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One year ago today, when the body count of US dead in the invasion and occupation of Iraq was less than than 200, Stan Goff, a retired career military man, published this piece online. The night before, Stan had seen President Bush issue his notorious macho challenge to the Iraqi armed resistance— "Bring 'em on!"

Stan's 739 simple words ricocheted around the Internet instantly. The enormous outpouring of responses, especially from Viet Nam veterans and other vets and from those with loved ones in Iraq or headed there, became the spark that triggered the creation of the Bring Them Home Now! campaign.

We reprint this article today, to remind people of how long a journey the last year has been, and how far we have come in opposing this unjust and unjustifiable occupation. A year ago, some questioned Stan's closing words: "We are losing this war." Today even serving Generals in theater admit it.

Today, as on July 3, 2003, there is only one answer: Bring Them Home NOW!

"Bring 'Em On?"
A Former Special Forces Soldier Responds to Bush's Invitation for Iraqis to Attack US Troops
By Stan Goff
Counterpunch, Thursday July 3rd, 2003

In 1970, when I arrived at my unit, Company A, 4th Battalion/503rd Infantry, 173rd Airborne Brigade, in what was then the Republic of Vietnam, I was charged up for a fight. I believed that if we didn't stop the communists in Vietnam, we'd eventually be fighting this global conspiracy in the streets of Hot Springs, Arkansas. I'd been toughened by Basic Training, Infantry Training and Parachute Training, taught how to use my weapons and equipment, and I was confident in my ability to vanquish the skinny unter-menschen. So I was dismayed when one of my new colleagues—a veteran who'd been there ten months—told me, "We are losing this war."

Not only that, he said, if I wanted to survive for my one year there, I had to understand one very basic thing. All Vietnamese were the enemy, and for us, the grunts on the ground, this was a race war. Within one month, it was apparent that everything he told me was true, and that every reason that was being given to the American public for the war was not true.

We had a battalion commander whom I never saw. He would fly over in a Loach helicopter and give cavalier instructions to do things like "take your unit 13 kilometers to the north." In the Central Highlands, 13 kilometers is something we had to hack out with machetes, in 98-degree heat, carrying sometimes 90 pounds over our body weights, over steep, slippery terrain. The battalion commander never picked up a machete as far as we knew, and after these directives he'd fly back to an air-conditioned headquarters in LZ English near Bong-son. We often fantasized together about shooting his helicopter down as a way of relieving our deep resentment against this faceless, starched and spit-shined despot.

Yesterday, when I read that US Commander-in-Chief George W. Bush, in a moment of blustering arm-chair machismo, sent a message to the 'non-existent' Iraqi guerrillas to "bring 'em on," the first image in my mind was a 20-year-old soldier in an ever-more-fragile marriage, who'd been away from home for 8 months. He participated in the initial invasion, and was told he'd be home for the 4th of July. He has a newfound familiarity with corpses, and everything he thought he knew last year is now under revision. He is sent out into the streets of Fallujah (or some other city), where he has already been shot at once or twice with automatic weapons or an RPG, and his nerves are raw. He is wearing Kevlar and ceramic body armor, a Kevlar helmet, a load carrying harness with ammunition, grenades, flex-cuffs, first-aid gear, water, and assorted other paraphernalia. His weapon weighs seven pounds, ten with a double magazine. His boots are bloused, and his long-sleeve shirt is buttoned at the wrist. It is between 100-110 degrees Fahrenheit at midday. He's been eating MRE's three times a day, when he has an appetite in this heat, and even his urine is beginning to smell like preservatives. Mosquitoes and sand flies plague him in the evenings, and he probably pulls a guard shift every night, never sleeping straight through. He and his comrades are beginning to get on each others' nerves. The rumors of 'going-home, not-going-home' are keeping him on an emotional roller coaster. Directives from on high are contradictory, confusing, and often stupid. The whole population seems hostile to him and he is developing a deep animosity for Iraq and all its people—as well as for official narratives.

This is the lad who will hear from someone that George W. Bush, dressed in a suit with a belly full of rich food, just hurled a manly taunt from a 72-degree studio at the 'non-existent' Iraqi resistance.

This de facto president is finally seeing his poll numbers fall. Even chauvinist paranoia has a half-life, it seems. His legitimacy is being eroded as even the mainstream press has discovered now that the pretext for the war was a lie. It may have been control over the oil, after all. Anti-war forces are regrouping as an anti-occupation movement. Now, exercising his one true talent—blundering—George W. Bush has begun the improbable process of alienating the very troops upon whom he depends to carry out the neo-con ambition of restructuring the world by arms.

Somewhere in Balad, or Fallujah, or Baghdad, there is a soldier telling a new replacement, "We are losing this war."

posted 03 july 2004

Jeremy Hinzman, Hero

by Lou Plummer

In January, a paratrooper from the Army's 82nd Airborne Division, Jeremy Hinzman, loaded his wife, their son and a few possessions into their small car and drove from Ft. Bragg to Toronto, Canada. In a journey reminiscent of one taken by another generation of soldiers, Jeremy deserted, committing a felony punishable by death to avoid serving in a controversial war.

I'd known him since he arrived from advanced infantry training, which he completed in the same place I had years ago, Ft. Benning, GA. We met in an unlikely place, Quaker House in Fayetteville, NC. I was there to attend a meeting of an anti-death penalty group and Jeremy was there to talk to the director, Chuck Fager,  who counsels soldiers on discharge issues.

When I left active duty in 1989 , I went to work in a North Carolina penitentiary. It took years for me to realize that the racism endemic to the prison was something I could not tolerate. When I did, I was able to quit and walk away from that job.

It didn't take Jeremy quite so long to realize that he was participating in something that was wrong. At Ft. Benning, instructors led a chant during bayonet training "What makes the grass grow?"

His fellow trainees hollered, "Blood, blood, blood"  and Jeremy started to question his enlistment decision. There aren't many places in American society where it's OK to scream one's bloodlust. Some people willingly train to kill for their country. Others realize they can't. That's why the US military has a conscientious objector discharge program. The all-volunteer military stops being all volunteer the day that a person enlists. Even the Pentagon realizes that people can change.

After spending a few months training with his unit at Ft. Bragg Jeremy filed a conscientious objector application. He hadn't been a slacker while contemplating this decision. He'd been awarded the highly coveted expert infantry badge, worn only by those who master dozens of tasks involving deadly military skills. He's aced parts of the Army physical fitness test and was admired by his superiors for his work ethic.

After receiving his application, the Army removed him from training and assigned him duty as a guard at the gates of Ft. Bragg, checking IDs to keep terrorists from invading the home of the Airborne Infantry. Yet when his unit received orders to deploy to Afghanistan, Jeremy was ordered to go with them. His superiors claimed they had no record of his CO application.

Jeremy deployed and while on a clerical detail discovered his application in, of all places, his personnel record. A hearing was convened and after Jeremy explained that, in the event of an attack he would defend his friends in the unit in which he's served for two years, his application was denied. The Army wouldn't discharge him.

When he returned from Afghanistan, I saw him often. We marched against the war in a demonstration at the state capitol.  We attended meetings of a local grassroots peace group. Jeremy never used his unique position to generate attention. He participated as a believer in peace, not as a novelty act from the 82nd Airborne.

We talked about computers and cycling, as well the war and the occupation. I watched his son grow.  When his unit received orders for Iraq, only five months after returning from Afghanistan, I was saddened beyond words. While Donald Rumsfeld held press conferences proclaiming that the soldiers he professes to support would receive real breaks between deployments, the people in military communities like the one I live in saw the real truth as we watched our friends prepare to depart to yet another combat zone.

