AMERICAN MERCENARY IN THE UKRAINE

There's speculation in the comments below this clip in YouTube about whether he's American or Brit - seems he could be either - I watched it a few times and figured that guy might be a Brit but his accent seems more American if you ask me. Looks legit . . . S.L.



I also found it funny that to some of the people commenting, "American mercenaries" automatically means "Blackwater". Blackwater was a private military company - in fact they no longer exist as Blackwater - and what they do is legitimate security work, highly regulated and overseen by the US Government.

You've got to figure - we've had almost 15 years of continual war ... before that we had a professional military the likes of which the world has never seen, with a lot of continual experience in places like Grenada, Lebanon, Panama, Kuwait, Iraq, Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Libya and the Mahgreb . . . and so of course it is inevitable these days that guys are "freelancing" - in two places specifically: Ukraine and Iraq.

The American warrior class is firmly established and quite distinct and visible . . . we are also the most misunderstood class of American society . . . and it is an honor to be included as a member of it . . .

STORMBRINGER SENDS

THE ETERNAL MERCENARY - Part II

Barry Sadler (November 1, 1940 – November 5, 1989) was a Green Beret medic in Vietnam, and of course his main claim to fame was as singer songwriter of the immortal BALLAD OF THE GREEN BERETS.

There's another side to the great balladeer of Special Forces, however: Barry Sadler was also the author of the notorious CASCA THE ETERNAL MERCENARY series of novels.

In an earlier era they would have been labelled "pulp fiction."

The "Casca" saga centers on the title character, Casca Rufio Longinius, a Roman soldier who stabbed Christ during the crucifixion, and is cursed to remain a soldier eternally till the Second Coming. The series of novels takes Casca through to the 20th century. Sadler himself wrote only the first few, with the remainder of the original 22 books being farmed out by the publishers to other writers and issued under his name.

There's a STORMBRINGER tie-in, of course: a private in the barracks in the early eighties could not escape these sacred texts. So somewhere between pulling CQ runner duties or one of those stupid details where they'd have you guarding a building and if you got lucky there'd be a jeep or a truck you could sit in to keep out of the rain, bust out your L-shape and read a few chapters of CASCA or CONAN THE BARBARIAN or maybe even MACK BOLAN.

FAST FORWARD: Kuwait, 2001. We were doing this unGodly commute down the National Highway back and forth to this Kuwaiti camp where their guys were pulling their annual training and we were the lucky guys who drew the short straw, which meant we got to train these poor rich slobs who really didn't want to be there.

Anyway our team Warrant Officer was Eric Rojo - not his real name - the best damn Warrant in Special Forces and probably the oldest, and one of the most lethal men I ever had the pleasure of serving next to. A cowboy from Oklahoma who held advanced science degrees and had once worked as a chemist for Exxon; Chief Rojo always got a lot of respect. Anyway Rojo popped this CD into the dashboard; yep, you guessed it; CASCA THE ETERNAL MERCENARY.

Well this was good, and all of us poor slobs who had soldiered through and paid our dues in the early eighties happily listened to the adventures of Barry Sadler's alter-ego, nodding our heads approvingly, knowing that we were receiving Green Beret lore and wisdom straight from the source. We'd tapped into the mother lode, apparently, because Rojo had brought the entire 22-volume collectors edition disk set, and suddenly this deployment began to look a little more bearable.

Of course the Team Captain hadn't been there in the early eighties - the youngest NCO on the team probably had more time under canopy that he had in the Army - he had no idea what this tripe was we were listening to and he couldn't figure out for the life of him what the hell it was all about. Finally on the second day he goes, "What is this sh*t we're listening to?"

Suddenly the CASCA material doubled in value, because IT PISSED OFF THE OFFICER! Because I was the 18F - team intell sergeant and resident philosopher - I spoke up in this serious tone of voice; from the back of the van I started with, "You are ignorant of your Special Forces heritage, Sir . . ."

He came back with, "What? WHAT? What the hell are to talking about ? ? ?"

This was license to push it, and I started getting more and more disrespectful in an oblique way; the Captain hated me so it was glorious fun, of course, and everybody else was digging it. The Captain was going nuts - he had self-confidence issues to begin with - until finally Chief Rojo spoke up, "He's talking about Barry Sadler, Sir."

"Huh? Barry who?"

"You know, the guy who wrote BALLAD OF THE GREEN BERETS."

"Huh? Oh yeah, him. What's that got to do with this crap we're listening to, this Mickey Mouse sh*t that Linnane likes?"

"Barry Sadler wrote it, Sir."

"Huh? What, the song? I KNOW THAT . . ."

"No, the book, Sir."

"Book, what book?" I'm telling you, this Captain was a real specimen - the kind the Brits call a Rupert.

"CASCA THE ETERNAL MERCENARY, Sir - this stuff we're listening to . . ."

The Captain goes, "Huh? What?" a few more times, then starts studying the box the disk came in; like a hog staring at a wristwatch.

Anyway I couldn't do a post about Barry Sadler and not mention CASCA THE ETERNAL MERCENARY - a character that Sadler modeled after himself, apparently, and then set out to emulate.

The Kuwait deployment actually had a couple high points, but it ended bad - real bad - like everything else in that particular twelve-month period. And like every significant event in my life, what happened to my team in Kuwait was eclipsed six months later when the buildings came down in New York and everything changed for all of us, from now and forever more, into . . . eternity . . .
SEAN LINNANE SENDS




Thursday Bird HERE



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WE OWE THEM NOTHING.

President Obama gave a speech to the 'Muslim World' today at Cairo University. He repeated the same "Blame America First" themes we heard during the "America Apologizes" European tour, predictably enough, and threw in some exaggerations. He compared the Nazi Holocaust against the Jews to the Palestinian refugees' (read: terrorists) situation - they serve as a willing foil to the Arab states against Israel.

Will somebody please remind me; why is it we need to reach out to the Muslim World? Why do they hate us? What are our transgressions against Muslim people?

A little review is in order:

We gave aid, arms & training to the Mujahadeen, gave them the edge required to liberate Afghanistan from the Soviets.

Millions of Muslims were liberated when the Soviet Union collapsed; entire Muslim nations emerged - Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan - thanks in no small part to U.S. efforts during the Cold War. Thousands of Americans died in this forty-year endeavor.

In Kuwait we liberated millions from the rape & rampage of Saddam Hussein's forces. We took casualties along the way.

We fed the starving people of Somalia. American soldiers were killed and dragged through the streets.

In Bosnia we halted the brutal slayings of Muslims at the hands of the Serbs and the Croats, when the United Nations proved unable to do anything except accommodate the Serbs in the massacre of Srebrenica.

We liberated the Kosovars from their Serb oppressors. American soldiers came under fire; Americans were captured and brutalized by former Communists in Belgrade.

We liberated millions in Afghanistan, and Iraq, at great cost of American lives and treasure.

The United States is directly responsible for any and all advancement the Palestinians have made toward statehood over the past thirty years. And yet when the Twin Towers crashed to the ground killing thousands of Americans, the Palestinians danced in the streets.

WE OWE THEM NOTHING.