Thursday, November 12, 2009

Duncan Hunter Interview 11-10-09: Gunny Pop, Afghanistan, Terrorism & Political Correctness!!

I was privileged to be invited to participate in a series of conference call interviews with 2008 Presidential conservative hopeful Duncan Hunter.

For those who don't know or recall Duncan Hunter was the candidate Ann Coulter described as "magnificent" and who Michael Reagan said is "most like my father".

Here is the conference call interview as published by the moderator pissant at Free Republic.com-

"We finally pulled it off. We managed to have a conference call, as opposed to a randomly timed interview with the former Congressman. Not only that, he was in his hometown of San Diego for a change; if only for a brief stint. Hunter interrupted his weeks long vacation in Idaho to hit Texas last Saturday for a speech celebrating the 234th birthday of the United States Marine Corps. He then traveled back to San Diego to introduce the next Congressman (hopefully) for the 51st Congressional district of California – war hero and staunch conservative Nick Popaditch – to the good people of San Diego County. (He really picked a good one here). Popaditch will attempt to unseat liberal democrat and Pelosi sycophant Bob Filner. We wish him the best of luck in this endeavor.

Unfortunately, because of technical errors on the moderator’s part (me), only 34 minutes of the interview was recorded, and therefore subject to transcribing. The balance of the interview, as you will see, is simply summations. They are, however, summations based on notes and memories of the 5 of us who participated in the conference call. I promise to upgrade the recording techniques and equipment going forward.

Anyway, several of us were already on the conference call line, waiting for Mr. Hunter to join us. He was running late, unsurprisingly, considering his busy day.

Here is what transpired last night:

****************

Automatron: Someone has joined the conference call.

AJM: Let’s take a guess who that might be (laughter).

DH: Hunter here (laughing). Hi everybody.

AJM: Oh boy, your fan club is here, Mr. Hunter.

DH: Oh oh. Both of them? (laughing). Are they relatives?

ALL: (laughing)

AJM: I’ll tell you what, why don’t we do a quick introduction. Everyone knows who you are. I think we have five people on the line. Ladies, why don’t you go first.

GW: I’m Gloria from Ohio

DH: Hey Gloria

GW: Hi!

LD: Lynn from NE Ohio. I met you in DC at that private little dinner in September of 07 with Captain Bailey.

DH: Oh Great.

AJM: The one that was supposed to be twelve people but turned out to be forty?

LD: Yeah, that one.

DH: That’s great.

DF: I’m Don ******, Congressman Hunter. It’s an honor to talk to you. I’m in Denver Colorado, and I run a blog called Red Stater. I’ve been a fan of yours since the get go.

DH: Hey, thanks Don.

RS: Russell *****, from the Fort Worth Dallas metroplex in Texas. Pleasure to meet you this evening Congressman Hunter. And I run three blogs and I’ve been an avid supporter for many years. I come originally from Mesa, California, graduated from UCLA. I’m well in tune with your career, and I’ll turn it back to the moderator.

DH: Hey, Russell, I just left Texas. I spoke at the Marine Birthday bash, for the 14th Marine regiment out of the Dallas/Fort Worth, what was it…..Saturday night.

RS: Oh, that’s fabulous. But I love that country out there (California). I left in 68 and went on to South Dakota and ran a big cattle ranch before I got into the oil and gas industry. But anyway, I do want to take this moment just to thank you for your service, and your sons’ service to this country, and everything you do for this country.

DH: Well listen, you’re very kind. And I want to tell all of you it’s been kind of a neat day. I came back from the Texas thing, and today I went down to San Diego to the kickoff, and helped to kickoff the campaign of a real American hero. And that’s Gunnery Sergeant Nick Popaditch. If you remember the AP photo they had of the statue of Saddam coming down, when the Marines were there in Baghdad Square, and there was a picture, an AP Photo, of a Marine Gunnery Sergeant smoking a cigar in the hatch of an M1 tank, while the statue behind him was going down; that was Nick Popaditch.

