Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

A lot of Dems talk about what the media tells them to talk about. Not helpful.

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

They love authoritarianism, but only when they get to be the authoritarians.

The arc of history bends toward the same old fuckery.

Jesus, Mary, & Joseph how is that election even close?

Peak wingnut was a lie.

It’s time for the GOP to dust off that post-2012 autopsy, completely ignore it, and light the party on fire again.

If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.

It’s easy to sit in safety and prescribe what other people should be doing.

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

I conferred with the team and they all agree – still not tired of winning!

Jack Smith: “Why did you start campaigning in the middle of my investigation?!”

I was confident that someone would point it out and thought why not me.

This isn’t Democrats spending madly. This is government catching up.

Good lord, these people are nuts.

“Cheese and Kraken paired together for the appetizer trial.”

Take your GOP plan out of the witness protection program.

In after Baud. Damn.

Republicans can’t even be trusted with their own money.

Every one of the “Roberts Six” lied to get on the court.

JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

This really is a full service blog.

Do not shrug your shoulders and accept the normalization of untruths.

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

You are here: Home / Foreign Affairs / Military / Safer in Jail

Safer in Jail

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It takes a special sort of blue falcon to do this kind of shit to your mates:

Navy SEALs divide their own into two groups. As they see it, there are the good mugs you can count on, and then there are the 10 percenters, the minority who slip through the screening process and bring disgrace on everyone else. Jason Mullaney might have started off in the first category, but after conning 11 fellow SEALs out of more than $1 million, he’s decidedly in the second.

When police caught up with Mullaney in 2012, he’d run through the money he bilked from his friends and the last of his own. After making it onto the SEAL teams and enjoying a lavish lifestyle after he got out, he was found near a freeway offramp, homeless.

In a San Diego County courtroom Monday, Mullaney, 42, pleaded guilty to grand theft and fraud in a trial that had dragged on for two years. He’s scheduled to be sentenced on October 7 by Superior Court Judge Frederick Maguire and could face nearly 13 years in prison, according to a Fox News affiliate that covered the trial in San Diego. Not so bad compared to the 34 years he could have received if he’d been convicted on all the charges he originally faced.

He just took their money and lived high off the hog until the money ran out. Just unbelievable someone would do this to their brothers.

Reader Interactions

108Comments

  3. 3.

    cminus

    Sadly, I’d be more surprised if there existed a community anywhere that was immune to affinity fraud.

  4. 4.

    Tommy

    I’d say safer in jail is a very accurate title and statement. In what world do you devise a scam where the folks you scam are trained to kill people for a living. Seems to be multiple, multiple flaws in this business/scam model.

  6. 6.

    max

    He just took their money and lived high off the hog until the money ran out. Just unbelievable someone would do this to their brothers.

    ‘What is this, bowb your buddy week?!’
    ‘On Veneria It’s always bowb your buddy week!’

    — Bill the Galactic Hero

    max
    [‘He’s got room and board taken care of for the next thirteen years.’]

  7. 7.

    Tommy

    I read this story in the early AM today. What stunned me the most was it appears he didn’t even try to do the pyramid scheme where some individuals got money back while he took more in. He seems to have just spent it all as soon as it got it.

  9. 9.

    scav

    and a general Whee! and Houp-la! that assuming the most highly-trained and reputedly embodiment-of military-values-and-dicipline forces are likely to go all extra-judicial and pre-emptive and bypass all that mere civilian court-stuff is probably the way the way to bet. Wasn’t there just a case of a guy even lying to his own special forces brother?

  13. 13.

    mikefromArlington

    Cole, you’re a fan of blues I think.

    Brother in law of mine is in a band, Vintage Trouble. You might like em….look em up on Youtube.

    If you’re into a field trip, they are playing at The Hamilton in DC this Thursday.

    Cheers.

  14. 14.

    Anoniminous

    @Tommy:

    Actually, the Seals, Marine Force Recon, and Green Beanies I knew/know are peaceful in their private lives. They’ve had enough violence and killing to last ’em two or three lifetimes.

  16. 16.

    Tommy

    @Anoniminous: No I totally agree. But as with most schemes like this the dude seems to have taken the life savings of these Seals. They clearly were not millionaires. He took $20,000 from this one. $40,000 from another. He wasn’t getting huge investments of hundreds of thousands of dollars..

