LATEST PHONY BALONEY

Another one bites the dust . . . that's our boy on the right, apparently.


NC ACADEMY HEAD SUSPECTED OF BEING FAKER

April 08, 2011 Associated Press - OAK RIDGE, N.C. - Well before he became commandant of North Carolina's only military boarding academy, William Northrop regaled people with stories of serving in the jungles of Vietnam - how he was wounded in battle, how some comrades committed suicide, how he used amphetamines on patrol.

But his war stories may be pure fiction.

There is no record Northrop ever served in the military, let alone Vietnam.

Northrop, 66, left as commandant at Oak Ridge Military Academy last fall after just a few months on the job, the same day a parent formally asked school officials to look into his background.

He refused to discuss his past or explain the discrepancies in his record to an Associated Press reporter. The academy's president would not discuss Northrop's background either.

If his claim of wartime service proves false, it will be the latest and one of the most audacious to emerge in recent years, and comes as the courts grapple with the constitutionality of a 2006 federal law that makes it a crime to pose as a war hero.


When will they learn? The era of faking it and getting away with it is coming to a crashing halt . . .



Today's Bird HERE


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WAR IN THE LAND OF CHOCOLATE

Source: CIA World Factbook


Cote d’Ivoire was in the news cycle this past week, a six month West African power struggle culminating with French and UN attack helicopters firing rockets on the Presidential Residence in Abidjan, economic capital of Ivory Coast, a West African nation of 21 million. But the war goes back further than the past six months; I was there for the beginning & early stages of that war, back in the late nineties / early ought-oughts.

It actually began as a military pay mutiny, at Camp Akuedo on the outskirts of Abidjan. I know this because I helped train the soldiers who became known as the rebels.

One of the guys we trained in peacekeeping duties, seen here as a part of the rebel force in Bouaké, Cote d'Ivoire.


We were there as a part of a U.S. State Department program – the African Crisis Response Initiative (ACRI) – teaching peacekeeping skills to company-sized elements from five battalions of the Ivorian military. At the beginning of the program we issued new uniforms, equipment, boots, everything – to the soldiers, many of whom had arrived from their remote bases in uniforms that were rags falling off their bodies, their web gear was held together in places by threads.

At the end of our four-month training program, the soldiers once again appeared in their rags. “What happened?” I asked one of the troops. “Where are your new uniforms, the ones we gave you?”

“The officers, they took them all back, put them in the warehouse.” Good old Third World corruption; we give them foreign aid, the guys in charge rip it off and use it to line their pockets. Your tax dollars at work.

This guy's nom de guerre was Ironman, because of his great physical strength. I still have the heavy steel bracelet he gave me in 1999.


One of the Ivoirians asked me for some money so he could take the train back to his base up north. He was a brother paratrooper, so I shelled out ten bucks – probably a month’s pay for him. This was telling, because later that night, it was the pay thing that kicked off the whole mess.

Third World Armies are paid peanuts. Actually, if they were literally paid in peanuts they’d probably be better off than the puny salaries they make. That’s where things like UN peacekeeping duty come in; UN pay is worth triple what they make, and this is crucial because their retirement scheme is practically non-existent.

Well, President Henri Konan Bedie was on TV that night, giving a big speech about how great things were going. The trouble was, things weren’t going all that great, and hadn’t been in the twelve years since the great Houphouët-Boigny – founding father of Ivory Coast – had died. The troops clustered in the dirt-floored canteen were yelling at the screen, ”Oh YEAH? Well if things are going so good – WHERE’s OUR UN PAY???”

What happened next - after they got enough beer in them - was they went down to the arms room, busted in and secured the firing pins for their rifles (that’s how much their own officers trusted them). Then they rocked on down to the Minister of Defense’s residence – about five miles down the road – and made known their grievances.

The security element at the Minister of Defense’s place returned fire, so the mutineers pulled back and went over to the President’s residence. There was no return fire this time, so the troops took the place down, and the whole country with it.

This was in December of 1999; the wealthiest, most stable nation in West Africa had just experienced its first coup d’etat.


TO BE CONTINUED . . .


. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . S.L.


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FOREIGN LEGION IN COMBAT - COTE d-IVOIRE

I just found out what outfit from the Legion it was that was present with us on the battlefield in Ivory Coast, 2002.


2eme REGIMENT ETRANGER PARACHUTIST (2nd Regiment, Foreign Legion Paratroopers) FIRE FIGHT FOOTAGE, IVORY COAST, 2003:

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WANNABE WARLORD

A popular feature here on STORMBRINGER is busting out the phony wannabes - this site even helped track this guy to ground - but this latest freak was so bold he takes phony-ism to a whole 'nother level . . . not good enough to be a phony wannabe poser - he stood up a whole PRIVATE ARMY:

CHINESE MAN ACCUSED OF CREATING FAKE ARMY SF UNIT

April 13, 2011 Associated Press

POMONA, Calif - A Chinese national who said he was the "Supreme Commander" of a made-up Army unit orchestrated an elaborate scheme that attracted recruits and their money with the promise that it was a path to U.S. citizenship, authorities allege.



