Simple is often powerful

By way of, well, everybody, we received the following video:

Be sure and watch it until the end.

Powerful, powerful stuff.

Thanks to the World Wide Web that one video is going to go viral — by the number of times it showed up in my Inbox I’d bet it already has — and I am somewhat stunned by the fact that in our post-Internet world this is the kind of thing that can have an actual affect on an election — if not outright make or break one.

One citizen with a $100 digital video camera, a $29.99 Internet connection and a free YouTube account is able to not only produce a video that has the best political propaganda masters swearing into their iced mochachinos, but he has been able to show it to millions of people and have thousands more aid him in passing it around.

God, I love living in the future.

LawDog

EDIT: YouTube has completely bolloxed the link, so the direct URL to the video is here.

LawDog

11SEP2001
Things learned

44 thoughts on “Simple is often powerful”

  1. Perhaps the best McCain ad out there, and it wasn’t even done by McCain. I saw this when it first came out and get at least one email a day with a link to it.

    This type of ad should make Obama break out into a cold sweat.

  2. If only the gold souls in the ruling elite could have predicted what the internet would become…

  3. Oh wow, tat is so powerful. Thank you for showing it I just wish everyone could see it.

  4. Exactly the kind of ad that McCain-Feingold was written to prevent being seen. Irony.
    emdfl

  5. Crud, the video isn’t available any more. Do we have an alternate link???

  6. I can’t get the video to play or send me to YouTube. Link?

    Thanks LawDog for your entertaining blog!

  7. You don’t know who I am, but Google Reader recommended your blog to me and I have read it ever since. Thank you for posting this video. My husband is a Sergeant in the United States Marine Corps and served a tour in Iraq in 2005. 6 weeks before coming home, he was involved in a 7-ton truck rollover in which he was the machine gunner. He spent 5 days in a coma, 1 week in ICU, and 2 months in the hospital without being able to eat. It was a very trying time for us. However, my husband proudly serves this country and would do whatever was asked of him to protect this country, no matter what physical harm might come to him.

  8. I think YouTube was doing some maintenance last night and temporarily messed it up. It’s definitely back now.

    Thanks a ton Lawdog for posting this. I hadn’t seen it yet and it was definitely worth the watch.

    I agree, the selection of Palin also galvanized me into voting for McCain, and I don’t have nearly the horrid taste in my mouth that I did before.

  9. they should be running this as a commercial on TV around the country! As am immigrant from a former Soviet country I couldn’t agree more, I thank God every day that I got a chance to move to the US and have a chance to taste true freedom! how do you thank the people that sacrificed their life, limb or time to protect our freedom? thank you just seems so inadequate, I can truly say that I am proud to be an American!!!

  10. Thank goodness for Al Gore. Without him, there would have been NO interweb!

  11. I’m disappointed in you, LawDog. This is an appeal to emotion, not logic. Haven’t you criticized the left for emoting instead of thinking?

  12. LD,

    Watching this video I was reminded of the quote by Orwell who said, “People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.”

    This is a fundamental concept that the left in this country does not comprehend nor can they. They live in a world of cocktail parties, and facades which allow them to indluge in the freedoms which men like this gentleman provide.

    Perhaps this prescience conversation in a Few Good Men is fitting here:

    You can’t handle the truth! Son, we live in a world with walls that must be guarded. Who’s gonna do it? You? You, Lt. Weinberg? I have more responsibility than you can fathom. You weep for Santiago and curse the Marines. You don’t know what I know. Santiago’s tragic death saved lives and my existence, while grotesque to you saves lives! But deep down, in places you don’t talk about at parties – you need me on that wall. We use words like honor, code, loyalty. They’re the backbone of our lives. You use them as a punchline! I haven’t the time or inclination to explain myself – to a man who needs my protection – but questions the way I do it. Better just to thank me. Or pick up a gun and stand a post. But I don’t give a damn what you think you are entitled to!

    Kind Regards
    Dr. Joe

  13. Wow, McCain should really thank this guy.

    I’m not a huge McCain fan but he’d be better than Obama.

    Heinlein had a point in Starship Troopers.

  14. That song at the end is to liberals what nails on a chalkboard is to the general population. They can’t stand any swelling patriotic music unless it’s “The Internationale”. I doubt any of them would be swayed by that video.

  15. thank YOU! i was sent here by jean and i am so glad she linked you. it’s an eye stinger!~

  16. And, anonymous, Obama doesn’t appeal to the emotional? What a load of old codswallop.
    Obama is totally inexperienced in anything, including the truth, except in his charismatic ability to sway crowds and in emphasizing his blackness.
    Appealing to the primitive side of us doesn’t equate with sensibility, intelligence, and logic. Or the ability to run this country.
    I know one thing: I do not want a repitition of what our Viet Nam war soldiers faced when they returned to America. Whether the war was right or wrong is irrelevant: these people answered the call of their Commander in Chief, and for that they should be respected.
    I wouldn’t be surprised if Obama did away with the title of Commander in Chief. That’s ok. He wouldn’t deserve it anyway.
    How’s that for emotional?
    LM

  17. It seems that Youtube has discontinued viewing the video. I am unable to watch it.

  18. I just watched it by clicking on the picture.
    Powerful message. Big words would have weakened it.
    I’m not doing enough to help.

