Thursday, May 31, 2007

Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) Takes Manhattan - Operation First Casualty

Returning Iraq veterans send an inspired message via Operation First Casualty. This is their second OFC, with the first being staged in Washington DC in March 2007, on fourth anniversary of Iraq war. Their second OFC, on Memorial Day, May 2007 in Manhattan, New York.




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Sunday, May 27, 2007

What exactly is a father's duty when his son is sent into harm's way?

The following guest opinion from an American father and published in the Washington Post is well worth reading. As parents of the most precious of American resources, America's young adults, we have more than a right to insist - we have a civic duty to insist on integrity at all levels of American governance.

Parents who lose children, whether through accident or illness, inevitably wonder what they could have done to prevent their loss. When my son was killed in Iraq earlier this month at age 27, I found myself pondering my responsibility for his death.

Among the hundreds of messages that my wife and I have received, two bore directly on this question. Both held me personally culpable, insisting that my public opposition to the war had provided aid and comfort to the enemy. Each said that my son's death came as a direct result of my antiwar writings.

This may seem a vile accusation to lay against a grieving father. But in fact, it has become a staple of American political discourse, repeated endlessly by those keen to allow President Bush a free hand in waging his war. By encouraging "the terrorists," opponents of the Iraq conflict increase the risk to U.S. troops. Although the First Amendment protects antiwar critics from being tried for treason, it provides no protection for the hardly less serious charge of failing to support the troops -- today's civic equivalent of dereliction of duty.

What exactly is a father's duty when his son is sent into harm's way?

Among the many ways to answer that question, mine was this one: As my son was doing his utmost to be a good soldier, I strove to be a good citizen.

As a citizen, I have tried since Sept. 11, 2001, to promote a critical understanding of U.S. foreign policy. I know that even now, people of good will find much to admire in Bush's response to that awful day. They applaud his doctrine of preventive war. They endorse his crusade to spread democracy across the Muslim world and to eliminate tyranny from the face of the Earth. They insist not only that his decision to invade Iraq in 2003 was correct but that the war there can still be won. Some -- the members of the "the-surge-is-already-working" school of thought -- even profess to see victory just over the horizon.

I believe that such notions are dead wrong and doomed to fail. In books, articles and op-ed pieces, in talks to audiences large and small, I have said as much. "The long war is an unwinnable one," I wrote in this section of The Washington Post in August 2005. "The United States needs to liquidate its presence in Iraq, placing the onus on Iraqis to decide their fate and creating the space for other regional powers to assist in brokering a political settlement. We've done all that we can do."

Not for a second did I expect my own efforts to make a difference. But I did nurse the hope that my voice might combine with those of others -- teachers, writers, activists and ordinary folks -- to educate the public about the folly of the course on which the nation has embarked. I hoped that those efforts might produce a political climate conducive to change. I genuinely believed that if the people spoke, our leaders in Washington would listen and respond.

This, I can now see, was an illusion.

The people have spoken, and nothing of substance has changed. The November 2006 midterm elections signified an unambiguous repudiation of the policies that landed us in our present predicament. But half a year later, the war continues, with no end in sight. Indeed, by sending more troops to Iraq (and by extending the tours of those, like my son, who were already there), Bush has signaled his complete disregard for what was once quaintly referred to as "the will of the people."

To be fair, responsibility for the war's continuation now rests no less with the Democrats who control Congress than with the president and his party. After my son's death, my state's senators, Edward M. Kennedy and John F. Kerry, telephoned to express their condolences. Stephen F. Lynch, our congressman, attended my son's wake. Kerry was present for the funeral Mass. My family and I greatly appreciated such gestures. But when I suggested to each of them the necessity of ending the war, I got the brushoff. More accurately, after ever so briefly pretending to listen, each treated me to a convoluted explanation that said in essence: Don't blame me.

To whom do Kennedy, Kerry and Lynch listen? We know the answer: to the same people who have the ear of George W. Bush and Karl Rove -- namely, wealthy individuals and institutions.

Money buys access and influence. Money greases the process that will yield us a new president in 2008. When it comes to Iraq, money ensures that the concerns of big business, big oil, bellicose evangelicals and Middle East allies gain a hearing. By comparison, the lives of U.S. soldiers figure as an afterthought.

Memorial Day orators will say that a G.I.'s life is priceless. Don't believe it. I know what value the U.S. government assigns to a soldier's life: I've been handed the check. It's roughly what the Yankees will pay Roger Clemens per inning once he starts pitching next month.

Money maintains the Republican/Democratic duopoly of trivialized politics. It confines the debate over U.S. policy to well-hewn channels. It preserves intact the cliches of 1933-45 about isolationism, appeasement and the nation's call to "global leadership." It inhibits any serious accounting of exactly how much our misadventure in Iraq is costing. It ignores completely the question of who actually pays. It negates democracy, rendering free speech little more than a means of recording dissent.

