WHAT HEELS: Veterans Smeared Again – This Time By The Boy Scouts
The New York Times describes a training scenario conducted in Imperial, CA by The Explorers, a Boy Scouts of America-affiliated program to teach aspiring law enforcement officers “skills used to confront terrorism, illegal immigration and escalating border violence”:
Ten minutes into arrant mayhem in this town near the Mexican border, and the gunman, a disgruntled Iraq war veteran [emphasis, The Stiletto], has already taken out two people, one slumped in his desk, the other covered in blood on the floor.
The responding officers - eight teenage boys and girls, the youngest 14 - face tripwire, a thin cloud of poisonous gas and loud shots - BAM! BAM! - fired from behind a flimsy wall. They move quickly, pellet guns drawn and masks affixed.
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“This is about being a true-blooded American guy and girl,” said A. J. Lowenthal, a sheriff’s deputy here in Imperial County, whose life clock, he says, is set around the Explorers events he helps run. “It fits right in with the honor and bravery of the Boy Scouts.”
According to The Times, “[i]f there are critics of the content or purpose of the law enforcement training, they have not made themselves known to the Explorers’ national organization in Irving, Tex., or to the volunteers here on the ground, national officials and local leaders said.”
At the risk of breaking this winning streak, The Stiletto has this complaint: The training scenario is uncomfortably reminiscent of that discredited and disavowed Department of Homeland Security report characterizing soldiers returning from the battlefield as potential crazies or domestic terrorists.
The Times did not find any interview sources who questioned this slander, though Deputy Lowenthal did express concern over one training scenario involving a role-player dressed in traditional Arab robes: “If we’re looking at 9/11 and what a Middle Eastern terrorist would be like, then maybe your role-player would look like that. I don’t know, would you call that politically incorrect?”
In a tangentially related matter, the U.S. Department of Justice is going after employers violating the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act (USERRA) by demoting or refusing to re-employ injured veterans, reports. Alejandro Miyar, a spokesperson for the DOJ's Civil Rights Division, tells The National Law Journal that, "We're committed to the enforcement of USERRA and will vigorously prosecute cases. There is activity on this front."
Do you suppose returning veterans repeatedly being depicted as psychologically unbalanced powder-kegs - not only by the MSM but also by the federal government - has created a meme that is scaring off employers? Just sayin’ …
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