Saturday, May 01, 2010

What 'cha do'n on 03 May?

Well, if you are within a couple hours drive of Norfolk, Ft. Worth, or Miami - then you may want to consider joining one of the rallies in support of Petty Officer Matthew McCabe, USN, via USNavySEALS.com.
Below are the scheduled events in support of Navy SEAL Matthew McCabe as his trial begins on May 3rd.

At 10:00 a.m., a support rally will commence at the Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base in Fort Worth, Texas; it will last until 2 p.m. Those who would like to join in the Fort Worth support rally can get in touch with Josh Irving at (817) 718-3156 or at jiving@supportourseals.com, or
RSVP on Facebook.

At 1:00 in the afternoon, another support rally will be conducted at the Bayside Market Place at 301 Biscayne Blvd (between 2nd and 4th St.) in Miami, Florida. The rally will last unitl 5 pm, and those who are interested in participating can contact Vinoska Hernandez at (305) 469-0538 or at vinoska@gmail.com. More details will reportedly be provided, so check out the
Facebook page for this rally.

Supporters will gather outside of Gate 5 of the Naval Station Norfolk at the corner of Hampton Blvd and B Avenue / Seabee Road, the venue for the trial of Matthew McCabe. The support rally will start at ten in the morning and will last until 3 in the afternoon, or even earlier if the trial goes well and ends before 3 p.m. The event coordinator for this rally is Dawn West, who can be contacted at (757) 374-2774, or
RSVP on Facebook.

After the rally in Norfolk, supporters are invited to head on over to Poppa’s Pub for an after party immediately after, at 2105 Diamond Springs Road in Virginia Beach.
I have no connection to any of these groups - but if they are willing to take point - I'll help spread the word.

14 comments:

prschoef said...

What earthly good does anyone think rallies do?

cdrsalamander said...

Have you ever felt alone and your story unknown - unknown so those who wish you ill can do what they want?

Fresh air and light.  It is a secondary indicator that you are not alone.  Ponder.

Anonymous said...

Who involved in this process are you suggesting wishes him ill?  The convening authority?  The military judge?  The members of the court-martial?  That's a heck of a statement to make.

cdrsalamander said...

No.  Not him.  Not them.  Ponder more, it's right in front of your face.

LT B said...

I'll say that who ever pushed it is praying for a guilty verdict to try to justify it.  The CA let it go to court martial so I'd argue that there is one person hoping for a guilty verdict.  I'd also guess there are the militay haters that would love to see him guilty and thus are wishing him ill.

UltimaRatioRegis said...

Military haters....

Like SecState, who, when First "Lady", loudly and often proclaimed that she "loathed" the military?  Or her draft-dodging husband who wrote of a military career as a waste of his time and effort?

One would think that the senior Military leadership would understand that sycophancy to such people, whom this administration is packed with, will never make them respect the Armed Forces or the people in them.  Quite the contrary, caving to the social experimentation and the like as if we thought it a good idea will cause them to view us with yet more contempt.

Anonymous said...

Who else could you possibly have meant?  No one else controls the charges, the forum, the verdict, or the sentence.  Who is it that wished this Sailor ill and might have been able to act on it but for the attention called to their potential actions?  I'm sure there are plenty of "military haters" eager to string this Sailor up, but unless you know something I don't, none of those people have any influence over this court-martial.

Skippy-san said...

URR, Your kind of mixing metaphors here. There are plenty of Republicans-who by their actions-say much the same thing: They could not be bothered to serve.

And to a certain point they are right. In today's society, the person who goes into the military and stays-is foreclosing other options downstream. That's not a bad thing-but one has to be aware of it from the gitgo. If you stay for 29 years like I did-YOU REALLY pass on certain things you coulda, woulda, shoulda done. But the tradeoff is I got to have fun and they didn't-and that's worth it to me.

Go back and look at who served in Congress and in the administration of both Obama and Bush. You will find a lot of people in both who took a pass-and a lot of people you would not expect to have served.

Seems to me-the system worked for the other two SEALS, they got aquitted. But there must have been something in the body of evidence for the CA to refer to Court Martial at the Article 32 hearing. I'll bet you a beer right now this guy gets aquitted.

UltimaRatioRegis said...

There is a giant chasm between those who couldn't be bothered to serve, and those who fundamentally despise and resent our military, and hate everything it stands for.  The first may have decided not to serve, which is their right, but the second is the intellectual kindred of the 1960s radical anti-war protesters, the flag burners, those who yelled "baby killer", and spit and threw garbage at our returning Vietnam veterans. 

While those who chose not to serve may have no particular insight of value to the Armed Forces, the second is as openly hostile as political prudence allows.  Hillary, Barbara Boxer, Patsy Schroeder, Feinstein, Bill Ayers, Bernadine Dohrn, Dick Durbin, et al. reflect the anti-military bent of their generation. 

The system is working?  Courts martial of combat troops in the field trying to fight a counter-insurgency?  I am sure morale is sky high for the SEALS in that unit and for units in that AO.  They sure feel like someone has their six.  Yessiree, just like Jack Murtha.

LT B said...

Skippy,
   I think there was no Art 32.  I believe this is an SCM, not a GCM.  They denied Mast, so it probably never saw an Art 32 and the CA took it directly to SCM.  I suspect, it was more about ego and a lack of desire by the command/CA to back down and just let it go.  There should have been an SJA somewhere saying, "Sir, we do or do not have the evidence that will hold up in court to convict these guys."  If the CA was told that there was not enough evidence, then his ego over rode his good judgement and advice.  If he got bad advice that said he could get them, then the SJA didn't honestly look at the evidence.  That's just my opinon.

Skippy-san said...

I'd like to know more about the case before passing any judgement.  It would seem to me-that in a case this politically charged, there is going to be a whole lot of vetting going on all the way up the chain of command-and the natural instinct would be not to prosecute, rather than prosecute. So there had to be at least some suspicion that something outside the box occurred.

ActusRhesus said...

skippy, this was a mast-refusal SPCM.  no 32 hearing there.

MR T's Haircut said...

LT B,

I have seen that before... yep!

UltimaRatioRegis said...

Hey Phib.

Good news.