Later,
Mark C.

P.S. and Yes, I have done 6 years in the military.

So why, despite his atrocious human rights record, does Chavez enjoy the support of high-profile actors and activists?

What tickles Penn and his ilk is that Chavez is the world’s most visible opponent of the United States and the U.S. government. Many foreign leaders differ with President Bush, but none of these leaders openly use profane and scatological language. In this, Chavez is identical to his cheerleaders.

Hollywood A-Listers Prove Ignorance in Supporting Hugo Chavez.

I can’t believe I had to lug that piece of shit up eight flights of stairs.

Oh, and when it was delivered to our receiving center, it had a fake name on it. We had to consult some files to figure out what movie it was, which led my buddy and superior to sarcastically remark: “of course, EVERYONE wants to pirate this movie”.

Bah.

I saw the move Friday. It is anti-war, which I don’t like. However, it’s not, “poorly produced, poorly acted, poorly directed, and very poorly written.”

There’s some power in this movie, which is worth seeing and evaluating. In addition to the gritty realism of the battles scenes, the movie’s well-acted, particulary as seen in Ryan Phillippe’s Staff Sgt. King. In Phillippe’s hands, King comes off as a vigorous all-America fighter, in Iraq and on the streets back home, where his realizes his personal beliefs have been betrayed.

I disagree with those beliefs, which is that the Pentagon’s stop-loss policy is tantamount to a “backdoor draft,” and that’s the major problem with this movie (and where I can understand Little Green Footballs dismissal of the film), and that’s where I appreciate your input on the policy:

http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=29428&only

We have an all-volunteer service, so when young Americans sign up to fight they go on the basis of choice and volition. Contractually, soldiers can be recalled to battle, and to be shocked, as Phillippe’s King is when told he’s returning to Iraq, is disingenuous, if not outright storytelling fraud.

Sure, families have been hit hard by the separations, the battle injuries, and the war dead. But the the consequences of joining the service are known in advance. Soldiers are not victims, no matter how hard the anitwar left tries to make us believe.

Thanks for the “inside intell” on soldiers’ knowledge of the policy. But there some elements that work against the antiwar message of the movie. The film’s opening scene of Phillippe’s unit manning a road checkpoint in Tikrit provides some of the most compelling cinematic footage of urban, house-to-house combat since “Black Hawk Down.” Everyday American couch-potatoes need to see these images, they need to see what modern warfare looks like, and particularly the nihilism of our enemies, who take refuge in civilian quaters, and use old men, women, and children as human shields.

It is unfortunate that the movie makers have become so far left, and that they can’t understand (or wish too) why so many still believe in the basic concepts of our great nation, such as honor, courage, duty, and sacrifice, but rather view those values in our nation, and those who do believe in them as objects of scorn.
We need Joe McCarthy again, he was right about the commies in Hollywood.

Because of the stance Hollywood has taken in it’s opposition to the country I love, I am now in my nineteenth year of boycotting the box office.