I think I like this guy's style:

"Uh, excuse me there, Your Majesty, but exactly what rank are you?"

"Supleeme Commandah. I a Supleeme Commandah Special Foss. You can car me Supah."



Yupeng Deng, who is accused of raking in hundreds of dollars from his recruits, is set to be arraigned Wednesday on more than a dozen charges.

Los Angeles County prosecutors said Deng, also known as David Deng, recruited 100 other Chinese nationals, primarily in Asian enclaves in the San Gabriel Valley, to join the "U.S. Army / Military Special Forces Reserve unit," then gave them phony U.S. Army uniforms and military ID cards.

The 51-year-old El Monte man is accused of charging the recruits initiation fees ranging from $300 to $450, with renewal fees set at $120 a year.

The recruits were instructed to report to Deng's office in Temple City, which was decorated to look like an official military recruiting center, to undergo military training and indoctrination, the Los Angeles County district attorney's office said. They marched in a parade in Monterey Park and took a tour of the U.S. Midway Museum in San Diego, all in uniform.


San Diego's a HUGE military town - somebody HAD to have seen these clowns and wondered What the Hell is going on?"


Deng was charged with 13 counts of theft by false pretenses, manufacturing deceptive government documents and counterfeit of an official government seal. He faces more than eight years in state prison if convicted.

Deng was arrested by agents with the FBI and U.S. Department of Defense on a felony complaint filed Monday.

Federal investigators began looking into Deng more than two years ago when they received reports from police who recovered counterfeit military IDs from some of Deng's recruits during traffic stops, FBI spokeswoman Laura Eimiller said.

When Deng sent his recruits renewal forms for their bogus military IDs, some showed up at real Army facilities to pay them, she said.


Oh I would have LOVED to have been a fly on the wall when THAT madness went down!

"Whaddya mean -


WE DON'T GET NO SCUBA PAY ? ? ?"











Saturday's Bird HERE



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ON WRITING

OK this is where my head is at right now:

I've been writing for years, but I really got serious about ten years ago; the year I lived alone, all by myself in a marble palace on the outskirts of a dusty, sand baked Nowheres-ville, on the edge of the great Sahara. I have the better part of two novels (based on my adventures, exploring the deepest recesses of the human psyche, all alone on the Road to Infinity, etcetera, etcetera . . .) already written down, and ten thousand times more than that bouncing around inside my skull.

What I want to do is save them as pdf's and post them online - a form of e-publishing - release them a chapter a week. For people to read them they click an icon, a dollar per chapter.

How to set this up? I know Pay pal is involved somehow; I put the question out there and true to form the Heroes of Team STORMBRINGER came back with all kinds of detailed instructions . . . give me a week or two to crack the code on this thing and we'll see how it goes from there.

All I know this thing is long overdue - the stories going around in my head have been screaming for an outlet for years now . . . decades even. I know my stuff is good - everybody I've shown it to cries out, "Sean! You've GOT to get your work out there! In the name of all that is Good and Holy, man, you've GOT TO GET PUBLISHED ! ! !" Now we're talking editors, writers - some pretty respectable figures in the literary world here - THE WOMEN even like what I write so I KNOW it's not just macho bravo sierra . . . and then sometime last week suddenly it dawned on me: This is what STORMBRINGER is FOR!

"To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women!"

BTW another journalist/writer has been querying me for technical advice for his sci-fi novels (involving a Special Forces desperado) and I have been feeding him institutional knowledge of the profession. I hardly told him anything about Special Forces . . . little drips and drabs . . . and what little I told him seemed mind-expanding:


Journalist/Writer Guy: I did read that there is some specialization among the SF companies, so that many specialize in some aspect. In addition to specializing in language, maybe one company is more highly-trained in underwater infiltration methods, another in mountain warfare, another in who knows what, and the one best suited (if available) is used in any given mission. So it's not as if all companies and A detachments need to know everything to the same degree. Just as there are focus roles in an A detachment with some cross-training (weapons, engineer, medical, communications, operations, commanders), so individual A detachments have areas of specialty.

Is this correct, or are they all basically interchangeable except with regards to language? I did read that all the 5 active groups are spending significant time in Afghanistan and Iraq despite their geographic responsibility. Maybe the two reserve groups are there as well.

As far as SF compared to Rangers, it appears that the Rangers, while I assume they could be used for any of the 9 SOF missions or 7 collateral activities, engage in more DA, CT, and SR than anything else. Well, I guess some FID. They're light infantry that goes in usually with bigger numbers than SF would. As far as the culture goes, and I know all individuals are different, but from what I understand, Ranger culture is more hooah gung-ho warrior macho than SF. Kind of "give me the target and I'll eliminate it." In, bam-bam, out.

"THIS . . . IS . . . STORMBRINGER ! ! !"

