one of the best blogs on the net, and probably his best piece of work.

I read this post awhile ago, and I kept thinking, "Holy crap! This guy got in the fight!" (Plus he got his ass chewed out for it; it's a great big no-no for a writer to use a weapon, and Yon could have been in some pretty serious shit if he'd killed anyone.) I compare this to the MSM jerkwads "reporting" from the hotel bar or from poolside and I can only shake my head. This Yon guy has balls the size of tractor tires.

I sent Michael Yon $50 -- we need guys like him on the scene. If you've got a few shekels to spare, you might want to consider throwing them Yon's way.

Lucky for us Mother Cindy returned to Texas claiming tha tBin Laden was only an "alleged" terrorist & that she spoke for 1000's of mothers of the dead children duped into becoming pawns for Bush's evil jew-war so this "non-story" was ignored by the MSM.

Whew. I can't get enough of the real heros of this time: The Iraqi "freedom Fighters" and Mother Cindy.....Thank God for the NYT!

(opps, I mentioned 'god' and blew my cover....)

XLefty

Two things:

1) I read all of Yon's posts and agree that his reporting is the best I have seen. (I seem to recall that he mentioned in one of his posts that he was ex-military, maybe it was special forces... someone with some time on their hands could verify)

2) I read Yon's post earlier today, but must have missed the part where Yon "Stomps Terrorist Unconscious" (or is that just some loose shit)

It's at the end.

Whoops, Loose shit, you were right. That was Prosser.

There's pretty much no chance of Michael Yon getting a Pulitzer Prize, is there?

Actually I think Prosser stomped said terrorist unconscious while the good Mr. Yon was helping out LTC Kurilla. "Bashed head into concrete" I think was the term. I remain surprised they just didn't kill the guy -- not for lack of trying, obviously, but thost damned M4's are peashooters. They got four rounds into the guy (including one in the balls), but he was still able to keep on comin'.

...VonKreedon, who only pretends to be a bleeding-heart pencil-necked pussy.

Now that's simply not true.

I mean that I pretend to be a bleeding-heart pencil-necked pussy is untrue; I keep telling you that I'm not the simplistic straw-man caricature that you want everyone on the left to fit. Sorry.

Also, I cannot find Yon stomping terrorists anywhere in his report. CSM Prosser beats the crap out of his guy, but Yon doesn't report that he managed to damage anything but the propane canister.

Interesting, Over There just had a story about a journalist who, after having his footage cut by the network to make our guys look bad was kidnapped by terrorists. Some Lefty "critic" named Justin Raimondo at Antiwar.com just panned the show so I sent him an email. Antiwar.com should know that even journalists resort to gun play sometimes. Some of you might want to tell this Leftist weenie what you think of him too.

VonKreedon:

I keep telling you that I'm not the simplistic straw-man caricature that you want everyone on the left to fit.

Let's see now -- prone to irrational hatred of G. W. Bush, easily offended, humor-impaired, able to dish it out but not take it: you fit the mold pretty well, there, pard. But we forgive you, because at Ace's it's always about the love.

(Well, love and zombies and hookers and equine rape and Valu-Rite vodka and politics. But mainly love.)

Grrrr... scroll up, I acknowledged the error.

Your correction is old.

Monty - There's nothing irrational about my disgust and distrust of the Bush administration. And please point out examples of my being easily offended and humor impaired. This is particularly funny since you missed the part of my comment where I insinuated that I wasn't pretending to be a bleeding-heart pencil-necked pussy. My humor does tend to be a little dry though, so your humor sense might not be subtle enough to recognize it.

Ace - Yeah yeah, but I was writing while you were correcting. If I could edit my comment I would, but I can't.

