Caring For The Troops

An article in the NY Times described a Pentagon program in effect since the start of the war in Afghanistan, a program which is actually pretty sensible.

Since 2004, every service man and woman killed in Iraq or Afghanistan has been given a CT scan, and since 2001, when the fighting began in Afghanistan, all have had autopsies, performed by pathologists in the Armed Forces Medical Examiner System. In previous wars, autopsies on people killed in combat were uncommon, and scans were never done.

The combined procedures have yielded a wealth of details about injuries from bullets, blasts, shrapnel and burns — information that has revealed deficiencies in body armor and vehicle shielding and led to improvements in helmets and medical equipment used on the battlefield.

The full body CT scans are especially useful. Not only did this process alert the military to the deficiencies in armor and medical equipment, it also allowed for less invasive and time consuming autopsies because the CT scan pointed to what specific areas needed to be investigated more fully. Reports of the findings are then offered to the families of the fallen soldiers, and most families have requested the reports, even if those reports aren't actually read for years.

It's pretty hard to fault such a program, even given the expense involved. We do need to know what precisely killed each soldier and what can be done to reduce the number of future deaths of the same sort. That said, it would be even better if the Pentagon showed the same concern for those soldiers who are fortunate enough to walk away from the battlefield, but not so fortunate to do so without wounds, especially the invisible kind.

While the Pentagon is finally coming around to the fact that Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is a very real consequence of battle, it still makes it incredibly difficult for those stricken to get the kind of treatment and support they need, as this op-ed piece in the Los Angeles Times makes clear. Written by Catherine Whitney, whose own brother suffered from PTSD and died alone and poor because he didn't get the treatment he needed and deserved, the article paints a bleak picture of what most soldiers face when that wound makes it difficult to cope with even the simplest of life's activities.

The sad part is that it's not like the military couldn't actually do something to mitigate the horror earlier on in the process, as Ms. Whitney points out:

Imagine how different this bleak picture might look if professional mental health screening were required for all troops, both before and after combat -- along with an adequate force of trained psychiatrists, psychologists and social workers to meet the demand. It's an obvious first step, but it would require an organizational and financial commitment from Congress, the VA and the current administration. Unfortunately, for most people, PTSD is an abstraction. The lonely battle of lobbying for better services is mostly left to independent veterans groups and families of the afflicted.

There is a significant disconnect between what we say about supporting our troops and what we actually do. We seem to despise the weakness of the wounded soldier, especially when it is manifested by mental illness, social alienation or undefined degenerative diseases. Today's war heroes too often become tomorrow's poor, many living in rundown apartment complexes around military bases, where they can squeeze out discounts for their essential needs.

If we insist on sending our young men and women into battle, the least we can do is keep our promise to care for them afterward. If the Pentagon can afford expensive full body CT scan machines and numerous skilled medical examiners to perform autopsies, then surely it can find a way to afford the kind of full scale treatment suggested by Ms. Whitman. All it has to do is ask. I find it hard to believe that Congress or the President would turn them down. I know the American public would approve of such an expense.

Tribute

Some time ago I went to school in the Washington Elementary School here, and one of my classmates was poor. I remember that he smelled bad. We tried to be kind but only now I realize he had no indoor running water.

When I see him now he pulls a big wastecan that holds his earthly belongings. Sometimes we greet each other. He knows I am that girl in his class that once threw a rock in a puddle and it splashed him. He ran after me and hit me and I cried. He was punished but I wasn't.

I want you to read this and know that we don't know how much damage we do when we simply don't understand.

What I said about memorializing goes.

What I feel when I see Lewis needed to be said.

This is my other MEMORIAL.

Memorial To Something Worthwhile

Today we are seeing all sorts of messages about the troops, and I keep hearing about those 'who made the ultimate sacrifice', and I want to know, for what? In my lifetime, the WWII in Europe ended, those troops came home who hadn't died, and back home they found a lot of gratitude.

They built up a country that was the strongest economy for the workers that ever existed. It was a country that was worth the struggle to maintain it. Since that time, policies that fought against living wage and adequate benefits for workers has turned it around, and we have economic disaster. The social security and unemployment programs to keep us through hard time, plans we have paid into, have been borrowed practically out of existence while we bail out the financial industry that has squandered what we earn.

In my lifetime, the wars have been diminishing into policy squabbles. Vietnam was about 'domino theory' and draftees encountered the realities that denied political dogma and turned the public into a war machine; the machine that ended an unproductive war.

Those who died in Vietnam, whose names adorn that dark solemn wall on the mall in D.C. are not claimed to have died to save liberty, or the country, or truth, justice and the American way of life. They died for a mistake. That mistake, and their deaths, would be worth a great deal if they have ended the warmaking push that followed, but they didn't.

We are extricating ourselves now from the War on Iraq, a.k.a. The Great War on Terror, that is a disgrace to our democracy. Lies were used to get a vote from Congress to authorize the ex-cretin in chief to use military power, votes given on the assumption that no one raised to the presidency would stoop to using troops' lives when the simple constraint on trade which was traditional in these events would suffice. The congress was wrong. We had in place as commander in chief some one whose ambitions were purely political, and a war was the way to get where he wanted to go.

