You Served Transcript – Podcast Episode #27

Female Announcer: BlogTalkRadio. [music]

Male Announcer: Thanks for joining us for another edition of the You Served military podcast, with your host, CJ Grisham.

Man: The views and commentary from the boneheads you are listening to are based on personal experiences from Iraq, Afghanistan, and other exotic, tropical paradises. The opinions expressed on the You Served Radio show are solely those of the hosts and contributors and not those of any agency of the United States government, expressly including but not limited to the Department of Defense or any branch of the military. Neither do the idiotic statements of these rambling buffoons reflect the views of youserved.com or the VA Mortgage Center. If they knew what was good for them, they’d find real talent as quickly as possible.

The site is not designed, authorized, sanctioned, or affiliated by or with any agency of the United States government, expressly including but not limited to the Department of Defense or any branch of the military. Listeners accept and agree to this disclaimer and the use of any information accessed from this podcast. These guys serve to protect your freedom; if you don’t like what they have to say, exercise it, and leave.

Troy Steward: And with that, hello again. I am Troy Steward, your host for tonight. CJ cannot be with us. He is tied up with good old Army training, kind of Army stuff. I make it sound better than it is. He’s partying tonight, some banquet-dinner thing, but I’m not going to go any farther than that. Anyways, I’m Troy Steward, your host tonight on You Served Radio, here on BlogTalkRadio. And I am blogger@vamortgagecenter.com, which is the host and sponsor of this show. I also blog at my main site at www.bouhammer.com, where I talk about Afghanistan and military issues in general.

And last but not least, our new site that we started just a week ago, which is militarypundits.com, which is a hot, new site, and if you haven’t been to it, you need to check it out. Why? Because it’s military folks and ex-military folks that are talking politics and political views. It’s a hot site. I think it’s really going to take off.

We’ve had a lot of traffic over the last week. Current count right now is almost 800 visitors in the last seven days. That’s not counting about 30 readers that are getting RSS feeds. And we have people coming in from all over the world. We have people coming from Israel, Singapore, India, Romania. You name it, they’re coming in to check out militarypundits.com.

So, a nice little plug on that other site. We’re signing up, I think we’re up to like 11 or 12 full-time bloggers on there. And we’ve posted one guest blogger, and we’re going to have more guest bloggers–we’re in talks with folks–as people are getting hold of us.

So, again, this is You Served Radio. CJ’s not with us tonight. It’s just myself. And it should be a pretty interesting show. We went ahead and held off on the one guest that we had, which was–and excuse me for not knowing it, I just don’t have it out in front of me. She had wrote a book, “The Journal for Jordan.” It sounds like an awesome book. However, I had not had a chance to read it; CJ did. And so it really wouldn’t make any sense for me to try to interview her, had I never even seen the book. But I think we’re going to look at trying to lock her up for next week.

It’s definitely somebody you want to listen to, because it’s an interesting thing. I guess, if I get it right–and I’m sure CJ will tell me if I don’t–but her fiancé, I guess it was, wrote these journals to his son, in case he did not make it back from Iraq. A first sergeant, Charles Monroe King. And he wrote all these dispatches as a journal for his son had he not come back that his son would read as he grew up, and it would be like how to become a man and things dealing with manhood and so on and so forth.

Well, unfortunately, he didn’t make it back. He did not come back from Iraq OK. And so I guess his wife published the journal, and then it ended up getting turned into a book.

That’s kind of what I know so far. Sorry that’s all I got. But it sounds like a pretty big tissue alert, if you ask me, and it’ll be something interesting to talk to her about next week. I think we’re going to bring her on next week or the week after. But unfortunately, she won’t be with us tonight.

Tonight, however, we do have Lieutenant Amy Bonanno. Amy is a pretty good friend of mine. I’ve know her for a while. I knew her back before she was married, so it’s always hard for me to kind of refer to her as Bonanno. But Amy, we tried to have her on her before, back in, I want to say it was November. So her husband actually was on the chat room and we were trying to get her on. We just had a hard time connecting her.

And Amy was the public affairs officer for Task Force Phoenix in Afghanistan. She was the public affairs officer for ARSIC-South, which is based out of Kandahar. And we’re going to have her on, coming on around 7:30, to talk to her about kind of what she saw.

We’re going to talk to her on a couple different angles: one, what life was like as a PAO over there; talk about some of the hot news issues that came out of ARSIC-South during her tour, for like the famous, I think it was July-last-year prison bank and a couple other things. So we’re going to be chatting with her about that.

And then, also, in kind of a follow up of the last couple weeks, we’re going to, with Women’s Military Month coming up next month, kind of talk to her about what it was like. We had some good insight last week from Eve, about being a female and being deployed. So I’m going to kind of hit some of those questions on Amy and see what issues she saw, from a woman’s perspective, being deployed in a foreign combat zone, and just what it was like for her to be over there.

So, with all that, Amy’s our big guest for tonight, our only guest for tonight. But that’s fine. I think we have a lot to talk to her about. There’s a lot of different topics. The chat room is buzzing. Everyone’s coming up. Unfortunately, I’m not going to be able to chat a whole bunch because I’m running it all myself. So I will keep an eye on it, but I won’t be able to participate a whole bunch.

So, with all that, we have a lot of things happening in the news this week, without a doubt. You can see some of it up on militarypundits.com. You can see some on both CJ’s blog at www.soldiersperspective.us, and talks about it on my blog at bouhammer.com.

So, I guess one of the hottest ones, and probably what just came out today–well, there was a couple of hot zones this week. Of course, there’s the stimulus thing, all the stuff going on with the economy and the president’s big speech the other night.

And the other one is, today, the Pentagon–we’ll kind of get into that one first because that’s more related to our show here because it’s military–but the Pentagon agreeing to reverse their policy on coverage of the caskets coming home when Soldiers are killed in combat. I wrote a blog today on my blog. I’ve already had quite a people, several people, email me, and several comment, which is good. That’s what I want, how they disagree with me and all that. And that’s fine. That’s why we have the freedoms we do. But it was pretty big.

I mean, it was asked a couple weeks ago in his one speech, the night that Helen Thomas asked her stupid question, I guess it was like three weeks ago, about whether he was going to lift that policy. And then, right away, he said he was going to look into it, and he did. And I guess today they’re going to lift it. Ironically, the posting I put up today was written over the last several days, and I was just waiting to post it up. And then this announcement came out today, so I threw that on there and threw it up there.

So, if you have any strong feeling on it one way or another, I welcome you to call in if you want to voice your opinion. But I can tell you right now that I support it, for the reasons I wrote about in my blog: and that is that the American people need to see.

I don’t support having a camera permanently mounted in the back of a plane that will continually just take pictures of caskets coming in. There’s no value in that, in my opinion. There’s no value in just seeing a plane full of caskets. There’s not a lot coming back anymore–a plane with a casket.

I think what it needs to show is what was shown on the movie “Taking Chance” last Saturday. If you haven’t seen it on HBO, do whatever you can, go to your buddy’s house, even if it’s people you don’t like, and see “Taking Chance” because you need to see it.

I wrote about it today on my blog, when we brought one of my Soldiers home, Sergeant Roustum, in ‘04, how I remember looking up, as we were standing out there in full dress uniforms giving honors as his casket was coming off the plane, the people–the entire Buffalo Airport, anyone that even walked by, I think, saw all these people shoved up against the glass windows, came to look. And there were people just bawling. There were kids watching and all this stuff. And no doubt, they will never forget it.

And I think the people need to see that. It is too easy for us to hear “four more Soldiers killed in Afghanistan,” “three more Soldiers killed in Iraq,” or so on and so forth, and become numb to it. That is just because it’s been so constant for so long. And unless you are near a family member or near a family or a friend of, or something, somehow connected to a Soldier that was lost, you do not grasp the impact the loss of one life has.

It is so far-reaching. Friends, high-school friends, coworkers; if they’re from previous in the Army or if they’re in the National Guard and Reserves, their recruiters. I mean, just a ton of people. People that, they walked into them at the store every once in a while, they kind of knew them from down the street, all that kind of stuff.

And then, when you start talking the thousands that we’ve lost, to try to understand the impact that its had, it’s like a chip on the windshield, and then it’s spidering all the way across your windshield.

That’s what it’s like. Think of every single Soldier that is lost as a little chip in a windshield, and then it’s just spider-cracking across your windshield. That’s the kind of reach that losing every Soldier has on society. That’s why I support this.

I put a couple rules up there. Some of the concerns I’ve had from viewers, or some of my readers, are, “I forgot what they did in Vietnam, and I’m never going to let that happen,” or so on and so forth. That was a different time, in Vietnam. It was a different culture. It was a different time. I’m not saying we are better or for worse, because there are some things that are better now and some things that are worse.

But if you have some rules and guidelines around it, I think once a couple get booted out that the news media would police themselves up or they would never be allowed in. I think there’s a way to show it and show it respectfully. I think the American people aren’t going to take viewing any disrespectful images. They’re not going to take to that. They will stand up and voice their opinion, as we do on blogs, or radio shows or whatever.

So, I support it. I think there need to be parameters around it. I think the family has to approve it, which, ironically, is one of the things that they’ve put up on the rules that the Pentagon has stated so far.

So we’ll see what happens. I could be wrong. I don’t think so, but I could be wrong. But I think America needs to see it. If America doesn’t have it in their face, if America doesn’t see the lives that it has touched, then America will continue to be numb and still go numb to it.

Oh, and I have a couple callers, and I see you both. And they are both great, and I think they’re both calling about the same subject.

So I’m going to bring in LL. And Reg. I don’t know how to refer to you as, because you’ve got so many different nicknames. Hello, ladies, how are you both doing?

LL: Hey, Troy.

Troy: Hey.

Regina: I’m doing good.

Troy: OK. So I imagine, do you guys have any opinions, either one of you, about this current topic that is pretty hot? And of course, I’ve already got some feedback from one of you.

LL: Well, for me, I guess the big question is the Families, if they approve it. As we’ve observed over the years, the press will do whatever it wants. Obviously, we have no control over them. It’s a free press. Whatever photos they take, whatever interpretations they make, whatever way they write it up, whatever way they portray the family and their grief, it’s all up to whatever reporter’s on hand. And they could have an ulterior motive. They could have an agenda. And unfortunately, we’re at that point now, with the way the press is, I don’t trust them. I don’t trust them. And it is unfortunate that we can’t trust our press to do the facts.

Troy: I don’t blame you on not trusting them. But I guess my question is are you concerned on how they would report the story or just what context they would put the images or video in the story?

