2nd act A year later, Sean Penn returns to Iraq and files a personal, candid report from the front

San Francisco Chronicle ^ | Wednesday, January 14, 2004 | Sean Penn, useless idiot

[Becki]

What does "cabron" mean? Is it a name that would be more appropriately applied to Ms. Penn? I could not read any more of this article.

"Cabron" is an extremely derogatory term. However, it can be used among guys without meaning much.

It would be the equivilant of "mother f*****".

Becki

[silverleaf]

"This is not the war of yesteryear, with relatives waving our boys off on ships and losing all contact beyond a weekly mail drop. These are young people who, via the Internet, are reminded daily of the comfort and safety of home and are quick to express their desire to return to their families. I want to ask many of them their feelings about our occupation in Iraq, and some express thoughts on this issue without being asked. And their thoughts represent all sides of the debate. But one has to be mindful that these are young people who have lost friends to battle, and girlfriends, boyfriends, wives and husbands to distance. One wouldn't expect them to yield easily to the notion that perhaps the United States should not have sent them in the first place"

Poor Sean! In other words- almost to a man(and woman) those zit-faced GI's are committed to doing the job they were sent to do in Iraq.

D'OH!

[Becki]

....and well written too:o) ///sarcasm off///

Oh

My God! I didn't get past the 8 hour lay over. It was just too much, too banal, too irrelevant, too .... I don't know. It was like listening to an old college roommate who loved her hashish. Disjointed conversation interspersed with giggles. And she thought she was so profound.

My eyes glazed over and I just couldn't do it any more.

Becki

[Destructor]

Geraldo would be proud!

[N. Theknow]

This might be of interest

Medea Benjamin gives a "Report from Iraq - First Hand View.
Thursday January 29th at 7:30 PM at the Ted Adcock Community Center, 535 Kelly Ave. in Half Moon Bay.
Donation admission $10 sliding scale. For more information, go to http://www.coastsidepeace.org.

Community Center is located in Downtown Half Moon Bay, just off Kelly Avenue, next to the police station. Please pass the word and help us fill the hall.

Last month, Ms. Benjamin visited Iraq with families of some of our military personnel. This "reality tour" investigated the true living and emotional conditions which our nation's young men and women in uniform are exposed to on a daily basis. Not allowing moss to gather, Ms. Benjamin has also helped launch "Occupation Watch" in Baghdad, which will monitor conditions in Iraq. Ms. Benjamin will be presenting her "Report from Iraq: Firsthand View" in Half Moon Bay, on January 29.

In 1999, San Francisco Magazine named her one of the "60 Players who Rule the Bay Area." Benjamin, a Columbia University and New School for Social Research graduate, United Nations economist, global mother bear, co-founder of the feisty Code Pink: Women for Peace, and founding director of the human rights organization, Global Exchange, is a tireless force for social justice and peace. She is author of eight books, including "Bridging the Global Gap, The Peace Corps and More," and the award-winning book "Don't Be Afraid, Gringo: A Honduran Woman Speaks from the Heart." She helped produce various TV documentaries such as the anti-sweatshop video "Sweating for a T-Shirt". This activist, author, speaker, and former California senatorial candidate, is headed to the coastside.

Sponsored by Half Moon Bay-based Coastside Peace, a growing community of local citizens

it's NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests

Doing a Google search on this ....um....person is to take a hike through a sea of stupidity and anti-Americanism.

Be back after I take a disinfectant bath!

[eastforker]

Y'all say what you will but I don't find this article offensive. Yes it is self centered, I agree, but I found nothing anti-war or anti-american. I was expecting a lot worse.

[<1/1,000,000th%]

My reputation within our home is one of impulsiveness, hubris and an overall bloated sense of my own survival instincts.

Can't blame it on genes then.

[A Simple Soldier]

I'll bet a paycheck that at least one soldier called him Spicolli and did an impromptu impersonation of some of the funnier lines from Fast Times At Ridgemont High.

[Marak]

I was expecting a lot worse.

I agree. I kept waiting for the punch line. Maybe it will be in the next segment, but I found the article interesting as it portrayed the situation through his eyes. I know what I expected him to say and didn't find it. It makes me curious why not.

[expatpat]

Yeah, he sure is incoherent. Perhaps this explains a lot of things:Hiwa offers me a shot of Glenfiddich. I accept a sip, enough to wash down an Ambien

[Texas_Dawg]

Global Exchange

I've run into people with Global Exchange while in Cuba. They are an anti-US, Marxist organization that takes useful idiots around Cuba for "cultural exchanges" that do nothing but feed a bunch of young "revolutionaries" and elderly, leftist women a load of Castro's propaganda.

[SFmom]

U.S. soldiers today are not what you'd picture if you grew up on World War II movies. Think younger. Now add zits (some of them).

What a moron! It's Hollywood which never got the GIs' ages right....always playing soldiers with actors 35+. Since my Dad and many of his friends and relatives were those GIs, I didn't have to rely on Hollywood's WWII movies for my impressions. And most of those guys were mighty young. My dad was 21 or 22 at the Battle of the Bulge. Grow up, Sean! Read some history! And with your case of zits, who are you to be pointing a finger?

[RightWingAtheist]

Much younger than that even. Some brave lads who were as young as fourteen lied about their age to join as soon as war broke out.

[Ditto]

This guy has a Doctor, who makes HOUSE CALLS, on THANKSGIVING DAY, just to do a blood sample and then TELLS (brags to) the world about it!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I can tell he's real in-touch with reality. You got to just love these celebs who are just common folk at heart. < /sarcasm >

[reagandemocrat]

"My wife and 12-year-old daughter are different people in the sense that my wife will occasionally kiss me on the lips, and my daughter, occasionally on the cheek. With this one exception, they're exactly the same person. And when I told them, "I'm thinking about going back to Iraq," they rolled their eyes and said, "Uh-huh." I interpreted that to mean "You're an idiot"

His wife and daughter are right.

[eyespysomething]

Me too.

[eyespysomething]

I wish these people would use their, ahem, "talents" to maybe, say, raise money to rebuild schools in Iraq? Help stock hospitals? Buy school supplies? Something anything. But they seem so hellbent on telling us what is wrong, about bad things (although, like I said, it is not what I expected to read, shockingly not), that they can't shut up and do something to help.

So Sean'll go back home after more Ambien induced sleep, and work to get Bush out of office, and be overpaid for crappy movies, when if anyone else had been in office, he wouldn't be able to do what he just did: talk to free Iraqis.

Notice no credit where credit is due. He almost did, at one point, credit America, but there is no way in HELL any of these lefty Hollywood types would ever say that Iraq is better off now that President Bush liberated the Iraqi people.

[hobbes1]

Hey, I say give the guy a break...At least, even though he was against the war, he is accurately portraying the events going on over there, unlike say, The Nine Dwarves.... However, One wonders considering that there is at least a glimmer of intelligence in the writing, how he can square his opposition with the war, including the statement you highlighted with his observation that.... If the Hussein regime could be credited with anything, it would be with keeping obsessively complete records of the atrocities the regime itself committed. (Pol Pot and Hitler shared this habit.) ...

At least now I'll feel less guilty watching his films....(though the Theater is still O.U.T.)

[hobbes1]

I agree with you.