When our troops died in Iraq, it achieved nothing for the country, but, rather, worked against it. Our obscene expenditures were death to the economy here at home, and did nothing for the working people here or in Iraq. Contractors reaped fortunes, while the troops received laggard assistance and inadequate arms, provisions, and equipment. Those who died because of these obscene misalocations certainly should be honored by an end to these practices. Yet there are many of the right wing shouting that we have to make sure they didn't die in vain. As that argument goes, we have to keep killing off the troops until we can declare victory. Victory is the establishment of a government in Iraq that represents our own puppet, a government that the Iraqis will never allow. This rorschach model of Iraqi government is a figment of the imagination, and would mean fighting and dying for troops who cannot give the wingnuts what they want without turning against the existing government that we have put in.

On Memorial Day, I would like to see us turn to a profitable use of troops for this country. We need to convert the wasted funds now being lost to public works here, and in service in countries that need assistance such as the Peace Corps represents. We need a commander in chief who will use our government and its forces for the good of this country. That has happened before. The CCC and WPA gave us roads, bridges, Riverwalk, the Providence Zoo: they trained workers to farm and feed themselves, to build their own farms and to sustain their lives. Peace Corps familiarized our own people with places and peoples that they learned to respect, whose institutions they bolstered, to our great credit. Troops do not have to destroy.

We lost few of the work trainees in the works programs of FDR's "New Deal", or in the Peace Corps. Their lives were enhanced, not lost or forever harmed by injuries. Our society gained, and our place in the world was raised.

There is no reason we have to continue a dishonor, a warring tradition that has led to nothing but loss. The powers that keep wars going are harmful to our world and its people.

For Memorial Day, we should dedicate our resources, and particularly human resources, to constructive works. We can be better, and we should start now.

Failing Stress Tests In Iraq

While the new administration is struggling to find a way to bring our economy back from disaster, a lot of stress outside that fiscal area is demanding attention. For the years of right wing wars, most of us were outside the field of operation. Those who emerged into their earning years, required to find a way to support themselves, the war was something many chose as a career. In order to make that choice, they had to leave youth behind and enter a military commitment.

During the sixties, when I was in that stage of life, Vietnam and the draft brought my generation an awareness of the rift between killing as a craft and our essential value system. The generation going to war then included all levels of our countrymen, and we encountered the war as an atrocity that violated our humanity and demanded we reject a whole area of the world. That didn't work out, and, to simplify, the unjustifiable war ended. We felt a part of our society, and a large part of the troops did, as well.

The generation that has been forced in great part by economic pressures to go into an unjustifiable war is not subject to draft, and largely consists of the less fortunate, the less affluent, and the less educated. Military authorities lately have begun to complain about the lowered standards that have occurred. The troops have increasingly been from the disaffected who haven't benefitted from the kind of care we of the sixties had. They were from the generation that had had the social contract violated, benefits decimated, made the fodder for corporate welfare beneficiaries who spread their Eat the Poor ethic.

What must it have been like to be a cog in that wheel? The stress levels that are occurring, as soldiers were recycled like our trash to keep up a war that no one could feel good about, have subjected ever increasing numbers to destructive mental stress. Suicide rates have soared, and increased scrutiny has led to revelations about the neglect of mental health by our military overseers.

A certain farmboy from nearby Sherman, TX, has made a tragic point; mental stress kills not just the victim, but those who are in the victims immediate circle if pushed too far.

A 2008 Army study established that the rate of soldiers reporting serious mental health problems increases with each deployment. (Russell was on his third.) By the third go-around, 27 percent of soldiers show significant signs of stress. National Guard and Reserve troops are suffering the worst, another report found.
Army suicides in 2009

According to Pentagon figures, 2008 suicides among soldiers reached 140, the most since the Army began keeping records in 1980 – surpassing even the civilian suicide rate. This grim finding, as well as mounting evidence that returning troops struggle with rising rates of depression, drug and alcohol dependency and related problems, prompted Gen. George Casey Jr., Army chief of staff, to announce this spring a new training program on combat-related stress.
(snip)
On Tuesday, the Army announced a probe into where its mental health care for soldiers is coming up short. This investigation must be given top priority – Salon.com reports that the military's 2009 suicide rate is on track to shatter last year's record – and must include listening to spouses and other family members.

Not all casualties of war are physical.

Not all casualties of war are individual, either. Our whole society has been tortured by the mindset that puts its ideology above the law, and above standards the world has arrived at over centuries of armed conflict. It's a mindset that was developed without any education in actual combat, or in resolving conflict.

The mindset that subjected this country to war has been that we are tough, and we are better able to judge for other countries what is best for them than they are, themselves. Coming into the field of the war in Iraq has been desperately disquieting to that ignorant attitude, but that wrong attitude has continued to be pushed on the soldiers we send into war.

Direct confrontation with wrong orientation has caused our troops the kind of suffering that will take them, with guidance from those schooled in mental anguish, a long time to bring into functioning systems of living.

We need to take broad control of the military industrial complex and the agonies it brings about for all of us. The psychology of combatting world difficulties with violence needs to end. It's time to start that action for mental health, and world peace, at once.

******

Thanks, Diane, for your continuing concern for the troops under the strain of unjustifiable war, badly conducted.

Neglecting the Troops

Our troops get lots of praise and attention for their service, and we hope they get just rewards. I haven't been one, so I don't know what their lives are like. I do know I have heard a few times about our troops having to go on public assistance to take care of their families. The pay must not be great. Now I discover that when they have a need and go to their own established assistance organization, their needs are not a big factor in that operation either.

There is, I find, Army Emergency Relief (AER), a charitable operation under the Army's auspices, that gets donations from the troops and interested parties. That AER is supposed to exist for the purpose of helping out in time of need. Mysteriously, there is much more reserved for the AER in savings than ever is given out in aid. An Associated Press report found some really sad facts in investigating the AER and its use by our troops.

