A Thread To Honor Our Military In Iraq

[bornright]

Originally Posted by BillCosby

I recall reading that Russian officers would stand behind their solders w/ guns aimed @ their heads as they sent to them out to the front....... Essentially facing possible death in front of them or assured death behind them...........

Both you & your Russian counterparts use coercion in order to make your unwilling draftees kill.........

I do not believe in forcing individuals into the military. I think they should be given an option. If they wish to give up their right to vote and give up all government benefits and their citizenship this would be ok. I really don't know if a person can do anything about being a coward but should he reap the benefits earned by those with enough courage to fight for his country when called upon.

[JeffinCO]

Originally Posted by bornright

Vietnam veterans did not end the war. Congress did by taking away funding and later abandoning the south Vietnam people by not sending weapons and support to keep their nation from being over run by a Communist funded North Vietnam Army.

Kinda sounds like you're still mourning the end of the war. (yikes man)

And come on, BR...like the only requirement to win in Vietnam would have been funding.

Those people thought we were there to COLONIZE them. Even McNamara realized long after the war that they had made MONUMENTAL mistakes in policy simply because we refused to empathize with the enemy.

YouTube - Fog of War- Lesson #1- Empathize With...

(Sounds familiar)

Again, flying million dollar sortees of jet fighters directly over old women moving rice and ammunition on bicycles.

YouTube - Fog of War Lesson #8- Be Prepared To...

...But I forgot, we're not supposed to talk about policy that determines use of troops here. ...We're just supposed to give em funding, ...and "go about our business".

We need to LEARN from history, in order to use military force with intelligent conservatism. The use of such awesome power, and such dedicated soldiers should be scrutinized at EVERY TURN, that we should only put troops in harms way when absolutely neccessary, and all other options have been exhausted.

[BillCosby]

Originally Posted by bornright

I do not believe in forcing individuals into the military. I think they should be given an option. If they wish to give up their right to vote and give up all government benefits and their citizenship this would be ok. I really don't know if a person can do anything about being a coward but should he reap the benefits earned by those with enough courage to fight for his country when called upon.

???? coercion is coercion........

If he is disabled or a coward or against the war or just against war......... What does that matter???

If someone was against murdering Native American women & children they should of been forced to engage in it.........

[JeffinCO]

Originally Posted by bornright

I do not believe in forcing individuals into the military. I think they should be given an option. If they wish to give up their right to vote and give up all government benefits and their citizenship this would be ok. I really don't know if a person can do anything about being a coward but should he reap the benefits earned by those with enough courage to fight for his country when called upon.

Heres but one of BR's "cowards"...


Your opinion is noted Dude.

I guess since these veterans had the AUDACITY to question the commander in chief about his desire to invade Iraq, maybe that makes them cowards too.??


Vice Admiral Ralph Weymouth, USN, Retired Vice Admiral Jack Shanahan, USN, Retired Brigadier General Evelyn P. Foote, USA, Retired

Colonel David H. Hackworth, USA, Retired Colonel Larry Williams, USMC, Retired Colonel James E Unterseher, USA, Retired Colonel James B. Burkholder, USA, Retired Colonel Roger F. Strand, USAF, Retired Colonel Virginia A. Metcalf, USA, Retired Colonel Mary H. Yeakel, USA, Retired Colonel Henrik O. Lunde, USA, Retired Colonel Bruce S. Jarstfer, USA, Retired Colonel Thomas Patrick Chisholm, USA, Retired Colonel James Steven Chandler, USA Colonel James J. Kent, USA, Retired Colonel Grace E. Squires, USA, Retired Colonel Carol Anne O'Donnell, USA, Retired

Captain Kris Kristofferson, USA, Retired Captain Thomas C. Tindall Jr., USNR, Retired Captain Herbert A. Blough, USN, Retired Captain M. David Preston, USCG....(cont.)

