Santa Barbara "Our Veterans"

[BingoT]

Santa Barbara "Our Veterans"

The first picture and the last picture are taken at the beach in Santa Barbara right next to the pier.
There is a veterans group that started putting a cross and candle for every death in Iraq andAfghanistan.
The amazing thing is that they only do it on the weekends. They put up this graveyard and
take it down every weekend. Guys sleep in the sand next to it and keep watch over it at night so
nobody messes with it.

Every cross has the name, rank and D.O.B. and D.O.D. on it.

Very moving, very powerful??? so many young volunteers. So many 30 to 40 year olds as well.

Amazing !

Did you know that the ACLU has filed a suit to have all military cross-shaped headstones removed?,
and that they filed another suit to end prayer from the military completely. They're making great progress.

The Navy Chaplains can no longer mention Jesus' name in prayer thanks to the ACLU and our new administration.
God Bless

Prayer:
'Heavenly Father, hold our troops in Your loving hands. Protect them as they protect us.
Bless them and their families for the selfless acts they perform for us in this our time of need.
These things I humbly ask in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior, Amen..'

 

[swampwitch]

The Santa Barbara ongoing memorial is real, and pretty damned cool.

This part, however, is a doughy pantload...

Did you know that the ACLU has filed a suit to have all military cross-shaped headstones removed?,
and that they filed another suit to end prayer from the military completely. They're making great progress.

The Navy Chaplains can no longer mention Jesus' name in prayer thanks to the ACLU and our new administration.
God Bless

Enter the above quote from a widely circulated and easily debunked mass email into Google and you get the real story.

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Here's an excellent summation...

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Times-Union readers want to know:

I'm supposed to be honored to pass along this e-mail that says the American Civil Liberties Union has sued to have all military cross-shaped headstones removed and to end prayer in the military completely. The e-mail says "they're making great progress. Navy chaplains are no longer able to pray in Jesus' name thanks to the wretched ACLU and our new administration." Should I pass this along?

All the fact-finding organizations are quite clear on this one.

The best place to pass it along is the trash basket. Nothing in the e-mail is true.

First of all, PolitiFact.com, the independent Pulitzer Prize-winning project of the St. Petersburg Times, checked with the ACLU to see if it had filed such a suit.

No way, a spokesman said.

"The ACLU has never once advocated for, or initiated any litigation in favor of, removing cross-shaped headstones from federal cemeteries," Will Matthews told PolitiFact.com.

The ACLU has, however, called for the removal of religious symbols that represent one religion to the exclusion of others from property owned by or maintained by taxpayer funds. But that is not the case here.

"Gravestones in public cemeteries are not deemed to be a government endorsement of religion because they individually represent religious beliefs of the persons buried there and those symbols are chosen by family members of the deceased and not the government," Snopes.com reports. Snopes.com is a well-respected, nonpartisan fact-finding Web site that confirms or debunks rumors and urban legends.

PolitiFact.com next contacted the National Cemetery Administration of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, which oversees the VA national cemeteries. Those grounds don't have crosses, but rectangular headstones upon which family members can select an emblem of religious belief to be inscribed. There are 39 emblems, including different types of crosses, the star of David, the Muslim crescent and star, the Buddhist Wheel of Righteousness and symbols for atheists, PolitiFact.com reported.

"We're not going to be removing emblems of belief that people have chosen," spokesman Michael Nacincik told PolitiFact.com.

In fact, PolitiFact and FactCheck.org both note that the ACLU sued to force the government to add a symbol, the Wiccan pentacle.

PolitiFact even went the extra mile and contacted the American Battle Monuments Commission, which maintains overseas cemeteries where U.S. troops are buried. Those are the resting places, usually in Europe, that you see in photos, with row upon row upon row of crosses.

There was never any effort to remove crosses there, either, a commission spokesman said.

Matthews also told PolitiFact.com that the ACLU has not filed suit to stop prayer in the military.

In 2008, the ACLU of Maryland did challenge the Navy's policy of forcing midshipmen to participate in the U.S. Naval Academy's "noon meal prayers," FactCheck.org reports. The ACLU did not file any lawsuit, however, nor does it have any objection to military prayer. In this case, it was supporting the First Amendment right of the military to pray or not pray as they see fit, exactly what it says on the organization's Web site. FactCheck.org is a non-partisan, nonprofit project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania.

A similar e-mail that claims the ACLU objected to Marines praying is also false, according to the ACLU.

The claim that Navy chaplains can no longer mention Jesus' name can be traced back to the 2006 case of former Navy Chaplain Gordon J. Klingenschmitt, according to FactCheck.org and Truthorfiction.com, another fact-finding Web site. FactCheck.org says: "Klingenschmitt accused his Navy superiors of pushing chaplains to offer generic, nonsectarian prayers. On his Web site ... he says he was 'court-martialed for praying in Jesus' name in uniform outside the White House.' He accuses the Navy of 'anti-Jesus persecution of chaplains.' "

Klingenschmitt actually was court-martialed and found guilty of disobeying an order by appearing in uniform at a political protest in front of the White House, according to The Washington Post. The ACLU's Matthews told FactCheck.org that his organization was never involved in the Klingenschmitt case and no news reports show otherwise.

And since the court-martial happened in 2006, it can't be tied to the current administration.

PolitiFact's Truth-O-Meter rates information as true, mostly true, half true, barely true and false. The most ridiculous falsehoods, according to PolitiFact's Web site, get the lowest rating, "pants on fire."

This "I'm honored" e-mail? Pants on fire.

Like BingoT must have, I got a similar email, and I'm not giving BingoT grief for this. The first part of the email lets us know about something wonderful, and T should be thanked for bringing it to our attention. Thank you, T. Sincerely.

Unfortunately, the original sender of the email took a true thing and added an untrue thing...using the true thing as a springboard for bullshit propaganda. It makes me sick that someone is using a truly noble thing and the good people doing the noble thing in this way. Not to mention using good-hearted people like T.