  19. Oh, and the Leftists can dismiss his words by saying that he has to invest in the war, otherwise he would have to admit his sacrifice was for nothing. The ability of the human mind to rationalize anything is not diminished merely because someone votes Democrat — I mean American Communist Party.

  20. Thank you for sharing the video! It gives me hope that there are still good Americans out there that care about freedom and the responsibilities it comes with. I’m forever grateful for the brave men and women who fight and die for this country in Iraq, Afghanistan and other parts of this world so we can be free. I hope it’s not all thrown away in November.

  21. Powerful video, and not at all paid for by McCain. And you know it’s gone completely viral when it’s mentioned, then played, on Rush Limbaugh’s show AND he correctly identifies the veteran who made it.

    Suis
    NW Arkansas

  22. Left out that we were sent there for a lie. He also left out that every soldier that has been to Iraq has been sent for that lie. He also doesn’t seem to know that soldiers have sent more money for Obamas campaign than for McCains. Just a little fyi

  23. Left out that we were sent there for a lie. He also left out that every soldier that has been to Iraq has been sent for that lie.

    http://tinyurl.com/5h4nnu

    He also doesn’t seem to know that soldiers have sent more money for Obamas campaign than for McCains.

    Prove it. And I’m not talking about links to opinion pages, or links to blogs which mistake “anecdotes” for “data”. I want sources.

    Show me the raw, substantiated figures or shut up.

  24. Not to disrespect the serving members and veterans of the United States Armed Forces, but how exactly is the war in Iraq defending our freedom? And why exactly is the department of Defense always on the OFFENSE? How has this war made US more free? And when exactly has Iraq ever been a threat to OUR freedom? It is, after all the United States Department of Defense, not Global Defense. It’s not the sacrifices our men and women have made that I see as absurd, it’s the fact that the war started in the first place. Allow me to be perfectly clear on that. The war in Iraq was originally about WMD’s, and when it was found that there was a complete lack thereof, our wonderfully incompetent Commander in Chief changed his story: “We went to Liberate Iraq…” And has since continued to rationalize a war that to this day he will not admit should never have been started. Because WE fired the first shot on this one. It is HIS fault that a citizen with a camcorder, an internet connection and an account on YouTube walked off at teh end to show his prosthetic leg to the world. It is HIS fault that this man even has anything to say to Barack Obama. And GWB will never, to his dying day, admit his mistake.

  25. “…to his dying day.” And neither will anonymous.

    The difference here being that Pres. Bush was right for many reasons; whereas anon. is merely wrong.
    emdfl

  26. I have posted this at my blog as well. Thanks.

    All gave some. Some gave more.

  27. To anon at 5:57- I feel so sorry for those such as yourself who keep ignoring the facts. If you had any more than a smidgen of internet skills you'd have found by now that the whole "No WMD" fairy tale has never held water, unless you discount over 500 artillery shells filled with poison gas. That was "500"; not 5, not 50, but 500. More than were likely to've just fallen off the turnip truck and never found by the "great" UN weapons inspectors. And it matters not one whit if they were left over from a previous war. Saddam was to have "No" WMD, as a condition of the ending of GWl. Just as he was violating the terms of the GWl cease-fire every time he ordered the internationally recognized hostile act of using targeting radar on our planes in the "No-Fly" Zone. See, the problem here is that he began the initial hostilities and got his butt kicked in GWl. If somebody starts a war and loses, he is stuck with the terms to which he agreed at the cease-fire. And you remind me of some Canucks who used to whine at me that we should have been as quick to get into WWll and help the Brits as was Canada. My response is that we got in in time to win it. And the Brits couldn't be bothered to help China in the thirties (read the book Rape of Nanking), I guess because they only had a British Dept. of Defense, not of Global Defense. Of course, those were only "yellow people", just as I guess some folks think of Iraqis as "rag heads", or "sand niggers" or whatever. In spite of your claim of not disrespecting current service members & vets, I, personally take great offence at the attitude you exhibit. Just the same old happy horse $hit and a$$-lip flapping I heard after serving 40 years ago. I sincerely hope that you some day overcome your personal and political retardness and do as you say the President should, and admit your were mistaken. Are you grown-up enough? If you'd care to refute my facts with some of your own feel free, but please save us all from any more of your BDS BS.

    Rob Jones AlphaCo,4th/47th,9thInfDiv. USArmy RVN '68

  28. Not a one of us has yet said the Iraqi war was right; the fact that we aren’t willing to denigrate the President for doing what he thought was best-and, I might add, being supported at that time by Congress and the American people, doesn’t necessarily mean that we support the war.
    Neither have I seen anyone here referring to Iraqis as “rag heads” nor “sand niggers'” most of us have better manners than to be gratuitously insulting; don’t put words in our mouths.
    We support our troops. Period.
    You appear to be an obsessed and bitter man, MR Jones. It might occur to you that some of us were also in a war in ’68-or even earlier- and we might not share your point of view, which you seem to be unable to accept.
    I think the person you feel sorriest for is yourself.
    LM

  29. emdfl: Look up stats on approval of the war, and how many support your views. You are outvoted.