By necessity, Jeremy planned his move to Canada secretly. Rather than laying low and avoiding the spotlight once he arrived, however, he decided to speak out for the first time, willingly drawing attention to his decision.  To those who know him, he isn't a showboat or a weakling who couldn't hack the rigors of the infantry. I know men who've served in Iraq and I admire them. I admire Jeremy Hinzman as well. He may not be a typical military hero, but he's a hero nonetheless.

posted 11 june 2004

How Reserve and Guard Troops and Families Got the Shaft Last Year, Thanks to Rumsfeld's "Wishful Thinking"

by Dennis O'Neil

When journalist Seymour Hersh broke the horrifying story of torture in Abu Ghraib prison in the New Yorker magazine less than two weeks ago, it started an avalanche that hasn't stopped yet. His story was accompanied by some of the now notorious photos from inside the prison. CBS News, which had been sitting on those pictures for three full weeks at the request of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had to break the cover-up or risk losing their television scoop. The viciousness and incompetence of the Bush administration have been on public display daily ever since.

But while the world's attention was riveted to the unfolding scandal, few people noticed a very telling paragraph in Hersh's follow-up article in the New Yorker.The story there was a reminder of the rush and heartache many families experienced last summer and fall as Guard and Reserve units were called up and processed into active duty status with almost no notice whatsoever.

Hersh was looking at how responsibility for the torture could be tracked directly up the chain of command. One factor he cited was the inability of Rumsfeld and his crew to deal with anything that doesn't go the way their fairy-tale plans predicted:

"Secrecy and wishful thinking, the Pentagon official said, are defining characteristics of Rumsfeld's Pentagon, and shaped its response to the reports from Abu Ghraib. "They always want to delay the release of bad news-in the hope that something good will break," he said. The habit of procrastination in the face of bad news led to disconnects between Rumsfeld and the Army staff officers who were assigned to planning for troop requirements in Iraq. A year ago, the Pentagon official told me, when it became clear that the Army would have to call up more reserve units to deal with the insurgency, "we had call-up orders that languished for thirty or forty days in the office of the Secretary of Defense." Rumsfeld's staff always seemed to be waiting for something to turn up-for the problem to take care of itself, without any additional troops. The official explained, "They were hoping that they wouldn't have to make a decision." The delay meant that soldiers in some units about to be deployed had only a few days to prepare wills and deal with other family and financial issues."

Think about it. These are men and women who been serving in Iraq for over a year now, these are men and women who have died in Iraq. Not only would they have had time to straighten out their personal affairs, but they would have been able to spend planned time with their loved ones and their friends before heading off into this unjust and unjustifiable occupation. And why didn't they get the opportunity? Because their unit's paperwork sat on a big desktop in the Pentagon for five or six weeks while some paper-pushers with big titles were playing happy-face and trying to hide the reality of the war.

Have things improved? There seems to be more advance notice these days to Guard and Reserve units about impending deployment. But the 120 day extensions in theater have been handled even worse than last year's call-ups were. Bring Them Home Now! and Military Families Speak Out received email after email telling of troops who had left Iraq and even cleared customs in Kuwait, when their c.o. showed up and turned them smack around.

Have things improved? Just look how this is playing out on a larger scale.This war is lost. Even some top generals are saying as much. But the Bush/Rumsfeld crew go right on pretending everything is dandy and hoping that the Lone Ranger (in the form of the UN) will show up and rescue them. How many more troops (and how many more Iraqis) will this "secrecy and wishful thinking" kill before the obvious decisons are taken? Bring Them Home Now!

posted 19 may 2004

Get to the Bottom of Prison Torture? No. Get to the Top of It!

by Lou Plummer

One Friday when I was in my early twenties, I took off my camouflage fatigues for the last time. The following Monday I reported to the best civilian job I could get. I was given a new uniform, a can of mace, a set of handcuffs and the keys to a cellblock at a state prison in North Carolina. Although I was no longer in the infantry, my boss was still a sergeant and his boss was still a lieutenant. The paramilitary replaced the military but there was still an enemy and a mission. I no longer trained to kill Central-American communists. Instead, every day, I faced a prison population that was nearly eighty percent African-American in a state with a population that is nearly eighty percent white.

It was my intention to treat the inmates I was charged with supervising in much the same way I had been treated as a junior enlisted soldier in places like Ft. Benning, GA and Ft. Hood, TX. I had been belittled and dehumanized in the name of discipline. I intended to use the same tactics to control the criminal scum I was assigned to manage.

I was quickly disabused of that notion by more seasoned guards, and surprisingly, by inmates who, SHOCK! GASP!, weren't mindless crack addicted drones. I was reminded that I'd volunteered to be in the military and that none of the prisoners on C-Block had signed a contract assigning them to their current surroundings. It wasn't a matter of coddling anyone. It was a pragmatic approach to effectively managing other human beings in a high pressure situation.

I also quickly learned that the management of the prison where I worked was intensely interested in keeping their jobs. They didn't want to rehabilitate anyone. They didn't want to heal anyone's inner child. They didn't want to cure anyone's psychological disorders. They only wanted to continue to operate their little fiefdom as far from public scrutiny as possible. They weren't even especially interested in getting promoted. Self-preservation was their goal.

It appears as though that model is not the one used at Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad. The management of that institution is intensely interested in more than just self-preservation. They've been presented with a unique opportunity to take advantage of a hellish situation to advance themselves in ways they never dreamed possible. They have an almost unlimited supply of evildoers from whom information must be extracted so that they can be BROUGHT TO JUSTICE! And, hey, if a few higher-ups can make their bones at the same time, that's just icing on the cake.

To accomplish this noble mission, the officers and administrators of Abu Ghraib have a contingent of young soldiers much like I once was. These young men and women are products of a military that gave them a one-hour class on the Geneva Convention during their first month in the military. They have been trained and trained and drilled into mind-numbing unquestioning obedience ever since that moment. Few of them have the slightest idea of how to refuse an unlawful order, much less of how to report a war crime.

Just as I didn't question my place in a prison system that was blatantly racist, these soldiers place undeserved trust in the system, in their superiors and in the righteousness of their cause. Untold millions of dollars and hours of clandestine research have gone into studies on the best ways to extract information from human sources. The Central Intelligence Agency has been repeatedly sanctioned for offenses so horrendous that recounting them reminds us of bad spy novels: LSD experiments, assassination programs, and exploding cigars.

Is anyone really surprised that in defending themselves, the working class scapegoats of this whole horrible situation are pointing the finger at their superiors, at OGAs (Other Government Agencies) and at that new phenomena in the out-sourced military of the 21st century - civilian contactors (i.e., mercenary corporations)?

These soldiers, many of whom have been conditioned to accept racism and human degradation by working in US prisons are as much to blame for the outrages in Iraq as I was to blame for the conditions of the prison I worked in. All of us participated in a state-sanctioned evil. There is an attitude in our country that trains us to accept the fate of those who we are told are less deserving than ourselves. It isn't the little people on the bottom who can be condemned for designing the system. It is the self-serving masterminds at the top who should bear that burden.

President Bush says that he intends to get to the bottom of this situation. I suggest that he forgo that plan. He should instead get to the top of it.

posted 15 may 2004

THE ROLE
Another Open Letter to the Troops in Iraq

from Stan Goff

In 1994, I was running an A-Detachment in 3rd Special Forces, ODA-354 to be precise, a team that specialized in free-fall parachute infiltration and special (strategic) reconnaissance. 3rd Special Forces Group's area of operation encompassed sub-Saharan Africa and the Caribbean, and our team was specifically designated for the Dominican Republic and Haiti. So we had two language requirements on the team, Spanish and French (even though most Haitians actually speak Haitian Kreyol).

I had a communications sergeant on my team named Ali Tehrani. His father was an expatriate Iranian who'd married a German, and Ali had been raised in extremely comfortable circumstances in Europe, where his father and the society around him pushed him to fluency in English, German, Spanish, and French. Ali also spoke decent Italian. He was the most fluent French-speaker on the battalion, and a year before we were sent to Haiti with the 1994 invasion, Ali had been sent to the camps constructed by the United States military in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for the purpose of detaining tens of thousands of Haitians who were trying to escape the brutal repression and grinding poverty of Haiti in ramshackle boats. Ali was needed there because of his language fluency.

Ali was typical of many of the "non-white" members of Special Forces in two respects. He was demonstrably patriotic - compelled, it seemed, to prove his devotion to the American security state - and he adopted the prevailing attitude within much of Special Operations of Negrophobia - a kind of institutional disdain for Black troops that served to bloc other "non-whites" with whites in SF. It's a peculiar mechanism of white supremacy where there is not a master-race mentality so much as a deficient-race ideology from which all others could self-exclude. This - along with an anabolic version of masculinity - served as one form of social glue in SF culture, though there were a few exceptions.