LL: Both.

Regina: Both.

Troy: [laughing] Both of you… OK. Well, I mean, how they report the story is one thing, right? If a reporter comes on and does a Nick Meo and says, “Specialist so-and-so died today, and I’m sure glad I never got to meet them, because they died today,” if they did something like that, I think we’d all agree: very disrespectful, and not something we’d want to hear. Which is why Nick Meo’s no longer in Afghanistan.

However, if the press comes on–especially, I would imagine, more local media–and they show the casket from the airport to the funeral home, and from the funeral home to the graveside, and the hearse or the horse pulling it or whatever, and all the people on the side of the road and all that kind of stuff, just to show a local guy, and here he’s coming home and all that kind of stuff, and they just report it as that, would you consider that disrespectful, Reg or..?

Regina: No. And we’ve seen that, here in Cedar Park, when we’ve brought one of our warriors home. They had fire trucks there with the water going over and the streets lined, and that was just to take the body to the funeral home. That’s not what concerns me. And again, your rules were right on, and the family has control. But once the pictures are taken, once the video is taken, they’re out in the public, and the media has lost that trust. And yeah, it goes back to Vietnam. It’s not the fact that they took the pictures. Yes, those pictures need to be seen. The whole story needs to be seen. We all want to get that out there. In an article today on CNN, one of the sentences said that, really, the topic really got hot when the casualty numbers in Iraq started raising. Well, why wasn’t it a factor before that? Because they just wanted to show the numbers.

And yeah, it is a touchy point, for me especially, because I do go back to Vietnam, and the stories that you hear aren’t stories to me. I’ve had a picture, a picture we’ve all seen from that era, of the back of a plane, and many, many caskets, many, many flags, and had that picture actually shoved in my face, walking next to my husband in his dress whites, Navy, and all of the things that you’ve heard from that.

Troy: Right.

Regina: They’ve lost the trust. I realize that it’s personal. And everything that you say, I wish I could agree with it, and I would love for that to happen, and I think I’ve proved that I want to get the stories out there. It’s just what happens to the images when they go in the public domain. That trust has been broken too deep. The cut’s too deep. I don’t trust them.

Troy: Yeah, I hear you. I think part of the concern is that when you look at the media outlets that initially pushed for this, I mean, it’s Washington Post, New York Times, LA Times. Truly not really trustworthy media outlets.

LL: [laughs] Exactly.

Troy: That is why when you put parameters around it, if they loose… For example, you take a picture of a casket, OK, you have got a picture of three caskets that are covered with flags, unless you are able to somehow get inside Intel as a reporter, there is no way you are going to know who is in what casket, or anything like that. If a Family said – Well, yes you can video him, and take pictures, and all that stuff. And they are coming in on this day, at this time, from what I have been told by Casualty Affairs Officer, and we want you to film him coming all the way home. Kind of a taking chance kind of scenario, but we are going to do it.

I say this because I had one of my Families, one of my Soldiers, actually open themselves up to the media because they wanted the people to see how much the Soldier was loved and missed, and all that. So if they did, and said — Here they are, and the media outlet decided to, OK, we are going to go video, then that’s the only way they would know that is this Soldier. Otherwise, I think, there is really no way to disrespect a particular Soldier or diss on one until really they got all the way home, to the local hometown, and then it was known.

Like you have seen, Reg, I think towns all of this country have had – it’s been on the local news when a Soldier is buried.

Regina 1: Yes, really wonderful coverage.

Troy: I think that’s the only way they would know it is a particular Soldier. Now, if they said something derogative about that Soldier or whatever, then that is of course, an issue. I wouldn’t say…

Regina: OK. I will take issue with part of you on that because…

Troy: …that’s not going to keep a Huffington Post or something like that from writing something derogatory, whether it is honest or not.

Regina: OK, I will disagree with you on before they will find out one particular one.

Troy: …then the caskets coming home on a plane. I am more of an advocate for the ramp ceremonies. I really am.

Regina: Yes.

Troy: It burns my butt that they cannot video and you cannot see the ramp ceremony. When you look at the blog today, the one I put with Canadians, it doesn’t apply to them so they videoed it. It’s in their news. That is phenomenal for the Canadian people to see how all the Coalition Forces honor their fallen Soldiers. Would you not agree?

Regina: Yes we are seeing pirated copies of some of our personal, especially from Afghanistan, Solarno, and they are beautiful and those tributes need to be seen. I will take point with you on that they will not know which caskets are which. Hey, you know we can figure out when the guys are coming into BAMCIS. We know before it’s official. Any reporter worth his salt, with the number that we’ve got coming in now, will know when those planes are coming in. Hello?

Troy: Yes. No, I hear you. It is possible they could know. I know from working with the Casualty Affairs and the Mortuary Affairs when some of my Soldiers have come back, it’s been tough for us to nail down exactly when a Soldier arrives in Dover. I mean, now granted this was back in the ‘04 to ‘06 timeframe, when there were caskets coming back almost daily from both wars. Today yes, where we just lost one the other day in Iraq and four in Afghanistan, that probably wouldn’t be too hard to figure out. But you know I just kind of wonder what value is it. Maybe now this is why they are looking at it, because there is not so many coming back. So maybe a lot of the big media outlets really won’t be attracted to it. I don’t know.

You know, what value is it for them to pay to have reporter go down to film one casket coming back. If they have ulterior motives to preach the, look at how many we’re losing kind of thing, that’s not really happening much anymore, right now. I think we are going to see a lot more in Afghanistan in the next couple of months.

LL: Yes, ladybug has a question in chat and she makes a good point. What if they bring three or four home and only one Family agrees. Do the other Families – the question is, are the Families also fair game for having their grief photographed or videotaped. I just don’t…

Troy: If they want to. Again, if they give approval, yes. If the Family opens it up and says, “Film us, look at us.”

LL: OK, but what if only one Family out of four waiting at Dover and watching their son come down the ramp, only one Family out of four gives their approval, and the reporters are just clicking away, what do you do then?

Troy: Families are never at Dover, almost never. I can say almost never because they are at home dealing with the CAO and getting all the arrangements done. The body is coming to Dover, they have to go to Mortuary Affairs, they have got to get prepared. If anything a Family member may go down to do the escort. They do do that sometimes. They will ask if there is a father or a brother, wanting to escort. But there are almost nil to none, from what I know through my experience, ever at Dover. There really aren’t.

Regina: Did you see the piece where the, I forget the officer but he made a good point that I had never thought of, that he thought of the ceremony and what goes on at the plane from Dover as that is the military’s own, and that is their last time. They are still part of the military Family and where the military gives them up to the Family, to the mortuary whatever. But he really felt strongly about keeping that because that was military Family. I had never thought of it that way.

Troy: Yes. You know the military. Once the Family refuses military honors, they are with them all the way to the graveside. They render full honors at Dover and they come out just like you saw in the movie, no matter what time. Just like they talk about in the blog, we do it in country, no matter what time of the day. I remember the big voice on the loudspeaker at 2:30 in the morning saying, “Fallen Soldier Ramp Ceremony. Everyone to Disney Way.” You got up out of your cot and threw on your stuff, and walked out there. No matter what time of day, people lined to do it. I would disagree to say that’s the last time you do it because, I’m sure there’s Families that maybe hate the military so much they don’t want military honors, but really they are with…

Regina: I think his point was that that was the last time that the military was in full control. From then on the Family’s wishes come first. Don’t get me wrong, I would love to be proved wrong. My feelings come from personal touched and if it’s something we’re going to have to deal with now and keep them on their toes.

Troy: I think if things do become very disrespectful and go bad to the point that maybe the current administration agrees to that, they would probably change it. Or to the point that enough people raise enough cane, I am sure they would change it. Unfortunately, like a lot of other stuff that has been instituted in the last a little over 30 days, I think, we are just going to have to live with it for now. We are just going to have to see how it turns out I think. I know it is a very hot topic, very contested. Again, as I said at the very beginning, it’s a different time from the ’60s and ’70s. I think a different time we can highlight in two areas. One, I think the people are more honoring of the Soldiers then maybe they were in general. I can only speak, I was born in the ’60s so I can’t speak with true authority, but in what I know, I think the American people as a whole, as a culture. Not too many will speak out or talk badly, even the people that are the ultra-left Liberals, still say – I respect Soldiers. I support Soldiers. Even though I don’t support the war and all that mess.

Regina: Yes even Texas has surprised us. They do support the individuals. You are right on there.

Troy: I think the people today are much more supporting. I think the media is much more in question. Not that they probably weren’t back in the ’60s and ’70s but it is definitely a media of less scruples, should I say, or more resources because of the Internet, and that kind of stuff. They are more out there to get the first story or get a buck or whatever.

Regina: Quantity does not breed quality.

Troy: Right, right. I don’t know but another good point, I think we said it on this show a while back, that the embedded reporters that go to the Ford Theater keep the Army truthful, and bloggers and new media keep the main stream media truthful. We have proven more than once that when the bloggers unite and new media unite, that we will shut a main stream journalist down. So, I have no doubt that those in the pitchfork brigade would not rise up again. Isn’t that right, Wendy?

Wendy: I was going to say not all embedded reporters are as truthful. They tend to kind of run a little fanciful, a few of them.

Troy: Oh, yeah. That’s why we keep them honest. That’s why we keep them honest. I know, I know.

Wendy: We try.

Troy: We try. We’ve got to pick our battles. Like I say, I know it’s a hot topic. The report just came out today which made it really hot, and I’ve bucked the trend from many of my comrades in the military and mail blog world. I know my buddies over at B5, Matt and those guys, threw one up right away, and David over at Thunder Run jumped on it right away. People were emailing me stuff, and I just kept replying and saying you may want to go look at my blog because as anyone who listened to this show last week heard, we went over about 10 minutes over the two hours where it was just me and CJ going back and forth about it, not back and forth rudely, by any means. We were very open-minded and kind to each other. He and I always are.

Reg, you got anything you want to bring up while I’m waiting on our guest?

Regina: Thank you for the post today because you’re right on. If we can keep him in line and that’s what the mail bloggers have proved so far, I think it will be an interesting part of history to see the effect that the mail blogs have had on Iraq, especially. But even people that don’t realize or read the mail blogs benefited from them. I fully believe what you guys did before General Petraeus made his first report; made it a non-story. The only thing that came up was Code Pink. If it hadn’t been for the mail bloggers and saying, “Wait a minute. Let us tell you what we’re seeing and especially people that were on their second and third deployment and seeing changes.”