I was right, Yon has a military background:
(from Amazon's synopsis of "Danger Close," by Mike Yon)

In 1982, one month after graduating from high school, Florida native Mike Yon joined the Army to earn tuition money for college. At that time, President Reagan had begun channeling massive amounts of funds into Special Operations units such as the Navy SEALS, Army Rangers, and Special Forces in response to the calamitous failure of a U.S. Special Ops attempt to rescue American hostages in Iran. For a brief time, writes Yon, "the Army allowed kids straight out of their initial military training to try out for Special Forces"--and Yon jumped at the chance. By July of 1983, at the remarkable age of 19, Yon had survived rounds of grueling training and graduated into the Green Berets. One day later, a bizarre encounter in a Maryland bar landed Yon in jail, accused of murdering a fellow patron with his bare hands.

Man, I wonder if Yon was the basis for Cage's character in Con Air?

vonKreedon - you once described yourself as an elf or an orc or something like that in one of the comment threads about 6 months ago. Do you remember it?

Max - Yeah, my humor impaired self took umbrage at being called an orc and issued the correction that I am a Chaotic Good Half-Elven Ranger, noting that IRL that translated to being a moral relativist hippy.

On another note, I think Yon has put himself in a very precarious position. By publishing the fact that he took up arms, he may get himself booted out of there. Also, it was troubling to read the account of the two green soldiers with Kurilla... I wonder if that was why the Army "ordered" Yon not to write up this post (scroll down to the end of his post "Proximity Delays" if you don't know what I'm talking about.)

All in all, I think Mr. Yon does a great service and I admire his courage and honesty, and I just hope this latest post doesn't get him in trouble with the higher ups in the military.

Yeah, I wonder about Yon's future as an embed and truly hope that he is not pulled out of Iraq because of his actions. I liked the way the Major addressed the issue.

One of my best friends (was a groomsman at my wedding) came over during OIF 1 as a correspondent for "American Rifleman". Sold off several thousand dollars of his collection to do it on his own dime. No, we didn't let him shoot anyone though he sure as hell wanted to. Spent a lot of time giving foreign weapons classes on all the odd weird stuff we found. I mean the FN Model 1900 in .32ACP isn't even in the SF foreign weapons book, so we didn't know how to get one apart.

He's been saving up to come back over when we do.

Michael Yon is there on his own dime. Like Monty pointed out, if you are looking to give a couple of bucks to a good cause, you can't do much better then Yon's blog.

As long as he was taking up a weapon to protect himself or others he should be ok.

Wow. That was an amazing read. These men are true warriors, and Michael Yon has some seriously big balls.

God, I hate to politicize this piece of work, but I just can't help thinking what a disservice it is to these men when the anti-war left labels them children or babies with their self-serving rhetoric. They sure don't look like children to me. They are men in every sense of the word - more so than I, and certainly more so than some fucknut, war protest sign carrying hippie.

Long ago, I saw a documentary about an Aussie tel-journalist (ie editor, narrator and cameraman all in one) who spent much of the Vietnam War embedded with LRRPs and the like, who recounted taking part in at least 20 firefights. His personal rule was that he'd never carry a weapon, but at such time as a number of "unused" weapons became availible, he would pick one up, since by that point getting out alive was paramount.

Survival Cancels Programming.

What REALLY Frosts me is what the NYC ACLU and "Human Rights Watch/Amnesty" attorneys have accomplished, beyond making soldiers reluctant to shoot and take down fleeing attackers and in the case of two cowards that refused to move to rescue their wounded LT Colonel Kurilla is this:

One of the very same fleeing terrorists that tried killing a squad, then fled and no one shot him because he dropped his visible firearm, then maimed the LTC with a bullet shattered femur had past involvement in killing 22 Americans and maiming 25 with a bomb - but was let go by a judge after being caught red-handed with an arsenal after fleeing the Dec messhall attack in Mosul. The two soldiers that froze up were not reprimanded, even though they cowered 60 feet away from their commander who was fighting for his life against a fantic terrorist trying to finish him off. The reporter, Michael Yon, was threatened with dismissal for picking up arms and trying to rescue the LTC and "violating" his agreement as a field writer.

