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Cadet Bush at West Point: Screw That Chin In, Beanhead!
by James Ryan

Mister Bush, you deserve a good reaming for your performance at the United States Military Academy graduation on Saturday. Post around to my room for some character guidance.

Come in, wackhead. Slam up against that wall! Suck up that capacious gut! Shoulders back! Pop up that puny chest! Fingers along the seams of your trousers! You want to be our big buddy, Mister? What’s that? I can’t hear you… Sound off, dumbsmack! Yes, you say? Yes, what? That’s an incomplete statement, beanhead. Tack a “sir” at the end. That’s better.

So you think you can be our big buddy by spouting some cadet slang in a speech? One hour here at Hudson High, and you’re falling out, acting like an upper classman. That’s pathetic behavior, Mister Bush. This is one place where you have to earn privileges, Mister! You got that? You think all we care about up here is war? From your speech one would think so. You must love yakking about IEDs, convoy operations, and running checkpoints. There is so much more going on up here, mister, and you make us out to be cannon fodder. So run your feeble neck in another notch for that.

You must be corrected about this place, West Point. It’s not a “tin school.” That’s just a joke, and not one for either you or Rumsfeld to crack wise about. West Point is supposed to develop military leadership to provide expertise in the increasingly complex world of geopolitics. Rumsfeld’s wishful thinking and arrogance swept all that away. His (and your) tragically flawed, ego-driven ideology trumped empirical, professional judgment and leadership. Over a score of generals walked rather than bow their necks under the deceitful yoke of Rumsfeld. And then you ended up with the likes of Tommy “We Don’t Do Body Counts” Franks. But now he IS counting bodies… those of our own troops. “What we’re talking about is neither 2,400, 24,000 or 240,000 lives,” the dismissive Franks said at a recent NRA bash, adding paradoxically, “It (terrorism) doesn’t have anything to do with politics.” Does this make you feel proud, Mister Bush? To have people like this develop policies for the United States of America? When you get back to DC, you tell Rumsfeld to drive around to our room and we’ll explain a few things to him too.

We pay attention to everything up here at West Point, Mister Bush. Even the fact that you told the same joke about giving cadets amnesty that you told four years ago. You should be more respectful of West Point, Mister Bush. That seems to be a pattern in your behavior, smackhead. Telling the same stories over and over. And you throw around the names of old grads like Eisenhower and Bradley, using them to somehow justify what you and your big buddies in DC have done to the world. What do you know about Eisenhower or Bradley? You might get away with that stuff in the oval office, but not up here. Not at West Point. You got that, wack? You got that loud and clear, beansmack? Good. Retain same.

The Long Gray Line spans the generations, mister. Its spirit fills the geographic, intellectual, and moral space that is West Point. The old grads are always there. – Mister Bush, you want to buy this place? No? Well stop gawking! Keep those slimy eyeballs straight ahead. Pick a spot on the opposite wall and examine it! – You never said anything about what those old grads said. You just got the cadets’ attention by saying the words, Eisenhower and Bradley, but then that was the idea, wasn’t it? Then you launched into how President Truman did this, that, and the other thing. You even pulled a Winston Churchill with your “…never back down…never give in…never accept anything less than a complete victory” routine. It reminded many of us of that “mission accomplished” crud that you blabbed off the coast of San Diego a few years ago. Just who are you, Mister Bush? Makes cadets wonder whether there’s anything inside that fine civilian suit of yours? You read me, Mister Bush?

Do you remember what you said here at the Academy four years ago? About pre-emptive action? Do you know what Dwight Eisenhower said about that much earlier? Don’t hem and haw, Mister Bush. Here at West Point there are only three answers for smacks like you… Yes sir. No sir. No excuse sir. Remember that! And remember this! Eisenhower said, “When people speak to you about a preventive war, you tell them to go and fight it. After my experience, I have come to hate war.” And his fellow classmate from the class of 1915, the class the stars fell on, Omar Bradley was even clearer. “Wars can be prevented just as surely as they can be provoked,” he said, “and we who fail to prevent them must share the guilt for the dead.”

You feel like sharing any of that responsibility, any of that guilt, Mister Bush? Your decision, your deceit-filled decision, to attack Iraq has cost tens of thousands of lives. What do you have to say about that? It seems to us that you have to watch your language, Mister Bush. I mean you still maintain that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, and that he was somehow responsible for 9/11. Your evasions and quibbling and lies have cost the world dearly. Cram your neck in, Mister Bush. And you implied as much again in your speech at West Point:

“On September the 11th, 2001, we saw that the problems originating in a failed and oppressive state 7,000 miles away could bring murder and destruction to our country.”