The mainstream media would have gone crazy with the story, and you people proved your worth then. I’m dependent on you now, guys.

Troy: You know what? We couldn’t do it without you guys. We couldn’t do it without the readers because there would be no motivation of doing it if we didn’t feel like we were serving a purpose. That’s for sure. Thank you very much, Regina. I appreciate it.

Regina: Well, I’m going to get my hot dog now because I rushed home and didn’t get any supper, so we’ll start reading now instead of talking.

Troy: There we go. Alright, thank you, Regina. Wendy, have you got anything else? Anything you want to close with on this topic?

Wendy: No, you know, other than basically what you said we’re just going to have to wait and see. Unfortunately, they have already had access. They had access. They took a lot of pictures. The left wing nuts grabbed them and ran with them, unfortunately. I think if it happens again, hopefully it will be a done deal and they’ll just cut it off and be done with it but you never know.

Troy: Did you see “Taking Chance?”

Wendy: No, I do not have HBO.

Troy: That’s right. You’re kind of-you’re trimming, aren’t you? You’re getting ready for this economy.

Wendy: Yes, the whole bad economy has struck very close to home.

Man 1: Yep. Well, when you get a chance-I’m not encouraging you getting a bootleg copy, of course, but when you get a chance, definitely grab your box of tissues, close the door in your room and just be ready to be awestruck.

Wendy: I saw some of the clips and some of the clips were heartbreaking. I have seen the mass emails that go around with people being brought home to Texas or Oklahoma Indian reservations and just the lined up flags and the little Boy Scouts. It’s always heart wrenching. Unfortunately, what happens is we fairly conservative people all send them to each other, and then I see all the people who are haters just hit the delete button which is, maybe, part of the issue.

Man 1: I think some are haters, and some are just ostriches. Some people deal with it by not dealing with it. They stick their head in the sand and pretend like it’s not there, not that that’s healthy. I think some people, that’s how they deal with it. I have some family that is that way.

Wendy: I think the majority of the country feels that way with everything, you know. One part of the deaths during the war, it hits close to home for us because we’re so active and we do the things that we do. But Joe Schmoo just working in his cubicle job every day who doesn’t have a family member or anything like that, he might hear from the guy in the next cubicle that his brother died in Iraq. And he might be like, “Oh, sorry” but there is no impact. Maybe, this will help. I don’t know, most people in America just kind of turn around and get back to clicking on the keyboard and working. It’s apathy and putting your head in the ground and not caring at all about your neighbors or about-the whole society, society as a whole has just fallen apart in terms of taking care of your neighbors. I’ve seen a couple of stories online.

It’s sad that there has to be a news article about a family that takes in another family during these rough times. It’s sad that it’s big news when somebody helps out another. I guess it’s just a reflection of our society, “Just, OK, I’m just going to work for the next buck and see if I can buy a couple of mp3 songs and, maybe, a bigger iPod”, just driving on. Oh, and when it comes down to be hitting in the pocketbook, then they are concerned.

Troy: Right, right.

Wendy: For themselves, not necessarily for other people. It’s just kind of like, “Now, how is this going to affect me and what can I do?” Yeah, don’t get me started [laughs].

Troy: I know. I’m just going to leave you on because I know you may want to listen in and chime in, but I’m going to bring on our first guest. Our first and main guest tonight-she is the star of the two hours. She was a PAO, and she is a PAO in the New York Army National Guard. She just got back from a one year tour in Afghanistan as the R6 South PAO representative, my good friend and fellow Soldier, which is Lieutenant Amy Bonanno. Hello, Amy. How are you doing?

Amy Bonanno: Hey, everyone. I’m good. How are you?

Troy: Good, good.

Wendy: Hi, Amy.

Troy: Good that we finally have Wendy on. She’s a big fan of yours. She was very involved with the Nick Meo affair which, of course, Amy, you got quite a following and a fan base after that.

Amy: [laughs]

Troy: We’re glad we got you on tonight. We tried to that one time from Afghanistan. The infrastructure just wasn’t there yet.

Amy: The connection was very poor in Kandahar, but here I am now from lovely Albany, New York.

Troy: There you go.

Wendy: Welcome home.

Amy: Thank you. It’s good to be home.

Troy: Have you done the vacation yet? Have you been anywhere-you and the hubby taken off and hit-don’t go to Mexico, I guess? Hope you didn’t go there.

Amy: Yeah, a bunch of friends and I and my husband, we all took off and went on a cruise. Actually, Cozumel was one of the ports of call. So, I did that and I visited family out in Rochester. And I visited the in-laws down in Duchess County, and I’ve already returned back to my civilian job which was working for the New York State Office of Homeland Security, also as a Public Information Officer.

Troy: OK. I didn’t realize that was what you did. Alright. Awesome. Well, we should have all kind of good stuff. We’re just going to chat about, like I’ve mentioned earlier on the show, I’ve known you for actually a few years now, and we worked a lot together. You as public affairs and myself as a mil blogger covering Afghanistan while your tour was going on. Why don’t we first just- I’m going to hit you on that. I did a lot of these virtual interviews of Soldiers when they were deployed over there both in the command level down to the Soldier level. I’m going to kind of hit you with some of the same ones. You’re our only guest tonight, so I’ve got you for as long as you can stay on.

What was your impression after coming back of the tour? Was it what you expected, close to what you expected or not even in the same ballpark?

Amy: I think, for the most part it was what I expected. I expected to be a staff officer going down and meeting with PMT teams, the police mentor teams, and training teams, and just overshadowing, writing about what our Soldiers were doing while they were interacting with the Afghans and trying to train and mentor them to be the best Afghan National Army and Afghan National Police that they can be. So I expected to do that. What I didn’t expect before I set my feet down on the ground in Afghanistan was to go to Kundahar. I thought I was going to be doing it for Kabul, working for the Kubul Military Training Center. Luckily for me, there was a Navy O-4 who was leaving country and they needed a public affairs officer to fit into that slot, so I jumped at the chance to go further down range where you know truly the action is happening.

Southern Afghanistan is the most volatile region of the whole country. So to have that opportunity, and try and tell the Soldiers’ stories from down in the south, that was actually a dream come true for me as a lieutenant, public affairs officer.

Another element that added to it, which I wasn’t expecting, was just working with Marines and Air Force and Navy personnel, in addition to the Soldiers, which added a whole new element in addition to the foreign services we had over there, too. The British Air Force, British Army, Dutch, Canadian, French, and so many other ones that aren’t just coming to my head right now, Belgians, Spanish, a little bit of Italians.

So that was great. I got to see a whole different gamut. Listening to what you and Wendy were saying a few minutes ago, you had mentioned something that made me think of it, being a Lieutenant more than anything, I wasn’t in with getting all the information that I needed to write the best stories that I could, and get out down range to the best missions and stuff that were going on.

I missed out on a lot of stuff like that but I’m not saying it’s bad. I am just saying people were cautious of me, they didn’t want to bring me to the gun range, and have something crazy happen, so they were kind of looking out for me.

Troy: Do you think your gender… We are going to talk about that because last week we had a very good friend of mine, Eve, on, who is starting a Woman’s Veterans Advocacy Group. She was in Afghanistan actually the same time I was. So do you think, we’re going to jump on that topic a little, that your gender made a play into how well you could do your job?

Amy: I think slightly, slightly. I don’t think it wasn’t over the top. I think people definitely brought me into the fold of what was happening but I think it could have been done a lot more often. For example, there was this one lieutenant colonial, a British lieutenant colonial who was our operations officer, and he couldn’t take two minutes to tell me the latest of what was going on, so that I was tied in with a lot of stuff. But the American side was a lot better about that. They brought me to the fold but I think still, maybe it was being a lieutenant, too. I am one of the few company grade staff officers hanging out at these meetings, so I didn’t have that institutional knowledge that a lot of the other field grade officers had, or whatever, to get a lot of information for what I needed to do.

Troy: Right. Did you find that you had been invited on more HA type drops and those kind of things, and not on the actual combat patrol type of stuff? Did you see a slight…

Amy: Oh definitely. I saw a lot more HA stuff then I did actual patrols. It’s funny, the few times that I went out we drove nine hours from Qalat in Zabul province to Mizan, which is also in Zabul province, and those guys were amazed that we didn’t come across anything in the set amount of time. It happened to me again. We drove from Kunar to Lashkar Gah, Helmand Province, and again absolutely nothing. There was crickets out there, is what we were hearing. So stuff like that, too, is an anomaly. It’s like the bunch of times I did go out absolutely nothing would happen, so it made me wonder if someone up top was looking out for me or something.

Troy: Well I am sure you have a lot of family saying a lot of prayers. I know mine did for me. So sometimes that paid off. So it’s interesting. We talked about this last week when she did visit, it’s our culture for man to protect woman, even though we are all Soldiers and all that stuff. I think when it comes down to brass tacks that is just bred into us and men will naturally try to protect or defend a female regardless of rank or this or that, or being a Soldier. I am sure with some of, you mentioned the British colonial, I am sure that is probably even more apparent with the foreign forces. Was it or did you see even in us, all Coalition.

Amy: Oh yes. No I think more so in the Brit culture more than anything else. One of the concerns that I would see is that I was also supposed to be mentoring and training my Afghanistan counterpart, who was the 205th Corps public affairs officer. He was a Major. There was a lot of, I think, subconscious concern with a lot of people who didn’t want to say it out loud, they didn’t think it was right to have a female Lieutenant in close quarters with an Afghan major, over on the 205th Hero Corps compound. So there is that cadet type of concern, too, where not only was I being a Lieutenant and not brought into the fold so much, but also I couldn’t do some of the things, they thought, because of safety concerns.

Troy: Yes, well you know the Afghans put a lot of weight on rank, right. Colonials don’t want to be talked to by captains, and so on and so forth. I would imagine being a female had to just add a multiple to that of issues. We have a question from our chat room about how was it dealing with Afghan Nationals? Not just maybe with…

Amy: I’m sorry not with a what? I think it cut out from me?

Wendy: Yeah, I think we lost Troy there.

Amy: Oh geez. [laughs] I think the question was something about working with the Afghan nationals.

Wendy: Hold on, I’ve got it. Oh yeah, how about your gender when dealing with the Afghan nationals.

Amy: You know it’s funny, I have been asked that a lot and I feel like they were respectful towards me but also were just very curious. I remember one time specifically in July we went down to visit Kuwait around that time frame. We did an HA mission locally and the little girls were even running away from me. I couldn’t understand why.