And later he was in some real tough fighting in Falluja. And he won the Silver Star. He was hit by an RPG, badly wounded, initially blinded totally, but got about 30% of his sight back in one eye. Great guy, wonderful wife April. And they are running for Congress here in San Diego. And we kicked off his campaign here today in San Diego. Then we drove over the mountain to Imperial County. This district goes all the way from San Diego to Arizona. So we went over the mountain into Imperial County and kicked off the campaign there on the courthouse steps.

It was a great day and Nick, he is the Grand Marshall at the San Diego Veteran’s Parade tomorrow. So that will help him a lot. But he’s got a good chance to win this seat, presently held by a very liberal guy, Bob Filner.

AJM: We know Bob.

DH: We call him Bad Bob, and we’ve got a great chance of beating him. It’s a conservative district, democrat by registration, but conservative democrat. Lots and lots of veterans here.

Gunny Nick Popaditch is just a superb speaker. He is a Ronald Reagan type speaker. Just a tremendous, tremendous guy. I heard him initially give a speech at an event where they raised $350,000 for wounded Marines. And I mean he got a 10 minute standing ovation. And I said “where did this guy come from?” Well, he ended up deciding to run for Congress here, and I think he’s going to end up being one of the winners this next cycle.

GW: Jim, get his website so we can all contribute!

AJM: Yeah. I will follow up on that. I just want to interject here – this is Jim, Mr. Hunter, you know me….

DH: Just faintly (laughing). He’s the only guy that calls me up when I’m in a tree stand.

ALL: (laugh)

LD: Did he scare the deer away?

DH: I got a big buck coming down the trail (laughing). Actually, Jim did call me. I was stalking elk in Colorado, and they were bugling, and I was moving in on them, and then *RING*. It’s Jim. And he wants to chat.

Go ahead Jim.

ALL: (laughing)

AJM: I wanted also to mention, since the last time I posted our interview, someone said “well, what’s Hunter doing, he’s not doing anything. Tell him to get out in the arena.” And so I responded to that by saying well, to my knowledge he did a fundraiser for Vaughn Ward up in Idaho, and he also did one with Jesse Kelly down in Arizona. Two very promising vets….

DH: Hey, I also gave at the office. I donated a kid. (laughing) I got my own candidate out there.

AJM: That’s right. And that apple did not fall far from the tree, as I keep telling everyone.

DH: With any luck, I’m going to get an appointment with him in the next couple of weeks.

ALL: (laughing)

DH: Last time I introduced Duncan – you know my other son Sam he’s in a Stryker unit over in Iraq right now - that’s my son ‘special’. Sam is ‘favorite’. He’s an Army guy, he joined the Army like his dad. But Duncan’s doing a great job. He just came back from Afghanistan incidentally, he’s on the Armed Services Committee, and the area he’s working – which is crucial for us – is roadside bombs. And, you know we developed a program in Iraq where we swept the roads with aerial surveillance. We brought in gunships to hit these guys as they were putting these bombs in place. It takes a while to set up a roadside bomb and we bring them in and get them. We literally took out thousands of roadside bombers. It was devastatingly successful. And we haven’t replicated that capability in Afghanistan, which makes absolutely no sense!

It’s an operational thing and Duncan’s campaign is to take out the roadside bombers. So he’s hammering the Marines, his old corps, to move faster, and also he’s trying to get the Pentagon and Generals to start moving in that direction.

AJM: Yeah, that sounds an awful like Duncan Hunter, D1, about 2 or 3 years ago, or more like 3 or 4 years ago.

DH: You know, he was on Fox News, and the guy that was doing the interview had expected me. He hadn’t been keeping up with the times. He says “you’re not Duncan Hunter”. So Duncan looked the camera in the eye and said “oh yes I am”. He said “my secret is Botox and exercise”. (laughs)

ALL: (laughing loudly)

AJM: Oh sh*t! (laughing)

DH: So listen, what’s happening with you guys?

