Leonard Clark, 860th MP CO, AZ Army National Guard, has been leaving voicemails for his friends back home. MP3 of recent message. Second recent MP3.
Typed hurriedly while I listened: “The leadership says we’re winning the war, that Hagel and others are wrong. I hate to tell you this. Mr. Hagel and Mr. Kennedy are right. We are losing. This IS a quagmire…. Almost every soldier I talk to says we’re losing … Every soldier that dies now is A NEEDLESS DEATH … Including very conservative soldiers who are diehard Republicans … About those who say that objections lower the morale of soldiers: We are calling our families back home and telling them… this is a fundraiser for Halliburton, KBR….”
Do listen to it all. It’s devastating in its clarity. And, at leonardclark.com/blog, you can read Leonard’s e-mails back home. Of note:
Thanks — again — to Norma for this incredible information.
Jesus–I haven’t heard his voice, but just reading the words just breaks my heart.
These people are such bastards. Do they know what they are doing? They are KILLING people! They KNOW this is a fool’s errand, yet they persist. They just don’t care, and they don’t care what it costs. The petulant child and his sycophants, too busy throwing a tantrum to see what they’re doing to real people.
Culture of life, my ass.
I listened to both of Leonard’s messages. I don’t know Norma but I am very thankful to her for allowing Leonard’s voice be heard. I want every American to hear this. I feel so guilty living in my nice comfortable home in Germany and young men and woman have to suffer. I wish I did more before the invasion of Iraq to try to stop this. It just kills me to think of all of the needless deaths of Iraqi’s, Americans, British for nothing. These young men and woman should be back home enjoying life and freedom that they never lost.
If Downing Street proves anything it is that no one could have stopped this.
Every generation suffers because their are always old men who want to send younger men to die in the name of “national interests.” The tragedy is that the younger men are always fooled that that is what they are fighting for.
He’s risking it all, and he knows it:
P.S. I don’t know how much longer it will be before they cut off my communications to you and before they possibly arrest me. If this happens I only ask that you please take my case to the American people and declare me a political prisoner and a prisoner of conscience to the American public. Don’t believe their lies–I am not a traitor, I am only gambling everything because I love my country and my fellow soldiers.
[From his letter home on the blog.]
He’s got my vote. BTW what’s the odds that if he gets
elected, he’ll get a call up notice in the mail?
What a description! In this context, imagine being asked to risk one’s life for such a banality.
The tide is turning against the war and it looks to be a
tsunami. Someone on DKos wrote that there were almost
2,000 news stories against the war in Iraq today.
The arrogant White House occupants are about to
find out ‘you can fool some of the people…’
Both of these messages should be transposed and plastered all over the internet. I hope those distributing them get them to Air America as well. What a brave (and very articulate) soul Leonard is! The least we can do is grant his wish and make sure his words are heard. Susan, I hope you posted this on dKos as well as EuroTrib. Thanks to Norma and to you, Susan… but most of all, thank you Leonard. I’m going to go bookmark his blog.
I haven’t. I’d like some HELP with transcribing them.
I’ve been outside sweeping, and digging up a bunch of moss on the steps and concrete walkway, and I need to lie down for a bit.
Whoever helps gets big credit… and we’ll publicize this man like he deserves it.
And we need to keep an eye on both his blog and his campaign plans. He might be someone we could really help on the ‘net.
OK, I’ll work on the second one… I could hardly hear the audio on the first one for some reason. I’ll get started on that right now.
Later…
I was lying down but got to thinking about this:
WE NEED TO SAVE HIS PAGES & HIS MP3s.
Just in case.
Can any of you help with that?
Done, I saved everything I could get. I listened to both messages and almost started crying. And I don’t cry easily…
This is pitiful and horrendous!
By the way, if anyone wants to save an entire website with the structure and all files associated with it, in case it might be taken away, an excellent program to get it in it’s entirety is WinHTTrack. I highly recommend it. It’s easy to install, and all you have to do is put in the url of the main home page, and it downloads it automatically.
Large sites may take a very long time and take up a lot of room, so be warned. ;-D
Great work, Splashy. You are so right… hearing Leonard’s voice and hearing his emotion is heart rending. I bet Raw would cover this, as well as some others. I’m thinking that some of our better opinion writers may make good use of Leonard’s words… maybe a few Senators as well. Let’s blitz this sucker and make Rove eat his own liver. Now if we could get some wonderful person to transcribe the other mp3 we could start getting that one out and about in print form.
I sent it to Raw Story right away. And told them, as I often do, to link directly to his blog rather than from my story.
But I haven’t seen the link yet. They’re crazy busy so maybe later. They’re usually very responsive to my little notes.