Which country might that have been, Mister Bush? No specification followed. Rack your neck in further for another gross deception!

Four years ago, you were introduced to the graduating class of 2002 as “a man who exemplifies the West Point motto of Duty, Honor, Country.” That now revolts some graduates of West Point. At West Point, we uphold the Cadet Honor Code… a cadet will not lie cheat or steal or tolerate those who do. Mister Bush, it seems to us that you and your ilk have done exactly the opposite. (Keep that chin firmly in!) And you are still, cooking up war stories, unalloyed of truth, further proving, if such was now necessary, that lying, even under your combat imaginings, jeopardizes the lives of fighting men and women. And Saturday you told the graduating cadets that “the war began on my watch but it’s going to end on yours.” Perhaps you would like to correct that statement? Perhaps consider adding what is now widely known, that the assault on Iraq began premised on lies. That it is illegal. That these lies have severely dissipated the capability, morale, and reputation of United States military forces, and the United States of America. And that the young men and women of West Point in this year’s graduating class may also be soon at risk for crimes against the Geneva Convention. And that you don’t give a damn for anything we just said. Would you like to make a statement, Mister Bush?

Urp!*

*(”Urp” is (or was) cadet oral slang directed at first-year cadets (plebes) and stands for “RP” an acronym for the command, “Respond promptly.” )

James Ryan graduated from West Point in 1962. He is cofounder of West Point Graduates Against The War. This essay was previously published June 1, 2006 by CommonDreams.org.

posted 09 june2006

Halliburton is not in Iraq to support the troops, the troops are there to support Halliburton!
by Jeri Reed

This coming Wednesday, May 17, I will be in the small Oklahoma city of Duncan. So will other military family members, Iraq veterans and other vets and hundreds of opponents of the occupation of Iraq. We will be there because that's where Halliburton has decided to hold their annual meeting, trying to hide from the demonstrators who slammed them last year in Houston. They can run, but they can't hide.

I am not just angry that my son Cody Camacho was sent into Iraq as part of an occupying army that caused death and destruction to the Iraqi people and countless deaths and injuries to US soldiers. I am even more angry that private contractors like Halliburton and its subsidiary Kellogg Brown and Root, in collusion with members of the federal government and the military, are raking in huge profits because of the presence of US soldiers in Iraq. I am angry that even though KBR made huge profits for Halliburton from allegedly providing food, water and mail to my son and other soldiers, he went without adequate food, water and mail service during the year he was deployed.

I first got a request for food from Cody shortly after the fall of Baghdad when he was based at Camp Dogwood in the south. He sounded very hungry. He informed me that much of the camp was sick, that he and his unit thought that the food being prepared for them was not clean or safe, and that they were trying to keep from eating so that they would not become sick. I was very puzzled, Cody had always been fed very well by the Army, and I did not understand what was going on, he was not telling me everything. But I immediately went and shipped a box of food, not snacks, whatever I could find that would provide nutrition to him and his fellow soldiers.

A few weeks later, Cody was moved to provide communication support at the Abu Ghraib prison where he would remain for six months. It became quite apparent that Cody and the other soldiers stationed there, unable to leave the premises due to safety consideration and buy food from Iraqis as many other soldiers have done, were simply not getting enough food and water. This may have varied over time, but the on average it seems that they were restricted to one MRE per day and two liter bottles of water. I still could not understand what was going on, but I continued to send shipments of food every week or so, something that I really could not afford. And the food was not getting to him.

I finally realized that Cody was not getting enough food or water and also was not receiving the food that I sent him for one reason. KBR had contracts to provide this for the military, food, water and mail delivery, and because it was so dangerous to drive to Abu Ghraib. or places west like Fallujah or Al-Ramadi where a large number of soldiers were based, civilian KBR employees were not performing these tasks on a regular basis. Families all over the country were shipping food to their soldiers, quietly and without question, spending money they did not have so their soldiers could eat-while KBR was being paid for this, with our money.