LD: May I interject something really quick.

DH: Go ahead.

LD: Congressman Hunter, what you were just talking about, the roadside bombs and all. I was actually able to view those, from the guys at Walter Reed. On their laptops they were showing me, just what you said, they were watching them from the air. They said “now watch, now watch”. You see them putting the bombs, then CREEEEE-BOOM. Gone. And we would laugh. It was great. Great job.

DH: We were very effective. We really hammered them. Just took out thousands of them. And the thing about killing a roadside bomber is you are not putting a two thousand pound bomb into a house that may or may not have civilians in it. You are hitting the guys who are trying to kill your troops. There is no collateral damage and they are in the act of war right there. And if you don’t hit them, later on they detonate these things remotely. The next day, if you are a terrorist, you are standing in a fruit market 200 yards from the road waiting for the Marine convoy to come down the road and line up with the street lamp you put the bomb under, then you simply detonate it with the clicker in your pocket. And you probably don’t even carry a weapon. So at that point you can’t get them (the terrorists). The time to get them is when they are putting these things in, and that is what we are trying to impress upon the command in Afghanistan. So that’s the campaign we’ve got going right now.

AJM: And the Commander in Chief.

LD: We don’t have one of those…..

AJM: That leads me to my first question. I was going to start off with Fort Hood, but I’m going to start off with Afghanistan

Afghanistan as you know, Obama in March told us in a very eloquent speech, his brand new strategy with his brand new commander and all this stuff, and during the campaign he was promising that Afghanistan would be priority number one. Come to find out that General McChrystal’s report has been sitting on his desk, and Bob Gates’ desk, since August. And Obama is doing nothing but dithering. Just the day before yesterday, CBS came out and said “Obama has approved the 40,000 extra troops”. Then today, they put out a correction, he has not approved it. Spokesman Gibbs, giblets is what I call him, said that Obama is still considering the FOUR options and will make a decision within WEEKS! That was from today. Do you have anything you’d like to impress upon the ‘commander in chief’?

DH: Here is the challenge to President Obama. He has talked at length about how effective he would be in bringing the American allies to the cause. And one of his chief criticisms of the President, President Bush, was that he felt President Bush went to war without the allies. He now has the NATO countries, some 26 nations, and a few non-NATO countries in Afghanistan. And they agree in principle that the war in Afghanistan is important, and that it’s important that we win.

So you now have the Germans, who are under admonishment from their own Bundestag not to leave the fort at night, to prevent casualties. You have the French refusing to go into the areas where they actually have combat.

GW: Shocker.

DH: So you have the allies with just a few exceptions, the Brits one of them….

AJM: The Canadians…

DH: just a few, yeah the Canadians have been in some combat areas, although we’ve now displaced the Canadians in Helmand Province which is one of the places where there is a lot of action. I call that the “NATO shift”. If you made a mistake and you are in NATO, and you actually have to go to war, and there is an American nearby that can displace you, you quickly rotate out and get the Americans to rotate in. And so you’ve got a NATO membership which spends more time enjoying catering and uniform fittings than they do employing to the battlefield. And so this should be a job for the President.

I think we have to concede that President Bush utilized his secretaries of defense to carry this message, this argument that NATO should be doing more. Don Rumsfeld carried it. Remember he had some pithy comments about ‘old europe’ not being as supportive as ‘new europe’ was. You had Secretary Gates making tough comments about the fact that only Americans right now were fighting and dying in Afghanistan and there was no burden sharing. So now the secretaries, they’ve had their run at the European stonewall and they haven’t succeeded in getting the Europeans onto the battlefield.

And the guy who argued that he would be the man to persuade European leaders to join up in the war against terrorists - that is President Obama - should now put his money where his mouth is! He should now prove up. And he should, with head of state to head of state communications, one by one, persuade the NATO allies to actually come to the battlefield and participate in the war. That’s the real determinative of leadership, the real addition of leadership. And he has not done that. That is what he should be doing right now.