SF is more relationship focused with its UW and FID missions. They still perform DA, SR, and CT missions. They’re deadly snipers (isn't it SF and Marines that have the top sniper training?) But there's also a lot of training friendlies—insurgents, military, and law enforcement. And they're not mainstream soldiers, but more independent-minded. I think someone will shoot me if I say they're the hippies of the military, but that's what I'm getting. They're wearing beards and riding horseback into battle. You probably want to shoot me yourself (grin). Maybe "unconventional" is a better term.

So what of the above is not right? Also, I guess it depends on the current needs, but is my assessment that Ranger’s = DA while SF = UW, FID, SR accurate?


StormBringer: This is going to take me WEEKS to answer - especially since it's tax time of the year and I'm a freelancer, a privateer; my accountant has a love/hate relationship with me.

“Great Patriotic War on Towelhead-ism” - yes, cynicism; sarcasm, black humor - we're allowed to engage in it; we pay the price.

Special Reconnaissance (SR) - it used to be called "Strategic Reconnaissance" to differentiate from "Tactical Reconnaissance" which occurs within a mile or two of the front - "STRATRECON" became "Special Reconnaissance" when it enveloped the various disciplines of reconnaissance - think living in a sniper hide for a week, keeping a recon log, shitting in plastic bags then humping them out - electronic surveillance, photo reconnaissance, clandestine urban operations - teams patrolling the cities of Western Europe for Red Brigades, Red Army Faction cells; later doing the same thing tracking al Qaeda cells - this genre crosses over into "Special Activities" when you involve running cell organizations, collecting HUMINT from assets, etc.


Journalist-Writer Guy: This stuff is gold. Plastic bags of crap? Never in a million years would I think of that. As well as the “spy” crossover. A book I have on my list is Hunting the Jackal and I thought it interesting that it was CIA and SF. But now I see why. And I really like that business about spy versus scout. Take the time you need. I can’t wait to get the rest.


StormBringer: Of course this is the most important mission - "Time spent in Reconnaissance is never wasted." - George Washington said that.

This is the discipline where I made my most money. I was in the Atlanta airport, in the international transit lounge and some old guy was telling me, "I was a spy, I was in Austria after the war," and his wife was nodding her head up and down. I was just nodding and smiling and not saying a word. It was 1995, I was enroute to Sarajevo, and I was in civvies.

For what it's worth, very few intelligence professionals actually meet the dictionary definition of a "spy"; to be a spy, one must betray. I was a scout, a reconnaissance soldier.


Journalist-Writer Guy: “This is the discipline where I made my most money.” Is that a turn of phrase, or do SF actually get paid by the job?


StormBringer: That was turn of phrase but military pay works three ways: you get your base pay, then you get your special pay & allowances (jump pay, special duty pay, language pay, scuba pay, demo pay, housing allowance, cost-of-living-allowance, etc) then there's mission-related pay (TDY pay, per diem, hazardous duty pay, imminent danger pay, combat zone tax-free exclusion, etc).

You end up trying to connect the dots. Twenty-plus years ago I saw a brass plaque hanging over a team sergeant's desk, in one of the team rooms over in Torii Station, Okinawa. It said it all:


"WE'RE LOOKING FOR A LOW-INTENSITY WAR IN A HIGH PER DIEM AREA."

"The man's enlarged my mind. He's a poet-warrior . . . I'm a little man, he's a great man."



STORMRINGER SENDS



Today's Bird HERE.



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RADIOACTIVE DOG RESCUE

In the wee hours of Sunday morning, seven volunteers left Tokyo and drove over broken roads and past demolished houses to meet three other volunteers in the ghost town that Minami Soma has become.

Some had prepared radiation suits and others wore simple vinyl raincoats.

The first two to arrive found the pack around the Odaka train station, near the owner's home, where the AP team had last seen them.

"They were waiting for their owner," said Tamiko Nakamura, a volunteer who went with the group from Tokyo.

The dogs had been left some dry food, and weren't starving.

It took a while to entice them with snacks, and six or seven were bundled into each car. The group saved 20 dogs in all.
 
Read all of it HERE: 

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110414/ap_on_re_as/as_japan_earthquake_dog_rescue 


I love dogs. In fact, the more people I meet, the more I love MY dogs.

These "Shelties" look a lot like MY border collie "Puppy Dog"- the smartest dog in the world.
Respect and honor to these kind souls who braved the hazards of radioactivity to rescue "Man's Best Friend" - STORMBRINGER SENDS
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

CULTURE WAR UPDATE

We've got the Ground Zero mosque sacrilege - over the pond they're dealing with THIS outrage:

Ex-Army chief's fears over plan for mosque next to Sandhurst

The site of the proposed mosque adjacent to Sandhurst, the British Royal Military Academy.


A former head of the British Armed Forces has warned that plans for a mosque overlooking Sandhurst could lead to attacks on the Royal Military Academy.

In a letter, Lord Guthrie says he is worried about the ‘security’ of the two 100ft minarets which will tower over the mosque, 300 yards from the Sandhurst parade ground.

And he is unconvinced by promises from the mosque leaders that
it will not fall into the hands of extremists who support a ‘doctrine of hate’

Read the rest of it HERE

Translation: "Viet Cong! This is a symbol of death!"

Today's Bird HERE

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