    I don’t think any of the Seals would have killed him. Not for a single second. But a “stern talking to,” well I wouldn’t say that would be out of the question. You know, just saying.

  17. 17.

    Dog On Porch

    Watch a few re-run episodes of American Greed. One tells the story of a high ranking official of the Mormon Church, who fleeced not only members of his church, but his own parents out of their life savings. Certain people are simply broken, and their pedigree (or life experience) was never part of the equation.

  20. 20.

    Corner Stone

    Yeah, it’s a HuffPo link, but:
    “President Barack Obama met with over a dozen prominent columnists and magazine writers Wednesday afternoon before calling for an escalation of the war against the Islamic State, or ISIS, in a primetime address that same night. ”
    “The group, which met in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in an off-the-record session, included New York Times columnists David Brooks, Tom Friedman, Frank Bruni, and editorial writer Carol Giacomo; The Washington Post’s David Ignatius, Eugene Robinson, and Ruth Marcus; The New Yorker’s Dexter Filkins and George Packer; The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg and Peter Beinart; The New Republic’s Julia Ioffe; Columbia Journalism School Dean Steve Coll; The Wall Street Journal’s Jerry Seib; and The Daily Beast’s Michael Tomasky, a source familiar with the meeting told The Huffington Post.”

  21. 21.

    Tommy

    @JPL: GA better do something with their secondary or they are going to lose more than one game in the SEC. But that was an entertaining game to watch (said as an LSU fan).

  22. 22.

    khead

    He just took their money and lived high off the hog until the money ran out. Just unbelievable someone would do this to their brothers.

    Yeah, what an idiot. A real pro would’ve written a few pieces trashing Obama on a blog or right wing website – just long enough to generate a mailing list. Then he could’ve taken their money for years.

  24. 24.

    Tommy

    @khead: I am not saying I remotely have any respect for somebody that runs a scam, but I admit I often find them fascinating. Read many longform articles on them and I often come away with two thoughts: (1) that guy is scum and ought to rot in jail and (2) wow that was pretty darn freaking creative, I have no idea how they were able to pull that off for as long as they did. If they put half as much effort into running a legal business they might have been pretty successful.

    This guy didn’t even try. What he did is one step up from robbing them at gunpoint.

  25. 25.

    jayboat

    @MattF:

    Me either. Good to know that Bobo and Ruth Marcus are in the loop- maybe we’ll get some fresh perspecti… ok, wait a sec.

  28. 28.

    PaulW

    He just took their money and lived high off the hog until the money ran out. Just unbelievable someone would do this to their brothers.

    You’ve basically described every 1-Percenter trying to scam the United States out of another tax cut and billion-dollar payoff to their banks while they line up the stock market for another out-of-control bubble.

  30. 30.

    Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)

    I’M GONNA BE PUBLISHED!

    “Peaceful, Colorado” has been accepted for the 3rd Minnesota Speculative Fiction Writers short story anthology. I have no idea when it’s coming out. I have no idea what format it’s going to be, though I’d guess it’ll be a trade paperback. I don’t even remember who they went with as a publisher.

    It doesn’t really matter because I’M GONNA BE IN IT!

  31. 31.

    PaulW

    Almost as if SEALs are ordinary humans, and not superheroes. Weird.

    thing is, most SEALs are not in it for the money. Most of us aren’t. That’s why we end up being suckers to the bastards who are only in it for the money.

  32. 32.

    PaulW

    @Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN):

    I’M GONNA BE PUBLISHED!
    “Peaceful, Colorado” has been accepted for the 3rd Minnesota Speculative Fiction Writers short story anthology. I have no idea when it’s coming out. I have no idea what format it’s going to be, though I’d guess it’ll be a trade paperback. I don’t even remember who they went with as a publisher.
    It doesn’t really matter because I’M GONNA BE IN IT!

    CONGRATS!

  33. 33.

    Roger Moore

    @Suffern ACE:

    where’s Cameron’s strategy?

    I think Cameron’s strategy is to ditch Scotland, since the Tories aren’t getting any votes there anyway, and hope it will let him stay in power indefinitely.

  34. 34.

    jayboat

    @Tommy:

    I share your interest in the creative aspect of a scam. Call it morbid curiosity into what makes people tick, and what makes for a successful sting.