Troy: OK. I’m back. [laughter]

Troy: BlogTalkRadio at its best. I get thrown out. It doesn’t matter I am the host. It doesn’t matter what is going on.

Amy: I was answering the question. Wendy was helping me out though a little bit with I don’t have you guys online yet, my computer is to slow. I was just saying that working with the Afghan Nationals, I think more than anything they were curious by me. I don’t think they see many females out and about especially wearing the IOTV, and the Kevlar, and carrying a weapon that is loaded, and stuff like that. All of a sudden it kind of clicked to me that when I took their pictures, or tried to, I ended up showing them their images in my digital camera and that led to the whole village came out after that. So I got a lot of great candid shots of a lot of the kids to, smiling for the camera. It was really great.

Troy: Yes they do like their picture taken that is for sure.

Amy: Yes.

Wendy: Let me ask a follow-up question. Was there any difference between working with the guys who were in uniform versus just civilians? You know coming across a civilian female or a civilian male and the guys who knew you were in uniform, you were doing your job.

Amy: Yes, I don’t think there was much difference at least not for me anyway. We had a few female reporters come down. Ann Marlowe, who is like a free lancer but writes for the New York Post, the Wall Street Journal, or Forbes a lot, and actually I think Old Blue had actually had commented on something she had written just recently. I think again, it kind of comes into the male mentality. You have to take care of the women, look out for them, and make sure she’s OK. But she was ready to get down and dirty and everything. She was the only really female civilian that I came across that was just like me. Hey, it’s the job. It’s the mission. That’s the bottom line.

Troy: All right, awesome. I am going to jump back in here Wendy, if that is all right.

Wendy: Pardon me.

Troy: I appreciate you helping me out there while I got kicked off.

Wendy: I had to run and get your lead question.

Troy: Yes, thank you. Now nothing but technical issues here. Let me ask you, Amy you dealt with a lot of high profile things while you were down there in Kandahar. There was a prison break and a couple of other things. How was it dealing with that? Did you find yourself getting bombarded by mainstream news outlets and stuff when those high profile incidents happened? Or were you having to go out – just kind of give us a rundown at how – Just take the prison break for example. What was that like to deal with as a PAO?

Amy: I have to admit that unfortunately my hands were tied when it came to going out of my way to speak with the media. I at the R6 levels we do not have release authority. So I couldn’t send out my own stories or news releases or advisories, anything like that. The way we got around that was by creating the R6 South blogspot website that we had. That was the way… because I knew I had to go through two and three, four chains before my stuff would actually be sent out to the mainstream media and even then, who knew if it was going to get posted wherever, spoken about or anything.

So when it came to incidents like the prison break or just day to day training and mentoring, no, I had no dealings with the media unfortunately. What I dealt mostly with was embedding media and waiting for their stories to come out. Giving the background information and having the reporters speak with the commanders on the ground and the platoon leaders and team mentor leaders and stuff like that. That was how we got our story out.

Troy: Right. And you wrote stories for the blog that you set up and you wrote stories for the newsletter. Then of course you sent them out to lots of bloggers like me. And then you dealt a lot with the DoD Blogger’s Roundtable, right, with Jack Holt and the folks over at DoD.

Amy: Yep.

Troy: Let me ask you how that went. I participated in a lot of them if not all of the ones that you hosted. I guess, what was the general feeling after those commanders… usually was pretty much all commanders. What was the general feeling after they got off those? Was there ever… and you don’t have to name anyone specifically. But was there ever a feeling like: wow, that was not even worth my time or were they just amazed or was it just like that was good? Any feelings on that?

Amy: Yeah, absolutely. We looked forward to doing the DoD Blogger’s Roundtable. We felt like they told our story word for word, almost. There were the speeches that I wrote for the commanders. There was actual sentences that were quoted in the stories that came out after the DoD Blogger’s Roundtable, word for word, right out of the speech and everything which was great. So we hit on a lot of our command messages and the points we wanted to get across. So for the amount of effort we put into it we got a lot back, a lot in return is what we thought. Absolutely. It was a great forum for us to discuss the latest and greatest that we were doing in our R6 south.

Troy: Now did you pass that info off to the people that replaced you, because there hasn’t been one roundtable out of R6 south or out of Task Force Phoenix since you left, actually?

Amy: Oh, really? Unfortunately some of the lessons learned from the 218s in South Carolina I don’t think necessarily got handed down to the 27th. Unfortunately, it happened again. The lessons learned from us didn’t get passed down to the 33rd out of Illinois. So unfortunately, I don’t think people came prepared to do the mission that was actually the mission that we got on the ground. It was just kind of shoot from the hip and we’ll figure it out as we go along, unfortunately. They came into country with two qualified public affairs officers. The one guy who took over from my position was a lieutenant colonel and he had spent the last year preparing also to go to Kabul Military Training Center. And then was shifted at the last minute to take over for me, which shocked the hell out of me.

And I have looked at the Our Success website and I notice that absolutely nothing is going on. Luckily we have a colonel from New York who agreed to send over there. He’s actually the commander right now of R6 south and he brought it to his attention. Hey, look there’s no stories coming out. What are you guys doing?

[laughs]

He was up harping on me for that. So I don’t know….

Troy: Is that Col. Cutty or Col. Somersall, those guys?

Amy: Somersall, yep.

Troy: Oh, yeah, Somersall is good stuff. He decided to stay, huh. Holy cow.

Amy: Just for a little bit. For like three months just to cover I guess. Col. Hicks had a mission that came up unexpectedly that he had to go attend to for three months. So he’ll be coming back if I understand it.

Troy: OK, yeah, I know some guys did extend for three or six month stints so… Yeah, that’s interesting you say that because of course I went in ‘06, ‘07 and we tried to bring back a lot of lessons learned to the 27th. Some were taken. Some were blown off because either first army told them to or some people didn’t believe us or whatever. I’m still getting reports from people who are over there now. One of the 33rd and EGTP&T world that talk to me and the reports are … Pretty much the bottom line is that they had a lot of complaints about the 27th and they thought the 27th was doing things really bad. Then the common feeling is that the 33rd makes the 27th look like, just phenomenal Audie Murphy heroes.

I tell everyone, be careful what you complain about because there is always is somebody who does it worse later on.

Amy: Unfortunately. It shouldn’t be like that, but I’m very encouraged by the fact that we’re sending a lot more soldiers, resources, just a lot more buy-in. I think, not to be too political, but we need to hold President Karzai’s feet to the fire, hold him accountable, end the corruption, figure out Pakistan and end the regional outlook I think. Just discontinue poppy production for the opium and things might truly turn around. We’ll see. We’ll see what happens.

Troy: Yeah. Well anyone that reads my blog knows that I am absolutely, positively not a fan of Hamid Karzai. Cannot stand the man at all. So let me ask you, we talked about the prison break. You’re right. There wasn’t a lot of info coming out there from anyone. In fact, I was talking to a lot of my former Soldiers during that time and working on interviewing them and getting them to write blogs for me. But once that happened they were off the radar. They were doing 18-hour, 20-hour days and then it just kicked up in the really hot fighting season.

Things did quiet down. In situations like that, you as a PAO, because of being in Task Force Phoenix unique relationship, you are truly dependent on embedded reporters, aren’t you?

Amy: Absolutely. Because my hands were tied. I didn’t have release authority. I couldn’t speak with the media on a day to day basis, saying, hey, check this out or, hey, look at this. I had to rely on who came to me. Sometimes it was very low key and no one came down and later on the holidays here is 27th was getting ready to rip out. There was so much flux that they couldn’t send anyone down because I didn’t have a replacement until about 10 days before I left country. So just little things like that just affected the optempo when it came to trying to tell the story.

One great thing, though, I have to say was my NATO PAO counterpart really helped me out a lot with resources. Little things like mailboxes for example, Secretary Gates came down to visit us in Kandahar and speak to the press. Or just transporting media around and helping me out or even giving me a heads up about a press conference.

If it weren’t for my NATO PAO counterparts it could have been a completely different situation for me as well. They really helped me out. I tried to do what I could for them in return. They were great.

Troy: Did you get a lot of support as a PAO out of Kabul or Phoenix or pretty much because Kandahar being such a huge command and in itself you were out there on your own? I’m not going to name them but were you able to lean on the main Phoenix PAO office at all?

Amy: Yeah, we spoke almost daily and I even had a lot more interaction with the CSTC-A PAO who was also extremely helpful. The one thing was, once my commander left op what he wanted to do with the press. All I had to do was coordinate it through the Kabul channel which was CSTC-A and Task Force Phoenix. So once they helped me fly down reporters and just facilitate things like that. So without them oh, my God, it would have been a billion times worse. [laughs]

Troy: Right. Let’s talk about Nick Meo, shall we?

Amy: Sure. [laughs]

Troy: You can take full credit as to being the one to alerting us of that. Just to give people a history that don’t know maybe. Amy reached out to myself and the boys at Black Five when that thing first started happening and pretty much said, can you guys help me out? Can you get the word out? Here’s what’s going on. We ran with it. Did the reaction or the outcome of all that, of you reaching out to Matt and I, was that beyond your expectations? Or was that what you were expecting to happen or looking for or what?

Amy: I think first of all, I can’t take any of the credit. You guys had the choice of running with the situation, the incident, or not. So really you guys took the day. I didn’t expect it to go that far. And I think again it kind of harkens back to my comment months ago where the military made decisions internally, based on what you guys were already doing for them. So we looked at it internally like, I wanted all sorts of letters to be going out to editors and all sorts of things like that. My original drafted letter to Nick Meo was four pages long. [laughs] So once the decision was made, holy crap the military bloggers were really taking this guy to task.

What we’re going to do via a letter with a formal signature isn’t going to have as much an affect as what is already happening on the wires as it is. So, you guys really led the day and then took Nick Meo to task. Hopefully his career just has a huge bad aura over it, whatever is the word I’m looking for. I can’t seem to grasp…

And I think maybe in the future he’ll rethink things and fricking don’t screw with us, man. We could potentially ruin your career. [laughs] I guess.

Troy: Yeah, it’s not so much us. It’s like anything. You can attack me all day and twice on Sunday but when you attack one of our Soldiers and you disrespect and you do things like get on a Medivac bird when you’re not hurt and then lie about, all that stuff. Then we take it personal. And I know you did and we did.

Amy: Yeah, absolutely. Well, what he did was uncalled for. Making fun of Soldiers’ haircuts and just writing completely blatant lies that we had proof against him. Just the stuff he concocted and these stories are just mind boggling to me. I never had so many negative words come to my mind at once, flooding with anger and frustration and just agitation over these stories that he was spewing out is just so ridiculous.

