RNC Video Used Fake Soldiers

By Eric on September 4, 2008

It was going to be patriotic, until they faked it:

There’s the Continental Congress…A real WWII vet…Photos of workers at Ground Zero. A close-up of a folded flag presented to a grieving widow at a military funeral… profiles of soldiers swelling with pride in slo-motion. 

But CBS News found that the footage of the ‘funeral’ and soldiers is what is called ‘stock’ footage. The soldiers were actors and the funeral scene was from a one-day film shoot, produced in June. No real soldiers were used during production. 

The footage, sold by stock-film house Getty Imageswas produced by a commercial filmmaker in Chicago. Both Getty and the production company, Mr. Big Films, confirmed that the footage was shot on spec and sold to the Republican National Committee. 

One of the actors, Perry Denton of Chicago, Ill. also confirmed that he was hired on a day-rate as an actor for the shoot and told CBS News he was surprised to learn the footage was shown at the convention. 

Tags: 2008, military, RNC, soldiers

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More Phony Soldiers Want Out

By Eric on October 27, 2007

I think we all remember when right-wing gasbag Rush Limbaugh called American troops who support withdrawal from Iraq “phony soldiers.” Well, a few more phonies are on their way home from 14 months in Iraq, and they have some interesting things to say about their most recent tour-of-duty:

Asked if the American endeavor here was worth their sacrifice — 20 soldiers from the battalion have been killed in Baghdad — [Sgt. Victor] Alarcon said no: “I don’t think this place is worth another soldier’s life.“
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“It’s just a slow, somewhat government-supported sectarian cleansing,” said Maj. Eric Timmerman, the battalion’s operations officer.
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[I]n one instance about two months ago, the American soldiers heard that the Wolf Brigade planned to help resettle more than 100 Shiite families in abandoned houses in the neighborhood. When platoon leader Lt. Brian Bifulco arrived on the scene, he noticed that “abandoned houses to them meant houses that had Sunnis in them.”

“What we later found out is they weren’t really moving anyone in, it was a cover for the INP [Iraqi National Police] to go in and evict what Sunni families were left there,” recalled Bifulco, 23, a West Point graduate from Huntsville, Ala. “We showed up, and there were a bunch of Sunni families just wandering around the streets with their bags, taking up refuge in a couple Sunni mosques in the area.”
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“We were so committed to them [the Iraqi National Police] as a partner we couldn’t see it for what it was. In retrospect, I’ve got to think it was a coordinated effort,” Timmerman said. “To this day, I don’t think we truly understand how infiltrated or complicit the national police are” with the militias.
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“I’m frustrated. After 14 months, I’ve got a lot of thoughts in my head. Do they fundamentally get giving up individual rights and power for the greater good?” [Battalion commander Lt. Col. George A.] Glaze said. “I’m going to leave here being skeptical of everything.“
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“I honestly thought we were making a difference in Tikrit. Then we come back to a hellhole,” [Sgt. Matthews] Marino said. “That was a playground compared to Baghdad.”
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The American people don’t fully realize what’s going on, said Staff Sgt. Richard McClary, 27, a section leader from Buffalo.

“They just know back there what the higher-ups here tell them. But the higher-ups don’t go anywhere, and actually they only go to the safe places, places with a little bit of gunfire,” he said. “They don’t ever [expletive] see what we see on the ground.”

These soldiers–officers and NCOs–must be phonies because they all want out of Iraq. They don’t think George Bush’s war is “worth another soldier’s life.” How much longer are we going to let Bush, Cheney, and the rest of the GOP keep sending our sons and daughters to die in Iraq? How much longer will we let them “support the troops” by leaving them in the middle of a civil war?

These soldiers don’t want “phased withdrawal.” They don’t want to hear “out by 2013.” They know that they could die any day, any minute, any second, and they want to come home now. If we really support the troops, how can we deny them this request after they’ve already given so much to our country? We need to bring our soldiers home.

Tags: Iraq, soldiers, withdrawal

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