This is not some great conspiracy. It's the way our system works.

In joining the Army, my son was following in his father's footsteps: Before he was born, I had served in Vietnam. As military officers, we shared an ironic kinship of sorts, each of us demonstrating a peculiar knack for picking the wrong war at the wrong time. Yet he was the better soldier -- brave and steadfast and irrepressible.

I know that my son did his best to serve our country. Through my own opposition to a profoundly misguided war, I thought I was doing the same. In fact, while he was giving his all, I was doing nothing. In this way, I failed him.

Andrew J. Bacevich teaches history and international relations at Boston University. His son died May 13 after a suicide bomb explosion in Salah al-Din province.

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War Widows Lobby for Better Benefits


War Widows Lobby for Better Benefits

May 26, 6:23 AM EDT


WASHINGTON (AP) -- Marie Jordan Speer and Jessica Byrd each sent a husband to war. Each became a widow in her early 20s. Speer had a 1-year-old son. Byrd was pregnant with her son. Suddenly on their own, both women were again dependent on their families. The biggest difference between their plights is 60 years - Speer's husband died in World War II, Byrd's in Iraq.

Because of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the graying membership of the Gold Star Wives, which Speer founded in 1945, is relevant all over again, advocating on behalf of an estimated 1,600 new widows and widowers.

"It was somebody to lean on, because my family could only take so much," said Byrd, 25, who got involved the Gold Star Wives through its Internet chat room after her husband, Marine Lance Cpl. John Byrd, died in 2004.

Most of the chatting, Byrd said, took place during "the famous widow hours" - the middle of the night, when she couldn't sleep. "I could go on it and cry without waking my family up, and I'd have other women crying with me and telling me they'd been through it and everything was going to be OK," she said.

"There's a lot in common because you have to get on your own feet," said Speer, 86, who attended a Capitol Hill reception last week with about 50 widows of all ages, and several members of Congress. "What we're trying to encourage is for the younger women to take more initiative and take it over because somebody told me that you don't live forever."


Gold Star's two main lobbyists, Edith Smith, 66, and Rose Lee, 78, are volunteers who have been teaching a small group of Iraq war widows about the legislative process and testifying at congressional hearings.

Lee, whose husband, Army Col. C.M. Lee, died on active duty in Taiwan in 1972 after fighting in Korea and Vietnam, said the lawmakers treat them kindly, but getting them to ante up more financial support for war widows is not always easy to do. Survivors today seem to receive better benefits, Lee said, but with the changing cost of living, it's hard to tell if they are better off than those from previous eras.

Kimberly Hazelgrove, 33, whose husband, Army CW2 Brian Hazelgrove, died in Iraq three years ago, said she's already learned one thing. "Be very patient, but to also be pro-active in getting what you deserve," she said.

What they find is that when it comes to the struggles of the survivors of dead soldiers, little has changed since 1945. There's the loneliness factor, and while they do get benefits, it's often not enough to cover the loss of one family member's paycheck.

After Byrd's husband died, she had to leave Hawaii, where he was stationed, and go back home to Philadelphia. Only recently, she got her own place with their 2-year-old son, Elijah. She is not working, she said, because childcare is too expensive to make it worthwhile.

Marion Rudin Frank, a psychologist who leads Gold Star's Philadelphia chapter, said that after her husband's plane crashed into the Atlantic Ocean in 1965, no one explained to her that she was eligible to receive educational benefits. At 23, she scraped by as a single parent and paid for graduate school herself.

"This is not a group that wants new members, but of course we have new members that we really have to fight for," said Frank, whose husband was Air Force 2nd Lt. Ira J. Husik. "We don't want them to go through some of the things we didn't have to go through."

Speer said she started the Gold Star Wives after contacting other widows she read of in a newspaper. One week later, President Roosevelt died.

Soon after, former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt accepted their invitation to join. She later had the ladies over to her Hyde Park home for blueberries topped with whipped cream. Other chapters starting popping up once Mrs. Roosevelt wrote about the group in her "My Day" newspaper column.

During World War II, Speer said, there was no death gratuity like the $100,000 given to Iraq widows today. World War II widows received a pension of $50 per month, with an additional $15 for the first child and $10 for each additional child. They also received $10,000 in insurance, doled out to young widows over 20 years - which amounted to $55 per month, she said.

"You had to go home to Mama and Papa every once in a while to eat," said Speer, whose husband, Army Pvt. Edward H. Jordan, died in 1944.