    One of my favorites, made all the more amusing because a bank was the ultimate victim, happened about 40 years ago in a small NC town (name of which is lost in the fog). An enterprising fellow attaches a sign to the night depository of a bank near a large shopping center that reads: “Depository broken, use mailbox at front door.”

    I guess there were at least a dozen rather tired assistant managers who fell for it.

    Feel sorry for those who got scammed by this Mullaney dick.

  36. 36.

    Tim C.

    @gussie: This isn’t that surprising actually. Generally speaking, the tighter the bond and the deeper the trust in a community, the easier it is to take advantage. Relevant fact: the state with the highest rate of fraud? Utah.

  38. 38.

    raven

    ATHENS — In a federal courtroom one mile from Sanford Stadium, former Georgia football coach Jim Donnan scored the biggest victory of his life Friday.
    A jury of seven women and five men found Donnan not guilty on all 41 counts of mail fraud, wire fraud, securities fraud, money laundering and conspiracy that the government had brought against him in connection with an alleged investment scheme. . .

    Prosecutors had argued that Donnan and another man, Greg Crabtree, ran a scheme from 2007-10, promising investors high rates of return from a West Virginia company, GLC Limited, that purportedly sold closeout merchandise. But GLC sold relatively little and instead repaid early investors with money from later investors in what amounted to a Ponzi scheme, prosecutors told the jury.

  39. 39.

    kindness

    Is there a tighter comeraderie in a Seal Team unit than a regular grunt outfit? I don’t know. The prospect of death does influence the priority schema though. I figure any combat folk who’ve faced battle together have a special link the rest of us don’t. They got to.

    Karma is real.

  40. 40.

    MattF

    @Tommy: One may note that con artists don’t often get rich. “Spent most of it on women and horses, then just wasted the rest.”

  42. 42.

    cminus

    @Tommy: I remember reading a long-form article on an affinity fraudster targeting Mormon congregations who went to the trouble of writing up a formal business plan to show potential marks. After he was caught out, financial experts said that his business plan was entirely plausible and he could well have been successful if he’d put the same effort he invested into scamming additional marks into actually trying to open the business.

  44. 44.

    Howard Beale IV

    @Suffern ACE:

    where’s Cameron’s strategy?

    He has none, outside of slamming his dick on the table:

    The video entitled, “A Message to the Allies of America,” opened with UK Prime Minister David Cameron talking about working with the Iraqi government and allied Kurdish Peshmerga forces to defeat Islamic State.

    “This British man has to pay the price for your promise, Cameron, to arm the Peshmerga against the Islamic State,” said a masked man dressed in black with a British accent, standing over Haines, who was shown kneeling and wearing an orange jumpsuit.

    The video then showed the beheading of the kneeling man.

    At the end of the video, another hostage was shown and the masked man said he would be killed if Cameron continues to support the fight against Islamic State.

    Cameron condemned the killing and said he would bring the killers to justice.

    “This is a despicable and appalling murder of an innocent aid worker. It is an act of pure evil. My heart goes out to the family of David Haines who have shown extraordinary courage and fortitude throughout this ordeal,” he said in a statement released by Downing Street.

    “We will do everything in our power to hunt down these murderers and ensure they face justice, however long it takes.”

    In Washington, White House National Security Council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said she had no comment on the video and referred queries to the British government.

    In the video, Haines also spoke, saying Cameron was responsible for his execution. “You entered voluntarily into a coalition with the United States against the Islamic State, just as your predecessor, Tony Blair, did,” he said.

    “Following a trend amongst our British Prime Ministers who can’t find the courage to say no to the Americans. Unfortunately, it is we, the British public, that will in the end pay the price for our Parliament’s selfish decisions.”

  45. 45.

    Tommy

    @MattF: Best as I can tell it is something in their DNA that makes them run scams. They get off on the thrill, risk, and danger. The same thing that draws them to gambling, betting the horses, you name it. They almost just can’t help themselves. But that is just what I think.

  46. 46.

    Mnemosyne

    @Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN):

    Congratulations! I’m glad you stuck with it.

    IF you decide to keep pursuing temp work, I would definitely recommend adding a “Publications” line to your resume. Trust me, the temp agencies would strongly prefer to market you as a published writer who’s picking up some temp work on the side than to think that you’ve just been sitting around the house watching reality TV.