Ali's Negrophobia wasn't virulent like that I had witnessed in other SF troops. In fact, he was willing to grant exceptions among individual Black soldiers fairly easily. It was more part of his obsessive desire to fit in.

Ali had spent six months "working the camps" at Guantanamo in 1993.

When we received word of our mission to invade Haiti in 1994, he reacted violently. His revulsion toward Haitians was visceral and white-hot. Given that my own team's mission might depend on both Ali's language capabilities ("my" language was Spanish) and on our ability to establish rapport with local Haitians, Ali's outburst sent up a warning flare in front of me, and I made time to sit down with him for a long talk.

Ali was, aside from his passive racism and the simmering rage that one could always sense just below his surface, a very intelligent and sensitive man. I always suspected that he may have suffered either physical or psychological abuse as a child.

When we talked, we fairly quickly concluded together that his aversion to Haitians had something to do with the role he had been thrown into against the Haitians at the camps, the role of jail-boss, and he agreed to keep that in mind and to subordinate his conditioned reflexes on the matter to mental time-outs in order to assure that he would behave appropriately while we were on the mission in Haiti, which he did… most of the time.

But the point I'm getting to is this. The antagonism that Ali experienced as an individual toward Haitians was structured by the institutional antagonism built into the jailer-and-jailed relationship. Ali had internalized the external reality that he was a prison guard and they were the prisoners. His job was to dominate, to bend Haitians to his will, and every exercise of human agency by the Haitians threatened that. Their very humanity - that combination of independent consciousness and will - was structured by the prison-camp phenomenon to be an enemy force in relation to Ali and the other prison-keepers.

In 1971, Stanford University Professor of Psychology Phillip Zimbardo designed an experiment that would come to be known as the Stanford Prison Experiment. Subjects were recruited and paid a modest stipend, whereupon they were separated into "prisoners" and "guards," and placed in a mock prison built in a Stanford basement. The prisoners were stripped, deloused, shackled, and placed in prison clothes, while the guards were given authoritative uniforms, sunglasses, and batons. Long story short - within two days there was a near prison riot, psychosomatic illness began to break out, white middle-class kids in the role of guards became rapidly and progressively more sadistic and arbitrary, and the two-week experiment had to be abandoned after only six days… before someone was badly hurt or killed.

The experiment seemed to support the truism that "absolute power corrupts absolutely." But that conclusion serves as a description, not an explanation. It describes what happens to the individual, but it fails to account for the role of rationalization that legitimates the domination, and it completely fails to account for institutional support of that domination.

When one uses the term "systemic," she is saying that the source of this abuse is not individual moral failure, but a predictable expression of the system and its structures.

The abuses of detainees, by US troops, by CACI International and Titan Corporation mercenaries, and by the CIA in Iraq, is "systemic."

But in the same way that the system found an expression in the thoughts and emotions of Ali Tehrani, in the same way that the structure of domination and subjection pushed him to rationalize away his shared humanity with his Haitian captives, we can now see in the leering grins of the Abu Ghraib prison guards, who are regular people - like the experimental subjects in the Stanford Prison Experiment - who quickly learned to behave as sadistic torturers. The military has admitted that 60% of these detainees are neither combatants nor threats.

As this is written, the US military is about to release hundreds of detainees who fall in that category, and there will be more horror stories coming, because it was systemic.

People were not only humiliated and forced to pose in degrading positions with each other naked. They were forced to masturbate in front of taunting guards. Some were sodomized with foreign objects. It appears that some were also beaten to death during interrogation - one whose body was put on ice for a day then carted away the next on a litter with a faked intravenous infusion in the arm.

Now the cover stories are being spun out like webs.

We are being asked to believe that:

(1) The only abuse that occurred against anyone detained by American forces in Iraq was photographed and reported.

(2) No abuses occurred anywhere that were not photographed or reported.

(3) The one percent of US troops who are the "bad apples" all happen to serve together in the same unit… the unit that is the only one guilty, and that happened to get caught because of the photographs.

(4) The aggressive investigation now being proclaimed by everyone from George W. Bush to CENTCOM, about abuses that were already on record in the military (an internal investigation had already been launched in February by Major General Antonio M. Taguba, but was kept from the public), would have happened had the photographs and story not been aired on national television.

(5) The military was not attempting to cover up their own investigation, and that they would have informed the public of these abuses even had Seymour Hersh not put the whole miserable episode into print.

(6) The military did not cover anything up in the two weeks between the time CBS warned them that they were going to air an expose and when they actually did air it.

(7) No one in the chain of command above Brigadier General Janis Karpinski is responsible for the failure to halt these abuses, even though Lieutenant General Ricardo S. Sanchez was informed of the investigation of these abuses, complete with sworn statements and photographs, by General Taguba last February.

Other abuses and violations of the Geneva Conventions and Laws of Warfare are already on record, some with videos available on the web, such as:

(1) Shooting people who are clearly not armed and who are engaged in no threatening behavior.

(2) Shooting into ambulances.

(3) Shooting wounded people who are not armed.

(4) Shooting wounded people who are obviously no longer capable of fighting.

(5) Shooting into crowds.

There has never been a Stanford Military Occupation Experiment to complement the Stanford Prison Experiment, unless we just count the military occupations themselves. There is a structured, systemic antagonism between an occupying military and the people whose land they occupy. And there will be no investigations of any of it, because there never are, unless and until the American public is confronted with them.

The National Command Authority and its cheerleaders cannot say out loud… this is what we are doing, and it can't get done unless we dehumanize the occupied. This reality, this system, will express itself in the thoughts and emotions of you, the troops who carry it out, because this military occupation is in a sense making a prison of Iraq and making you, the troops, its turnkeys.

It will only be those exceptional individuals among you in the military who refuse to surrender their humanity - no matter how little you may understand the big picture - and who will witness. You who do break with the system and witness are very important people, important to history, because your refusal to surrender your own moral integrity to the system may lead to our collective salvation by ending this felonious occupation. The troops who filed reports about the abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison were such exceptions.

So were Tom Glen and Ron Ridenhour.

In The Culture of Narcissism, Christopher Lasch wrote in 1979 about US leadership during the occupation of Vietnam:

Success in our society has to be ratified by publicity… all politics becomes a form of spectacle. It is well known that Madison Avenue packages politicians and markets them as if they were cereals or deodorants; but the art of public relations penetrates more deeply into political life… The modern prince [an apt turn of phrase for the current member of the Bush political dynasty] … confuses successful completion of the task at hand with the impression he makes or hopes to make on others. Thus American officials blundered into the war in Vietnam… More concerned with the trappings than with the reality of power, they convinced themselves that failure to intervene would damage American 'credibility…' [They] fret about their ability to rise to crisis, to project an image of decisiveness, to give a convincing performance of executive power… Public relations and propaganda have exalted the image and the pseudo-event.

What these images of the Abu Ghraib humiliation and torture have done in the United States is collide with the "exalted image and the pseudo-event" of the Bush propaganda apparatus, just as the images of the My Lai massacre did in 1969. That collision between the reality and the real image of war startles civilians here in the La-La Land of wide screen TV and suburban SUV's, and it shakes them out of their opiated shopper dream-state.

My Lai is what General Colin Powell was remembering when he implemented "the Powell Doctrine" for the military, which includes a co-opted press and a vigorous attempt to keep things like flag-draped coffins off of those wide screen TVs.

Most of you don't remember My Lai.

On March 16, 1968, units of the Americal Division, to which Powell was assigned as a staff officer in Chu Lai, entered a Vietnamese village called My Lai and spent four hours raping women, burning houses, then finally massacring men, women, and children - including infants who dying women tried to shield with their own bullet-riddled bodies. The massacre was stopped by a Georgia-born helicopter pilot named Hugh Clowers Thompson who landed his chopper between the few surviving Vietnamese and the blood-intoxicated soldiers, and ordered his door gunners to open fire on the Americans if they failed to stand down.