From Yon's article"

The terrorist turned out to be one Khalid Jasim Nohe, who had first been captured by US forces (2-8 FA) on 21 December, the same day a large bomb exploded in the dining facility on this base and killed 22 people.

That December day, Khalid Jasim Nohe and two compatriots tried to evade US soldiers from 2-8 FA, but the soldiers managed to stop the fleeing car. Then one of the suspects tried to wrestle a weapon from a soldier before all three were detained. They were armed with a sniper rifle, an AK, pistols, a silencer, explosives and other weapons, and had in their possession photographs of US bases, including a map of this base.

About two weeks ago, word came that Nohe's case had been dismissed by a judge on 7 August. The Coalition was livid. According to American officers, solid cases are continually dismissed without apparent cause. Whatever the reason, the result was that less than two weeks after his release from Abu Ghraib, Nohe was back in Mosul shooting at American soldiers.

LTC Kurilla repeatedly told me of--and I repeatedly wrote about--terrorists who get released only to cause more trouble. Kurilla talked about it almost daily. Apparently, the vigor of his protests had made him an opponent of some in the Army's Detention Facilities chain of command, but had otherwise not changed the policy

I don't know if the judge in question was an Iraqi or an American with great grades from Brandeis - but it seems American interests would be better served if somebody took care of such terrorist helpers on the Bench. A long helo one-way trip into the desert....

with great grades from Brandeis

Cedarford:

Take a tip from a friend, and just knock off the racist shit for awhile. OK? You're on thin ice here. Ace has made that clear.

"Take a tip from a friend, and just knock off the racist shit for awhile."

Someday you're going to realize he can't because that's who he is. I know you'd like to think he's just pulling our legs and having a grand old time laughing at the rubes, but this is who he is Michael.

Go fuck yourself, Michael. I wish Michael Yon had published the terrorist-springing JAG judge's name.

If anyone is inhabiting thin ice, it is the East Coast liberal lawyer community that is obsessed with maximizing "terrorist civil liberties".

It is an absolute mystery why Jewish American lawyers are flocking to represent and defend Muslim terrorists here, at Gitmo, or overseas - but those are the facts.

If you wish to do something productive, explain to me why a carload of terrorists fleeing the scene of a bombing so bad (60 casualties, 22 dead) they had to use shovels to put American soldiers blasted into hamburgerized bits into body bags - terrorists caught red-handed with bombs, maps of the base --were let go.

Then tried killing another American squadron and crippled the commander of US ground forces.

A judge like that should be capped.

Would you support capping the judge even if such a judge came with a Brandeis degree?

I swear, he's channeling Harry Callahan. Next thing you know, he'll be balling his Oriental babe neighbor, and throwing his badge away.

It is an absolute mystery why Jewish American lawyers are flocking to represent and defend Muslim terrorists here, at Gitmo, or overseas

They're industrial strength RealMoonbats™.

A RealMoonbat™ is surrounded by an impenetrable reality distortion field with the density of a neutron star.

That piece is absolutely riveting. Thanks for the headsup Ace.

F'ing awesome.

Nothing more need be said.
/TJ

SGT Dan;

FWIW when we went into Haiti the Marines had some of the same problems identifying weapons. They ended up turning to the USMC historian that was sent out to document the mission.
He told me not only were there scads of low number Springfield M-1 but they found a number of Winchesters amd Krags sent over the first time Marines were in Haiti.

It was enough to make you drool.

You know, since Yon is former special forces and apparently well respected by the grunts in the field, why doesn't the government offer to let him sign up as a military reporter, pay his way and give him a gun? Seems everyone wins...

Anybody see the shot of recovering Sgt. Lama?

Too bad some street filth won't jump his ass some night but will choose another method of suicide instead.

"Babies" my ass.

Monkeyboy, and I bet the Marine Corps museum collection cleaned up, too. Wonder if anyone got one home for themselves? I already have a Krag and a couple '03's, but wouldn't turn down more.