As soldiers stream home from Iraq and Afghanistan, the biggest charity inside the U.S. military has been stockpiling tens of millions of dollars meant to help put returning fighters back on their feet, an Associated Press investigation shows.
Between 2003 and 2007 — as many military families dealt with long war deployments and increased numbers of home foreclosures — Army Emergency Relief grew into a $345 million behemoth. During those years, the charity packed away $117 million into its own reserves while spending just $64 million on direct aid, according to an AP analysis of its tax records.

Tax-exempt and legally separate from the military, AER projects a facade of independence but really operates under close Army control. The massive nonprofit — funded predominantly by troops — allows superiors to squeeze soldiers for contributions; forces struggling soldiers to repay loans — sometimes delaying transfers and promotions; and too often violates its own rules by rewarding donors, such as giving free passes from physical training, the AP found.

Founded in 1942, AER eases cash emergencies of active-duty soldiers and retirees and provides college scholarships for their families. Its emergency aid covers mortgage payments and food, car repairs, medical bills, travel to family funerals, and the like.

Instead of giving money away, though, the Army charity lent out 91 percent of its emergency aid during the period 2003-2007. For accounting purposes, the loans, dispensed interest-free, are counted as expenses only when they are not paid back.
(snip)
The Army also exercises its leverage in raising contributions from soldiers. It reaches out only to troops and veterans in annual campaigns organized by Army personnel.

For those on active duty, AER organizes appeals along the chain of command. Low-ranking personnel are typically solicited by a superior who knows them personally.

Spiegel, the AER administrator, said he’s unaware of specific violations but added: ‘‘I spent 29 years in the Army, I know how ... first sergeants operate. Some of them do strong-arm.’’

It's not an economic time when there are a lot of options, and I understand that graduates getting out of schools are getting few offers. As I recently found out, jobs that have been lined up are even falling through as graduation approaches. The military seems like one of the few options many newcomers to employment age have. Making service worthwhile might attract a lot more of those, but that doesn't seem to be an operating principle of the AER.

The effect of its stewardship on the staff of AER appears to have been to make it cherish the money, rather than the troops they're there to serve. The time for a serious overhaul of this kind of uncharitable behavior is now, and should have been sooner. The people who serve this country in our military deserve to get help, not another instance of neglect.

Army Emergency Relief isn't a holding company, and building up a big bank account should never have become its design.

Courage Comes In Several Varieties

Having never been part of the military, the awards that are given to combatants have never been part of my experience. This morning, though, I see an op-ed that makes me just sad for my country. It seems our military thinks that the only kind of suffering that requires courage is physical.

Many of the wounds of the kind of battle that involves military against civilian populations are mental affliction. The suffering of our troops involves more than physical pain and disabling. Confronted with the injustice they are required to inflict cannot help but hurt their stability, and self-esteem.

When I was in Iraq, the most common wound behind the many Purple Hearts we awarded was the "perforated eardrum," an eardrum punctured by the concussion of a nearby explosion. In the vast majority of cases, no blood was ever shed. Seldom did these Marines ever miss a day of full duty. And yet they were all awarded the coveted medal.

A year later, back at Camp Lejeune, N.C., I was making calls to the families of wounded Marines – a difficult duty even when the wounds are minor. But I noticed during that time that I never once made a call to a family about a Marine's psychological wounds. I never got a casualty report for post-traumatic stress, despite the rising number of veteran suicides. Never once.

Why, I asked myself, if a combat wound is a combat wound no matter how small, shouldn't those people suffering from the "invisible wounds" of post-traumatic stress also receive the Purple Heart? Difficulty of diagnosis is one of the central justifications the Pentagon has given, citing the concern that fakers will tarnish the medal's image. Spilt blood cannot be faked.

But this seems an unconvincing argument not to honor those who actually do suffer from post-traumatic stress. For example, the possibility of fakers has not prevented the Department of Veterans Affairs from awarding disability payments to service members who have received a diagnosis. Why should the military itself be different?

The distinction, I suspect, lies in the deep-seated attitude toward psychological wounds. It is still difficult for many members of the military to truly believe that post-traumatic stress is, in fact, an injury and not the result of a weak or dysfunctional brain. The same culture that demands tough-mindedness also encourages skepticism toward the suggestion that the violence of war can hurt the healthiest of minds.

What we require of military service should be very much the major consideration for awarding service awards. When we produce veterans wounded deeply in ways that are not physical, we should be ashamed not to honor them. Mental suffering is real, and many of us have experienced it. We need to leave our prejudices aside in evaluating what is worth our respect.

The fear of being recognized for mental suffering is a part of the affliction trauma victims are subject to, and giving them the respect they've earned would be a step toward easing that suffering.

The Latest Version of Slavery

The term is out of vogue, but it's time to end the enslavement of our troops. I wish that were as far-fetched as it sounds.

How long has it been since we had to correct the problem of Shanghai'ing - a.k.a. impressment - of wandering folks for our military services? In case you didn't study it in school, this was adopted from the British, using shady practices to entangle sailors, who were prevented from leaving before a trip was finished. It usually happened to rootless sorts, in port towns, to make them serve involuntarily. Once aboard, they could be tormented until the voyage was over. It was a practice that our early sailing firms took up, to boost their profits from shipping. It was ended 1915, by the Seaman's Act.

