"Per Mike Yon on Facebook: If we are going to make a success out of this war, must start squeezing out and choking off the irresponsible "sources." People who care will start writing letters to editors/producers who link to websites such as Blackfive and Mudville Gazette. Must start telling mainstream sources that when they link to milkooks, we stop paying attention. Please leave comments at mainstream message boards encouraging people to ignore milkooks.
There are some good milblogs who should get more attention (such as Small Wars Journal), but others need to be choked off. We have a tough, bloody war ahead, and should refuse to put up with this nonsense. The information battlefront is half the battlespace, and you are in it. Please fight hard from your position.
It's time to get active. I will get back to the war and focus there. On the home front, please choke off Blackfive and Mudville Gazette. When you see links to them from MSM sites, please contact editors and producers, and also leave public comments that responsible people do not listen to milkooks.
Get active and help win the war."
I will respond to that here, as it is my web page and even though the Code Monkey is driving the bus, I can still moon people from the windows.
My "from the hip" response: Eat shit, mike yon. Eat. My. Shit.
My well reasoned and thought out response: Mikey, Milbloggers made you as popular as you are. If it weren't for sites like Blackfive and Mudville Gazette, you would be the saddest panda in Iraq right now, living hand to mouth on the mercies of people who had not (yet) had enough of your silly shit and tantrums to stop putting up with you. You may have been taking good pictures, but nobody would have noticed, were it not for us "milkooks."
You go back to taking pictures in Afghanistan, Iraq, or Thailand, or wherever suits you. Since photography is your medium of choice, and you refuse to consider anyone who hasn't "been there" as a valid information source, I'll post my street cred right here:
This is (most of) my leg. I also left the rest of it in a canal near Baqubah, Iraq. The black stuff held together by red cord is there because other things, like constantly trying to keep my heart beating, took precedence over peeling off layers of my skin to fix it. All the dark brown dots are shrapnel, which sets off metal detectors to this day.
Of course, they did get around to doing just that, once my heart stayed steady. They couldn't peel all the skin off at once, so we took off strips as soon as the graft site would heal.
There, all fixed. See that stump of a hand in the bottom of the picture, Mikey? That's where they had to put my thumb back on. Under those covers, where you are meat-gazing, is what's left of a scrotum. It too, is half the size it used to be. As for the rest of what is under the sheet, I'll leave that to your vivid imagination, mikey.
You recently said you couldn't adopt a kid because you couldn't return to war. Guess what, Mikey? I go to war because of my family, because I want them to live in a better world. This is me after 34 reconstructive surgeries (and more to go.) Guess what else, Mikey, I am going back to war, Again. I am going to go back to Iraq right before Christmas. How do you think the kids will enjoy that, considering last time daddy went away, he died several times before coming home? I know sacrifice, but not like they do. You, mikey, have no idea what personal sacrifice means. If you write her a nice letter, maybe my 7-year old daughter could explain it to you.
Here's four things I know:
1. I will continue to fight wars, risk my life and families livelihood, for my country and my soldiers.
2. I will continue to write, nay, milblog about them, from my perspective as a soldier--something you are not. I know you are a used-to-be... for something like half an hour. I have spent more time looking for a quiet place to shit than you have soldiering.
3. I will always be a better man than you.
4. I have far more to lose than you.
One last bit of street cred for you.... You know what I did Mikey, when I was too physically destroyed to go back to war immediately? I damn sure didn't go get a foot rub and happy ending in a Thai whorehouse.
I helped launch a charity program called Project Valour-IT through soldiersangels.org from my hospital bed. In the five years since, we have helped over 5000 wounded soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen find ways to speed their recovery and return to their new normal lives.
You take pictures, I'll keep doing the things you take pictures of, Mikey. What you do, may, someday, in some small part, help win the war, because public sentiment is sometimes necessary for politicians to decide victory conditions. Without you, and other journalists or writers, the war would still go on, the politicians would still decide the victory conditions, and soldiers like me would be wounded, and others would die. If you, mikey, and every other journalist/writer/wanna be are taken out of this equation, nothing changes. From my position, that puts your maximum effect on this war at zero. You keep carping on about how you are taking on "the powers that be" and getting people fired. From my turret, you're just the village idiot ranting about the people you don't like because they aren't explaining the strategy to you with small words so you can understand it. Your effect on anything is negligible. (Because even when you do violate OPSEC, nothing happens.) If you were actually saying anything worthwhile, the enemy would be reading your site, like they do mine.
Oh by the way, do you know who is 100% involved in soldiers angels and Valour-IT? Not just involved, but actively supports and raises money for it? That's right mikey, Blackfive and Mudville. You beg others to smear them--what do YOU actually DO for soldiers? What do YOU provide for them?
Now who is the irresponsible source, mikey?
mikey?
/crickets
--Chuck
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