  48. 48.

    Tommy

    @cminus: That doesn’t surprise me in the least. Anybody that has tried to start a business knows the hardest part is obtaining capital. These guys (and they are always men are they not) can do that in spades. Almost makes you wonder how many VCs and “rainmakers” or just a few degrees of separation away from running scams instead of legal businesses. Heck some might say they are already running scams, just legal scams :).

  49. 49.

    Mnemosyne

    @cminus:

    I heard an interview one time with a musician-turned-drug-addict who ended up getting clean and going back to music, and he said that he actually worked harder as a drug addict than he ever had to as a musician. He was amazed at how much easier his life was once he didn’t have to plan it around how he was going to get the money for his next fix.

  50. 50.

    catclub

    @cminus:

    Sadly, I’d be more surprised if there existed a community anywhere that was immune to affinity fraud.

    Some group that takes a vow of poverty is pretty close. Of course, even those groups might have bank accounts to be pilfered. Any cases among the Poor Clares?

  51. 51.

    Corner Stone

    @cminus: It’s strange because I’ve seen/read that a lot of the time the criminal spent more effort/energy/time being “lazy” than if they had actually just went to work everyday.
    There’s a line in a Louis L’Amour novel (fiction) where an outlaw essentially spent 20 of his 40 years in prison and got too old to sleep in caves and be on the run any more.

  54. 54.

    cmorenc

    @Tommy:

    In what world do you devise a scam where the folks you scam are trained to kill people for a living. Seems to be multiple, multiple flaws in this business/scam model.

    What’s more, the winnowing/training process for Seals is severely selective for people who can be absolutely counted upon to not give up on taking out an objective, no matter how difficult. You really, really don’t want to be that objective they aim to take out.

  55. 55.

    Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)

    @I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: The Kickstarter is still in the planning stages. Among other things, I still don’t have anyone who can help me with the video. I sent out a bunch of emails a week and a half ago, got a response from one person (ruemara) expressing interest and nothing else. And until I have someone who can help me with that it can’t go forward.

  59. 59.

    Tommy

    @cmorenc: I get why he used Seals as his mark. As Seth Godin talks about 24/7 in his sales and marketing books, “tribes” are important. Vital in how we navigate this world even if we don’t want to admit it. So on that level it does make sense.

    But from 60 minutes stories. Articles on Alternet. Many other places it would seem if you want to fleece the American people set up an organization related to vets or supporting the troops and you have a pretty good chance of running a scam where you can generate large sums of money. And if you pump that initial money right back into raising more money, as a number of fly-by-night so-called charities have, there are millions and millions out there.

  61. 61.

    Mnemosyne

    @Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN):

    Don’t forget to “casually” mention to the people publishing your short story that you have a completed novel that’s in the final editing stages. They may have some leads on small houses that might want to publish it or references for an editor if you’re still looking. G’s friend published his first novel with Vista Publishing, which mostly does medical books, but he had a relationship with them because he’s a nurse. Maybe the University of Minnesota Press or another regional house?

  63. 63.

    Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)

    @raven: A Kickstarter pretty much needs to have a promotional video attached to it. Don’t ask me why that’s important for selling a book because I don’t get it. But it is. And I have no idea how to shoot one or even what a good approach to it is.

    My idea is just to have someone taping me talking about how the story came about because, at a minimum, I can be excited and upbeat about that. Someone who knows what they are doing might come up with something better.

  64. 64.

    WaterGirl

    @Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN): I know a bunch of us made suggestions about the video on the blog one night. Have you put together the list of all the ideas we came up with for the video?

    If not, that’s something you could do in the meantime to at least get the ball rolling while you wait.

  67. 67.

    I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet

    @Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN): Don’t let the lack of video cause you to stop working on it. The Kickstarters I’ve contributed to didn’t have videos (or if they did, I didn’t watch them).

    One of the most successful crowdsourcing projects (at least that I know of) didn’t have a video.

    It sounds like you’ve got a good book. You’ve got a good audience here, and there are probably people who can help spread the word to get you more potential readers and contributors. Don’t let the “traditional” marketing tools get in the way. If they don’t seem to be coming together at this point, work around them. (The idea of absolutely needing a video to help market funding for publishing help for a book seems weird to me. But I’m not on Facebook and Twitter and may be too much of an oldster to know how things are “done” these days… You’re not selling a new gizmo.)