Wendy: I think in the email I had to use all the naughty words. [laughs]

Troy: Wendy does not hold back on the naughty words at all and is not worried about offending anybody. Because her mom’s not reading her blog like mine is or listening to my show right now like mine.

Wendy: I guess the big thing with Meo, however you pronounce his name, is that it would be different if he would have put a little disclaimer up at the top. Like somebody jumped on Susan Katz Keating, if this is satirical you need to say it’s satirical. If Meo would have just said, this is kind of a fanciful flight of the imagination. This is kind of like a “Alice in the Looking Glass” type story, then we all would have been like, Oh, OK. But for him to come out and say this is true, this is fact. And then taking potshots. How low do you have be to take potshots at people? That doesn’t make you a reporter. That makes you just…. even with a big audience.

Amy: Oh, yeah.

Troy: And I got to say, Amy, I don’t think you know this. Maybe I told you, I don’t know. Cole Diamond was attached to because they meshed all the different e-organizations together. Pretty much my old company that I was the first sergeant on for four years. So all my old Soldiers and they were very close to him and they have started Facebook groups for him and Rodriguez and those guys and all them. They consider him one of their own because there were shedding blood with him. A couple of them reached out to me after they got back after they picked up wind of what happened with Nick Meo think and they found that I was part of it.

Just thanking me to no end. Not as first sergeant or anything like that but it was that what we did, we as the Mil blog community did and they thought that was just phenomenal. It just really meant a lot to them that everyone stepped up. These are the guys that were big brothers in arms.

So it wasn’t just us getting him out of country. So when you think about it it wasn’t just Mil bloggers keeping him honest or any of that stuff. It was we were helping make it right for his brothers that were missing.

Amy: Yeah, I never heard one bad thing about Corporal Diamond. Everyone glorified him and always spoke about what a wonderful person he was. So for someone like that to receive the type of treatment from a complete… oh, I can’t even say it. [laughs]

Troy: You can say whatever you want. Hey, the FCC isn’t going to say anything about this. You can say whatever you want. I don’t care.

Amy: [laughs] Just a complete jerk off. For some guy to be like that. What are you trying to prove, buddy? Just that same lieutenant colonel, that British lieutenant colonel, that I referred to at the earlier part of our conversation, he also said why do you care so much? What’s the big deal? I said, for crying out loud, we have Soldiers die and this guy could have written a story about the sacrifices Soldiers are making or a spotlight piece. Instead he did this. It’s just a detriment for what we are trying to do over here. For every one step we take forward, it seems like we take ten steps backward with assholes like this.

But he said don’t worry about it. The colonel was like he’s just a typical reporter. So in the British culture they look at it like, ah, who cares? They don’t pay much attention to them anyway.

But unfortunately I feel like in our society you’ve got too many people who do and say and act the way that the mainstream media wants them to. They don’t know any better. So it’s guys like this that I fear train, for example, maybe the American people and prove their points, which aren’t right.

I don’t know what I’m trying to say.

Troy: It may be that Britain doesn’t have as many sheep as we have in this country because there are way too many people in this country that only do what the 6:00 and 10:00 news tells them to do.

Amy: Right! And the British guy he didn’t quite get it. His whole thing was, ah, who cares? He’s just a stupid reporter. I said, well, in my society we don’t look at it like that, necessarily. Unfortunately, the journalists in America tend to carry the day for a lot of people.

Wendy: I think a lot of us, the total… excuse me. Not even attending the ramp ceremony. Not bothering to learn anything about this young man who passed away. Nothing. He made no effort, but he took plenty of time and effort to write this smear article but he couldn’t even find it in himself as a human being who watched another human being die… He couldn’t find it in himself to pay a little bit of respect or to write anything other than….

Well, I’m kind of glad that I didn’t get to know him or talk to him because really…

That was just so disrespectful. It was stunning. It was kind of like, what kind of human being are you? I think as a civilian, not just men and women who have served in uniform like that, but as a civilian you go: this guy deserves to be hung up and just flayed in front of everybody.

That kind of insensitivity is just horrifying. It’s horrifying to see.

Amy: Weak. That was the word that kept coming to me was weak. He is a weak man. And I feel like a lot of his personal, maybe self esteem issues, were coming out through his writing. We know he got on the bird to come back to Kenner Air Field under the pretention that he was hurt. He said he was cowering and fearful. If you look at his video, he’s whispering, just hiding when really there weren’t that many shots going on if you listen to it. [laughs]

So I think he took himself to the low by writing such a weak piece and bringing his self esteem forward and just showing how weak of a person he really is, unfortunately.

Troy: Now, there’s a follow-up piece to this which maybe people that follow our blogs they know about. But they tried to file a complaint, him and the Telegraph, tried to file a complaint against you guys, Task Force Phoenix? Who did they file a complaint against? I know that he tried to go through ISAF, but who did he try to complain about?

Amy: Us. Particularly you guys. [laughs] For emailing him, his editor the info at what telegraph website. And going through every channel you guys could go through. And I guess some people were like: I hope a bullet goes through your camera and kills you, that type of stuff. They took it to be that we were assaulting him. And so they went through…

Troy: That was our readers, right? That was our readers taking upon themselves and letting their emotions get the best of them. So to put it in context, a British report from the country of UK tried to complain and file a complaint against the US Army Task Force Phoenix because bloggers who are personal civilians, free, with all the freedoms of anyone else in the United States were writing things. Then people that read those blogs were writing nasty emails.

And somehow it’s holding you accountable.

Amy: In some of the cases, they were some numbers of our Soldiers who were over there in Afghanistan. I think they looked at it like it was hitting too close to home. So they ran and cried to NATO and then NATO tried to tell us: leave him alone. Leave him alone.

We said whoa, whoa, whoa. [laughs] CSTC-A took the day on that one. CSTC-A really said, excuse us but you don’t belong here. Thank you. Goodbye NATO. It was great because they knew everything that had happened.

It was as if our wounds were still open and NATO started to pour salt into it is how it felt. We got lawyers involved and everything, saying, “What are their rights here? What’s going on?”

At the end of the day, just through the command channels, the commanders ended up telling their Soldiers, “Hey, don’t threaten their lives, but I’m not going to tell you what you can and cannot say, at all. Be professional.”

Troy: Right. As bloggers we can write whatever we want, regardless if we’re in the army or not.

Amy: That’s a good thing.

Troy: Our readers can take it upon themselves to do whatever they want. We’re just providing free public information. We’re just giving them phone numbers. I’m glad CSTC-A stepped up and didn’t cow in, and understood the gravity of that situation. That really says a lot.

Amy: Absolutely.

Wendy: I wanted to say something that strikes me as amusing about Meo and his newspaper. They had no problems with publishing this article for however many thousands – or I expect three readers who read their article – but they had no problems with writing this piece and publishing this piece that put our guys in a very, very bad light. Not even true, a lot of it. But when the record was corrected, and when a lot of people took exceptions, they were like, “Well, you bloggers are working for the military,” and taking exception to what free people in the United States had to say about it.

It’s kind of like, you know, you guys had no problem publishing this piece in England where however many people were going to read it. You had no problem with portraying us in a bad light. But when we correct the record, and put out the truth. Somehow, that’s just not acceptable and we’re going to go whining and crying to mom and dad. Give me a break.

Amy: You’re absolutely right. If anything, unfortunately this situation, as bad as it was, it taught everyone on the OEF – Operation Enduring Freedom – side that let’s truly vet these people, look up their biographical backgrounds. Because unfortunately in Nick Meo’s case, he was sent to us from one of the headquarters and pretty much was just like, “Here, take this guy.” We had no true vetting process. We had the right to have a vetting process but why would I not trust my higher headquarters? You know what I mean?

Troy: Right.

Amy: It was out of us, unfortunately.

Troy: Well, we’ve got another situation right now with Robert Pelton. That’s a hot one. And Old Blue, my buddy Old Blue, is all over that. CJ jumped on it and I jumped on this week. He is another one. He’s written a disgusting piece, pretty much trying to end his lieutenant’s career from Men’s Journal. And has threatened Old Blue with a lawsuit. And has pretty much tried to make a threat against CJ. But Old Blue has a done a lot of investigative research. I talked to him this week and he has gotten emails from people and talked to people and has really found the guy guilty of several charges. I think he’s going to be Nick Meo #2 because he’s being discredited pretty quickly. He started a fad.

Amy: I have to admit though, I have to be somewhat thankful that these are not, at least – at the very least – American reporters doing that to their own American Soldiers, and the same with the marines. At least we can say they’re foreigners and they’re freaking clueless, or they have an agenda. At least it’s not a fellow American.

Troy: Pelton is Canadian, that’s a good point. No slight to our Canadian listener and friends. I know we’ve got a few on right now, but he’s a Canadian journalist. We have our own in this country, Chris Matthews and a couple of others, that aren’t really that good of reporters. That’s a good follow-up on that. That was a huge story when it happened. Wendy’s got to go. She’s going to be dropping off. I wanted to see did you ever hear anything else out of that? No more fallout? No more nothing, it just died off?

Amy: Not that I’m aware of yet. Pretty much, I think Meo just found a cave and has been hiding in it as far as we’re concerned. Luckily, in-country, a lot of the OEF people knew what to look out for with him. And others that were on the radar screen, too. I think they were going to continue blacklisting certain people that clearly haven’t helped us out.

Troy: He was reaching all corners. My good friend Scott was over there embedded at the time and he was over at 203d about right when it happened. Scott was calling me about once a week from over there – he’s an embedded journalist, and he was like, “Hey what’s going on about this. We’re hearing about it.” It was causing an uproar. The 101st knew about it and the 101st definitely blackballed him from being with them.

Amy: Luckily I went to a public…

Troy: So…

Amy: I’m sorry, go ahead.

Troy: Go ahead. Say it again.

Amy: I went to a public affairs course with one of the captains that was attached to the 101st. She was there as a PAO. She covered all her PAOs in-country too that she worked with. We made sure that he was definitely not allowed, as far as OEF is concerned.

Troy: Right. We kind of covered that. We talked about the PAO down there. Let me go back and chat for a few. You got a few more minutes?

Amy: Sure.