A few weeks later, General Creighton Abrams, then commanding general in Vietnam, received a letter from a young Specialist-4 in the Americal Division named Tom Glen:

The average GI's attitude toward and treatment of the Vietnamese people all too often is a complete denial of all our country is attempting to accomplish in the realm of human relations… Far beyond merely dismissing the Vietnamese as 'slopes' or 'gooks,' in both deed and thought, too many American soldiers seem to discount their very humanity; and with this attitude inflict upon the Vietnamese citizenry humiliations, both psychological and physical, that can have only a debilitating effect upon efforts to unify the people in loyalty to the Saigon government, particularly when such acts are carried out at unit levels and thereby acquire the aspect of sanctioned policy… [American soldiers attack Vietnamese] for mere pleasure, fire indiscriminately into Vietnamese homes and without provocation or justification shoot at the people themselves… Fired with an emotionalism that belies unconscionable hatred, and armed with a vocabulary consisting of 'You VC,' soldiers commonly 'interrogate' by means of torture that has been presented as the particular habit of the enemy. Severe beatings and torture at knife point are usual means of questioning captives or of convincing a suspect that he is, indeed, a Viet Cong… It would indeed be terrible to find it necessary to believe that an American soldier that harbors such racial intolerance and disregard for justice and human feeling is a prototype of all American national character; yet the frequency of such soldiers lends credulity to such beliefs… What has been outlined here I have seen not only in my own unit, but also in others we have worked with, and I fear it is universal. If this is indeed the case, it is a problem which cannot be overlooked, but can through a more firm implementation of the codes of MACV (Military Assistance Command Vietnam) and the Geneva Conventions, perhaps be eradicated.

Glen's letter was forwarded from Abrams' office to the Americal Division and ended up with Major Colin Powell in Chu Lai.

Powell never followed up by questioning Glen, and instead ended his "investigation" of Glen's allegations after accepting uncritically the claim by Glen's commander that Glen hadn't been close enough to "the front" (whatever that was supposed to be in Vietnam) to have any knowledge of such alleged abuses. Powell then began his career as a damage-control expert in the military by writing a letter, dated December 13, 1968, in which he said, ""There may be isolated cases of mistreatment of civilians and POWs… [but] this by no means reflects the general attitude throughout the Division… In direct refutation of this [Glen's] portrayal is the fact that relations between Americal soldiers and the Vietnamese people are excellent." He went on to impugn Glen's account for having been brought to light only reluctantly and lacking sufficient detail.

This was, of course, horseshit. Abuses were systemic.

Glen had only heard through rumors about My Lai. It was another GI, Ron Ridenhour, an infantryman who was not willing to surrender his humanity to occupier-racism, who finally pieced together, on his own initiative, the story of the My Lai massacre, and brought it to public light. When the photographs of the massacre were combined with Ridenhour's account, and the American public was confronted with the reality of an entire unit participating in a systematic massacre of civilians, it marked a turning point in the loss of political support in the United States for continued military occupation of Vietnam.

Powell himself admitted war crimes in his memoir, My American Journey, where he wrote, "I recall a phrase we used in the field, MAM, for military-age male… If a helo spotted a peasant in black pajamas who looked remotely suspicious, a possible MAM, the pilot would circle and fire in front of him. If he moved, his movement was judged evidence of hostile intent, and the next burst was not in front, but at him." Powell would also come to the defense of Brigadier General John Donaldson who had the door gunners on his own helicopter shoot Vietnamese for sport. Donaldson was exonerated, naturally, in a military investigation.

Powell not only developed as a skilled cover-up artist, he would eventually incorporate this ability to manage public perception about war as a key element in the "Powell Doctrine," which he imposed on the military and the press. He never forgot My Lai, and he has always believed that exposure of My Lai and other atrocities were responsible for the US defeat in Vietnam.

Donald Rumsfeld shares these beliefs with Colin Powell. They are both wrong. The two phenomena that collide with this Powell-Rumsfeld orientation were and are (1) the decision of their 'enemy' never to quit, and (2) the inevitability that someone who is part of the occupation force will be confronted with these contradictions between "the exalted image and the pseudo-event" and the real character of war - and that this someone will expose it in an attempt to rescue his or her own humanity.

The war in Vietnam was lost by the French then the Americans because they didn't belong there, and the resistance endeavored to do whatever was necessary to make that point. This is also the situation in Iraq.

So I'll leave to others the analysis of whether the troops facing courts martial are scapegoats (they are, and they are also probably guilty as hell), and whether or not the military is letting the officers off with reprimands and walking papers to prevent the fire spreading (which it is). I'll just emphasize that the war in Iraq cannot be won. Not because of the inability of US troops to fight, but because we don't belong there. And since that's the case (which I firmly believe it is) every life - Iraqi, American, or otherwise - that is lost or ruined… is wasted.

All this talk of whether Military Intelligence or the mercenaries working for CACI International or the CIA or the MP commanders were responsible is diversionary bullshit so we won't see how Iraq itself has become the Stanford Military Occupation Experiment.

Because if we conclude that the problem is systemic, then the only thing to do to stop this is to walk away. And the Bush administration sent troops there for the purpose not of building democracies, but of building permanent military bases in the heart of oil country, and if they walk away, they can't rightly build bases, can they?

So we can either blithely obey and support our new Neros, or we can continue to cling to the absurd notion that the vandal can rebuild the house they just ravaged, or we can do what we might to make them walk away. Troops that come forward will play a key role in this moral imperative.

Every troop that comes forward with accounts of the inhumanity of this war - while jeopardizing his or her career - is serving to hasten an end to this criminal enterprise of the Military-Petroleum Complex. These troop/witnesses will serve to hasten an end to the suffering of Iraqi families and the suffering of the families of the occupying forces. They will serve to prevent more torture, more humiliation, more suspicion and hatred, and more lives being thrown away on this imperial folly.

Every troop who keeps his secrets, who faithfully serves the system and never bears witness, can travel for the rest of his life.

She can go to Rio de Janeiro.

He can go to Bangladesh.

She can go to Lagos, or Montreal, or Tokyo, or Moscow, or Antarctica.

But no matter where he goes, there he'll be - alone with the growing weight of his own silence on his head, wrapping himself in his own rationalizations, and restlessly turning away from the faces that look back at him in the mirrors of his memory.

posted 04 may 2004

Angry Mother Speaks Out About What Her Daughter Suffered In Iraq

The following speech was given by Military Families Speak Out member Adele Kubein at an April 15 rally in Oregon for Dennis Kucinich.

I am honored to welcome all of you to this event. I have great respect for Congressman Kucinich—he wants the best for our nation and he gives much thought to help us find the right path.

My name is Adele Kubein. I am a student here at OSU as many of you are. I became active in the peace movement in the 1960s and '70s during the Vietnam War, and I resumed my peace activities when I realized we would certainly go to war with Iraq. I did not realize my own daughter would be caught up in this war when I began to speak out against it.

My daughter enlisted in the Oregon National Guard in 1999. She is a highly trained Army engineer, and her contract specifically read that she would never be in combat. She was a marine biology student at OSU, the same age as many of you. She wanted to fight fires and build roads in Oregon. She needed college money and thought she could help her home state while earning it. She is a real person. She could not stop thinking of the Iraqis as real people too, and that knowledge haunts her today.

Her unit was told they would build schools and homes in Iraq, that they would be welcomed as liberators. Instead she was put behind a .50 caliber machine gun, with no body armor, or even any ammo at first, to protect Kellog, Brown, and Root convoys in Northern Iraq. In the first days her unit had minimal ammo, one meal a day, and hardly any water. She rode on roads covered with depleted uranium dust and littered with burned cars full of dead bodies.

Listen to a few words from a letter my daughter sent me from Mosul, Iraq in mid April of 2003:

"Dear Mom, I have angry moments, frustration, all those things I had before, but I also have found something else. I cannot describe the joy I have in living. Even the bad moments, I find something of beauty around me. I hold to this with all my power.