The National Guard of New Jersey was featured last night on Bill Moyers' Journal. They were massively 'stop lossed' which is the maladministration's version of Shanghaiing - and amounts to enslavement. These enrollees were brought into the National Guard before anyone imagined that the U.S. would start wars without grounds, and that our troops would be made to serve beyond their terms. Now they are being forced out of civilian jobs, given inadequate pay for service, and sent off to fight unreasonable and immoral wars. With a majority of U.S. citizens agreeing that the war should be ended, the enslavement of our citizens is immoral, and should be declared illegal.

As everyone knows, politics and the weather collided this week. Hurricane Gustav had Republicans ducking for cover, fearing that a repeat of the Katrina calamity would conjure bad memories, so they delayed the start of their national convention by a day.In advance of Gustav, nearly 16,000 members of the Army National Guard were sent to the Gulf Coast to ensure the public's safety. Thousands of others are ready to be deployed along the southeast seaboard watching out for two more hurricanes, Hanna and Ike.This of course, is the Guard's primary mission — to be a standing, domestic defense force that each state's governor can call on when the need arises, especially in cases of natural disaster. But since 9/11, an estimated 220,000 National Guard soldiers have been sent by the Defense Department to Iraq and Afghanistan.The Guard's absence from home has created financial and emotional hardship for these citizen soldiers and their families. It's also created a bind for state governments dependent on the Guard's personnel and equipment.

BILL MOYERS:Roy's wife Tina, however, is not ready.
TINA PARKS:Makes me mad. I'm angry. I mean at the same time, I know that in Iraq, a lot of people are suffering badly for no reason, and I, you know, consider ourselves lucky, the country we live in, and the freedom we have in this country and those poor people don't have it. (Emphasis added.)

Involuntary servitude just isn't what freedom entails, by any definition I know. The danger is not just to the National Guard, or to this country's principles. It endangers our security as well, by weakening the military.

Some contend that the reliance on the National Guard does not only endanger foreign missions, it also leaves the United States without a force able to respond to attacks and disasters on U.S. soil.

This is, as Bill Moyers has said, one of the most important elections we have ever had. There is no choice between the perpetrators of atrocities and public servants waiting to oust these criminals from high places.

Smackdown Of The Troops

The occupied White House has used emergency funding to carry on its unjustifiable war in Iraq and has not paid for the war, but charged it on taxpayers' credit. This has been a violation of its responsibility in so many ways, I won't use up this space to list them all. A major violation is the bypass of Congress' constitutional powers to manage the economy. Needless to point out, disaster is the result.

Congress under the Democrats has used that emergency funding tactic to attempt to serve the public that this executive branch despises for all but its deep pockets. Of course, the right wing is screeching over this prospect of actually doing its job. Tacked onto the emergency funding are several measures, including benefits for education for our troops.

The benefits of veterans of their wars have been cut to the bone by the war criminals, and the congressional Democrats are trying to remedy that injustice. Benefits adequate to finance their education amended into the emergency funding promise to benefit not just individuals, but the entire economy.

...thousands of veterans who, although proud of their service, are coming home from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan struggling to pay for the education they thought the military would help them obtain. The current GI Bill pays out a maximum of $1,101 per month, with most vets receiving benefits for 36 months. That's a total of $39,636. Since the average four-year public college costs more than $54,356, including room, board, fees and books, according to the College Board, there is a lot of ground to make up. Private schools, for the record, can total more than $129,000 for the full package.

The original GI Bill was passed at the end of World War II and sent millions of veterans to public and private universities on full rides. They even had their books paid for and got a monthly stipend. Many historians credit the GI Bill with building America's middle class and creating the idea of an accessible college education. "Godfather" author Mario Puzo, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, and former Presidents George H.W. Bush, Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford are among the famous veterans who paid for their education this way.

The education benefits our current military and veterans receive were created in the 1980s, under the Montgomery GI Bill, in order to promote enlistment in the military during peacetime. The discrepancy between today's era of multiple deployments and meager educational benefits, along with pressure from veterans' organizations, has inspired some lawmakers to craft new versions of the GI Bill. The most popular one could be voted on by Congress as early as Thursday (May 8), as part of the funding for the war in Iraq.

The vote has been delayed by attempts to give the war criminals everything they are misusing while cutting away any benefits to the country.

As Avedon pointed out this a.m. in her comment at the usual WaPo editorial against serving public interest,
Avedon wrote:
There's nothing wrong with having a good GI Bill and taking care of our troops if we're going to be at war.

What's wrong is being "at war" when we shouldn't be, maiming and killing other people and our own soldiers for no good reason.

If the Washington Post was serious about responsible government, it would be demanding that the executive show some responsibility, not complaining because the legislature is trying to ameliorate the executive's irresponsibility a little.

Complain if Congress fails to end the occupation, if you must. But as long as WaPo supports the occupation, you don't get to complain about Bush insisting on phony "emergency" funding and Congress trying to use it to do some good.
5/12/2008 8:22:57 AM

Like the cabal in the White House, the WaPo and other enablers will give a pass to the irresponsible use of continuing emergency funding to prevent debate on their war. Meanwhile, the use of that tactic actually to do this country some good gets an attempted smackdown, and the cretin in chief promises to veto any actual benefits. In addition to educational benefits for our troops, these would include extension of unemployment benefits during the economic crisis the war and related expenses has caused.

Another commenter, one of WaPo's loyal cadre of actually concerned and informed readers trying to bring reportage back to the paper, gave this elementary information the editors ignored:

hope77 wrote:
The GI Bill, as applied after World War II, returned $8 for every $1 spent....this represented higher taxable income for the college graduate soldier, not to mention a higher quality of life and the increased possibility that that soldier's children would also be educated. It was a much better investment than this war has turned out to be, and, if fully funded, will probably turn out to be the only positive outcome of this war.