Troy: OK. I want to chat about what it was like… Last week we had Evonne and she talked about what it’s like to be over there. I know your married and all that stuff, but you probably saw other females and maybe heard them talk. But what some of them kind of became the star of the show, if you will, because they were over there in such a disproportionate ratio of male to female – some weren’t that careful, or some just got googly-eyed over being so popular. Did you see any issues like that to any of our listeners you could pass on as advice? Eve gave us a lot last week, good advice. Anything like that for a female deploying or think about going into the service, things to be careful for or watch out for?

Amy: I guess my bottom line would be just make sure you know what your morals are and hold yourself accountable. I think when there are so many more males than females, the females receive attentions, and I think they easily give into that. I think some of that comes with youth and — I was going to say innocence, but technically if you’re in the army, you’re really not that innocent.

Troy: immaturity, right? Immaturity probably.

Amy: Yeah, immaturity, sure. But I don’t know too many cases personally to refer to in a generic scheme. A woman’s morals, she should hold them close to her heart and know who she is as a person and not let any guy try and change who she is just because there’s so few females for every guy and not to fall into all that crazy business, for lack of a better word.

Troy: That’s probably good advice. Like you said, holding it true to hear and not forgetting who you are and that kind of stuff. You mentioned, it probably played a little difference on how many missions you went out on, but the missions you did go out on, were you treated like a Soldier.

Amy: Absolutely. That’s my philosophy as a female, and I say in a man’s army, females made such a big deal about joining the man’s army. I think there comes a point when you’ve got to put some of those female EO complaints. We had one girl, oh my God. She was just out of control. You couldn’t even talk without her threatening EO on you. Stuff like that, you know. You join for a reason. Luckily, I guess you could say I’m the product of a truck driving father who… I lost my innocence when it came to just regular talk years ago, swearing and sharing his opinions loudly and stuff like that. I love it.

I think one of the things, it’s important to be a female in the Army, but you’ve got to try to be like a guy at the same time. You’ve got to try and be one of the boys too. I’m not saying women should be running around and burping and scratching and whatever, have you.

Share a joke. Don’t be offended at some of the smaller jokes, or tell a joke too. It’s not going to hurt anything. Play the joking game. Just be jovial about it. You don’t need to be so uptight and pretending, “Oh my God, I’ve never heard that swear word before. Oh my God, my ears are bleeding.” That’s just nonsense. So I think it’s important to be like a guy but still maintain your femininity at times, too.

Troy: Well, being a Soldier and have a Soldier’s humor, right? Yeah, things are like you say, some people can take it to extreme and yell EO every time something is said, but then it’s going to mean guys not want to be around or hang around, bring ammunition or do anything. But I think most guys, they might try to push the envelope but they in comments or whatever, but I think you can tell them, hey it’s one thing to joke about this but now you are starting to push it. They would know to back off, wouldn’t you say?

Amy: Yeah. I have to admit part of me. I’m faithful to have my husband who fought under the 27th Brigade when he was deployed to Iraq in 2004. So I came with the name that was recognized by quite a few people in the 27th Brigade. I think on the other hand they knew who it was and clearly I was married and from respected my husband, at least it seemed they respected them but not to screw with me in that type of way, either. So you have to give benefit where it’s due, too.

Troy: Awesome. Well, like I said, it is a volatile place over there. I don’t know how 33rd is doing but I know as far as the PO outreach, they are not doing near as much as you guys did, between yourselves and Lt. Col. Fanning. You guys were PAOs to the word, to the definition as far as reaching out and spreading the word. If you ever have contact with those solds over there again, and tell them that they are missing out on the opportunity. Even the guys in 2-7 Marine, I don’t know whether any of them off the top of my head, but the master sergeant down that that was a PAO guy. He was just feeding me stuff all the time.

Amy: Yeah, oh yeah. He was great. He was great. Absolutely. And even the two for me that was there for most of our tour, they taught a lot of stuff, too. They were very proactive.

Troy: The 2-7 guy was like I’m getting ready to leave. He was writing me up the day he left and I was like, hey, pass off my info to 3-8 and let them know. He was sending me stories left and right. When sometimes a picture wouldn’t come through, got corrupted, he would resend it to me. I was putting up a lot of stuff. I have a lot of followers on my blog up at 2-7 Marine. I had a lot of family members of 2-7 Marine that were following it because there was so much information coming out for them.

Amy: That’s great. That’s great. See, and that’s why we have so much to be thankful for that you military bloggers is you guys cover what the MSN doesn’t. If it weren’t for you guys I don’t think even a quarter of the people would know about what’s truly doing on the ground on a day to day basis. Really, our hats are off to you guys, the military bloggers.

Troy: Well, thank you, I really appreciate that. I don’t want to blow my boat there too much but what are your thoughts or predictions for this year for Afghanistan?

Amy: I have been saying since I have been home, I don’t think we’ll see solid, real change in Afghanistan for a generation — day to day operational whatever in Afghanistan for at least another 20 or 30 years. One of the things I noticed while I was over there was that the Afghan generals who are Afghan generals now have this Russian mentality. Clearly the Russians were over there in the ’80s and now they have kind of come of age as generals today.

So I think right now our focus should be on the 20, 25, 30-year-olds and help them, show them the NCOs are the backbone of the army and no more check points you need to patrol to keep your city or town or district safe.

So I think we won’t see any solid change for a while. Like we mentioned earlier, you really got to nip that corruption in the bud, which starts with the president of the country. And unfortunately I think there’s a lot of holes that need to be plugged, too, with having coming up from Pakistan, east through the south there. You need to plug those holes.

But I think we’ll start seeing change incrementally with the addition of what, 17,000 troops and they’ve got more already there and more on the way by the summertime. I think we’ll start seeing some changes. I think you won’t see solid, true change for at least a generation.

Troy: Yep, yep. And that’s, when I first came back I was saying 15 years that we would be there for and it would take a generation. It would take kids growing up. And now I’ve explained that that would probably be 20 years we’ll be there for, have some presence. But you bring up a good point. The corruption has been since when I was over there, I’ve said and I’ve stated the same thing.

The three biggest problems they have in that country are corruption, the Soldiers, the forces are not in it for the good of Afghanistan. They’re in it for a paycheck. And absolutely the biggest problem, the root of all that as you know you see MJ.

Until there’s a uniform code of military justice in some flavor to hold people accountable, you’ll never get rid of the corruption. You’re never going to get people proud to be part of the military and do it for their country. They’re going to sit back and will continue to steal fuel, steal gear, sell their weapons, all that kind of stuff that they do today.

Amy: I think our bottom line is that we need to insure that it’s not a safe haven for terrorists any more. That’s why I’m working for the New York City Office of Homeland Security today is because of 9/11. The agency was created after 9/11 and we can’t have Afghanistan or even Pakistan be a safe harbor for these terrorists to continue these sort of activities against innocent people across the world. I think that’s the bottom line and I don’t know. The question over there in Afghanistan was how much corruption can you take to insure that it’s not a safe haven. They are so corrupt, but I don’t know what that formula is. I don’t know. Someone has got to figure it out. I’m just a lieutenant so I don’t know. [laughs]

Troy: Well, you know, that’s an interesting myth because part of their culture as you know is what we in the US and America will consider corruption. They consider it a deal, kind of like networking. That’s how they have always done thing. For us, it would be corruption absolutely, but then there’s also blatant corruption over there which we see, like you say, all the way to the highest levels. It’s balancing which one is part of their culture, which one is corruption? I would be interested to hear what your thoughts are on Secretary Gates’ new policy which I’m fond of because it follows along what General McCaffrey’s AAR.

That is that to get away from trying to implement America and American policies in this country of [inaudible 81:50] the stone age. Instead, try to come up a five year plan and just get basic security in place. Because nothing else can happen until security is in place. This is what he is looking at doing now. Do you agree with that?

Amy: When we were over there… I’m sorry. When we were over there one of the toughest things that we had to deal with was keeping people out of that situation of not covering it even Soldiers can’t cover anything. We couldn’t take any pictures. Just the PAO and only the PAO sent that material, all of it to the Families. So we spent more time and effort turning people away from doing that, covering ramp memorial ceremonies and stuff like that. I think this will help. Again, it goes back to in my mind as long as the family is OK with it. So like we would take pictures and stuff them up to Task Force Phoenix to send that ramp ceremony for those in memorial ceremony photos to the family.

Once I think it’s great if that give that to the media to cover. I think people need to see it. I think that’s why you don’t hear enough about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. You don’t know the day to day stuff over there in the mainstream media because we’re cloaking it. We’re hiding it from people and I’m glad to see that that policy changed. I think more people should cover it.

My fear is that we’ll be covering a ramp ceremony and we do ramp ceremonies within hours of the family being notified. If they are not notified we don’t know that. So my biggest fear is just having a mainstream media person or anyone rather, covering a ramp ceremony hours before a family is notified and then somehow that name gets leaked out to the press and the family hears about it through the press.

I think that would be awful. So that’s the type of thing we got to worry about. I think in the future.

Troy: That’s not actually what I asked you but you answered something I did want to ask.

Amy: Sorry. [laughs]

Troy: It’s OK, I talked way too long. You probably forgot what my question…

Amy: I was formulating my answer and [laughs] I’m sorry.

Troy: You say policy and that’s what came to mind. But that’s OK. We were talking about for 30 minutes before you came on. But it’s cool because that’s actually very good because that goes right along with because as a PO it’s something you would be very involved with and I’m glad you brought that up. You brought up a couple of points I want to ask you about. I won’t keep you longer. But no what I was asking about was Secretary Gates’ change in policy for Afghanistan, America’s change of policy. Rather than trying to implement a full functional government which they say could take 15 years. Now just trying to do five year, short term goals, reachable, implement security. Get security in place so they could do whatever they’re going to do with their own government.

Amy: See, I didn’t see that today. All I saw was the media thing that came out today. So I don’t know enough about it to comment fully. I’ll have to research that though. I can always shoot you an email. I apologize, I wish I had seen that.

Troy: No, no. That’s OK. I guess it’s not so much of the announcement. It was actually done the other day. It was just that when I was there at least it was we’re trying to implement… I mean, when I was there… I don’t know what it was like when they did this with you. But here I am, I’m trying to get them to have a platoon to be able to sustain itself for three days on a combat op. They wanted me as the Sergeant Major mentor to implement an NCO rating scheme and NCO counseling. It came back that that couldn’t sustain itself for two or three days.

They couldn’t even do PCIs or fuel their trucks before they went on a mission. And they wanted me to put in an NCO rating. I was like wait a minute, that’s the cart before the horse. Do you think General Washington put in an NCOER system in his first year standing up the army?

Amy: Right, right.