AJM: He’s too busy backslapping with Hugo Chavez.

DH: Yeah, I don’t think Mr. Chavez is going to show up on that front. But anyway, that is a legitimate role for a President. And at this point it’s clear that only the President is going to be able to move this boulder, of actually pulling NATO back into the reality that they are supposed to be a security organization, not a catering club.

AJM: Well what do you think about this idea, or this fact that Obama came out in March of this year, several months after taking office, and proclaimed that he had a brand new working strategy for Afghanistan, when he didn’t have anything of the frickin sort?

DH: Well, it’s time for him to man up. We haven’t seen the prove up. If he can persuade the NATO allies, for example, to get in and share this combat burden, then I’ll be the first person to congratulate him. But he has not done that.

LD: He’s insulted most of them hasn’t he? The French, the English, the Germans…

DH: (laughs) According the ‘world press’, he’s still immensely popular with the electorate of those countries. In fact he may well be, because their press, their national press is very, very liberal. I think they embraced anyone who was against George Bush and George Bush’s policies. The argument that is made by the European allies, by the heads of state, is that their hands are tied, that their people are very much against their soldiers going into combat. They are able to drag their troops to the theatre; they just can’t get them to leave the fort without upsetting their people. Obama, according to these world polls, is supposedly quite popular with their people. So there is no reason for a French leader or a German leader, there is no excuse for them to not now participate in this burden sharing of actually going out on the field of combat and handling some of these difficult missions.

That’s the thing he ought to be doing right now, and that’s essentially what he promised he would do. And he hasn’t come through at all.

AJM: Yeah, that’s an understatement. Let me tie that into the general War on Terror, where we saw a very bleak example of that transpire at Fort Hood Texas, not too far from Russell. And that is the incident – what day was that – Thursday, with 14 people dead, 13 people dead and 30 something wounded. Come to find out, Congressman, that even in the liberal press and the conservative press they are finding that the FBI, the military intelligence, everybody and their brother to a look at this son of a bitch, and saw that he was communicating with Al Qaeda types, and they did nothing. I’d like your commentary on what the heck is wrong with this politically correct attitude that we’re not going to yank people out like this, that have proven themselves beyond a shadow of a doubt to be of questionable motives.

DH: Yeah, all I’ve got is what I’ve read in the newspapers, so I’m always careful. You’ve got to see precisely what facts were in front of the FBI, in front of our military intel guys. I know that he went to this church, this mosque, that was then in Northern Virginia, as was reported in the paper. It was led by this extremist cleric, who as I understand, has issued a statement saying he did the right thing in killing those Americans. I understand this is also the same mosque where some of the 911 highjackers went to.

I don’t know what was exactly in front of the FBI at the time. But if there is fault and blame in this thing, we have to follow this thing through to the end! And ensure that when you see those signs, that you IMMEDIATELY take action. This isn’t a game we’re playing. And let’s hold people ACCOUNTABLE for what they did.

I don’t know all the facts, but what I thought about when I saw this, it brought to mind a couple things. One is, remember just before we went into Iraq, as I recall there was a Sergeant who killed two officers. He threw a grenade into the tent. A muslim Sergeant. And I think that is something we have to look at. This guy’s not a raving maniac. He is a guy that is told by his preachers, so to speak, “attaboy, you did the right thing; you did what was morally right”. So he felt that was his moral compass, to kill Americans, that is. So this is a very dangerous element, if you have a person in a military organization who feels it’s his moral duty to kill his fellow soldiers; that is something where you HAVE to take tough action.

That’s not an attitude of resentment; it’s not an attitude of slight instability. In fact, it’s exactly the same position – when I saw what this guy did – he had the same mental state, the same purpose, as the muslim guys that drove the planes into our buildings.

DF: Exactly.

DH: That’s what I know so far.