While encouraging citizens to improve their status to increase their incomes, the occupied White House turns away from any actual means to do that. The great economy of earlier years was greatly enhanced by GI benefits, and I am proud to have worked on the Cold War GI bill that gave educational access to our Vietnam soldiers. With an administration that actually respects and serves its citizens, this country can pull out of the disaster this administration has created.

Education has been devalued along with the public and its interests. While control is in the hands of these bottom liners, a.k.a. bottom feeders, the economy will continue to deteriorate for everyone.

A return to responsible government - of the people, by the people and for the people - is desperately needed. When we elect actual public servants to high office, we can restore the economic health of the U.S.

\***************************************************

My comment at WaPo this a.m.:

jocabel wrote:
The emergency funding method of carrying on the war which the occupied White House instituted is objectionable indeed. It is budget busting as well as being an avoidance of the executive branch's responsibility to provide sound government and sound finances. Using the emergency ruse as a vehicle to pass needed measures like veterans' education benefits has been pushed onto the legislative branch by the irresponsibility and truculence of the executive branch. If it is to serve the public, which is being held hostage to the war, the congress will have to use what means it can. Their attempts to carry out their responsibility are praiseworthy. WaaPo criticizes the wrong branch, as usual.
5/12/2008 6:35:03 AM

Poetry

I have a Rendezvous with Death
by Alan Seeger

I have a rendezvous with Death
At some disputed barricade,
When Spring comes back with rustling shade
And apple-blossoms fill the air
I have a rendezvous with Death
When Spring brings back blue days and fair.

It may be he shall take my hand
And lead me into his dark land
And close my eyes and quench my breath
It may be I shall pass him still.
I have a rendezvous with Death
On some scarred slope of battered hill,
When Spring comes round again this year
And the first meadow-flowers appear.

God knows 'twere better to be deep
Pillowed in silk and scented down,
Where Love throbs out in blissful sleep,
Pulse nigh to pulse, and breath to breath,
Where hushed awakenings are dear...
But I've a rendezvous with Death
At midnight in some flaming town,
When Spring trips north again this year,
And I to my pledged word am true,
I shall not fail that rendezvous.

I have a Rendezvous with Death
by Alan Seeger

Trying to Put the U.S. Beyond Repair

First, a tribute to Molly Ivins, lost to us a year ago today. July of 2006 she wrote, "The Suicide of Capitalism" for the Texas Observer:

It seems to me that we’ve seen enough evidence over the years that the capitalist system is not going to be destroyed by an outside challenger like communism—it will be destroyed by its own internal greed. Greed is the greatest danger as we develop an increasingly winner-take-all system. And voices like The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page encourage this mentality by insisting that any form of regulation is bad. But for whom?

It is so discouraging to watch this country become less and less fair—“justice for all” seems like an embarrassingly archaic tag. Republicans have rigged the “lottery of life” in this country in ways we don’t even know about yet. The new bankruptcy law is unfair, and the new college loan rules are worse. The system has been stacked so that large corporations have an inside track over small businesses in getting government contracts. We won’t see the full consequences of this mean and careless legislation for years, but it’s starting to affect us already.

Look around you, did she call it or what? And her bete noire, w, is well on then way to destroying a lot more than the economy.

(Thanks to racymind.wordpress for reminding me of the date in Molly Ivins adoration.)
*********************************************************



Can we last out the next 354 days - which seems to be just enough time for the occupied White House to screw up everything so badly in addition to its failures of the past 7 years - that no successor will be able to save this country from disaster?

In Afghanistan, it seems we're after the only measures that have proven up to keeping our justifiable war from failure.

Several groups of the U.S. foreign policy establishment have released reports calling for major changes in strategy on Afghanistan (I am a member of the Afghanistan Study Group, the first mentioned). From a media advisory (links added):

Three independent reports have concluded this month that a major new effort is needed to succeed in Afghanistan. These reports – by the Afghanistan Study Group, established by the Center for the Study of the Presidency following the Iraq Study Group; the Strategic Advisors Group of the Atlantic Council of the United States; and the National Defense University – concur that without prompt actions by the U.S. and its allies, the mission in Afghanistan may fail – causing severe consequences to U.S. strategic interests worldwide, including the war on terrorism and the future of NATO. The U.S. cannot afford to let Afghanistan continue to be the neglected, or forgotten, war.
(snip)
Besides the well-known dispute over aerial poppy eradication and eradication in areas where farmers have no alternative livelihoods (but are said to be "greedy and corrupt"), the US is now pressing the Afghan government to use the Afghan National Army to provide security for eradication operations. Sources in the Afghan government who do not wish to be named state that this will make the ANA fight the people and destroy its morale. Morale is already falling, since mullahs who conduct funeral services for fallen ANA soldiers risk assassination. But the Bush administration is apparently determined to wreck its one partial success story in Afghanistan before leaving office.

Of course, the possibility of making use of Afghanistan's uniquely suitable conditions for growing poppies to give that resource to painkiller manufacturers can't be brought into play by the administration, as it interferes with their posture with the rightwingers who have the hots for drug eradication programs.

It's not just in Afghanistan that the surge is on to make an impossible situation for the next White House resident.

George W. Bush can lap the Middle East, the planet, the solar system and America's Iraq is still never going to get up and walk away. Not even in 2018 or 2028. Don't forget, it's a corpse. (In fact, unlike the politicians and the media, recent opinion polls show that the American people generally have not forgotten this.)