    My $0.02.

    Good luck! Keep us in the loop if you can.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  69. 69.

    scav

    @Anoniminous: While An Opinium poll for the Observer “has the no campaign on 53% against 47% for yes, among those certain to vote and excluding “don’t knows”. Fewer than 3% of those on each side say there is any real chance of them changing their mind.”. Seems to a lot of variance in the polls recently — is there a Scottish Sam Wang?

  70. 70.

    Anoniminous

    @MattF:

    I’m an interested on-looker, no more. How an independent Scotland – if there is an independent Scotland – would fare is beyond my paygrade.

  71. 71.

    raven

    @efgoldman: It was a tough day and having the ball on the 6, ist and goal and down 3 and then losing was not all that much fun. Especially since the day started with the Hokies coming from 21 down to tie only to lose in the last seconds.

  73. 73.

    Anoniminous

    @scav:

    As I can find? Not as such. James Kelly seems to have his act together, trying to do a good job. BUT one has to be aware he is a Yes Supporter. From what I’ve read he keeps it under control when doing his analysis.

    Caveat Emptor, YMMV, & all that kind of thing.

    ETA: Here is Sam’s take. Shorter: “At present, the data point toward Scotland staying in the United Kingdom.”

  74. 74.

    raven

    @efgoldman: Well, ECU played a very tough game against South Carolina the week before and they are an experienced team with a good QB. I think it was a little of a lot of things. Ohio State has a fresh QB and VT was able to keep him from throwing. The Hokies shut them out in the second half until the td at the gun so they adjusted but, obviously, not enough.

    Georgia is exactly what we thought but the shame is that the D finally turned in what should have been the game winner and the OC is getting killed for not giving the ball to the best player in the nation.

    Then there was the Illini. OY.

  75. 75.

    scav

    @Anoniminous: Ah thanks! It was more a rhetorical flourish about the thing being individually squirrelly on a poll by poll level, needed some averaging and trend magic, as I wasn’t expecting Sam Wang to actually be the Sam Wang on the spot! One should always expect the Sam Wang apparently.

  76. 76.

    Schlemazel [was Schlemizel till NotMax taught me proper yiddish!]

    My kid got fucked by an army buddy. Channeled into a shit mortgage that ended up costing them their house. He didn’t consult with anyone before signing because he assume an army buddy wouldn’t do that to him. I wanted to slap him on the forehead and ask him if he had ever listened to himself talking about some of the shity birds he had dealt with in the service.

    There are a lot of crooks, liars and thieves in and out of the service and honor is a rare commodity in either case.

  79. 79.

    Schlemazel [was Schlemizel till NotMax taught me proper yiddish!]

    @Corner Stone:
    The guy was a broker & instead of going VA he convinced him there was a better deal but it wasn’t as it involved a large balloon payment.

    @raven:
    Why am I not surprised they have a name for it? Working with a lot of ex-servicemen over the years I have found that the military produces some fine guys, hard workers and honest people, they may have had those qualities when they went in but they were sharpened by the experience. But the biggest goldbrickers I have ever worked with all received their training in the service. They probably had the gift when they went into the service but the fine art was honed there.

  80. 80.

    khead

    @efgoldman:

    A noon game at home as a double digit favorite after a big win is an awful spot for a college team. VT did not show up until after halftime.

  84. 84.

    satby

    And can I just tell you all how grateful to the Balloon-Juice community I am? The outpouring of generosity, and the notes about your own rescue animals, have really stood me back up when I really felt myself just starting to fold up. I can take my big old dog to the vet and have the funds to treat him, I hope. Or to let him avoid suffering when his time comes, and that just means so much. And the other goofballs can stay on their various meds too!
    It’s been a great day, and for that I thank you all!
    You especially John, for pulling together such an awesome tribe!

  88. 88.

    ? Martin

    @efgoldman: My parents taught me to trust nobody, not even them when it comes to money. Do the research, call the BBB, ask for their license, run the numbers, all that. There are a lot of people out there trying to screw you, but there are far more people that are well intending but just have it wrong. Given how rife our financial sector is with landmines, the government should mandate that this stuff be taught in school.

  91. 91.