Troy: And so they went from that and Secretary Gates has now got the President on board to say rather than trying to implement our full doctrine and 200 plus years of policy that we have run as a country. Let’s just try to get the place stable in the next five years and get rid of the Taliban for good. That’s the policy change.

Amy: Right. And I wonder if part of that though is not only mentoring the Afghan National Army and the Afghan National Police, but also mentoring the government that can support the Afghan National Army and Afghan police. I mean, we don’t even have… Someone gave me the statistics one time, we don’t have nearly as many mentors in the government system than in even the department of health or whatever they’re calling it over in Afghanistan, I forget now. We don’t even have provincial leader mentors and stuff like that.

So you’ve got to get those government processes in place to be able to support the army and the police who can then support the security in the country. So I think that’s an element too that isn’t often discussed that plays a key role.

Troy: Right, right. Well, they’re definitely short ever since they’ve taken on the PMT and AMT mission which was handed to us in January of ‘07 when I was there. When you have task force Phoenix and we’re handling the army. Then all of the sudden you give us the police to mentor, the only thing you can do with more is less is less. You spread us too thin and then you can’t do it. So I think we’re going to see some changes this year. In fact I know we are. I’ve gotten some intel from out of DoD that we’re going to see some major changes in how task force Phoenix is run.

Amy: Yeah, there were rumors in country about different stuff like that. It will be interesting to see what shakes out from it.

Troy: Yeah, we got in the chat room, an old friend of mine, one of my old Soldiers who called me the other day. He’s heading over the ETT. He’s calling it an emit team, that’s an Iraq term. But he’s going over as an ETT, so he’s listening to the show. He’s an old New York, he’s an old 27th 1108 guy.

Amy: Oh, cool. Good for him.

Troy: He’s active duty now. He went to the dark side and became an officer. [laughter] And he went active duty, so at least he’s doing great stuff. Well, Amy is there anything else you’d like to… I’ve had you on for almost an hour now. Is there anything you’d like to touch base on or summarize after being our longest guest ever on You Served Radio?

Amy: You know, I just can’t say it enough how thankful I am to you guys, the military bloggers for what you guys do in holding a lot of these mainstream media and other type reporters accountable for a lot of the stuff. I think my bottom line when it comes to being a PAO is as long as the story is factual and truthful, I have no problem with it. I think telling the truth is the number one thing any journalist should do. And then the number one thing any public affairs officer should maintain.

So I think the military bloggers are truly coming to the forefront of telling the stories. Across the military and across all sorts of subjects and topics and things across the world really. I think we’re already seeing the mainstream media changing how it tells the news. I think you guys are a big part of the future.

If it weren’t for you guys and the standards that you guys hold true to yourselves, it would be a completely different situation in talking about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. So I just want to say once again thank you to all you military bloggers for what you guys do. Without you guys I wouldn’t have had so much fun over in Afghanistan. So thank you guys very much.

Troy: Well, thank you. And Amy anytime you want to write as a guest blogger, write an entry online, you are more than welcome to send me and I’d be honored to put it up on my blog. And if you want to write something political, I’ll put it up on militarypundits.com.

Amy: Yeah, that looks like a great website.

Troy: Yeah, we’re doing good. Well, thank you everyone. We’ve been talking with Lieutenant Amy Bonanno from the New York Army National Guard. Just getting back from a one year tour as a public affairs officer in the volatile Kandahar region, R6 south of Afghanistan. Amy, I want to thank you again for being on and I look forward to next time I’m out Albany way for us to meet your husband. Who you married after last time I saw you, and buying you a beer.

Amy: Yeah, absolutely, you got it. Thank you for everything. Have a good night, Troy.

Troy: All right, thank you. Bye bye.

Amy: Bye.

Troy: All right everybody. That was Amy Bonanno again from the New York Army National Guard. What a great guest. A lot of stuff going on in the chat room. A lot of people thanking her. I’m sorry that I probably couldn’t chat more in the room, but hey when you’re running it by yourself, that’s just the way it is. Got a lot of listeners on tonight, a lot of guests. With that and since we just talked to Amy and I’ve been going nonstop for an hour, I’m going to take a break here and play one of my favorite songs. From one of my favorite artists, Michael Darwin’s Theory. Since we’ve just been talking about Afghanistan, we’re going to take a couple minute break here and play “I’ve Alive.”

[music]

Troy: And there we go. That was Michael Darwin’s Theory’s “I’m Alive.” They are regular listeners and came to the show. We’ve had Michael and his daughter on. Just an awesome song. What a great song in today’s time with the topics going on and more importantly after that great guest we just had, Ms. Amy Bonanno, from the New York Army National Guard just getting back from Afghanistan herself. So a couple of things I want to chat about today. We have, of course, no more guests, so we’re just going to chat about a couple current topics and things going on that fit in with the show, I guess.

First and foremost, the other day in my blog I put up a thing about Muze Clothing. These people contacted me. I went and checked out their site and looked at them. I’ll tell you, they’re doing a phenomenal thing. Muze Clothing is a t-shirt company started by a few guys that take famous comments or sayings out of movies, and they make t-shirt out them.

On their paparazzi page you can see all kinds of pictures of just the who’s who of Hollywood, this, that and whatever, that are caught wearing their clothes all the time. Anyways, what they’re doing is they are raising money for the wounded members of Afghanistan and Iraq. They had money. They are considered a friend of BAMCIS, and they’re raising money for the Wounded Warriors Project and a couple other charities.

They are doing it by having people submit classic movie lines and graphics as ideas for shirts. They’re going to have a panel of celebrities judge them. Then 100 percent of the proceeds of the sale of whatever shirt that’s picked will go to the Wounded Warriors Project.

Then if the service member, a member identified by a service member, or a member who served someone else on behalf of them wins, they’re going to take them with three of their friends and fly them out to the shirt launch in Los Angeles on May 16. So you go to muzeclothing.com. Right on the front page you can click, and it will take you right to their blog, which is all about it.

But they’re doing it. Why? Because they want to. Why? Because they’re Americans. No other reason. They have no other ulterior motive that I can see. They’re doing it because it’s the right thing to do. They have a history of supporting troops. It’s just one little way that they can give back. I think it’s very honorable.

The entire country is not made up of sheep. The entire country is not made up of people that listen to MSNBC. That’s the reason why Fox News just came out with the third highest ratings over all cable. Behind USA and TNT Network, Fox News is the highest rated of all cable channels. Fox News is number one.

Why? Because they tell it like it is, and they’re honest. They have people from both sides that are not just the ultra-left doing things like Chris Mackey, Charlie Gibson and all the rest of them are doing. So, there are some people out there that are great Americans.

A lot of you are listening to the show. A lot of you listen to the show later on. A lot of you can’t listen to the show, but we know you’re out there. You care about America. You care about our country. More importantly, you care about the Soldiers, the first responders, and the public servants that are out there trying to make this country great.

Muze Clothing is trying to do their part. I just wanted to bring that part up and give them a free plug. Another thing that’s coming up, and there’s a couple of other things I want to bring your attention to, of course, is this movie Brothers At War, which is coming out. It’s a documentary that is coming out in March maybe. I think there are some previews of it.

They’ve contacted me. They’re sending me a copy of the movie, and I will be screening it. It’s about two brothers that happen to be in Iraq, and a third brother that is a journalist. He goes over to see his other two brothers and experiences it. He’s got one brother that’s an E-6, and the other one’s a captain or something like that if I remember right from trailer I saw.

It’s called Brothers At War. Then the third brother goes over to see him and what he experiences. It looks like a phenomenal piece. I watched the trailer, and it just gave me goose bumps. It really looks good. So I’ll be writing up something on that soon. We’ll probably be interviewing somebody from that movie, I’m sure, pretty soon.

The other one was the person we talked to last week, the gentleman that created this movie The Way We Get By. I’ve got that up on my blog at Bouhammer.com. We interviewed him last week. The trailer’s up there on my blog. You could just check it out.

It’s about the greeters at Bangor, Maine, again, another phenomenal group. I watched the trailer alone. I think it’s three minutes. It just gets you emotional watching that, watching these old vets and these people just trudging out every day through the snow and through everything to come out and greet every single plane that comes down.

Yes, Gary Sinise is the executive producer of Brothers At War. You’re right. I’m hoping that I can get him to back or something with Scott’s film. Actually, I should have a copy of At War within the next week. I’m talking to Scott today, and I’m looking to get a copy of it soon. As soon as I do, I will be definitely writing about that.

I’m actually going to be hosting. For anybody that is in the western New York area, once I get that I will be setting up a screening party and putting on the movie At War in the western New York area. I’m going to be coordinating that over the next couple weeks to show that, probably mostly to military and a lot of my old Soldiers who just got back from Afghanistan.

But if you’re in the western New York area and listening to this show, contact me at Troy@bouhammer.com. I will keep you on the list, and give you the details. And yes, Michael Darwin’s Theory, you’re not far from Buffalo. So you could easily come down. Just get ready to come across the border, and come visit us here in western New York. You are only about an hour away.

So on that, let’s see what else are we going to talk about here tonight? Let me see if I have got anyone called in. No, I don’t have anyone call in. Well, we talked about the Pentagon lifting the ban. I think we talked that one to the nth degree. Sorry some of our listeners missed that first part. I think another piece that I want to talk about is the speech the other night – we will go a little bit political here. I think if you look at the president’s wannabe State of the Union Address, there is a lot to be desired. And now that he has submitted his budget – of course, there are these all about that – and what’s going on with the financial situation.

But one interesting thing that is brought up today that I saw in the news was that they did analysis and every time that President Obama has got on the TV to talk, every single time he’s talked, the market has gone down. In fact, they showed today, this morning, when he talked yesterday about his budget proposal they actually had the Dow Jones numbers up on the side, and as he came to the podium and started talking you just see it and it just dropped.

I don’t know what that means. I know it isn’t good. But, if anything, we need to keep him off the air. Because every time he talks the market drops. And at the closing today its 7,182 — down 88 points. We are hitting such lows. I mean the unemployment numbers are terrible. Everything else is terrible. And we need to keep the guy off the TV. It’s going to drop the market.

Another interesting thing I want to bring up is it was literary just this week – I guess kind of a sneaky silent policy change – was that it looks like they are going to keep the military, the major combat forces, in Iraq for the next 19 months. I talked about this the other day a little bit on, I think, militarypundits.com. He is breaking the promise, I guess you could say, from the 16 months when he was on the outside the White House before he came in when he thought he knew everything.