AJM: Let me inform you one other piece of information on this. There’s been a ton of stuff coming out, and I know you’ve been busy today. But one of the things that Michelle Malkin has put up, along with the Washington Post as well, is that he (Hasan) gave a presentation, 2 years ago, as he was just about to get his degree in psychiatric medicine, or psychiatry, or whatever it is. But all the students that were in the military taking these courses had to make presentations. While most of the guys got up and talked about a certain drug use, or combat stress, things they’ve learned or researched, this guy got up and gave a jihadist speech, going so far to say that the infidels throats must be cut. This was in front of a bunch of other officers and military doctors, etc, etc., two years ago. And they didn’t drum this SOB out?!

DH: Have you seen the speech, word for word?

AJM: I have not seen it word for word, but I’ve seen slides or snippets of it that the Washington Post reported.

DH: Did they record it?

AJM: I believe it is recorded.

DH: Or transcribed. Well, I haven’t seen it. But it makes my point. This wasn’t a guy who suddenly lost his stability and went berserk. This was a person whose purpose, driven by what he saw as his moral compass, was to kill Americans. What you just told me was that purpose was actually articulated some months earlier. So it’s not something that happened two hours before he went on a rampage. So the inaction of his colleagues is just bizarre.

And one other thing I think is remarkable. Let’s just say he didn’t do anything; circumstances were such that he didn’t take the action that led to all of this. The question you’d ask is – this is a guy who is supposed to be helping to stabilize people and to reassure people about their moral purpose in life, that they are right in fighting for their country, and in laying down their lives for the country? These returning GIs being counseled that their cause is morally wrong? And that the jihadists are right? How can that possibly help their mental state? That’s a question we should ask. The type of question from a psychiatric point of view. Why is THAT good for our any of our GIs?

The answer is just that they put a bunch of psychiatrists in a big forum and stir them like scrambled eggs, then apply them to our soldiers. There is no benefit coming out of these so-called ‘counseling’ sessions.

They ought to be listening to guys like Jim Mattis, General Jim Mattis of the First Marine Division who said “when you kill these jihadists who are trying to kill our people, these Al Qaeda, you are doing the RIGHT thing!”

I'm reminded that General Kelly had to take one of his chaplains aside who was kind assuring all his Marines that they were all “victims” of the war. He had to pull this guy aside and he (Gen. Kelly) finished the session to the Marines.

AJM: A counseling session?

DH: It wasn’t a counseling session, it was an address to the Marines, and he had this nitwit chaplain who started going off on the “we are all victims” route, and Kelly jumped in and said “listen, you’re all great Americans. You are doing the right thing. Feel good about what you are doing.”

If these psychiatrists that are telling these guys that they are victims, that we are all victims, and beyond that - they are wrong, that makes you wonder about this guys colleagues! What are they doing? Are they a bunch of potted plants?

AJM: Hey Congressman, Lynn has a follow-up on this. Lynn, why don’t you ask, or tell Congressman Hunter what you told me earlier.

LD: Congressman Hunter, I spent 4 years at Walter Reed. I was there at least one day, sometimes two or three days a week. Numerous times I over-nighted there…

DH: What were you doing, Lynn? When you were there all that time, what were you doing?

LD: I was just acting as a citizen that loves our heroes and wanted to make sure they were supported.

DH: OK, so you weren’t there as an employee of any kind, or service provider. You were coming in to see our wounded guys, give them some comfort and cheer. That’s great.

LD: Yes, for a couple of years when it got real bad in Iraq, I was making “Welcome Care” baskets. When they would come in, we’d give them this basket, because you know, their clothes are cut off of them on the battlefield; they go to Germany to stabilize before they are flown in…

DH: Yeah, I know all about that. Only the US Army could fine you for leaving your equipment when you’re carried off in a stretcher. I sometimes wonder if they do these things for humorous reasons. Only Uncle Sam could do this to you.

