoral war?
I find it hard to believe...that a command would tell their soldiers that they have to ask questions first, and then shoot...all while sitting behind their comfortable desks out of harms way. Pitiful...I pray for the innocent lives being placed in harms way by the idiots who are more worried about image than force protection.

yes they are willing to place your life in jeopardy, but that is why you get training before you get there and updated training as new tactics are discovered. but as a CO are you not more for the non-violent, life-sparing end to these "disagreements"?

the reason these Rules Of Engagement exist is to more or less follow the Geneva Convention and keep US actions from being misconstrued as war crimes or crimes against humanity. no matter what the situation, right or wrong, there is a 75% chance that the media anywhere will place a negative spin on it. last thing american soldiers need is more people feeling the call to Jihad offering their lives to destroy the "western devil".

you can't blame the media for everything, some things that have been done are "wrong in the moral vision of at least half the nation" so it is like being pulled over doing 15 over in a school zone, suck it up be a man you got caught. however there are times when things need to be done right or wrong and you just have to hope no one finds out, that is the problem, people find out.

it is a very sharp double edged sword and if you do not know how to wield it, it will cut you. and there is nothing worse than being cut with your own blade.

Freedom of the press is a very sharp sword indeed.




Transeat In Exemplum: Let this stand as the example.

Chamillionaire wrote:So basically Saint what you're saying is, the Marine Corps (possibly Army too) are willing to place the lives of their personnel in great jeopardy, knowing the enemy that they deal with, just to make vague attempts at keeping the already ruined image of the US from being further stained because of this immoral war?
I find it hard to believe...that a command would tell their soldiers that they have to ask questions first, and then shoot...all while sitting behind their comfortable desks out of harms way. Pitiful...I pray for the innocent lives being placed in harms way by the idiots who are more worried about image than force protection.

GAM basically anxwered it correctly, the whole reason behind the Escalation of Force is to keep the Iraqis that might just be in a hurry to work, or to get home alive, and to seperate them from the suicide bombers. It really has nothing to do with placing our lives in jeapordy while they sit in thier cushy offices, when we were both on our respective bases, my CO was in a more dangerous place then me, and he went into the city of Fallujah a lot more then me, on those same convoys that he placed the Escalation of Force restrictions on.




Yella02-I promise I will return to you in one piece and this will stay up until I am safely home