The actual letter to the president and all the names of the vets who signed are here
Veterans for Common Sense (VCS)

[Kanadesaga]

The Walrus » Ephemera » Photo Essay Latrine Graffiti » Steve Featherstone

Latrine Graffiti, Kuwait and Afghanistan
by Steve Featherstone



I stumbled off the dark, curtained bus into the blinding desert sunlight. A sergeant shouted for volunteers to unload gear. I lit a cigarette in the marginal shade afforded by a mesh tarp staked out in the sand and watched as soldiers from the 82nd Airborne tossed heavy canvas duffel bags into heaps from the backs of trucks. The temperature was already 45 C, and it wasn’t quite 9am.

A young Marine with an M-16 slung over his shoulder pulled a bottle of water from a nearby pallet and unscrewed the top. I recognized him from the bus. He’d sat in the front seat, one of two designated shooters who were authorized to return fire in the unlikely event our bus was attacked on the highway.

“Hey shooter,” I said. “Not much to shoot at in Kuwait.”

He swished the warm water around in his mouth, spat into the dust, and grinned. “Yeah, but I’m ready,” he said. He was nineteen years old, and this was his first tour. He was headed for Iraq. I was headed for Afghanistan, on assignment for Harper’s Magazine. I snapped a photo of him, M-16 in one hand, bottle of water in the other, his chin tilted up like a boxer about to enter the ring.

We dragged our gear to a fleet of buses that took us to Camp Ali Al Salem, an airbase not far from the border with Iraq. Ali Al Salem was a transition point for soldiers rotating into and out of the war zone. Unlike the bases in combat areas that belonged to particular military units, Ali Al Salem didn’t belong to anybody. It had the listless atmosphere of a rural bus station. I didn’t expect to be there more than a day or two, but I was stranded there for a week.

Huge concrete blast walls ringed the camp. Inside the walls were row upon row of tents laid out in a grid, with wide, sandy lanes between blocks. Soldiers wandered from their air-conditioned tents to the air-conditioned mess hall or the air-conditioned MWR (morale, welfare, and recreation) buildings where they played ping-pong or checked their email. The sound of Ali Al Salem was a chorus of clicks and whirs as hundreds of air conditioning units cycled on and off, undercut by the steady drone of diesel generators the size of minivans.

It was late July, and hot. The temperature rose above fifty degrees during the day. The steel doorknobs on the latrine and shower trailers were hot to the touch. I spent a lot of time in the latrine trailers, reading the graffiti I found there because I had nothing better to do. Much of it was arcane, full of military acronyms and slang that only soldiers could understand. But one main theme stood out: soldiers were being stretched to the limits of endurance.

A few months earlier, in April 2007, the U.S. Department of Defense had extended combat tours from twelve to fifteen months. In the graffiti, soldiers expressed their growing fatigue and anger—mostly with each other. When they weren’t scribbling Chuck Norris jokes or questioning the fighting ability of other units, they were slamming soldiers who dared give voice to their dissatisfaction.

I can still vividly recall the upper case ballpoint handwriting of one soldier who listed the number of men killed and wounded in his unit. He didn’t plead for sympathy or prayer; he simply wrote down the numbers. The response was harsh for its tone of glib detachment. “Should’ve worn their eye-pro (short for “eye protection,” or goggles) one soldier wrote. Another soldier suggested that the wounded and killed should’ve trained harder, as if any soldier in the war had been trained to survive an IED blast, or to avoid getting shot by someone who looked to them like every other Iraqi civilian.

I began photographing the graffiti because I realized that it would soon be erased by the cleaning crews who regularly swabbed the stalls. I made a point of visiting every latrine trailer on base, squeezing into more than 100 stalls and shooting in the dead of night to avoid suspicion. The air conditioning in some of the trailers had broken down and the oppressive heat and stench made me dizzy. The graffiti you see here is almost certainly gone now.

I got a C-17 flight from Kuwait to Bagram Air Field (BAF) in Kabul, Afghanistan, where I spent three days. BAF was similar to Ali Al Salem insofar as it was a point of transition, except it was much larger, and it was set amid a bustling city, separated from it by razor wire, dirt-filled Hesco barriers, and concrete blast walls. Some areas of the base had yet to be cleared of Soviet-era landmines. The thousands of soldiers stationed at BAF, including many international troops, lived in metal Conex trailer ghettos, or in low concrete buildings behind gates and armed guards.

