FADE IN:

INT.   HOLLYWOOD STUDIO CONFERENCE ROOM – DAY

“Hurt Locker” scribe MARK BOAL slams his mighty fist down hard on the conference room table, making the HOLLYWOOD EXECUTIVES surrounding him jump in their leather seats.

MARK BOAL

Now listen up.  I don’t care about your liberal preconceptions and your smug certainty that you’re somehow better than those men and women out there in Afghanistan and Iraq just because you work in the movie industry and they actually work!

EXECUTIVE NO. 1

But, but…

MARK BOAL (pointing an accusing finger)

Put a sock in it, meat puppet!  You want to use those American heroes as a backdrop for some politician’s reelection campaign?  Well, you can take my Oscar and stick it in your Fonda-hole!  I’m not having any part of it!

Ed. Note:  We now pause for a photo of sensitive, introspective hipster Boal:

Big Hollywood has been all over the story of screenwriter Mark Boal’s collaboration with the Obama campaign’s usurpation of the work of our SEALs and other covert warriors in hunting down Osama bin Laden.  It’s outrageous – you know you’ve crossed a line in the sand of decency when even Jurassic liberal-saur Maureen Dowd seems creeped out by your shameless SEALS-ploitation.

As Big Hollywood has pointed out before, Boal is Hollywood’s go-to guy for sending the leftist message du jour about our troops.  When President Bush was in office and the party line was that fighting terrorists was a bad thing, Boal was there with In the Valley of Elah (2007).  That one painted our soldiers as hideous psychopaths driven crazy by the war, so nuts and evil they murdered one of their own because of, well, Bush or something.

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Oscar-winning screenwriter Mark Boal must be thrilled about this whole Libya thing, since he seems to be making a cottage industry out of articles, books and movies about American soldiers and how they are a bunch of incorrigible psychos whose desire to murder everyone they see is constrained only by their limited intellect.  Who knows what doors the latest “kinetic military action” might open for him in Tinseltown.

His current anti-soldier hit piece, The Kill Team, is about a group of disgraceful scumbags in Afghanistan who decided to murder several civilians.  With it, Boal seems to be following his tried and true formula – write something for publication in a past-its-prime magazine that makes American troops look like cro-magnons then work to turn it into a movie.  He took a Playboy article on Americans murdering each other and soon we had In the Valley of Elah.  You may have seen it – though the odds are stacked against it.  It was ignored by popular demand.

Another article, this one on bomb disposal experts, became The Hurt Locker, which took some of the bravest and most dedicated people in our armed forces and made them out as undisciplined, drunken, unprofessional clowns.  In fact, Boal got sued by one of the guys he allegedly wrote about.  To be fair, it did win an Academy Award . . . from the same band of geniuses who passed over Saving Private Ryan in favor of Shakespeare In Love and once picked as “Best Song” the unforgettable hit “It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp.”  So, there’s that.

Boal’s technique is to chronicle the most degenerate fringes of the warfighters’ experience and repackage the most sordid episodes as its totality.  One can easily imagine the Rolling Stone editors eager for the chance to please their dwindling audience of aging Garfunkel-digging hippies and Chomsky-devouring clove-smokers with another prejudice-reinforcing piece about how those Middle-American Army guys are barely one step above gorillas.  Rolling Stone even promises a glimpse at the grim photos the mean old Pentagon doesn’t want you to see – as if there was some moral imperative for the military to provide gist for the jihadi propaganda mill.  Hey, that’s Boal and Rolling Stones’ job!

What is particularly cunning in his approach is that there is no excuse for the crimes these savages committed, and Boal uses this fact to deflect any kind of perspective.  Hundreds of thousands of young, heavily-armed and stressed American men and women have served overseas since 9/11.  Several dozen have murdered people.  You won’t find any city in America with a murder rate like that for that demographic. 

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Ed. Note: This article is relevant to Big Hollywood because the author of the piece Michael Yon is responding to here is Mark Boal, the screenwriter who won the Oscar for “The Hurt Locker.”  Much more to come.

15 January 2010

Cobra Battery at FOB Frontenac
Arghandab, Afghanistan

Artillery is called “The King of Battle.”  When it comes to the delivery of force, probably nothing outside of nuclear weapons can outmatch the sustained delivery of extreme brutality.  Cannons also can deliver small atomic weapons. (more…)

Corrected: The federal enforcement agency involved in the incident with Mr. Yon at Sea-Tac was previously misidentified as the Transportation Security Administration (TSA).  The article has been updated to reflect that it was Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents who questioned and detained Mr. Yon.

Award winning war correspondent Michael Yon was detained and handcuffed at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport Yesterday by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) personnel.

Yon was returning to the United States from Hong Kong to visit family when CBP officials stopped him during a routine security checkpoint.  “Officials asked me what was in my bag—nothing wrong with this question,” Yon said in an interview with BigGovernment.com.  “I told them it was normal stuff, clothes and toothbrushes.”