In the meantime, the military in Iraq is preparing for something other than a simple victory lap, just in case the President's surge luck doesn't quite extend to 2009. Former brigadier general and Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Middle Eastern Affairs Mark Kimmitt, for instance, recently suggested that there was "only a mild chance" that surge security gains would prove permanent: "[I]f I had to put a number to it, maybe it's three in 10, maybe it's 50-50, if we play our cards right."
(snip)
So, here's a simple reality check: The whole discussion of, and argument about, "success" in Iraq is, in fact, obscene. Given what has already happened to that country—and will continue to happen as long as the U.S. remains an occupying power there—the very category of "success" is an obscenity. If violence actually does stay down there, that may be a modest godsend for Iraqis, but it can hardly be considered a sign of American "success."

Every now and then, history comes in handy. In a previous moment, when the neocons and their allied pundits were feeling particularly triumphant, they began touting Bush's America as the planet's new Rome (only more so). That talk evaporated once Iraq went into full-scale insurgency mode (and Afghanistan followed). But perhaps Rome does remain a touchstone of a sort for administration Iraqi policies.

What comes to mind is the Roman historian Tacitus' description of the Roman way of war. He put his version of it into the mouth of Calgacus, a British chieftain who opposed the Romans, and it went, in part, like this:

"They have plundered the world, stripping naked the land in their hunger, they loot even the ocean: they are driven by greed, if their enemy be rich; by ambition, if poor; neither the wealth of the east nor the west can satisfy them: they are the only people who behold wealth and indigence with equal passion to dominate. They ravage, they slaughter, they seize by false pretenses, and all of this they hail as the construction of empire. And when in their wake nothing remains but a desert, they call that peace."

Folks, it's obscene. We're doing victory laps around, and dancing upon, a corpse. (Emphasis added.)

Again the war criminals are showing that they cannot wrap their minds around concepts like peace and prosperity because those great goals of political gains get in the way. The troops they extol they inflict with unimaginable trauma and deny the bare benefits of economic support like the GI Bill and the 'stimulus' package.

The damage inflicted on this country pales in comparison with that the war criminals have inflicted on Iraq and Afghanistan, and are trying to extend to Iran. It is a horrible burden that the next President will have to bear. The sooner it begins, the better for us all.

To take a leaf from Diane's book; 354 days to go.

Labor Day

Bloodsuckers.

In half an hour a president who has never one a real day's work, whose father had friends who gave him money and positions, who is visiting in Iraq with soldiers who are doing a job he's never done, will address the nation.

This is sad and revolting. I will say once again that the way the cretin in chief treats this country is as a 'cash cow' to drain for his interests. He didn't just run his own oil companies into the ground, he drained them of assets, which depived his employees of their incomes. This is what is being done to this country.

We need to take this country back from the war criminals.

You are Paying to Kill our Troops

While the Holy Land Foundation is being prosecuted on suspicion of funding terrorism, the U.S. is giving money directly to the insurgents in Iraq. Yes, that's what I said. The war criminal that is claiming to support the troops is supplying its killers.

Anyone wanting to fund the insurgency? Your tax dollars are right now doing just that. In the traditional way of doing business, contractors giving security to troops and vendors in Iraq have to pay the insurgency to let it operate. The insurgents also accept guns and bombs.

Forget accusations that Iran is supplying those that are shedding our soldiers' blood. We're giving it direct.

Iraq's deadly insurgent groups have financed their war against U.S. troops in part with hundreds of thousands of dollars in U.S. rebuilding funds that they have extorted from Iraqi contractors in Anbar province, Iraqi contractors and politicians say.

The payments, in return for the insurgents' allowing supplies to move and construction work to begin, have taken place since the earliest projects in 2003, they say.

The contractors and politicians warned that a fresh round of rebuilding spurred by the U.S. military's recent alliance with some Anbar tribes – 200 new projects are scheduled – provides another opportunity for militant groups such as al-Qaeda in Iraq to siphon off more U.S. money.

"The violence in Iraq has developed a political economy of its own that sustains it and keeps some of these terrorist groups afloat," said Iraq's deputy prime minister, Barham Saleh.

The U.S. Embassy in Baghdad declined to provide anyone to discuss the allegations. An embassy spokesman, Noah Miller, said in an e-mailed statement that "in terms of contracting practices, we have checks and balances in our contract awarding system to prevent any irregularities from occurring. Each contracted company is responsible for providing security for the project."

Providing that security is the source of the extortion, Iraqi contractors say. A U.S. company with a reconstruction contract hires an Iraqi subcontractor to haul supplies along insurgent-ridden roads. The Iraqi contractor sets his price at up to four times the going rate because he'll be forced to give 50 percent or more to gun-toting insurgents who demand cash payments in exchange for the supply convoys' safe passage.
(snip)
One Iraqi contractor who is working on a U.S.-funded rebuilding project in the provincial capital of Ramadi said he faced two choices when he wanted to bring in a crane, heavy machinery and workers from Baghdad: either hire a private security company to escort the supplies for up to $6,000 a truck or pay off locals with insurgent connections.

He chose the latter and got $120,000 for a U.S. contract he estimates to be worth no more than $20,000. The contractor asked that specific details of the project not be disclosed for fear he'll be identified and lose the job.

"Insurgents control the roads," he said. "Americans don't control the roads – and everything from Syria and Jordan goes through there."(Emphasis added.)