Most soldiers, however, passed through BAF en route to remote bases in the Afghan countryside. At BAF they stayed near the terminal in tents for a night or two, and relieved themselves in rows of Port-a-Johns. The graffiti I found in those Port-a-Johns was specific to soldiers serving in Afghanistan. For instance, ISAF—International Security and Assistance Force, or NATO soldiers in Afghanistan—took quite a beating. But overall, it shared the same form and spirit of the graffiti I’d read in the latrine stalls at Ali Al Salem. All soldiers were suspicious that rival units were having an easier time of it, and they were ruthless in their criticism of each other.

I flew from BAF to my final destination, Forward Operating Base (fob) Salerno, located in Khost, Afghanistan, within artillery range of the Pakistan border. fob Salerno was nothing like Ali Al Salem or BAF. The place was immaculate, including the latrines, perhaps because the base belonged to a single unit, the 82nd Airborne’s 4th brigade combat team. It was their home for an entire year, and I suppose it was a point of pride to keep the place tidy (they paid crews of local Afghans to pick up trash and clean the latrines).

A few weeks later, I returned to BAF on my way out of Afghanistan. I stayed there for a few more days, walking the sprawling base from one end to the other, looking for Port-A-Johns I’d missed the first time around. The day before I left BAF, on a hot August afternoon that brought a dusty wind whistling down from the mountains, turning the air a murky beige color, my camera suddenly stopped working, and my survey of latrine graffiti came to an end.

It’s tempting to view these photographs as the “true” or “authentic” voice of American soldiers. But that would be missing the point. Graffiti is public by definition—it’s not a private confession. It’s a surface effect of something far broader and infinitely more complicated than what can be contained in a hastily scribbled line or two.

I look at these photographs and read the words in the same way I read the expression on the face of that 19-year old Marine I met on my first day in Kuwait. When I snapped his picture, he took a moment to pose. He wanted anyone who might later look at the photograph to know that he was tough, that he wasn’t frightened, that he was ready for whatever was coming his way in Iraq. But his expression at that moment wasn’t the sum of who he was, just as the graffiti you’re reading here isn’t the whole truth about what American soldiers think and feel about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

So how should you look at the graffiti in these photographs? As a fleeting moment in a six year-old war—nothing more. The words on these walls are snatches of an overheard and ongoing conversation that changes by the day, soldier’s talking to other soldiers at a time when soldiers are being asked to give more than they have been giving, which is already too much.



The rest of photos are in my photo album.

[Kanadesaga]

The Truth About Veteran Suicides
By Aaron Glantz

Eighteen American war veterans kill themselves every day. One thousand former soldiers receiving care from the Department of Veterans Affairs attempt suicide every month. More veterans are committing suicide than are dying in combat overseas.

These are statistics that most Americans don’t know, because the Bush administration has refused to tell them. Since the start of the Iraq War, the government has tried to present it as a war without casualties.

In fact, they never would have come to light were it not for a class action lawsuit brought by Veterans for Common Sense and Veterans United for Truth on behalf of the 1.7 million Americans who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan. The two groups allege the Department of Veterans Affairs has systematically denied mental health care and disability benefits to veterans returning from the conflict zones.

The case, officially known as Veterans for Common Sense vs. Peake, went to trial last month at a Federal Courthouse in San Francisco. The two sides are still filing briefs until May 19 and waiting for a ruling from Judge Samuel Conti, but the case is already having an impact.

“Shh!”
That’s because over the course of the two week trial, the VA was compelled to produce a series of documents that show the extent of the crisis effecting wounded soldiers.

“Shh!” begins one e-mail from Dr. Ira Katz, the head of the VA’s Mental Health Division, advising a media spokesperson not to tell CBS News that 1,000 veterans receiving care at the VA try to kill themselves every month.