    Howard Beale IV

    @MattF: Biggest mistake Europe made was thinking they could become the biggest currency market by eliminating their native currencies. Whoops.

  93. 93.

    Eric U.

    Too bad I missed the hourly worker thread below. Our local chipotle was closed the other day because all the workers quit. Apparently they said it was a sweatshop

  99. 99.

    Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)

    Also, Chipotle doesn’t franchise so it doesn’t have the same issues that McDonald’s does. And I’ve heard good things, relatively speaking since it’s still in the cheap food business, about them as employers, so I suspect that the situation Eric U. was talking about involved issues with that store’s management rather than the company as a whole.

  100. 100.

    Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)

    @stinger: I will definitely let you know. I have no idea what the other stories in it are going to be like. Since contracts haven’t been signed yet they haven’t publicly announced the list of stories that were selected or the authors.

  101. 101.

    John Weiss

    It seems I’m late to the party. John, grifters are going to grift. Even very fit ones.

    And, you know, grifters are found in many other species than us. It seems as if that ‘strategy’ works often enough that the “species” is perpetuated.

    Grifters are one of the species of vampires. They should be shot on sight.

  104. 104.

    Robert Sneddon

    @Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN): Just keep Thog’s Iron Law of Writing in mind.

    “Money flows TO the writer.”

    I’ve warned folks off vanity presses and the like before where the writer was expected to pay money up front for editing, fees for publicity and websites, getting the books printed etc. This isn’t how publishing works, it’s how scams are perpetrated. Pro writers don’t pay a penny towards anything the publishers do for them in the process of making their works available to the public aka “publishing”.

    http://www.sfwa.org/other-resources/for-authors/writer-beware/

    Sure, the writer’s agents and others shave the royalties but at the end of the day Thog is master.

  106. 106.

    Bill Arnold

    @Corner Stone:

    …off-the-record session, included New York Times columnists David Brooks, Tom Friedman, Frank Bruni, and editorial writer Carol Giacomo;…(other names)

    That’s a little depressing. I keep hoping he converses with other pundits (and also non-pundit public intellectuals) who are not named for political reasons, but have no confidence that this is happening.

  107. 107.

    mclaren

    Why is it “unbelieveable” that someone would do something like this to his “brothers”?

    Navy SEALS are cowards. They’re paid assassins who get sent out on assignment to murder women and children in their beds. Navy SEALS were a key part of the terror campaign Operation Phoenix in Vietnam, where SEALS crawled into windows and cut off Viet Cong sympatherizers’ heads and left them in their childrens’ beds.

    Navy SEALS have long been the go-to guys for atrocities that the U.S. armed forces want to commit, but don’t want to admit. SEALS murder women and children. They torture old men and pregnant women. The weapon of choice for a Navy SEAL is the “hush puppy,” a subsonic smooth-bore .22 pistol silenced with a water suppressor. This is not the weapon a soldier uses. It’s the weapon of choice of a cowardly assassin who wants to shoot a guy’s children in the head without waking the father up, so he can get up in bed in the morning with his dead kids lying against his arms.

    In Vietnam the Tet Offensive had prompted a terrible series of search and destroy missions by the US, plus the assassination program known as Phoenix. As part of the US Navy’s slice of the action, Admiral Elmo Zumwalt and his sidekick Captain Roy “Latch” Hoffman had devised “Operation Sea Lords”, in which the Swift boats would patrol the canals and secondary streams of the Mekong Delta, with particular emphasis on the areas near the Cambodian border. The basic plan, explicitly acknowledged by many Swift boat veterans, was to terrorize the peasants into turning against the National Liberation Front, aka Viet Cong. The entire area, except for certain designated “friendly villages”, was a free fire zone, meaning the Americans could shoot at will and count anyone they killed as VC.

    Source: “What John Kerry Really Did in Vietnam,” Counterpunch, 26 July 2013.

    A coward whose job involves murdering children and killing pregnant women obviously has no conscience — so why should any of these sadistic cowards balk at robbing their fellow war criminals?

    Sometimes I just don’t understand you, Cole. A cowardly sociopath is not someone to look up to. That’s the kind of person who needs to be sent to prison for war crimes. Anyone who acts surprised that one of these cowardly sociopaths commits crimes against people other than the women and children he’s told to murder in their sleep is just being naive.

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