But it is a lot different when you are actually in the seat, in the hot seat, and you are getting the national intelligence briefs and you are hearing and seeing the whole picture. And you are not just sitting outside throwing potshots and throwing darts at whoever is making decisions. It easy to sit there in the backseat, you know, backseat driver and armchair quarterback somebody.

Now that he is getting in there just to point a few of the things. But when President Obama was campaigning he was saying that he was going to close down Gitmo, getting out immediately within the first hundred days. And now it’s in the first year he is looking at it. He was going to have us out of Iraq in 16 months. First it was right away early on when he was campaigning, like over a year ago. Then it was 16 months. And now it is 19 months.

He is now supporting and upholding President Bush’s policy on combatants caught on the battlefield not having rights to trials in US courts. So they are not allowed to have trails in courts and he is going to uphold that policy.

I mean there is more and more. The stuff on the budget. I mean it’s more and more he is upholding President Bush’s policy, which tells me one thing. You can say hope and change all you want. But there is a reason why something where they were. Were all the decisions good? No, President Bush made some bad decisions. I will be the first one to say it. But there is some stuff he was doing right. So before you just sit outside and just throw darts at somebody, you better have all your ducks in a row because once you get into that seat there’s no one else to blame but yourself.

Granted, he tries to blame President Bush every time he gets on the air now, but his policy has started to turn a little bit into the polices that President Bush had in place. They were there for a reason. They are not there just because President Bush was a butthead or because Rumsfeld said it or because Dick Cheney was pissed off. They were there for a reason. I think it’s interesting that we see more and more things.

What does this mean? I talked about it the other day. President Obama didn’t have to worry about the Rush Limbaughs of the world or be concerned with the conservative Milbloggers of the world or Fox News or any of that mess. He needs to worry about the ultra-left liberals on his side — the ACORNs and the MoveOn.orgs and all those. They think he owes them something. They think that they have him in the back pocket. They are all taking credit for him being getting elected. That is who he has to worry about because he is about to seriously disappoint them because he was all touting whatever they wanted to hear. And now they are expecting him to put his money where his mouth is.

I don’t think they are going to see it. I think they are going to be highly disappointed when he is not coming through on the promises. So we will see what happens. I said it earlier on in a talk with CJ one time that I hope I am wrong. I hope I am wrong on what he is going to do. But I don’t think I am going to be. I hope he turns things around. But I would love to be wrong. Because if I am right and thinks he is going down, then we are screwed as a country and there is nothing else we can do about it. So, I don’t want to be right that’s for sure.

Let’s see, what else have we got in the news? Recently a picture came out, a picture of President Obama, with like the presidential seal around his head so it kind of looked like the halo. You could find it on militarypundit.com. It’s a blog called Obsessed with Obama. I will be honest, I just haven’t had the chance to say anything about it, but I did a search on “presidential seal” and “halo” on Google and there’s like four pictures of President Bush in the same way.

I don’t know who does them. I don’t know if someone photoshopped him or a photographer just waits till they walk right in front of it. But for those that kind of got all wrapped around the axle about it, I just hadn’t had the chance to blog about it. It hasn’t been important, because I was putting up the stuff about the Dover thing. But if you go out and Google “presidential seal, halo” and look under images, you are going to find about two or three pictures of President Bush the same way. I think that got blown a little bit more out of proposition then need to be. But we will see what happens.

What else we got going on. As I mentioned earlier with Amy, the 17,000 going into Afghanistan. Unfortunately, President Obama is going to hold off on the 30,000 that were requested by General McKiernan because just want to hold back. I don’t know. Maybe it won’t be a bad thing. The infrastructure is lacking in Afghanistan. I can’t imagine where they are going to put those other 17,000. I mean, they are going to have Soldiers living on top of Soldiers, and line out of the mess hall and line out of the latrines like no tomorrow. And in all honesty, they may not be able to handle much more than 17,000 surging at one time.

I mean it is not Iraq, right. You hear me say it a hundred times. Afghanistan is not Iraq. There are not palaces all over the place that you can stick these guys in. You can put them in kolats. For those who don’t know what a kolat is. It is made out of mud. It’s a walled compound with a house in the middle of it. The house is tiny compared to the compound and its all mud.

People don’t normally give up their kolats when they have to hand make them with mud or pay someone to make them. So either you are going to kick someone out and take them and occupy it by force, which isn’t really a good way to conduct COIN operations because it doesn’t really win hearts and minds.

Or you are going to move them to a dilapidated one. Let me tell you, for an Afghan to move out of a kolat it’s got to be pretty bad. These people live in dirt. They live in houses of dirt. They live on dirt. They are covered in dirt. They bathe in dirt. They farm dirt. So when a house is that bad that they don’t want to live in it, you can better believe that it’s going to be in pretty bad shape.

There is no castles. There’s no Saddam castles, there’s no Karzai castle, there is no Taliban castle. So, I don’t know where they are going to put these guys. We will see what they do. But the thing is I am sure General McKiernan has a plan somewhere. I mean most of them are infantry Soldiers, sticking out there to live out of the Humvees or conduct combat ops; they are going to be moving. But what I just noticed is that President Obama said he is holding off until whenever.

So, if the man on the ground says, “I need 30,000″ give him 30,000. If he wants 30,000 troops and if you can do it, then give him. Commanders on the ground win the battle, not politicians in Washington. They may in the end the final say, but they don’t run the day to day ops. And that is where I give kudos to President Bush. He was very good in that.

A lot of people critiqued him for not having more of a hand in keeping control of the generals and having more say. But you know what? He truly believed that they were the best decision makers. I wish all Presidents thought that way because they definitely don’t. It looks like President Obama is not thinking that way either.

Let’s see, another hot topic coming on lately is the Special Forces Soldier that was acquitted. Special Forces Master Sergeant Joseph Newell, who was up for murder charges of an Afghan. He was recently acquitted, yesterday I guess it was, of murder and mutilating a dead body, from March 2008.

He was over there, he was charged with murdering the guy and cutting off his ear. They tried to bring him up on charges, they did an Article 32, they found there was enough evidence, they put him in front of a court martial, but he was acquitted. So good for him. I guess there was no evidence. I guess he didn’t do it or if he did it there was…

I know he shot him, he admitted that. I don’t know what is up with the ear cutting thing, but he was acquitted of all charges. The guy can go back to being a Soldier. I hope that doesn’t mar his record. I would love to get him on the air, but since he is still a serving Soldier, I’m not sure if he is going to be willing to, or could. He’s probably not really free to talk about a lot of it right now. So, that one just happened.

On the tail end of just a few weeks ago, didn’t make the news a lot, but I will bring it up here. It’s kind of near and dear to my heart, is the New York National Guard, Sergeant Martinez, who was the Soldier in the 42nd Division out of New York that was accused of the first fragging case, the old term from Vietnam. Killing the Lieutenant and Captain Esposito, of New York, with a claymore. You heard a lot about it from the old Main Stream when it first happened.

You know, a Soldier upset with his Command, or whatever this or that, well it was quite a shock about, I guess it was about a month ago, maybe the end of December, when he was acquitted of all charges. They didn’t find the evidence. Of course, it was very shocking to many in my state of New York, to the New York National Guard, to the Families that were there at the court martial of the Soldiers that were killed. A lot of things were yelled and screamed in the court room, but he was acquitted.

I don’t know what happened. I think his time in the National Guard is over. I think he said that he was definitely getting out. I saw a quote from him the other day and he said that he knows he is not well liked up there and doesn’t plan on going back. I thought he was going to be all over the news. I thought it was going to be everywhere. Like, holy cow, this guy that everyone was so sure that killed his commander and his lieutenant, he was the XO, all of a sudden just acquitted. He didn’t do it. So I don’t know.

You don’t hear much, of course it’s a UCMJ, they don’t really release a lot of info. It’s not like a regular civilian court. There is not a whole lot of the commanders and sergeant majors, the senior officers and sergeant majors that are sitting on a court martial are going to come talk to the press. That one just kind of got pushed under the old radar there. Pushed under the carpet. But yes, Sergeant Martinez, the first Soldier ever accused and brought up on charges for fragging his Commander, was fully acquitted.

We will have to see where that goes. I guess he’ll go on and live his life. If he’s innocent he’s innocent. It’s a shame that they drug him through all that but apparently either their prosecution didn’t bring enough evidence or he truly was innocent and never had anything to do with it. But what could that mean? Are they still going to try to investigate? Are they going to find out who really did do it? Or is it going to be like the old OJ case and it’s just going to drop because everyone is for sure that he did it.

Well I just actually was about to close down here but I looked at the news and it looks like quite a few Democrats are pretty ticked off at President Obama’s war plan to leave as many as 50,000 troops in Iraq after 19 months. So they’re pretty upset that he is going to leave them.

Like I just said a few minutes ago, the Rush Limbaughs, the Fox News’s, the Troy Stewarts, aren’t his concern. His concern are the ultra-left liberals. The Nancy Pelosi’s, the Harry Reids, the MoveOn.orgs, the I-invented-the-Internet-and-I’m-going-to-save-the-planet Gore, the huffpost, all those folks. That is who he needs to worry about because he is going to lose all that shine.

I’m on the road and I don’t have my wife here. I can’t bring the wife on and I don’t have a new American Story Teller to put up, it doesn’t look like. I didn’t get one loaded up, so I can’t do that. So with that, I guess we are going to be getting ready to close down. Oh yeah, the Code Pink one. You don’t hear about Code Pink anymore. They’re not in the news. I guess they will be now that he is going to keep some troops over there. Maybe they will be.

Anyways with that, I guess we’ll wind it down. We have got a couple of minutes left and we are going to play our out song here. I just want to say thanks for listening to You Served BlogTalkRadio show. I hope all of you enjoyed what you heard tonight or what you have been listening to it now, if you are listening to it after the fact.

Hope, thank you very much for Wendy and June coming on. Thank you for Amy Bananno for being our guest tonight. We had her on for a whole hour. I want to thank all of the people in the chat room. It was a great show.

Next week check into our description. We have a full show next week, including, I think, we are going to try and get Dana Canedy, author of Journal For Jordan, on next week. We have some good guests on. Actually the next two weeks we have it pretty well loaded.

CJ has promised me that he will be on and will be able to be doing next week’s. Again thank you guys very much and I am going to close out with our outro and then I am going to put on the good old Army song. Thanks again for listening to You Served Blog Talk Radio.

Announcer: From CJ and the gang at You Served, thank you for joining us for another edition of our Military Podcast. We’ll see you next week. [music]

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