“Our suicide prevention coordinators are identifying about 1,000 suicide attempts per month among the veterans we see in our medical facilities. Is this something we should (carefully) address ourselves in some sort of release before someone stumbles on it?” the e-mail concludes.

Leading Democrats on the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee immediately called for Katz’s resignation. On May 6, the Chair of the House Committee on Veterans Affairs, Bob Filner (D-CA) convened a hearing titled “The Truth About Veteran’s Suicides” and called Katz and VA Secretary James Peake to testify.

“That e-mail was in poor tone but the content was part of a dialogue about what we should do about new information,” Katz said in response to Filner’s questions. “The e-mail represents a healthy dialogue among members of VA staff about when it’s appropriate to disclose and make public information early in the process.”

Filner was nonplused and accused Katz and Peake of a “cover-up.”

“We should all be angry about what has gone on here,” Filner said. “This is a matter of life and death for the veterans that we are responsible for and I think there was criminal negligence in the way this was handled. If we do not admit, assume or know then the problem will continue and people will die. If that’s not criminal negligence, I don’t know what is.”

A Pattern
It’s also part of a pattern. The high number of veteran suicides weren’t the only government statistics the Bush Administration was forced to reveal because of the class action lawsuit.

Another set of documents presented in court showed that in the six months leading up to March 31, a total of 1,467 veterans died waiting to learn if their disability claim would be approved by the government. A third set of documents showed that veterans who appeal a VA decision to deny their disability claim have to wait an average of 1,608 days, or nearly four and a half years, for their answer.

Other casualty statistics are not directly concealed, but are also not revealed on a regular basis. For example, the Pentagon regularly reports on the numbers of American troops “wounded” in Iraq (currently at 31,948) but neglects to mention that it has two other categories “injured” (10,180) and “ill” (28,451). All three of these categories represent soldiers who are so damaged physically they have to be medically evacuated to Germany for treatment, but by splitting the numbers up the sense of casualties down the public consciousness.

Here’s another number that we don’t often hear discussed in the media: 287,790. That’s the number of returning Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans who had filed a disability claim with the Veterans Administration as of March 25th. That figure was not announced to the public at a news conference, but obtained by Veterans for Common Sense using the Freedom of Information Act.

Why all the secrecy? Why is it so hard to get accurate casualty figures out of our government? Because the Bush Administration knows if Americans woke up to the real, human costs of this war they would fight harder to oppose it.

Some ‘Cakewalk’
Think back to 2002, before the invasion of Iraq, when leading neo-conservative thinker and Donald Rumsfeld aide Ken Adelman predicted the war would be a “cakewalk.”

Or consider this statement from Vice President Dick Cheney. Two days before the invasion, Cheney told NBC’s Tim Russert the war would “go relatively quickly…(ending in) weeks rather than months.”

Today, those comments are gone but the motivation behind them remains. This is why the VA’s head of mental health wrote “Shh!” telling a spokesperson not to respond to a reporters’ inquiry.

But all the shhing in the world cannot stop the horrible pain that’s mounting after five years of war in Iraq and nearly seven years of war in Afghanistan.

Unpleasant Facts
According to an April 2008 study by the Rand Corporation, 300,000 Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans currently suffer from post traumatic stress disorder or major depression. Another 320,000 suffer from traumatic brain injury, physical brain damage. A majority are not receiving help from the Pentagon and VA system which are more concerned with concealing unpleasant facts than they are with providing care.

In its study, the RAND Corporation wrote that the federal government fails to care for war veterans at its own peril - noting post traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury “can have far reaching and damaging consequences.”

“Individuals afflicted with these conditions face higher risks for other psychological problems and for attempting suicide. They have higher rates of unhealthy behaviors — such as smoking, overeating, and unsafe sex — and higher rates of physical health problems and mortality. Individuals with these conditions also tend to miss more work or report being less productive,” the report said. “These conditions can impair relationships, disrupt marriages, aggravate the difficulties of parenting, and cause problems in children that may extend the consequences of combat trauma across generations.”