ALL: (laughing)

LD: Yes, I’ve known hundreds and hundreds of these guys. If you read the Citizens Report on Iraq, I’m the one who wrote what the troops and the families had to say. I interviewed our troops, and I was getting emails from the battlefield, as well as from the wounded. Being there as often as I was, I wanted to say that not to elevate myself in any way. Because to me, I could never possibly do enough for these men and women. But the reason I said all that was to let you know how terribly involved, how intimately involved, I was with them. And the big thing is, because I wasn’t a government employee, they trusted me. I was privy to a lot of information.

Now, various wounded Warriors at Walter Reed expressed shock and surprise when they saw a soldier wandering around the grounds of Walter Reed Army Medical Center in muslim garb. I don’t know if you’ve seen the pictures of Hasan in the long white gown and the headdress, the white cap thing.

AJM: This is the murderer guy….

LD: Yes, yes, yes.

DH: That is what he wore??

LD: Well, he didn’t always, Congressman Hunter. I think that that did not happen until later….I’ll be honest with you, I was in DC for Michele Bachaman’s call (Tea Party), in DC on Thursday and I got home at 4:30 AM and one of my soldiers called me at 8:30, just ranting about this. I’ve known this kid now since 05. He’s out now and everything, but he was severely wounded. He was just screaming and ranting “YOU KNOW HIM, YOU KNOW HIM”. And he started telling me that this Hasan actually ‘counseled’ this kid, because “they all have to be counseled”. And here they have this muslim guy. I don’t think in the beginning he wore this white gown, but was in uniform. But later on he started wandering the grounds. I even asked one of the employees at Walter Reed “who is that and what’s he doing here”. He said “he’s just visiting the soldiers”. I said “oh, Okay”. So one day I’m standing there with a group of soldiers, and quite frankly, they were like “WHAT?” and one said “what the ‘F’, are you kidding me?”

So my question is, do you really think Walter Reed is the best military hospital they could find for Hasan to do his internship, his residency, and his fellowship? He spent six years Walter Reed Army Medical Center! Did anyone in the upper echelon give ANY consideration to the effects that this might have on our battle fatigued and wounded warriors, when this is the premier hospital that brings in the worst of the worst?

DH: The answer to that is I don’t think they do. This is an intuitive answer, not one that is based on absolute knowledge of what they do and what their standards are. But I think that this is such a vague science, and subject to so much interpretation, that when you have a person that’s got credentials as a psychiatrist, it’s like taking your car, a new car that’s got all the computer stuff in it, and you take it in for repair, and they have all the machines there. They could be chewing gum for the next ½ hour and you wouldn’t know if they were really affecting these complex systems in your car or not. So I think it is something that the fighting, the war fighting wing of the military kind of pushes away, or compartmentalizes – and says that’s all the squirrelly guys who come in and talk to you about your mental state. And I think most of the war fighters don’t have a high opinion of these psychiatric people, and possibly for very good cause. So these providers, they kind of left them alone. This is not something like going down to the rifle range, where you either hit the target or you don’t. It’s a very vague science, and one in which, I think, people can provide no value whatsoever and can still exist for years. Even then, and I understand that this guy even got some bad OERs – so apparently some people picked up on his appalling lack of value that he represented –

AJM: And he was proselytizing…

LD: Yes.

DH: Yes, that’s what you told me, and that may have led to some of his bad reports. It’s kind of like – the guy who used to work for me, was a great guy, Wendell Cutting, my chief of staff out here that died of cancer a couple of years ago. And he was at one time a superintendent of a school here in California. And he said that one year, he fired a teacher. And he said he thinks he was the ONLY superintendent in the entire state, that year, who successfully fired a teacher; and did not have them later re-instated. The teacher came back later, ran for the school board and was a burr in his saddle ever since.

My point is, there are certain government jobs you can be in, where you cannot be dynamited out of that job. And I think that being a psychiatrist in the military, is quite possibly one of those jobs. Maybe akin to being a professor, like this Ward Churchill idiot, in Colorado, where they can say the most outrageous things, and be protected by the politically correct bureaucrats.