At this point the Customs officials escorted Yon to a designated screening area where they examined the contents of his bag.  “Then they asked me how much money I make,” Yon said.  Yon suggested to the Customs officials that the question was inappropriate and unrelated to transportation security.  The award-winning blogger noted another CBP officer approached Yon: “he asked who do I work for.”  ”I did not answer the question which clearly was upsetting to the [CBP] officers.”

Yon was escorted to a room elsewhere in the airport where he said he remained silent during much of the questioning.   According to Yon, “they handcuffed me for failing to cooperate.  They said I was impeding their ability to do their job.”

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20 December 2009
Arghandab, Afghanistan

As Christmas approaches, many people are thinking about the troops, who in turn are thinking about loved ones at home.  Cards and letters are tacked up on many walls.  The favorites are from the little kids, with questions like, “How do you go to the bathroom?”  “Can you eat dinner?”  “Does it hurt to get shooted?”  It goes on.

I emailed to Command Sergeant Major Jeff Mellinger, asking if he had any words for the troops this Christmas.  Jeff came right back with this awesome letter:

Michael,

As you make your rounds over there, please to remind them that we know they are there and appreciate their performing their duty in such a magnificent manner.

Jeff

Then CSM Mellinger writes:

I awoke this Saturday morning at PT time (0430), and looked at my surroundings.  The worst winter storm in DC for a number of years had arrived in force.  Snow, and lots of it.  Roads are closed, planes are grounded, and people are huddled comfortably inside their homes or foolishly out trying to learn how to drive in snow.

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16 November 2009

When New York Times journalist David Rohde was kidnapped last year in Afghanistan, the company engaged in a painstaking effort to squash the story. They succeeded in persuading major media who learned of the kidnapping to keep quiet. The cover-up was so good that a New York Times reporter I spoke with in December 2008, while she and I joined Secretary Gates on a trip through Afghanistan, Bahrain, Iraq and back to the United States, had not heard about the David Rohde kidnapping.

The New York Times openly agrees that publishing such articles increases the peril to the lives of hostages, yet it published details about a British couple being held hostage in Somalia, and thus increased the value of the hostages to the kidnappers.

Some months after Mr. Rohde’s kidnapping started leaking, I published a generic blurb about the case, but made sure none of the information was new. (more…)

08 November 2009

Got a ping today about an attack on the road between Jalalabad and Kabul.  It’s a dangerous road and I don’t like to drive it.  The source has always been reliable, so I pinged Tim Lynch (who often is on that road), and Tim just sent these pics and a quick narrative.  (Unedited, and my post also coming via Blackberry.)  Tim writes:

The ambush happened around 0845 or so on the west side of the Duranta Tunnel.  Steve and I rolled out to look – the fuel convoy had security escorts from Compass security and they plus some ANP are who you see up in the ridges.  Three tankers were burning and three more were shot up and leaking fuel all over the place.  There was a section of OH-58’s up and after about 20 minutes of figuring out who was who on the ground they started in on the bad guys with rockets and mini gun.

There was still some fighting going on when we arrived and few rounds came our way but were very high and not to close.  The bad guys had one belt fed which opened up briefly – the Blue Compass/ANP guys clearly had the momentum and used damn good fire discipline – we only heard volleys when the Taliban exposed themselves and those volleys were not that long.The Army claims four KIA from the OH’s which is not doubt true given how low they were scouting about for targets – there is no cover out there just fingers and draws and the security guys were putting pressure on the Ambush team to keep moving which exposed them to the birds.

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Wise, wise words from Michael Yon: 

Now is not a time to psychoanalyze the attacker by using a media-supplied telescope that already said he was dead, and that there were multiple attackers.  Media: STOP, please.  There will be time to pursue answers and justice after Christmas.  We must remember that family members lost loved ones just before the holidays.  Justice and answers will come with time.

When stories of this kind break, the weatherman becomes the most accurate part of the newscast. We know nothing right now. We know less than nothing because too much of what we’re told is wrong.

All we know is that people are dead and wounded, and families and loved ones are suffering. That’s all that matters right now. The rest is noise.

Kandahar City, Afghanistan

Slowly, surely, the city is being strangled.  Signaling the depth of our commitment, security forces are thinner in Kandahar than the Himalayan air.  During the days and evenings, there were the sounds of occasional bombs—some caused by suicide attackers, and others by firefights.  The windows in my room had been blown out recently and now were replaced.  We came here to kill our enemies, but today we want to make a country from scratch.