“These consequences can have a high economic toll,” RAND said. “However, most attempts to measure the costs of these conditions focus only on medical costs to the government. Yet, direct costs of treatment are only a fraction of the total costs related to mental health and cognitive conditions. Far higher are the long-term individual and societal costs stemming from lost productivity, reduced quality of life, homelessness, domestic violence, the strain on families, and suicide. Delivering effective care and restoring veterans to full mental health have the potential to reduce these longer-term costs significantly.”

Bush and Congress have the power to stop this problem before it gets worse. It’s not too late to extend needed mental health care to our returning Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans; it’s not too late to begin properly screening and treating returning servicemen and women who’ve experienced a traumatic brain injury; and it is not too late to simplify the disability claims process so that wounded veterans do not die waiting for their check. As the Rand study shows, this isn’t only in the best interest of veterans, it’s in the best interest of our country in the long run.

To start with, the Bush Administration needs to give us some honest information about the true human costs of the Iraq War.

Like that's ever gonna happen! We'll be feeling the costs of this war for decades to come. In ways we haven't even thought of.

The Truth About Veteran Suicides - CommonDreams.org

Aaron Glantz, a Foreign Policy In Focus contributor, is the author of two upcoming books on Iraq: The War Comes Home: Washington’s Battle Against America’s Veterans (UC Press) and Winter Soldier Iraq and Afghanistan: Eyewitness Accounts of the Occupations (Haymarket). He edits the website WarComesHome.org.

[Kanadesaga]

Iraq Vets Testify to War Atrocities, Vow to Fight and Resist Bush Policy
By Liliana Segura, AlterNet

Posted on May 20, 2008, Printed on May 20, 2008
Iraq Vets Testify to War Atrocities, Vow to Fight and Resist Bush Policy | AlterNet

"I was ordered multiple times by commissioned officers and noncommissioned officers to shoot unarmed civilians if their presence made me feel uncomfortable," Sgt. Jason Lemieux told a panel of lawmakers last Thursday in a packed public hearing on Capitol Hill. "These orders were given with the understanding that my immediate chain of command would protect our subordinates from legal repercussions." Lemieux, a former Marine who was part of the invading force that entered Baghdad in March 2003, came to Washington, D.C., with Iraq Veterans Against the War, weeks after the fifth anniversary of President George Bush's declaration of "Mission Accomplished" to tell Congress enough is enough. Invited by Rep. Lynn Woolsey, D-Calif., the veterans spoke firmly and eloquently before members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, telling stories that were just "the tip of the iceberg," as Lemieux put it, but which nevertheless offered a frightening range of accounts: violent house raids, the killings of innocent people, "drop weapons" used to make dead civilians look like insurgents, racism in the ranks, and their own process of dehumanization as they became inured to the humanity of those who they were supposedly sent to "liberate."

The morning was infused with a sense of urgency. "Every day that the occupation continues, more men, women and children will be killed, maimed, or forced to flee their country as refugees," said Kelly Dougherty, executive director of IVAW, in introductory remarks. "More veterans will return home with lifelong scars, emotional and physical, with little support to help them readjust.

"Many," she added, "will fall victim to suicide." Indeed, of the nine veterans who testified that day, two said they had tried to kill themselves after returning home.

Like the Winter Soldier hearings in March, when more than 200 service members gathered in Silver Spring, Md., to give their eyewitness accounts of the injustices occurring in Iraq and Afghanistan, "Winter Soldier on the Hill" was designed to drive home the human cost of the war and occupation -- this time, to the very people in charge of doing something about it. Elsewhere on Capitol Hill, the rest of Congress was debating the next round of funding for the war -- whether to approve more than $160 billion in additional taxpayer money to continue the occupation. "I think you know that the very issue that we're talking about today is on the House floor today," Woolsey noted -- a partial explanation for the small hearing room and the small handful of lawmakers who showed up. Even for those politicians who have consistently criticized the war, however, a group like IVAW -- whose platform includes immediate withdrawal of all occupation forces from Iraq, including contractors, as well as paying reparations to the Iraqi people -- is a politically risky ally. "I think we're generally viewed as too radical for most politicians," one IVAW field organizer and former military intelligence officer, T.J. Buonomo, said after the hearing. And this is a Congress where political courage has been in lethally short supply.