*****************

(Here the transcript ends, due to malfunction, but the summary of the rest of our conversation follows below)

Congressman Hunter went on to state emphatically that people that show any tendencies like Nidal Hasan need to be yanked out of the military immediately. And it is more than obvious that jihadist speeches are grounds for more than just a dismissal. That this kind of thing creates a “toxic environment that cannot be tolerated”, period.

He stated that the “entire discipline of psychiatrists” in the military needs to be opened up and examined. And heads should roll for any dereliction of duty associated with the case of this terrorist in Foot Hood.

Hunter also stated quite bluntly that if the Nidal had been a Baptist, and used his position as a shrink to proselytize to our wounded troops, the ACLU and the politically correct bureaucrats would have had him identified and would have attempted to drum him out in a heartbeat.

Hunter mentioned the case where the Pentagon Bureaucrats had told Chaplains – yes, chaplains, not to preach in Jesus’ name, and also their decision to prohibit the reciting of the traditional Christian prayers during the folding of the flag ceremonies at military funerals. It was, in fact, Hunter himself who put on the brass knuckles while still in office and forced the bureaucrats to rescind this PC claptrap.

Russell then asked what we, as citizens, could do to counter the politically correct nonsense that seems to have permeated even into our military. Russell’s son is currently on active duty, so he was not simply speculating.

Hunter’s answer was twofold. First, it is the responsibility of the parent to raise their children right with the “right values and principles”. Hunter noted that the vast majority of our servicemen are upstanding and are willing to mock the politically correct stuff that is sent their way. Also, Hunter stated that we must have leaders that understand the importance of allowing our warriors to live by their principles and the heritage of our armed forces. And for the most part, Hunter says, the military is a great place for people to be able to live those principles, and that those principles are demonstrated time and again by the quality men and women now serving, “regardless of their station in life” when they joined.

To illustrate this, Hunter recounted a story told to him by General Tom Kelly, about an incident in Iraq. Two Marines were on duty together, in charge of guarding an outpost entryway out in the very dangerous Anbar Province. One was a poor black kid who grew up without a father, dirt poor, in a bad neighborhood. He joined the Marines to find a better life and to find self discipline. The other Marine on duty that night was a Princeton student, raised in a wealthy, well educated family, with the expectations and opportunities that he would go on to live well in the upper class society of America. He joined the Marine Corps after 9-11. While on duty that night, a truck loaded with explosives came barreling down the entry way, with no intention of stopping. The Iraqis who were on duty scattered and ran. These two warriors both got down with their weapons and began firing heavily at the rushing truck. They kept firing until it finally lurched to a stop, at which point it detonated. Both men were killed. Together. But they saved the lives of a multitude of other Marines and Iraqis who were stationed at the outpost. It is a poignant story about duty, honor, America and what it means to be Marine.

Hunter then pointed out that the warriors in the USMC look up to and greatly admire men like General Peter Pace, who had the courage to call homosexuality “immoral” in his testimony against the idea of ending the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy that the democrats are so eager to dismantle.

AJM reminded Hunter that while the slings and arrows of the democrats and leftwing media were being fired at Peter Pace, there was one rock ribbed republican who did not run and hide behind Nancy Pelosi’s skirt, but instead contributed a triumphant defense of General Pace and a scathing rebuttal to the leftists’ social experiments in an A-Section Op-ed in the USA Today, and that was Duncan Hunter himself.

In summation, Hunter said to lead by example, congratulate our warriors who do so day in and day out, and support the politicians that do not abide by cowardly political correct platitudes, but rather are proud of America and our heritage.

Finally, Hunter encouraged us all to spread the word about Gunnery Sergeant Nick Popaditch’s campaign to take back the border county of California from the very liberal, and very beatable Bob Filner! This was a prime example how we could directly support a return to the “values and principles” that will keep America great!

More to come in the weeks ahead.
Thanks again to Pissant at Free Republic.com for inviting me to participate and providing the transcript.
-red

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1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Great stuff! Keep it coming!

3:08 PM  

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