Today, the Gold Star Wives have more than 10,000 members. Men whose wives died while serving on active duty or as the result of a service-connected disability are also eligible to join.

The Gold Star members successfully pushed for the passage of a law that says spouses who remarry after age 57 can keep the Veterans Affairs Dependency and Indemnity Compensation, a monthly benefit paid to eligible survivors of certain deceased veterans. They also successfully advocated to extend the time for widows to use their education benefit from 10 years to 20 years.

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Sunday, May 20, 2007

Military Training Using Depleted Uranium Weaponry in Schofield Hawaii

Depleted Uranium used in the discharge of military weapons which then becomes airborne radiation. Military continues to deny that it is more than 'heavy metal', and experts continue to say otherwise - that it is indeed radioactive once discharged and airborne. In Hawaii there has been effort by peace/activist movement to file an injunction against use of the weapons at the military training ground in Hawaii near Schofield Barracks.



read more 'Doubts Remain About Depleted Uranium',

By William Cole Military Writer at The Honolulu Advertiser

excerpt:

The Army says its Stryker armored vehicles have never fired depleted uranium rounds in Hawai'i, and there is no intent for them to ever do so.

That leaves Dr. Lorrin Pang unsatisfied.

"I guess the community is a little bit worried about (the Army's) credibility, so they would like to set up for monitoring," said Pang, the state Health Department's district officer for Maui County.

Pang, who also spent 24 years in the Army and was a preventive medicine officer at Tripler Army Medical Center in the late 1980s — and speaking as a private citizen and not in his official capacity — supported a bill that would have required regular soil testing at Schofield Barracks for the presence of depleted uranium.

The bill died in conference committee this past legislative session.

The revelation in January 2006 that the Army had found 15 tail assemblies from depleted uranium aiming rounds used in a 1960s weapon, coupled with the Stryker vehicle's ability to fire rounds with the weakly radioactive material, is spreading new concerns that the Army says are unfounded, and some community members say amount to a potential health risk.


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Wednesday, May 16, 2007

Gen. Wesley Clark video - Protect America, Not George Bush - Congress has to help get the strategy right

General Wesley Clark: The President did not listen when I went before the House Armed Services Committee in 2002, discouraging an invasion of Iraq. The President did not listen to General Batiste and General Eaton, as they called for a new strategy in Iraq. And the President is still not listening.

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Tuesday, May 15, 2007

General Eaton video "If Pres. Bush Won't Listen, Congress Must"

FOX ISLAND, Washington. Video from Major General Paul Eaton to President Bush and Congress. Major General Paul Easton is a retired United States Army General and former Office of Security Transition Commanding General. He was in charge of training the Iraqi military from 2003 to 2004.[1] Eaton was commissioned upon graduation from the U.S. Military Academy in 1972. He is fluent in French, receiving a Master of Arts from Middlebury College in French Grammar and Civilization.[2]

Eaton's awards and decorations include the Distinguished Service Medal, Defense Superior Service Medal, Legion of Merit (with 3 Oak Leaf Clusters), Meritorious Service Medal (with 2 Oak Leaf Clusters), Army Commendation Medal (with 2 Oak Leaf Clusters), Army Achievement Medal, Expert Infantryman Badge, Parachutist Badge, Ranger Tab, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff Identification Badge.

* 'For his failures, Rumsfeld must go'; an article by General Eaton on the International Herald Tribune, March 20, 2006
* 'A Top-Down Review for the Pentagon'; an article by General Eaton on the New York Times, March 19, 2006

General Eaton for VoteVets: "If Pres. Bush Won't Listen, Congress Must"

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Sunday, May 13, 2007

What the Soldiers Say; What General Batiste Says 'Mr. President - You weren't listening"

From Heckle, a returning Iraq veteran who Blogs at Fight to Survive.


But what the military hates more than anything in the world is a soldier that thinks for him/herself and makes his/her voice heard, especially when that voice is telling the truth.

It was an average soldier who blew the whistle on the tortures and inhumanity at Abu Gharib.

It was an average soldier who pointed his finger right back at Rumsfeld and asked, "When will we get armor for our trucks?!"

It was a group of average soldiers who refused a suicide mission to deliver tainted fuel into a combat zone with no crew-served weapons or ammunition to defend themselves with, and no armor to protect them whatsoever.

It was an average soldier who publicly interrupted his Colonel saying, "No sir, America is not at war. Its soldiers are at war. America is at the mall!"

To assume that a soldier will blindly follow along in the wake of criminality of an illegal and bloody occupation does not give enough credit to the conscious of the human mind.

To think that silencing a soldier's voice to hide the truth will help us win this war is absolutely ludicrous!