Not that IVAW expects Congress, after five years of cutting checks, to suddenly become the driving force that will end the war. Rather than lobbying politicians or pouring its energy into the presidential election, IVAW has focused on recruiting and chapter-building to fortify its ranks. Membership has reached 1,200, with members in all 50 states, as well as in Iraq, Afghanistan, and most recently, Germany. Concluding his remarks before the caucus, Washington, D.C., chapter head and nine-year veteran of the New York National Guard Geoffrey Millard spoke confidently about IVAW's role in fomenting an antiwar movement capable of ending the occupation. "The only remaining question is," he said, "will Congress be there to help us?"

"Welcome America to the second Vietnam"

Growing up, all Kristofer Goldsmith wanted was to join the Army. "I wanted to be in the military my entire life," he recalled, showing a photograph of himself at age 10 in military garb. But whatever sense of patriotism inspired him to want to wear the uniform as a young boy became something different after 9/11; the Bush administration's lies linking the terrorist attacks with Saddam Hussein inspired a willing foot soldier for its "war on terror."

Goldsmith was 16 years old when the planes hit the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and he recalls thinking that the United States ought to use biological weapons to take out the entire Middle East. "I joined the Army to kill people," he admitted, "to kill Iraqis, to kill Muslims." Trained to use artillery -- "some of the most destructive weapons that the army has" -- he deployed in 2005, only to find himself in Sadr City doing "supposed humanitarian aid," which he described as becoming "trumped by presence patrols" -- a daily reminder for Iraqis that they were surrounded by an "armed and dangerous army" patrolling their streets."

"It's basically fear tactics," Goldsmith said. The violence against civilians and the degrading conditions the occupation imposed on Iraqis became appalling to him. Slides he presented during his testimony showed raw sewage covering the floor at schools and the ground outside a hospital. "We made no attempts to repair it," he said. "We were unable to." In fact, the armored vehicles used by the military tore up the streets, exposing drinking water pipes to raw sewage. Goldsmith also showed a photograph he took of graffiti written on the side of a school in Sadr City that read, "Welcome America to the second Vietnam." It's not only critics in the United States who have drawn such comparisons, he said. Iraqis, he says, "are smart, educated people that are dying every day."

As the gross reality of the occupation hit home, rather than bloodlust, he felt unable to cope with the war as he experienced it. When Bush announced the "surge" in January 2007, Goldsmith had just gotten home. "I was stop-lossed the same week that I was supposed to get out of the army for an 18-month deployment," he said. But he never went. "I attempted suicide. I never deployed a second time. And because of that I received a general discharge. And I lost my college benefits; the $40,000 promised to me in the Montgomery GI Bill, I will not be eligible to receive." Going to college after serving in the military, he said, had been his "one hope and dream."

A number of veterans cited their involvement in IVAW and the chance to tell their stories as a critical outlet, a way to make up for what one veteran called his own "moral death." It's clearly a process: The first time IVAW member James Gilligan told his story in public, at the March Winter Soldier hearings, he broke down. As a Marine corporal in Afghanistan, he had radioed in an erroneous target for a mortar attack that ended up striking a village and killing innocent civilians. As he spoke that day, his whole body appeared wracked with guilt. He too had attempted suicide. He has since spoken out many other times. After his testimony Thursday, he showed me a photograph of himself on "Mission Accomplished Day" and said he remembered thinking that he would soon be going home. Instead, five years later, he has served in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, and is now a committed speaker against the war. "I fly this flag upside down because my nation is in distress," he told the representatives, holding up an American flag.