"I may not be able to change the situations I face, or the world here, but I can hold true to the things which make me myself. I will change. I will come home different. But I will not let go of this joy in life. I will not let go of the ability to find beauty in squalor. I can't explain the faith that surges through me, but I know that I will return whole. I will not let this tear me apart."

It did tear her apart though, and she will never go together again as she was.

How can we condone bombing and destroying a country with women and children and students with the same dreams you and I have? Iraq posed no threat to us, yet we allowed others to convince us war was the righteous thing to do.

Knowing we all share the same earth, the same air; will we stand by and allow mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, just like our very own, to be killed?

That is what war is about. We value individuality and choice, yet in a single act of killing, war strips away all that makes us human.

Do you really want to kill someone? I know my daughter did not. When she called me sobbing and told me she looked in a young man's eyes as he died from her bullet, she knew she had lost her humanity for a time. She will bear the burden for the rest of her life, just as most veterans do.

Right now my daughter awaits surgery on a base in Colorado, and she wakes screaming from dreams of death at night. Her body and her mind will never be young and joyful again. She and I may never again hike or mountain bike together. She is my closest friend and companion, her grief is mine on many levels.

We are all brothers and sisters. We must realize we all feel the same and bleed the same. This is our nation, we are the future. We have the strength to be heard, to change things, and to lead us all to a more civilized future.

I thank you for giving me your attention. Now I would like to introduce a gentleman who does not avoid the hard questions about the direction of this nation. I think his aim is to unite us and help us find a way to a stronger, more just nation. Please welcome Dennis Kucinich.

posted 28 april 2004

A Call from a Recent Veteran:
To My Fellow Troops in the Iraq War

Being in today's military can be a very tough thing, a feeling that is even worse when you don't believe in what you are fighting for.

I was in that situation a year ago when I was in Iraq with the 1st Marine Division.

I knew the war I was fighting in was wrong but I didn't see myself as having much choice. I knew that as soon as I left the Middle East I would make my feelings known and that is something I have done.

The greatest surprise to me since then is that people have actually listened to me.

People really want to hear what I have to say about the war. Average people want to hear my thoughts and experiences, both good and bad.

The country isn't divided like we see in the news. Not everyone is for or against the war. Many people still don't know how they feel about what is going on in Iraq. The voice of someone who has served there carries more weight then you could ever imagine.

I've changed someone's perspective on the war any number of times simply sitting on a barstool next to them and talking about what I know.

So now you might be asking how you can actually make your voice heard. I know for those of you in the service sounding off is much harder then for the recent veterans like myself, but you can still speak out.

All of us, veterans, reservists, National Guard and active duty, can side with Military Families Speak Out, Veterans For Peace, and other folks standing up to stop the senseless killing of Americans and Iraqis. Those of us with direct experience in this disastrous occupation need to make our voices heard. Active duty troops don't even have to "speak" yourselves. Just letting those of us who are now out know that you side with us lends weight to our cause and speaks volumes.

Imagine walking up to George Bush and saying that there are 100, 200, 300, 1000, 5000 or more participants from his "War on Terror" who oppose the US occupation in Iraq.

That's the kind of force that can end this war, just like it did in Vietnam. Together we can end this occupation and save the lives of our fellow American servicemen and women.

Michael Hoffman
Veteran, USMC 2nd Marine division, Artillery
Served with 1st Marine Division in 2003 invasion of Iraq

Contact Michael at iraqvet@mail.com with questions or to join the cause.

posted 24 april 2004

A Debt of Gratitude

Statement of Veterans for Peace on the
Photographs the Pentagon Doesn't Want Us To See
April 23, 2004

We read, with dismay and anger, in the April 22 Seattle Times, of the firing of Tami Silicio and David Landry from Maytag Aircraft for taking a picture of flag-draped coffins in a military transport aircraft and allowing its publication. Tami is said to have hoped "the publication of the photo would help families of fallen soldiers understand the care and devotion that civilians and military crews dedicate to the task of returning the soldiers home."

Veterans For Peace does not believe Tami and David deserve firing for performing an act of pure compassion from which no profit was derived - in contrast, we may say, to organizations like Halliburton, Kellogg, Brown & Root, Dyne Corp, and their former employer, Maytag Aircraft who are doing very well as the result of the conduct of this war.

On the contrary, Tami Silicio and David Landry have earned our gratitude for calling attention to the artificial barrier, erected by the Pentagon, against images that poignantly and properly impress us with the deaths of our nation's children and the sacrifices of their families.

We believe that no policy should stand between our citizens and access to the price they are paying for this war. We believe the Iraqi dead should be seen, counted and acknowledged. We believe our wounded should be allowed to engage the services of organizations designed to help them, like the Disabled American Veterans, who have had such difficulty gaining access. We believe people should be constantly reminded of the lost lives of combatants and non-combatants, of money spent, of international goodwill wasted.

Veterans For Peace, consistent with our statement of purpose which says "We, having dutifully served our nation, do hereby affirm our greater responsibility to serve the cause of world peace..", believe that an informed public, having knowledge of the true cost of war, is less apt to allow government to use war as an instrument of foreign policy.

Wilson (Woody) Powell
Executive Director, Veterans For Peace
438 N Skinker St.
Louis, MO 63130
(314) 725-6005
veteransfp@sbcglobal.net
www.veteransforpeace.org

posted 24 april 2004

Slain soldier's family is bitter

the Associated Press

DUNN - The family of an Army sergeant who died in Iraq this week was mourning over Easter weekend at the house of the grandparents who raised him.

Sgt. 1st Class Marvin L. Miller, 38, of Dunn died Wednesday in Balad when he was shot while on traffic control duty. The Pentagon said the shooting is still being investigated.

Some members of Miller's Harnett County family were struggling to justify to themselves his deployment to Iraq.

"Is it a good cause?" asked his sister, Miriam Smith. "No, not really. They're over there trying to help the people, and they're steady killing them."

Miller's cousin Felicia Smith of Raleigh and aunt Annie Miller concurred.

"It stinks," Annie Miller said. "The president got us into something he doesn't know how to get out of. It seems like the more killing that goes on over there, the more troops he's sending."

The family remembered an outgoing, friendly man devoted to the Army and to his family.

"He loved to party, and he loved his girls," Smith said.

Miller had two daughters and two sons with Linnett Miller, his wife of 12 years.

The 18-year military veteran was assigned to the Army's 1st Squadron, 4th U.S. Cavalry, 1st Infantry Division, Schweinfurt, Germany.

The family had been living in Germany for about two years.

Miller's eldest child, Marvin Lee Miller Jr., said he no longer wants to follow his father's footsteps and go into the Army after high school.

"I was going into the military, but not no more," he said on the porch of his father's childhood home. "Not after this."

Funeral arrangements were not available Saturday.

posted 12 april 2004

A Deserter Speaks

by Christian Parenti
in an article from the Nation
[posted online on March 25, 2004]

The young man across the table looks sad, but not as stressed as one might expect from a US Army deserter. Camilo Mejia served with a unit that crossed into Iraq just after the invasion and then, for five months, fought in the counterinsurgency war in the Sunni Triangle, where he says he was in firefights, killed people, almost got killed, helped torture prisoners and finally had his life saved by a small-scale mutiny. Now he is a declared conscientious objector who spent five months absent without leave, facing the wrath of US military justice.

In October, when he was home on furlough, Mejia decided to ditch the killing and chaos of Iraq. Although the military never officially charged Mejia with desertion, he spent the rest of the autumn and winter living like a fugitive, never using cell phones, credit cards or the Internet for fear of being busted. He was frequently on the move and survived on the good will of friends.

There are dozens of other soldiers who have refused to show up for their deployments, but the military doesn't pursue most of them and usually releases them from service without too much fuss. Most AWOL soldiers don't even get tracked down. However, if a soldier goes public to make a political point, the military response can be severe.

"This is an immoral, unjust and illegal war," says Mejia. "The whole thing is based on lies. There are no weapons of mass destruction, and there was no link with terrorism. It's about oil, reconstruction contracts and controlling the Middle East." Like many US troops, Mejia is a recent immigrant, but unlike many he is from a left-leaning bohemian family; his father is an internationally famous Nicaraguan musician, Carlos Mejia Godoy, and his mother was active with radical movements in the 1980s. Mejia, however, says he used to be apolitical. When he moved to the United States as a young adult, he joined the military "to become an American and know the culture."