Ha, I just sent it to Raw and Buzzflash. If the first MP3 isn’t transposed by tonight I’ll get on it… won’t have time ’till then. My sound problems with it were due to broken ear buds… so I have no problem (but time). Kos frontpaged this blog yesterday. It’s all military commenting on Rove, Bush and the war. Lots of great quotes.
I just put the other MP3 down below.
Thank you, Hausfrau!!!! There’s a thread on it by StephenD over at Kos… I already posted the one I did… I’m going to go and post the other one (giving you credit for the transcribe, of course).
THANK YOU, Splashy!
Do you have an e-mail address? Please add it to your INFO. If we need to reach you.
Or, can you upload the files here? If they’re not too big? (I’m a bit nervous about our server capacity here.)
Not sure about uploading, because it is changing size as they add to it. It was 4.14 mb, now it’s 5.23mb.
I suggest others getting the HTTRack program and now and then update the build with it, so several people have it stashed on their hard drives for safekeeping. With a high speed connection it only takes a minute or less so far to update it.
I will add my email address to my profile.
Just heard the mp3. It is heart rending. Susan, what permission do you have to publicize this to media outlets? This should be heard on the nightly news, but maybe countdown w/olbermann would be willing to run it, assuming that Mr. Clark has no objection to that. I’m not sure what kind of trouble this could get him in vis-a-vis the Uniform Code of Military Justice. I know that there are some restrictions on what soldiers can and cannot say in criticism of their superiors.
I’m thrilled that Nag has done a transcript. I think we should emphasize to people that they should LISTEN too … he has a very mature, responsible, no-nonsense, authoritative voice. It makes what he says ring true.
Per blog he said to “By all means make public my voice mail and disseminate as far as possible.” Posted to kos, olbermann, americablog.
I just sent this to Susan, I just finished transposing…
Kevin, this is Leonard Clark again, hate to bother you. I’m calling you from somewhere in Baghdad, Iraq, in the middle of a dust storm and it’s the daytime.
Kevin I forgot to also mention something that is really irritating me… remarks by Mr. Karl Rove about Liberals supposedly not being tough on terrorists and on the war on terrorism. Well, Kevin, I would like to personally convey to Mr. Rove that he is very wrong. He’s dead wrong and he needs to apologize. I’m a Liberal, and I’m over here. I volunteered, I was sent, I volunteered in the National Guard, and then I was sent here. But I am not one to shirk going out beyond the wire. That means I go out almost every day outside of the protection of this fort even though this fort has been mortared and a person where I’m at right now was killed near the local military store not more than two weeks ago.
So the response to Mr. Rove’s remark about Liberals not being tough on terrorists… Mr. Rove needs to take off his three piece suit and join the armed forces as he’s calling on other patriotic Americans to do and come over here and live as I do driving a Humvee or in a gunner’s turret in a Humvee every day dodging bullets and people who are trying to blow themselves up in their cars or just setting off bombs to kill you. I have been through one bomb attack to my vehicle and my squad and I’ve been attacked at least, oh I’d say four to five times with mortars; bombs that are just sent up in the air and try to drop down and kill you.
So I’m a Liberal and damn proud of it, I’m over here right now serving in Iraq, and Mr. Rove and all of his Hate Talk Show Hosts who are decrying or stating that people such as myself are unpatriotic. I wish that they would get out from behind their microphones and get off their rear ends and come over here. And I’m not saying live behind in some comfortable place like the Green Zone but live out and live the life of a soldier like we do every day. He might not be so quick to accuse Liberals or other people of not being, you know, tough on terrorists. He’s basically saying that we’re unpatriotic.
He’s also playing politics with the soldiers lives over here and I don’t appreciate it. He’s used this whole thing he’s hijacked the war on terror, a legitimate war, that has now been sidetracked by this huge tragedy we call The Occupation.
So please let him know about that and also let him know we’ve done everything we can do here and the Iraqi people now have their government. They wish to pursue their own happiness. We can support them through military aid and humanitarian aid. Our soldiers should not be dying over here any more. They should come home. Thanks again, Kevin, and I’ll try and keep in touch with you if I’m not arrested before then for voicing my free speech. The Generals are allowed to go tell Congress their views. I as an American citizen should also be able to do the same. I am not revealing any operational security but I just think the other side needs to be told. Have a good day there, Kevin. Goodbye.
Somehow, I don’t think that saying “I told you so” to the morons who supported this fucking mess, when we finally pull out in ignominy, will feel anything but bilious.
If you don’t cross-post this at DKos, I will.
Fair warning. : )
YOU DO IT.
I am going to see my mom and brother today … back late afternoon.
I put this together as fast as a I could this morning. If there are any errors, please let me know.