"If you want to do something about PTSD, stop sending people into unjust wars"

According to former Sgt. Adam Kokesh, who served in Fallujah during the height of the siege, post-traumatic stress disorder can be attributed to three things: "lack of confidence in equipment, lack of confidence in leadership, and lack of confidence in the mission." He added: "In Iraq, we have all three." The alarming rate of veteran suicide -- which has only recently begun to be reported -- loomed heavy over the hearing. Former Marine sniper Sergio Kochergin's voice strained as he told the story of a roommate who had been placed on suicide watch "on and off," only to be taken off in anticipation of "family day," so that he would not say anything to his parents -- "and he did not say anything to them." He was deployed not long after, only to shoot himself in the head in a shower stall, one month after arriving in Iraq. "The Marine should have never been deployed to Iraq in the first place," Kochergin said, "and nobody was held responsible for his death."

On the same day of the hearing, a story broke that revealed a disturbing new strategy for dealing with the influx of veterans reportedly suffering from PTSD: Stop diagnosing it. In an e-mail dated March 20 out of an office of the Department of Veterans Affairs (subject header: "suggestion"), a VA employee wrote: "Given that we are having more and more compensation-seeking veterans, I'd like to suggest that we refrain from giving a diagnosis of PTSD straight out. Consider a diagnosis of Adjustment Disorder, R/O PTSD." The National Institutes of Health defines adjustment disorder as an "abnormal and excessive reaction to a life stressor, such as starting school, getting divorced, or grief" and says that symptoms "usually do not last longer than six months." Compare that to the definition for PTSD, which "can occur after you've seen or experienced a traumatic event that involved the threat of injury or death" and which, in some cases, "can last for many years." Now, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), which broke the story, has submitted Freedom of Information Act requests seeking "all records pertaining to any guidance given regarding the diagnosis of PTSD." "It is outrageous that the VA is calling on its employees to deliberately misdiagnose returning veterans in an effort to cut costs," said CREW Executive Director Melanie Sloan.

"If you want to do something about PTSD," said Kokesh after the hearing, "stop sending people into unjust wars."

Who really supports the troops?

Perhaps more than the question of additional funding for the occupation, the debate that riles veterans the most is the current political battle over the GI Bill, which, in at least one version -- that of Democrat Jim Webb of Virginia -- proposes full scholarships for service members to any in-state public university. Bush and the Defense Department oppose it, primarily because they claim it would provide too large an incentive to leave the military and go to college. In an interview last month, paralyzed Iraq war vet Tomas Young (also of IVAW, and the subject of the powerful documentary "Body of War") recalled the reaction of his brother, who is currently in Iraq, to such twisted logic: "Just being in Iraq is an incentive to leave the military!" he exclaimed. The notion that sending soldiers to college would be a bad thing is the worst brand of cynicism.

Many veterans have turned their indignation into action. Last month a petition featuring some 30,000 veterans' signatures arrived at the office of John McCain, urging him to get behind in Webb's legislation. But the candidate who wraps himself in the banner of patriotism and support for the troops has refused to back it, parroting Bush's line that it could lead enlistees to choose college over war. "There is a senator in Congress, currently running for president, who is fighting to kill our Webb GI bill," said Goldsmith. "And I'm one of the soldiers who will never get that money." In fact, by the end of the day Thursday, the House had passed its version of the Webb GI bill by a vote of 256 to 166. But the $163 billion for the war was ultimately blocked.

Members of IVAW are not naive to the political context of last week's hearings -- nor are they content to see their day on the Hill as a largely symbolic development. When U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee, a Texas Democrat, asked the second panel of veterans if they would be willing to bring out 100,000 people to march on the National Mall against the war, all of them answered respectfully, but frankly. "Beyond amassing hundreds of thousands of people here -- which has been done before to no avail -- there has to be clear objectives," said former Army Capt. Luis Montalvan, who worked extensively for General David Petraeus. Indeed, for those in the room who have marched countless times against the war -- sometimes alongside the very building where the hearing took place -- the exchange contained a sad irony.