Just before Mejia's eight years of service were up, he found himself in Iraq. "After the war people were cheering, but within a week or two they were asking when we were going to leave and getting angry. And then it became clear that nothing was getting reconstructed, people's lives weren't getting better. We had all these deadlines, for setting up the police, getting the power back on, whatever, and nothing ever got done, nothing changed or got better," Mejia explains. "And then the resistance started."

To make matters worse, Mejia found his officers to be glory-obsessed and intentionally reckless with the safety of their men. In particular, he says, they wanted the Army's much-coveted Combat Infantry Badge—an award bestowed only on those who have met and engaged the enemy. "To be a twenty-year career infantry officer and not have your CIB is like being a chef and having never cooked or being a fireman and never having put out a fire," Mejia says. "These guys were really hungry, and we were the bait."

In one attempt to draw enemy fire, Mejia's company—about 120 guys divided evenly into four platoons—was ordered to occupy key intersections in Ramadi, a notoriously violent Iraqi city, for several days running. "All the guys were really nervous. This was a total violation of standard operating procedure. They train you to keep moving, not sit in the open." Finally the enemy attacked, and a platoon in Mejia's company took casualties.

When the troops were ordered to perform the exact same maneuvers again, Mejia refused. "I told them, I quit." Luckily for him the four staff sergeants of the platoon that had taken casualties also refused to go out. Technically, refusing an order in a combat situation can be charged as mutiny. But in a tense meeting with their commanding officer, the staff sergeants negotiated a new plan of action that allowed the GIs to vary the timing and movement of their patrols. After these changes, Mejia agreed to go. "We went out two hours earlier than usual, and because of that we caught these young guys setting an IED (improvised explosive device) of three mortars wrapped together." If Mejia's squad had set out according the Commanding Officers' original plan, he believes that some of the guys in his squad would have been killed. For its part, the Florida National Guard claims that Mejia was a bad sergeant and that he was not aggressive enough in engaging what all admit is a highly elusive enemy.

Spc. Oliver Perez, who served with Mejia, disagrees. "I fought next to him in many battles. He is not a coward," said Perez, who has also said he will testify on Mejia's behalf if the Army proceeds with a court-martial.

During another assignment, Mejia's company ran a detention camp. "They didn't call it a POW camp because it didn't meet Red Cross standards," he explains. There, intelligence officers ordered Mejia's squad to psychologically torture three suspected resistance fighters. The hooded and bound prisoners were

placed in isolation, intimidated with mock executions and forced to stay awake for days at a time. "We had one guy lose his mind. He was locked in a little metal closet that we'd bang with a sledgehammer every five minutes to keep him up. He started crying and begging to lie down." When asked how the prisoners were fed and given water, Mejia stares off into space for a moment, and then says, "I don't remember how we fed them."

This soft-spoken young man has plenty of other bad stories to tell. There's the time his squad killed a civilian who ran a checkpoint; the time they shot a demonstrator. There's the officer who forged orders so he could get his unit into combat, and the other officer who broke his own ankle to get out of

combat. There is the father who wasn't allowed temporary leave even though his young daughter had been raped. And there is the GI who took shrapnel in the head and now can't talk, can't recognize his family and wakes up in the middle of the night confused and sobbing.

Given the politics of the military, it is unlikely that Mejia's serious allegations about the conduct of his superiors will be investigated, let alone prosecuted, while his own decision of conscience could be treated as a criminal matter. "I'd rather do the five to ten years in prison for desertion than kill a child by mistake," says Mejia. "When you are getting shot at, you shoot back. It doesn't matter if there are civilians around. Prison ends, but you never get over killing a kid."

So far this war has produced only a few AWOL convictions and one high-profile asylum case in Canada. Pfc. Jeremy Hinzman of the 82nd Airborne is seeking refuge north of the border on the grounds that he is a conscientious objector. Marine Reserve Lance Cpl. Stephen Funk also went AWOL and claimed conscientious objector status this past April. Funk was convicted of being away without leave, demoted, forfeited two-thirds of his pay, received a bad-conduct discharge and sent to the brig for six months. Mejia, who turned himself in at a press conference on March 15, faces five to ten years in prison. Currently Mejia is in Florida with the National Guard, awaiting administrative dismissal as a recognized conscientious objector or criminal prosecution as a deserter.

posted 31 march 2004

March 20th in Fayetteville:
Remarks by Stan Goff

Welcome to all the partisans of peace. Welcome to Fayetteville. Welcome, people of conscience. Welcome, families, who's loved ones are under arms in the service of a system they don't yet understand. Welcome, soldiers, because I am one of you, and welcome veterans who can say to soldiers, as if we were the dead, that as you are, we once were, and as we are, you shall be. Welcome home to those who have been sent to inflict and to suffer pain and grief in the service of avarice and ambition. My own son is among you. I was among you. Welcome back into our sight and our hearts. Welcome home. There have been too many of you who have not come back whole, and far too many who have come home not at all.

These are hard times and harsh times, and they call for harsh words, and they call for clarity that sometimes seems almost cruel, and they call for a sense of purpose that has passion.

The Bush administration is a gangster administration, and they have used gangster tactics at home and abroad, and they have signed our names to their crimes, and they have spent our treasure on their crimes, and they have spilled out children's blood and the blood of the children of others to commit their crimes, and we have had – by God – enough.

And we are not going to sit idly by and pretend about this. We are not going to pretend that we haven't heard that John Kerry's only criticism of this war is that is isn't being fought competently. We are not going to pretend that this is not about oil. We are not going to pretend that this was an intelligence failure. We are not going to pretend that this is something we can change by being civil or by being obedient. We will not be civil with gangsters, and we'd better learn to quit obeying them. Because it is our obedience that do-signs their crimes, and it is our silence that will make us complicit.

So we will not be silent, and we will not be obedient, and we will not stand down - no matter how long it takes, no matter the cost, nomatter the effort, because we are fighting for our children and our grandchildren who we will not surrender to gangsters.

We are not going away. This may be called the instant gratification society, but hear us right now, George Bush and Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfled and John Kerry for that matter — we are not an instant gratification movement, and we are not here to make deals with the lives of our children or the children of others.

NOT ONE MORE DAY.
NOT ONE MORE DIME.
NOT ONE MORE LIFE.
NOT ONE MORE LIE.
BRING THEM ALL HOME NOW!

>>View our March 20th photo/report archive

posted 24 march 2004

March 20th in Fayetteville:
Speech Of Michael McPhearson,
Gulf War 1 veteran

First, I would like to show love and respect for my hometown. Growing up in Fayetteville helped me understand the meaning of patriotism long ago. People here know about sacrifice, honor and duty. Thank you, Fayetteville.

Second, I want to be clear that I am proud of my son, who has chosen to serve his nation, and I support all our service members. In fact, that support is why I stand here today.

In a true democracy, the sacred trust between a soldier and those he or she protects demands that the civilian leaders send soldiers into harm's way for nothing less than moral and just reasons. The soldier is then prepared to die in defense and/or pursuit of that cause.

This sacred trust is based on truth. George Bush, you have broken the sacred trust! First you insinuate that Saddam Hussein was somehow responsible for 9/11. Then you tell us he has weapons of mass destruction. One year later--no weapons and the only solid al-Qaeda connection to Iraq is the current resistance you created.

Now you tell us Saddam is a monster and the world is better off without him. You tell us the war on terror must be taken to the terrorist. Yet for some reason you attack a country that did not and could not attack us. You use smoke and mirrors to mislead us and change your story to fit the political moment. Then you wave my Flag and command us to follow.

You have placed our soldiers in a no-win situation. You call on them to be police, something they are not trained to be; and force them to be occupiers, something they do not want to be. If they live to be veterans, you will ignore their ailments and cut their benefits like you are doing to current veterans now.