Major General John Batiste takes the President on, directly, when he says that he's just 'listening to commanders on the ground' in Iraq. Batiste should know if the President is listening or not, since he was one of those commanders!




read more about this ad and other ads coming from other Generals at Vote Vets website




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Memorial Day Holiday; Days of Self-Examination - Some Americans Live with War


Link: Veteran says Memorial Day not a day of celebration, rather a day of self examination

excerpts:
“On Memorial Day, and all these holidays where we take a few seconds out and pause, I don’t think they’re days of celebration. I think they’re days of self-examination,” Mr. Paul Bucha said.

Mr. Bucha, received the Medal of Honor “for conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity in action at the risk of this life above and beyond the call of duty” in Vietnam in 1968, when the company he commanded was helicoptered into the midst of an enemy stronghold and spent the night fending off a battalion-sized force.

“I believe, systematically, the soldiers and their families have been ignored in the worst case, and poorly managed and administrated in the most charitable case, since this war began,” Mr. Bucha said recently.

“I’ve attended funerals to see public officials fall asleep in the middle of eulogies. I’ve been to Brooke Army Medical Center, where I saw literally hundreds of young men and women without arms and legs, and some without faces, who were kept out of sight and out of mind.”



Link: My Patriotism Has Been Used and Exploited

Army Sgt. John Bruhns will talk about his tour in Iraq and his opinion of the war.
He concludes: "My patriotism has been used and exploited. I am very proud of my military service, but I'm very disappointed in the civilian leadership and administration for sending us needlessly into combat."




Link: Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés sends Open Letter to Laura Bush

Words That Fall Short of the Soul’s Bar “No one suffers more than their president and I do…”



Link: Treating Trauma

O
ne in three veterans of the war in Iraq, and one in nine of the military operation in Afghanistan, face mental health problems, including depression, anxiety or post-traumatic stress disorder, according to the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America.




Link: Author Deanna Mills blogs; another Military Family speaking out

Deanie Francis Mills is the author of 10 suspense thrillers, including ORDEAL and TIGHTROPE, and one true-crime, FACES OF EVIL, (which she co-authored with Houston PD forensic sketch artist Lois Gibson.) Her work has also appeared in numerous national magazines, and she is an experienced public speaker.

In 2004, when her son, Dustin, deployed to Iraq with the United States Marine Corps, Mills found she could no longer sit on the sidelines and watch a war she opposed, not when three close family members deployed, between them, six times to Iraq with the Marine Corps and the army.

In 2006, when her son deployed to Iraq a second time, Deanie started the political blog, "Deanie's Blue Inkblots" (formerly "Blue Inkblots").



Link: Debra Morgan Pardee blogs; Another Military Family speaking out on 6 killed in her son's unit; her own son injured by IED

excerpts:
Six members of my son's company died yesterday in Diyala Province, Iraq, killed in a massive explosion that entirely destroyed a Stryker vehicle. Only one person survived. My daughter-in-law spent the whole day with her best friend and was with her when she received word that her fiancé had been killed.
Mothers Day is a very sad day for many, many military families, and six more mothers will be grieving this Sunday.
However, the beat goes on. Just when my daughter-in-law and I and all the families who lost loved ones on Sunday were preparing ourselves to attend the memorial service next Tuesday, our near miss became a direct hit this morning. I received a phone call from the Army informing me my son was injured in an IED blast that destroyed his Stryker vehicle.




Link; John Fenton, Another Military Family speaking out on one year anniversary of his son's death in Iraq

excerpt

On the first anniversary of his son's death in Iraq, John Fenton spoke out against the war Wednesday during a rally in front of the National Guard Armory.

"I just find it frightening," Fenton said. "We're going nowhere and we're going nowhere fast. And it's mostly young kids dying, I just don't understand it."

Matthew Fenton, a 24-year-old Marine Corps sergeant from Little Ferry, was wounded by shrapnel while conducting combat operations in Al Anbar province on April 26, 2006. He died at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., less than two weeks later, a day after receiving a Purple Heart.





Link: Military Families Speak Out - NANCY LESSIN - April Exceedingly Violent month with 104 U.S. Troops killed

Lessin is co-founder of Military Families Speak Out. She said today: "April has been an exceedingly violent month with at least 104 U.S. troops killed and we don't know how many Iraqis. This is almost as high as during the offensives against Fallujah. Contrary to the White House line that we need to give their latest escalation more time, it's clear that the occupation is not calming down the violence, it's helping to cause the violence." Lessin is in contact with numerous families of U.S. troops who are in Iraq.
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Wednesday, May 2, 2007

Project; ruffled skirt using pantyhose nylons for ruffles

What a fun idea from Craft Chi - Ruffled pantyhose added to a skirt makes it kicky fun. Instructions at her website.







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