    Inbredredneck: as one vet to another, Shut Up. You are doing us all a great disservice by even speaking. Aside from the radar incident, I’d like to see you back up even one of your claims.

  30. What Does Little Birdie Say?

    (1)

    What does little birdie say,

    In her nest at peep of day?

    Let me fly, says little birdie,

    Mother, let me fly away,

    Birdie, rest a little longer,

    Till the little wings are stronger.

    So she rests a little longer,

    Then she flies away.

    (2)

    What does little baby say,

    In her bed at peep of day?

    Baby says, like little birdie,

    Let me rise and fly away.

    Baby, sleep a little longer,

    Till the little limbs are stronger.

    If she sleeps a little longer,

    Baby too shall fly away.

    —–by runescape gold

  31. Yeah, sorry folks, but it keeps telling me the video is no longer available. Could it have something to do with my IP? I am in Canuckistan.

  32. Let’s start over. LawDog, I’ve enjoyed reading your blog, and your stories, for some time and am hoping to take part in some of the reasoned discourse and light-hearted banter that abounds in your comments section.
    Even with my humble computer skills I was able to make use of the Google feature on my home page to search, using the words sarin+gas+Saddam, and I might’ve even thrown in Rep. Harmon, as could anybody else who is so inclined. I received several responses that showed that over 500 shells which contained sarin or mustard gas have been discovered in Iraq, in violation of the cease-fire agreement that Saddam signed at the end of GWl. Since he also ordered his forces to use targeting radar on our (and British) planes, which is internationally considered to be an act of aggression, I’m sure we’d all have to agree that he “fired the first shot” in this case.
    While none of us would use loaded terms like “sand nigger” or “rag head”, also to be avoided is the attitude towards “yellow people” that was evinced by the occidentals when the Japanese invaded China in the thirties. I guess that we didn’t really need to pay attention to what happened to those poor people, as what goes on politically in other parts of the world might not affect us. The freedom of those in the rest of the world has no bearing our ours, after all.
    Might be that GWB was mistaken, and it is all HIS fault. Then agin, history might some day look upon him more favorably, not with the derangement that seems to affect some folks these days. Could be I’m “obsessed” with other things, myself, and I guess I might be “bitter”, as I cling to my guns, as some politician or other suggested.
    And if “I, personally, take offense” as a vet, I certainly couldn’t presume to speak for all who’ve served, whether at the same time, before, or after. Nobody has to share my view, just as I have to share no one else’s. Just as I think that as one vet to another I’d be ashamed to tell anybody to “shut up” and ask to see “proof” of a claim when it’s as close as Google. But, maybe it’s just more important to knock the messenger if you can’t go to the trouble to look up the facts yourself.
    Guess I’ll just slink off now and feel sorry for myself.
    LawDog, thanks for the hospitality.

    Rob J

  33. Rob J seems to be wholly unable to credit anyone who disagrees with him with a modicum of intelligence.
    Yes, we’re quite capable of Googling, just as we are capable of watching t.v., reading newspapers, compiling stats, and, guess what? experiencing war firsthand ourselves.
    We are also capable of digesting this information and making up our own minds.
    Disagreeing with you doesn’t equate with “knocking the messenger.” Nor does it equate with ignoring the facts.
    Mea culpa, Mr. Jones, and by all means GO AWAY.

  34. Yes, Rob J, google turns up that article, as well as these from more reputable sources than FOX news:
    MSNBC, which mentions Rumsfeld’s statements that the tests conducted may very well be in error: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4997808/
    The CIA’s report in which it is clearly stated that Saddam abandoned his chem and bio weapons campaigns, as well as his campaign to develop nuclear weapons: https://www.cia.gov/library/reports/general-reports-1/iraq_wmd_2004/index.html
    And the Backgrounder’s report on Iraq’s use of sarin as well as a celar statement that as of 2006 (your “pulitzer Prize Winner” was in 2004) states that NO WMD have yet been found.

    Fox news is hardly a reliable source of information regarding anything that can be doctored to raise ratings.

    Good day, SIR.

  35. I’m not disrespecting what the many young people fighting in the US armed forces have done, and their sacrifices are just as important whatever the outcome.
    But the question is, has the war really actually helped the Iraqi people? The country is still incredibly unstable – the overthrow of Saddam’s dictatorship created openings for radical insurgencies to come in and try to seize power, meaning the US is stuck trying to fight a guerrilla army which is almost impossible to pin down.
    All young Iraqi men see is that their lives are less stable and more dangerous than they were before, even if they’re freer to act the way they want, and right in front of them are religious leaders telling them it’s the Americans’ fault. It’s the perfect climate for creating home-grown terrorism. They believe they’re doing the right thing by their country and their families and their God, just like the American soldiers do.
    Tearjerkers are all very well, and nothing can diminish the sacrifice those soldiers have made trying to make the world a better place. But we have to think about whether or not they’ve been successful.

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