Yes. I agree we liberated Iraq from the tyranny of Saddam and have a responsibility to help rebuild. But the heart of liberation is self-determination. Imperialism, be it imposed from London in 1776 or from Washington D.C. in 2004, is arrogant and unjust. We cannot decide the future of Iraq. The Iraqi people must determine that for themselves.

Pulling out of Iraq now would not be the act of a defeated United States. It would an act of choice. A choice that shows we believe in the Iraqi people. It would prove we believe in liberty.

Instead, President Bush, you choose to dishonor our soldiers with deception and misinformation. You dishonor their blood by casting them as occupiers to further imperialist ambitions.

Finally, I say to President Bush, Senator Kerry and all of Congress, our message is clear and our demand is simple. Support Our Troops. Bring Them Home Now!

Power to the peaceful!

>>View our March 20th photo/report archive

posted 24 march 2004

Vet and Military Dad Michael McPhearson Reports from Baghdad!

Well, I'm back from my second trip to Iraq (the first was in Gulf War I or, as I say, "the 1st ground campaign of the current war"), and this time I made it to Baghdad. I find that words cannot truly capture my experience, but I want to share my impressions and the messages that Iraqi people sent home with me.

It was both exhilarating and sad. I met wonderful people, almost all of whom have experienced great suffering. Many are brave people struggling to shape their futures. I met many nonviolent Iraqi patriots.

Saddam Hussein was a monster; of this there is no doubt. Almost every Iraqi I asked was happy to be rid of him. Many thanked the U.S. for liberating them from his regime.

But others feel that the U.S. occupation offers little, if any, improvement over living under Saddam. While this is the sentiment of Iraqis across the board, it was especially true for a group of about 50 Palestinian families I met at a refugee camp in Baghdad, a tent village of sorts. Under Saddam these people could not own land or a car, or have access to quality education, or obtain citizenship, but he never bothered them. Today they find themselves in the same position.

So while most are happy to be rid of Saddam and many thank the U.S., they are at the same time unhappy with the current state of affairs and want immediate changes. Security is high on the list of priorities. Many Iraqis live in fear of crime. They told me there was less crime under Saddam. They want more law and order. People are afraid to walk the streets at night and guns are everywhere. I'm not sure why, but an Iraqi actually showed me a gun he had hidden under his sweater. As usual, women particularly find themselves in danger. Sex crimes and kidnapping have forced girls and women to stay home from school and work. The fear of crime is matched only by the fear of U.S. soldiers: our sons, daughters, mothers, fathers, and friends or at least my friends and possibly my son.

Once again, while most Iraqis are happy and grateful to be rid of Saddam, they do not want occupation. They want the U.S. troops out of Baghdad streets and Iraqis to maintain security. Our troops are trained soldiers, not police officers. They do not know how to treat the civilian population. They routinely use more force than necessary. They shoot before thinking — because they are trained soldiers, not peacekeepers — and innocent people are hurt or die, including children. Amazingly most of the people I talked to are not angry with individual soldiers. They are angry with our government. They believe that our leadership does not see an Iraqi life as equal to a U.S. soldier's life. Many people said that there are two victims: the soldier and the Iraqi. I was told to tell the American people that U.S. soldiers' and Iraqis' lives are equally important. One person said that Iraqis hurt every time a U.S. soldier is harmed just as they hurt when a soldier abuses one of them.

If one can rank the Iraqi's concerns, the second is restoration of the infrastructure. Most of the Iraqis to whom I spoke said the U.S. must deliver on its promises to rebuild their basic systems. We must fix what we have broken. Hospitals do not have enough medical supplies. The electricity goes out 3 to 4 times a day, sometimes for hours at a time. To adapt people have pooled money to buy generators and agree to the number of lights that can be used per family when using generator power.

Economic, political and social structures must be repaired. Unemployment is extremely high and many times people are paid 2 to 3 months late. Iraqi business people struggle to get back on their feet. Local contractors' have limited access to reconstruction contracts. People spend six to 12 hours in gas lines a mile or more long. Taxi drivers regularly miss a day of work just to fill up their cars. Off market (usually called black market) gas is sold less than 100 meters away. One Iraqi said to us, "We are the people of oil, how can this be happening?"

Third, an overwhelming majority of people I spoke to want the occupation to end quickly. These people want to run their own country. Over and over I was told that while they appreciate the liberation, they do not like occupation. Many fear civil war, but others believe the Iraqi people will pull together and can handle their affairs right now. The timetable may not be uniform, but the overwhelming consensus is that the U.S. needs to leave as soon as possible, with an emphasis on soon. We can then return as civilian guest. The U.S. and Iraq should be friends.

Finally the troops we saw were very happy to see us. We gave them full support and told them we are working to bring them home. They are between a rock and a hard place.

What good is happening in Iraq? Well I stayed in a decent hotel with laundry service and had no problems taking a warm low water pressure shower. I ate good food in open restaurants. Commerce takes place on the streets. Iraqis with funds can buy TVs, VCRs, washers and other goods. I bought a few items my last night on a street of shops and outdoor vendors. The same suitcase shops exist in Baghdad and New York. New cars arrive daily from Jordan and Syria. There has been a boom on satellite dishes and access to the Internet. Human rights organizations, women's advocacy organizations and political parties have formed. Discussion and protest is alive. Democracy of some sort has sprouted. Self-determination is in the air.

But in my eyes the bad outweighs the good. Due to the administration's poor planning and disrespect for the opinions of the Iraqis, far too many U.S. troops and Iraqis are being injured (both physically and psychologically) and dying. If President Bush thinks he is winning the peace, he is mistaken. I say again, soldiers are not police. They are trained to use overwhelming force; the kind of force used against opposing armies, not civilian populations. Our leadership has put our soldiers in a no win situation. The current state of affairs has created new resistance fighters and the cycle of violence and suffering begins anew.

posted 19 feb 2004

Lou Plummer responds to President Bush's State of the Union Speech

If there's one thing that the American people have learned by now, it's not to trust anything that Bush says about Iraq. We're supposedly just a few months away from handing control of Iraq back to Iraqis. When I read that in the New York Times, the actual verbatim quote was, "The occupation of Iraq will end in July. The troops, however, will remain." This is Orwellian doublespeak.

So the state of the union for soldiers is full of uncertainty. They certainly don't trust the government. For example, a lot of the units have been given numerous dates for when they'll rotate back, those dates have come and gone, and the soldiers have remained there.

The rosy picture that we get in interviews in the mainstream media are generally given to us by military press officers or by commissioned officers. That's just a small part of the military. You don't see them interviewing 18- and 19-year-old privates who are somewhere in the Sunni triangle, and they don't interview those same soldiers' spouses back home.

What we get is the outlook on the war from the "upper class" of the military. We're not really hearing from the mass of troops to get a more accurate picture. These are the people that I talk to--both soldiers and spouses--and although some of the earlier deprivations, such as rationed water and primitive living conditions, are starting to improve, it's a double-edged sword.

On one hand, the conditions are improving, but they're seeing these permanent-type barracks being built. If it's a temporary occupation, why are they building permanent barracks?

A lot of these guys served in Kosovo, where Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR)--the subsidiary of Halliburton where Dick Cheney was CEO--built the same type of compounds in the early 1990s. And there are still soldiers there.

Some went from Kosovo to Fort Bragg to Afghanistan back to Fort Bragg to Iraq--and there's a theory of permanent war that's really hitting home for them. The other thing that continues to get put on the back burner is Afghanistan.

But if people look back to Bush's State of the Union two years ago, the majority of what he promised hasn't come true for the Afghan people. The U.S. had an initial fear that a lot of foreign troops would interfere in the search for Osama bin Laden.

So what we have there is a token international force that pretty much stays around Kabul, and roughly 12,000 U.S. soldiers whose sole job--supposedly--is looking for Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters. There's been no nation-building going on.

We're told that we have to have a huge force in Iraq to keep it from devolving into chaos and civil war--while we've got the nation of Afghanistan, which we bombed into oblivion and occupied two years ago, that has devolved into civil war and chaos, and doesn't have a functioning infrastructure.

So we continue to get this doublespeak from the president--all the reasons we get about why we should be in Iraq are, if you use the same logic, the reasons that we should be in Afghanistan, but we're not.