"I think it's important to take everything with a grain of salt," Buonomo said when asked how much faith can be placed in Congress. At the same time, he called the hearing a "great opportunity." "To me, it was very encouraging that we have legislators who are taking a principled stand." To what end may remain unclear, but for starters, the possibility that IVAW members will have a chance to testify again -- this time before a committee -- seems much more likely. When Jackson-Lee asked if the veterans would return to Capitol Hill to testify under oath -- and provide documents -- the answers were unequivocal: "Absolutely, yes." And although "Winter Soldier on the Hill" was billed as the first official testimony by IVAW before members of Congress, a handful of other members had spoken to members of Congress the day before, at a two-part hearing sponsored by Jackson-Lee and Iowa Republican Sen. Charles Grassley. The subject was protecting whistle-blowers; Buonomo was one of three IVAW members who testified, having been involuntarily discharged for, as he called it, "speaking out against the occupation of Iraq and the policies of our government."

"This soldier will not be deploying to Iraq"

Perhaps one of the most significant statements of the day was made after the hearing, in the rotunda of an adjacent congressional building. There, Sgt. Matthis Chiroux stood before cameras and the public to announce his decision to refuse to deploy to Iraq. It was a move that Gilligan described as "momentous" -- especially as it had been inspired by the Winter Soldier hearings back in March. "As an Army journalist whose job it was to collect and filter service members' stories, I heard many stomach-churning testimonies of the horrors and crimes taking place in Iraq," said Chiroux. "For fear of retaliation from the military, I failed to report these crimes, but never again will I allow fear to silence me. Never again will I fail to stand."


"In February, I received a letter from the Army ordering my return to active duty, for the purpose of mobilization for Operation Iraqi Freedom. Thanks in great part to the truths of war being fearlessly spoken by my fellow IVAW members, I stand before you today with the strength, clarity and resolve to declare to the military and the world that this soldier will not be deploying to Iraq."


"This occupation is unconstitutional and illegal, and I hereby lawfully refuse to participate, as I will surely be a party to war crimes. Furthermore, deployment in support of illegal war violates all of my core values as a human being, but in keeping with those values, I choose to remain in the United States to defend myself from charges brought by the Army if they so wish to pursue them. I refuse to participate in the occupation of Iraq."

*(thanks to dada)

[Kanadesaga]

Where have all the right-wing, conservative, troop supporters gone? Where are all the stories of our brave soldiers in action. Where are the stories of all the hospitals and schools that have been built? All the water and sewage and electric plants up and running? Where are all those stories we were to be enlightened with? All those "feel-good" articles that would make us love the retard? Well, where are they?

[JeffinCO]

YouTube - Alive Day Memories - Brian Williams &...

The makers of this documentary "Alive Day Memories"....were very purposeful about keeping politics out of it. It's up to YOU, the person watching, to process the information shared by these kids.

Man this was hard to watch sometimes. Like the segment with the young man who had lost both eyes, and since his wife left him because of his injuries, he had had the diamonds from his wedding ring embedded in his beautifully radiant blue glass eye.
..... The ptsd, the nightmares, etc.

Or the young woman lementing the fact that, because of the loss of her arm, were she to have a child, she could not wrap her arms around that child ....

Just gut-wrenching stuff. .....and yet I couldnt turn away, because somehow I FELT RESPONSIBLE. I felt as if my silence contributed to their fate. That these kids had been hurt, while they were in a foriegn country serving in my name. I felt almost as a criminal who is forced to have a sit-down with his victim.

......thats how it impacted me, anyway.

[bornright]

Originally Posted by Kanadesaga

Where have all the right-wing, conservative, troop supporters gone? Where are all the stories of our brave soldiers in action. Where are the stories of all the hospitals and schools that have been built? All the water and sewage and electric plants up and running? Where are all those stories we were to be enlightened with? All those "feel-good" articles that would make us love the retard? Well, where are they?

Your posts from these extreme leftist groups displays your tremendous hatred for the Troops and the US. It is weak how you swallow the untrue internet trash that you gather. I am sorry that you feel you have been wronged. If you live in the US my question is.......WHY? I am sure you would find another country much more to your liking.