Three returning combat Iraq veterans arrested at Fort Benning - Iraq Veterans Against the War continue to speak - are we listening?

IVAW members were arrested while attempting to enter Ft. Benning to speak with members on the base.



Adam Kokesh, IVAW (Iraq Veterans Against the War) was arrested after entering Fort Benning to check on fellow members, Liam Madden and Nate Lewis.

All three face a hearing for criminal trespassing - July 27, 2007

These three are returning Iraq veterans:

Sgt Liam Madden, U.S. Marine
Liam served as a Communications Electronics Specialist in the Marine Corps from January 2003 to January 2007. While enlisted he was deployed to Iraq, Kuwait, Thailand, Okinawa, Japan, and Korea. During his last year in the Marines, Sergeant Madden co-founded the Appeal for Redress, a campaign of service members demanding that congress halt the war in Iraq.

Sgt Adam Kokesh, U.S. Marine, Served in: MCRD San Diego, CA Camp Pendleton, CA Fort Sill, OK Camp Fallujah, Iraq Rock ASP, Iraq Fallujah Peninsula, Iraq Fallujah Liaison Team CMOC, Iraq Camp Lejeune, NC
(You can read more about Adam Kokesh at his own blog )

Nathan Lewis, U.S. Army returning Iraq veteran.

All three are returning Iraq veterans with military base privileges and appropriate identifications. For more detail about how military bases view 'protesters' at the gates of military installations, and when those protesters are the troops themselves .....

detail account of this arrest at Veterans for Common Sense;

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July 1, 2007 - Three Iraq war protesters were arrested Sunday evening after crossing onto Fort Benning property.

Liam Madden and Nate Lewis, both 24, were taken into custody by military police shortly before 6 p.m. for stepping onto federal property, according to post spokeswoman Monica Manganaro. A third unidentified protester was also detained for committing the same infraction approximately 30 minutes after Madden and Lewis were arrested, Manganaro added.

Lewis and Madden, both members of Iraq Veterans Against the War, were charged with criminal trespass. They, along with six other members of the anti-war organization, are currently on a bus tour protesting military bases around the country and speaking to soldiers. The group's tour bus was parked outside the stone gate on Fort Benning Road off Victory Drive, Manganaro said.

Michael Blake, 24, of Iraq Veterans Against the War, said his comrades didn't break the law intentionally. They simply crossed a line that wasn't clearly marked, he said.

"What they were doing is they were going to step up to the guard and ask him if they could come onto base," Blake said. "It was a complete accident."

Manganaro said she didn't know the specifics of the incident, but the law is clear when it comes to protesting on military installations: It's illegal.

"If individuals are protesting outside a military installation and they come onto the installation, they've broken a law."

Manganaro said the protesters were given a verbal warning not to come onto the property.

Blake said Madden and Lewis are both veterans with valid Veterans Affairs cards and should be allowed onto the post. As soon as the protestors crossed the line, Blake said, two military police officers approached them, cuffed them and charged them.

This isn't the first incident of Iraq Veterans Against the War protestors being detained for bringing their message to military installations.

According to the group's Web site, five members were handcuffed Saturday morning at Fort Jackson in South Carolina after attempting to meet a fellow member on base for lunch. They were wearing T-shirts with "Iraq Veterans Against the War" and because of that they were considered protesters, Blake said.

None of the members were arrested that day, but they were removed from the base, Blake said.

In addition to the handful of anti-war Iraq veteran protestors traveling from base-to-base, a small crew of film makers from the Showtime Network is also on hand to document their journey. Blake said their presence, however, had nothing to do with Sunday evening's proceedings.

"We had no plan to go on base unauthorized," Blake said. "We're all pretty upset. We didn't come here to make trouble."

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Award winning photo of injured Marine at his wedding

Courage comes in many forms; Award winning photo of wedding - returning injured Iraq Marine marries his high school sweetheart. Credit to the young woman for her own kind of courage, and credit to this amazing couple for finding a different kind of courage The photo is a hurting kind of photo in that it depicts horrendous injuries suffered by our young troops, yet the couple seem able to transcend and find their own hearts. Since yesterday was Valentine's Day, somehow it seems the right time to share this story.

I picked the below extract from a feeder and placing it here. I was undecided about using it in exact format since it pulls out the nature of the young Marine's injuries, and while that goes to the story, the couple's courage in facing this adversity is a more telling story, so I added some additional extracts.

Nina Berman won a prize in the 2007 World Press Photo contest for this heartbreaking photo of a badly wounded Iraqi war veteran and his childhood sweetheart on their wedding day.

Their story is here.

excerpts;

Ty was on his second tour of duty in Iraq and had been patrolling the streets in a truck with six marines around al-Qaim, an entry point for foreign fighters on the Syrian border. He had been there for five months, and the mission had become routine. “Mostly we just rode around and came back. The atmosphere was not particularly menacing. They weren’t shooting guns at us any more.”

Suddenly a suicide bomber blew himself up by his truck. “It felt like somebody just blasted me in the face really hard,” Ty recalls. “I was rolling around on the bed of a truck, yelling the whole time I was conscious. The guy next to me kept putting me out – I guess I kept relighting

"One arm was a stump and his remaining hand had only two fingers. Later, his big toe was grafted on in place of a thumb. One eye was blind and milky, as if melted, and his ears had been burnt away. The top of his skull had been removed and inserted by doctors into the fatty tissue inside his torso to keep it viable and moist for future use."

They were married in October, in their home town of Metamora, Illinois, a small farming community in the Midwest.

In Metamora, people know him well enough not to stare a lot, but he gets plenty of looks elsewhere. Mostly he shrugs it off. “I give people the benefit of the doubt. If you were me, I might look at you.” If they are particularly rude, he will turn and say: “So what were you going to ask me?”

Here are some more of the couple's wedding photos and
more photos of Iraqi vets from Berman here and here.

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