[From an interview published in the Socialist Worker Newspaper, January 24, 2004]

posted 26 jan 2004

Letter regarding the lies in Mr. Bush's January 20 State of the Union speech

by Fernando Suarez de Solar

Mr. Bush gave his State of the Union speech and like a film star who cannot act he claimed the nation was in perfect health and on the road to full recovery. In his speech he said:

"Because of American leadership and resolve, the world is changing for the better."

"The work of building a new Iraq is hard, and it is right. And America has always been willing to do what it takes for what is right."

"We have not come all this way - through tragedy, and trial,and war - only to falter and leave our work unfinished."

And he stated his opposition to amnesty for undocumented workers. My questions to Mr. Bush are the following:

Are you certain that your policies are changing the world for the better? Is it better that over 500 young Americans have died in Iraq? That thousands of innocent Iraquis have died? That the hospitals in Iraq have no medicine and so every day innocent children die? That thousands of Iraquis have no job? That the schools in Iraq and many in the United States have no funding? Is this what you call changing the world for the better?

Who asked you to create a new Iraq? Who told you it was the right thing to do? Have you been in the streets of Baghdad, walking with the people and asking them if this is what they want? You say: "We have not come all this way - through tragedy, and trial, and war." Pardon me but you have not come through any tragedy or trial and have no idea what those words mean. Meanwhile, more than 500 American families know all too well.

On the issue of amnesty, I have a hard time understanding you. On the one hand, you reject an amnesty program for the undocumented but on the other hand you say you will grant permission for undocumented people to work in the United States. Why do you try to fool millions of Latinos? To win votes? Are you that afraid of losing the election?

Did you know that California has lost thousands of jobs especiallly in the school systems? Did you know that there is already a half billion dollar federal deficit? You did know? Then why do you lie to the people? Why do you toy with our feelings and hopes?

Enough of your lies, Mr. Bush. Enough of your trying to deceive the American people and insult the Latino community. Why do you wish to continue as president? So that you can continue sending brave young Americans to die in wars whose only rationale are the economic interests of your friends?

Remember that the people are fed up. I am sure that next November we will make that crystal clear.

posted 26 jan 2004

Jesus Alberto Suarez de Solar Navarro:
The Aztec Warrior

12/31/03:

Another year ends today, a year full of important events in the lives of the American people and especially many Latino families like mine. Exactly one year ago my entire family was gathered together, ready to enjoy a meal prepared by my wife and daughters. My son, Jesus, was so happy with his wife and their son Erick. Everyone sat around the table and we counted the 12 tollings of the bell and ate the traditional 12 grapes, hoping that the new year 2003 would be full of joy, peace, love, and prosperity for all. We embraced and wished each other much happiness for 2003. I recall that my daughter Olivia told me, "Dad, you will have many opportunities this year," and Jesus told me "Father, Thank you for educating me. I am a Marine now and I hope to do well so that you will be proud of me." I answered him that I was already proud of him, that I had always been proud, and that I hoped he would achieve his goals together with his wife and son.

And so that terrible year began with much hope for the entire family, for the American people, and especially for all Californians. And February arrived with its rumors of war and with the stubborness and inflexibility of Mr Bush who insisted on attacking Iraq. The UN could not use its authority nor the rule of law to stop him and so the world waited with fear as Bush declared that according to intelligence the regime in Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. On the fifth of February, Jesus bid us farewell and headed towards his destiny in the faraway lands of Iraq. As he said goodbye we embraced alone outside in the driveway of our home. It was diffcult for me to hold back my tears but he was optimistic and with great clarity he told me, "Father, do not fear, nothing will happen to me, we are well trained and well prepared. But if something does happen please take care of my son and educate him as you did me." He climbed in the car with his wife and son at 9 p.m.

March arrived, the nineteenth to be exact, when American troops began their offensive against Iraq. The war began without the support of the UN, without the support of the American people, without the support of the world community—a war started by Mr Bush who lied to the American people and to the world community. Mr Bush insisted that Iraq was a threat to the US and the whole world and unfortunately many believed him and so the deaths began. And on March 27 a young Mexican boy fell, full of hopes and dreams, deceived by the government, a good boy who had more important work ahead, a son to love, raise and educate. Yes, Jesus Alberto Suarez de Solar Navarro, the Aztec Warrior, died because of the negligence of the US military command in Iraq. A US cluster bomb had been dropped the night before but Delta Company was not advised and so the tragedy took place and two hours passed before helicopters could evacuate him. He did not die alone but rather he died with his friends, his brothers, and their love surrounding him. He died free of hate and in peace.

April 11 arrived—the day the Aztec Warrior was sowed, yes sowed because he is a seed for peace for future generations. We all wept because of his loss and his absence but his mother, my wife, suffers the most, she who bore him, took care of him when he was ill, who taught him to respect me and to love me. She is the one who has suffered the most.

And the rest of 2003 passed by and many more brave American youth have died and with them their dreams until we have almost reached 500 dead American troops and thousands and thousands of innocent Iraqis.

And December 4 arrived, my grandson's birthday, and I found myself in the exact place where my Aztec Warrior fell. And I placed a crucifix, said a prayer, and gathered the earth where his blood ran. I fulfilled my promise to my wife that I would find that sacred spot, and during my time in Iraq I could see and witness that my son was right to say that the children of Iraq were the ones who really needed our help. And I could witness as I visited the hospitals and shortages of medicine the lack of economic assistance provided by the Bush administration. And in the schools I could see that the children are eager to learn but do not have what they need to get ahead and the Bush administration offers them nothing. I could feel it in the streets of Baghdad where shoeless children whose parents died in the war offered me a smile in exchange for a friendly word, a kiss in exchange for letters from American children. In short, I could see that the liberation of the Iraqi people has cost them a great deal and it has cost the US as well.

And December 14 arrived, the day the dictator and murderer Saddam Hussein was captured. And Mr Bush tells us that at last we have him, that peace has arrived for the Iraqi people, but in the ensuing days the deaths of young Americans increase and Mr Bush continues to lie to us, continues violating international law, claiming that Saddam will be treated as a prisoner of war and tried under international law only to tell us days later that the Iraqi people must try and sentence him. What about international law? Why does Bush fear an international tribunal?

And so we arrive to the present, the 31st of December, the end of this terrible and unhappy year 2003 and what do we find? That everywhere, in every city and in every family, there is joy, optimism, and the usual New Year's Eve custom of conveying our best wishes. This is why I have taken the liberty to write this letter in order to tell you that it is imperative that in this coming year of 2004 we be cautious and very focused in our actions, for this is the beginning of a presidential election year in this great nation. And we must do everything in our power to make sure that Mr Bush is not reelected and to ensure that he does not steal the election. I invite everyone to reflect on recent events that have cost so many lives, jobs, broken families, economic ruin, and do all we can to defeat Bush, a defeat that is in the best interest of the American people and world peace.

The hope of my entire family is that God will grant you the health and strength to continue this struggle.

In peace,
Fernando Suarez de Solar

P.S. I wish to thank all those who have offered their support, friendship, and warmth. I cannot name everyone and do not want to forget anyone. But you know who you are.

I would also like to thank the representatives of the media who have covered my activities in the service of peace.

POR UNA GENERACION LLENA DE PAZ Y AMOR!!
EL GUERRERO AZTECA
May God Bless all of you.

posted 03 jan 2004

Bush Lied, They Died

There have been 559 confirmed coalition deaths, 478 Americans, 53 Britons, four Bulgarians, one Dane, 17 Italians, two Poles, one Spaniard, two Thai and one Ukrainian, in the war as of December 30, 2003. The casualty list below reflects the names of the soldiers, Marines, airmen and sailors whose families have been notified of their deaths. There also have been 2,696 Americans wounded in the war, according to the Pentagon.

Multiply these pictures by 20 to know what the Iraqis have lost in civilian deaths, by 1,000 to know their debility and deformity from wounds and the poisoning of their cities.  How many barrels of oil are represented by one body?  How much suffering is embodied in just one drop? ....

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posted 01 jan 2004

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