A world away from Afghanistan, over in Holland, was approaching the 65th anniversary of the allied liberation from Nazi occupation, and I had been invited to attend by James “Maggie” Megellas.  Maggie, who had fought his way through Holland and is today remembered there as a hero, is said to be the most decorated officer in the history of the 82nd Airborne Division.  Now 92, Maggie has recently spent about two months tooling around the battlefields of Afghanistan, and though it would be an honor to finally meet him, there was the matter of extracting myself from Kandahar City and getting through about forty minutes of dangerous territory to the military base at Kandahar Airfield. (more…)

Published: 08 October 2009

“In April this year it became 2 Rifles’ dubious fortune to be sent to Sangin on a six-month tour. By mid-August their battle group, a composite force from various units built around a core of several hundred riflemen and fusiliers, had the worst casualties of any British brigade sent to Helmand, with just over 100 soldiers killed or wounded: a fifth of their total patrol troops. The trend suggested that by the time the battle group’s tour ends this month as many as one in four of these infantrymen will have been slain or injured, a figure that compares with British infantry casualty ratios in Europe during the later stages of the Second World War.” -Anthony Lloyd

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14 September 2009
Helmand Province, Afghanistan

With the war increasing, Air Force Pararescue has been crisscrossing the skies picking up casualties. (more…)

When I saw that Michael Yon had joined us here at Big Hollywood, I was overjoyed. This is a great opportunity to expand his audience and, frankly, everyone should read his stuff. Yon has been embedding with military units in combat for the better part of the last four years and has been bringing the ground-level truth to those that care to read it.

I can’t remember exactly when I first discovered his writings but it was at a point where he was disagreeing with the spin coming from the Bush White House regarding progress in Iraq. I was disturbed to have confirmation that things were not quite as we were being told but Yon’s critiques, while serious and undiluted, were constructive in nature. I could tell that he was supportive of the effort even though he sometimes railed against the execution of it. Michael Yon pulls no punches and I checked back often to see what else he had to say. Eventually, the network news would catch up and start reporting things that Yon had written about weeks, often months, earlier. This is a pattern that continues today. (more…)

The members of the ruling class of the British Isles seem to be committed to demonstrating that they are nothing but hopeless neo-socialists busy sacrificing their green and pleasant land on the altar of nanny-state multiculturalism.  It seems that every day there is a report of some new Labor assault on free speech, a fresh disaster in the decaying single-payer health care system, or another craven surrender to domestic jihadism. The latest atrocity is Scotland’s politicians’ ”compassionate release” of Lockerbie mass-murderer Abdulbaset al-Megrahi, a shameful maneuver that managed to combine greed, cowardice and self-righteousness all into one gutless package. I used to emphasize that I was 25% Scot and not mention my 12.5% French ancestry.  Now?  Well, can you say, “Bonjour?”  At least the “frogs” leadership will take their own side in a fight.

But the people of the British Isles – the English, the Scots, the Welsh and the Irish – are a proud, tough bunch ill-served by their shabby politicians.  And nowhere on screen can you see their heart and glory displayed better than in 1964’s war epic Zulu.

Understand that Zulu is a true story.  In January 1879, a column of about 1500 poorly-deployed British troops was overrun at Isandhlwana by the 20,000-man Zulu army of King Catshweyo. After that slaughter – the Zulus did not bother with niceties like taking prisoners – the Zulus turned their attention to the nearby mission station at Rourke’s Drift, defended by about 100 Welsh infantrymen and their English officers. The desperate battle against overwhelming odds that followed became a legend. (more…)

22 July 2009
Filed from Sangin, Afghanistan

(This dispatch is from Ghor Province, though I am now with British forces down south.)

Lithuanian soldier on Swedish C-130 from Kabul to Kandahar and finally to Chaghcharan. On his left are Filipino workers. Filipinos are like birds; the only place that an American has stepped that a Filipino hasn’t is the moon. Yesterday was a special anniversary for space travel: man first landed on the moon. I watched the launch from our family boat when I was five years-old. Apollo 11 was bright, and loud. Many people think that the Russians also walked on the moon, but this is untrue.

The Swedish C-130 landed at Chaghcharan “airport.” Landmines still wait in ambush in the fields around the airstrip, and in fact a legacy mine (previous war) was found just about three feet off the road—just a minute from the base—while I was there. The mine has been next to the base for about five years and apparently nobody stepped on it. When soldiers say to you, “Sir, please don’t step off the road,” they mean “DON’T STEP OFF THE ROAD!” The director of the local hospital told me that mines strike about one person per month in this area. (more…)

Please go to this link first – click here – to understand what I’m about to rant about and why I’m so pissed.

Almost 90% of Americans believe the war in Iraq is and was a waste. The Hollywood media feeds the public wasteful, depressing, and horribly fabricated stories. When did the U.S. military become the bad-guys? We are stereotyped “Generation Kill.” I guess that is all we do. All we do is go to Iraq, hunt innocents and slaughter them. I guess that is what I did for eight months while I was there.

I guess I really didn’t save Iraqi families from being tortured by foreign jihadis. I didn’t set up the first ever Iraqi elections. Or see my brothers blown up, shot, maimed, and killed. Getting attacked from Mosques and hospitals–and you know what?  We just took it, day after day we took it and we kept going. An IED blowing up underneath me each day.  We couldn’t fight back; we were ordered not to. No matter how much vengeful, pent up aggression I felt, or how much I wanted to kill, I didn’t act on it. We have a code, Rules of Engagement. “RULES,” rules that are followed.

But according to then Senator and now President Obama, all I did was air-raid villages and kill innocent civilians.  This is a video I will never forget:

People like Pat Dollard and Micheal Yon tell the true stories.

Please watch these clips and tell me if you buy into what is portrayed. Honestly, tell me what you believe. (more…)