There is absolutely no excuse for continuing operations that pay for the bombs and bullets to kill our own troops. If anyone had an ounce of sense, they'd have all come home when no WMD's were found. With half an ounce of sense, they'd have come home after Saddam Hussein's capture.

There isn't enough sense in this whole administration even to get an incompetent Attorney General to resign, we had to throw out enough GoPervs to get investigations started. Even then, it took too long to see the writing on the wall. These cretins don't think, they can only react. Let's give them lots and lots to react to.

Justice Stacked Against the Seamen

Our troops are being tossed out in many ways. I came across accounts of two today.

The misuse of our system of justice for servicemen seems to have been mauled very badly. Now, it seems that those who were appointed to judge Coast Guard cases were told what justice to dispense. It was not what usually is called Justice.

Two retired U.S. Coast Guard judges are expected to tell a congressional oversight panel today that the agency's administrative court system is biased against civilian defendants.

Jeffie J. Massey, who retired as an administrative law judge in March and said in a sworn statement days later that she was pressured to rule for the agency, will testify before the Coast Guard subcommittee of the House Transportation Committee.

Also scheduled is a former judge, Rosemary Denson, whose job was eliminated 10 years ago by Coast Guard officials who complained that she was taking too long handling difficult cases.

A third retired judge, Peter A. Fitzpatrick, is also expected to testify. He could not be reached for comment.

The committee called the hearing to explore claims, detailed last month by The Sun, that the Coast Guard's administrative court system is stacked against the tugboat pilots, charter boat captains and other mariners who appear before it.

The courts, which handle charges of drug use, misconduct or negligence brought by the Coast Guard, can revoke the credentials a civilian mariner needs to work on the water.

Massey said her testimony will echo her sworn statement, in which she said Chief Judge Joseph N. Ingolia told her to always rule for the Coast Guard no matter the evidence. Massey also said she overheard another judge voice fear for his job if he ruled in a mariner's favor.

"I'll tell the truth to anyone who wants to listen," she said.

Where did all that money come from, that we're tossing into the quagmire called the Iraq War? Out of the pockets, and sometimes the skin, of our servicepeople. In November, it was our contractors, paid out of Americans' pockets, that left four servicement stranded, taken hostage. The contractors blame the servicemen. This is outrage number two from reading the news recently.

...Crescent violated U.S. military regulations while being paid millions of dollars to support the U.S.-led mission in Iraq. The company routinely sacrificed safety to cut costs. On the day of the kidnappings, just seven Crescent guards protected the immense convoy as it drove through southern Iraq, a force that security experts described as inadequate to fend off a major attack.

Former senior managers with Crescent denied any wrongdoing and said the guards who were seized had been well equipped and simply failed to thwart the kidnappers.

"We pretty much catered to them. We spoiled them," said Scott Schneider, the company's former director of security.

The atrocities grow ever larger, and ever more impossible to stomach. The systems have been stacked against our troops, yes, those much lauded heroic figures that we are setting up as targets for anyone to shoot at who gets in range. What are we doing for our troops? and the American public? Lying to them.

Lies, Outrageous Lies, and Constant Lies

It's being too kind to denounce the cretin in chief for having no grasp on reality. What he constantly speaks is lies, intentional and idiotic, knowing that having a grasp on the highest office in this country makes him safe from much refutation.

Today, he wanted to accuse the Democrats of working against the troops, although we are actually working against him and for the troops. Forget that everyone listening knows he's telling a lie, and that he vetoes measures meant to help the troops. He's the deciderer liar.

President Bush, ratcheting up a fight with Congress over Iraq, accused Democrats on Friday of conducting a political debate on the war while delaying action on money to upgrade equipment and give troops a pay raise.

"It is time to rise above partisanship, stand behind our troops in the field, and give them everything they need to succeed," Bush said in the Rose Garden after meeting with veterans and military families.

Bush spoke two days after Senate Republicans thwarted a Democratic proposal to pull out troops from Iraq. Bush said that instead of approving money for the war, "the Democratic leaders chose to have a political debate on a precipitous withdrawal of our troops from Iraq."

Despite Bush's suggestion that the bill is a must-pass measure that would pay for critical war programs, the legislation is not an appropriations bill that feeds military spending accounts. Called the defense authorization bill, the legislation is more a policy-type measure used by Congress to influence the management of major defense programs, set goals and guide the 2008 military spending bill.

The bill is needed, however, to authorize military pay raises. Congress typically does not finish the bill before fall, and the pay raises are applied retroactively.(Emphasis added)

In other words, Mr. Reporter, it's a lie. Like calling the Democrats obstructionist when GoPerverts are obstructing everything they can in Congress, even accepting the record of the previous day's proceedings. Their role is petty criminality. The C-i-C is committing major criminal behavior. The Executive Liar is determined to keep the U.S.'s interests from being represented.

This is growing into what may well necessitate Speaker Pelosi's putting impeachment back on the table. I admit I prefer war crimes be charged against the entire executive branch, to be brought at Nuremberg or the International Criminal Court. However, with Congress being charged with various false accusations and defied when it brings legal charges against the executive branch's crimes, there may well be no other course. Thanks again, all of you out there putting up signs that say "IMPEACH".

Supporting the Troops

Hello, soldiers. This is to let our troops know that if they want to post something they're welcome here. Anyway, since the DOD has decided they can't let the troops use the internet freely, I think it's up to us here and at other sites to tell them, they're welcome to use this site.

Soldiers serving overseas will lose some of their online links to friends and loved ones back home under a Department of Defense policy that a high-ranking Army official said would take effect Monday.

The Defense Department will begin blocking access "worldwide" to YouTube, MySpace and 11 other popular Web sites on its computers and networks, according to a memo sent Friday by Gen. B.B. Bell, the U.S. Forces Korea commander.

The policy is being implemented to protect information and reduce drag on the department's networks, according to Bell.

"This recreational traffic impacts our official DoD network and bandwidth ability, while posing a significant operational security challenge," the memo said.

The armed services have long barred members of the military from sharing information that could jeopardize their missions or safety, whether electronically or by other means.

The new policy is different because it creates a blanket ban on several sites used by military personnel to exchange messages, pictures, video and audio with family and friends.

Members of the military can still access the sites on their own computers and networks, but Defense Department computers and networks are the only ones available to many soldiers and sailors in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Iraqi insurgents or their supporters have been posting videos on YouTube at least since last fall. The Army recently began posting videos on YouTube showing soldiers defeating insurgents and befriending Iraqis.

But the new rules mean many military personnel won't be able to watch those achievements — at least not on military computers.

If the restrictions are intended to prevent soldiers from giving or receiving bad news, they could also prevent them from providing positive reports from the field, said Noah Shachtman, who runs a national security blog for Wired Magazine.

"This is as much an information war as it is bombs and bullets," he said. "And they are muzzling their best voices."

The sites covered by the ban are the video-sharing sites YouTube, Metacafe, IFilm, StupidVideos, and FileCabi, the social networking sites MySpace, BlackPlanet and Hi5, music sites Pandora, MTV, and 1.fm, and live365, and the photo-sharing site Photobucket.

Several companies have instituted similar bans, saying recreational sites drain productivity.

___

Army memo:

http://tinyurl.com/2x2qka

If you have something you want to share, I think serving in the military in a completely useless war and risking your life every day gives you some rights. Welcome. Please stop in and visit.

Veterans Affairs Takes Funds From Troops

Not long ago hearings turned up huge pay benefits at the Agriculture Department offsetting cutbacks in services such as food safety inspection.

In more adventures with the Incompetence Pays motif, now we have the Veterans (Remember Support The Troops?) Affairs maladministrators scooping up the green stuff. And it isn't just mold, it's your tax dollars at play, not work.

Months after a politically embarrassing $1 billion shortfall that put veterans' health care in peril, Veterans Affairs officials involved in the foul-up got hefty bonuses ranging up to $33,000.

The list of bonuses to senior career officials at the Veterans Affairs Department in 2006, obtained by The Associated Press, documents a generous package of more than $3.8 million in payments by a financially strapped agency straining to help care for thousands of injured veterans returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Among those receiving payments were a deputy assistant secretary and several regional directors who crafted the VA's flawed budget for 2005 based on misleading accounting. They received performance payments up to $33,000 each, a figure equal to about 20 percent of their annual salaries.

Also receiving a top bonus was the deputy undersecretary for benefits, who helps manage a disability claims system that has a backlog of cases and delays averaging 177 days in getting benefits to injured veterans.

This morning I was chatting with a vet who has had to appeal his requalification for disability downwards three times now, with all his medical assistants backing his claim. The Walter Reed review group included in its recommendations that the system for rating incapacity be looked at hard, in view of all the complaints that it shorted veterans on their disability ratings sheerly to save money at their expense.

This cabal is a disgrace. They are undermining our troops, and making this country poorer to feed at the trough that they see when they talk about 'government'.

Shooting Gallery War

That so-called liberal media is making trouble again. You'd think they'd just swallow whole the maladministration's line and report that magically peace has broken out, and schools are being built, in Iraq. They just keep stumbling into facts, which have a liberal bias.

Watching the report yesterday of Martha Raddatz about the book she has just published, "The Long Road Home" (on CSpan) I saw a picture she had managed to find, of the patrol that went out into Sadr City. The soldiers rode in the back of essentially a pickup truck, open to fire from beside and above. Several were killed. They were sitting ducks.

I read the book review in today's NYTimes;

Sometimes the level of detail is astonishing, as when she writes that sewage in the streets was so deep it would splash into the turret of a Humvee, or when a man watches his own knuckle explode. The soldiers’ treatment of Iraqi children is particularly tough: When a kid shouting “Mister! Mister!” runs beside an American truck with a bomb in a Coke can, the soldiers’ compassion is beyond its breaking point. They shoot to kill.

Ms. Raddatz concludes that one platoon’s position of being “ambushed, unprepared, bloodied, and alone” is now our nation’s. And she, like the Woodruffs, delivers searingly vivid evidence of the toll our soldiers pay.

[emphasis added]

Some of those dying soldiers must have realized that they were nothing but targets in a shooting gallery, the victims of their country's abysmal carelessness. They were underequipped and the planning totally insane. In a light open truck in the middle of a large open space, surrounded by enemy with high-powered rifles, they died. They should never have been put in that position. The event came to be called Black Sunday, April 4, 2004, the day Cindy Sheehan lost her son.

Most of those vehicles turned out to be disastrously vulnerable, since it had been thought that bringing tanks into Baghdad would undermine the concept of friendly peacekeeping.

Six years into the war, the Gang That Can't Shoot Straight is finally starting to use diplomacy instead of throwing away soldiers' lives. Hopefully the war criminals have learned a little something about the combat they have never experienced, themselves. If they can't show better sense in the table version of this war of theirs than they have in the combat version, we're not going to get out of it any time soon.

No wonder it's being called The Long War.