Most disturbing to me was the growing attitude of hatred towards Iraqis I sensed in my son, who had deployed to Iraq thinking the invasion was wrong, mainly because of his concern for the Iraqi people. "They are going to send us into Iraq," he told me before he deployed, "and do terrible things to the people there. And we [the soldiers] will be the ones who get blamed." As part of an occupying army, under attack by Iraqi people who did not want them there, Cody's attitude began to change. I could not help but notice how his sleep deprivation and lack of food and water contributed to this. As I have heard other soldiers based at correctional facilities in Iraq report, Cody began telling me that the prisoners were being cared for better than the soldiers, and I could hear the growing hatred for the prisoners in his voice, even though this did not seem to be the case to me.

"But Ma," he told me, "the prisoners get real cooked rice." This was one of the most upsetting things he ever told me. It was hard to cope with the fact that my good son, who held no grudge against the Iraqis before the invasion, was beginning to hate them, in part because they got rice and he didn't. Rice is what poor people fight over. While I do not believe that prisoners at correctional facilities in Iraq are being well cared for, it does not surprise me that many soldiers come to resent and hate them. Conditions are horrific for both prisoners and soldiers at these places and the atmosphere is filled with fear. And to me, KBR through its inability to fulfill its contract of delivering food and water to all of our soldiers contributes to the abusive situations at these facilities. Things have not improved in Iraq since the first year of the war when Cody was there, they have worsened. They are less safe. And there continue to be reports of soldiers not having food or water, or being provided contaminated food and water, something that government and military officials are certainly aware of, even if the general public is not. They allow it to continue, KBR continues to get paid.

One of the first things Cody wanted to tell people when he came out of Iraq was that it was his belief that US soldiers are still there to support private contractors, not the other way around. The toppling of the government of Saddam Hussein left a lawless void in which there are no stops to the operation of international corporations or other private contractors who are flocking to Iraq with dollar signs in their eyes, the only law in place is that of the US military, and government and military leaders are allowing our soldiers to be used to protect the money makers. They could not operate in Iraq without our soldiers to provide security for them. In addition, KBR makes a fortune just because our soldiers are there and are making profits from this despite the fact that they have been unable to adequately provide the services.

KBR employees charged with delivering food, water and mail to our soldiers either cannot do so because conditions are too dangerous, and when they do make deliveries, must do so in the company of large military convoys. There is little progress in "rebuilding Iraq," yet contractors continue to make profits. Our soldiers continue to go without adequate food and water, or become sick from contaminated food and water provided by KBR, yet KBR and its parent Halliburton continue to make money from this. To me this is just plain old racketeering, the United States Government and military officials colluding with international corporations to profit from our misery and the misery of the Iraqi people, profit from death and destruction.

Jeri Reed is the mother of Iraq War veteran Cody Camacho, a member of Military Families Speak Out, and she also participated in the Veterans & Survivors 135 mile "Walkin' to New Orleans" march from Mobile, Alabama to New Orleans which linked the issues of money spent on the unjustified and unjustifiable war in Iraq to money NOT spent on rebuilding the US Gulf Coast in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

posted 12 may 2006

From the Mother of a Marine
by Missy Comley Beattie

Elaine Brower is a "big-mouth woman" and she has a lot to say, especially, to the Bush Administration but also to military families and, well, everyone who has a stake in the survival of this country.

Elaine is a military parent, a member of World Can't Wait/Drive Out the Bush Regime, and Military Families Speak Out. She can't wait for Bush to be impeached and she is definitely speaking out. Her son James is a Marine who served a tour of duty in Afghanistan and deployed to Iraq in March 2006. Elaine drove him to Twentynine Palms, California where she held a peace vigil outside the military base as he left.

For this mother and so many military parents, every minute of the day is a nightmare. Elaine writes:

DISGUSTED WITH BEING A MARINE MOM

I'd like to describe the life of a military mom in 2 words: IT SUCKS! My beautiful son is in the Marine Corps now stationed in Fallujah, eating dirt and sleeping with rats. I vehemently protested the war from the beginning. Not only the war, but I really do hate the man who smirks a lot sitting in the White House, and all those cronies alongside him. How dare he send my son and other young American soldiers who signed on the dotted line to protect our country, not to fight an illegal, immoral, and illegitimate war, for the personal gains of the rich and elite.

But I digress. Every single day, sometimes twice a day, I receive these ghastly emails from the Military Volunteer Network, made up of Stepford Wives and Mothers. There's lots of rah-rah stuff and how we should support "Our Boys". They include pictures of them in full-battle gear running through the streets, or sleeping in the dust with their M-16s. The captions read anywhere from "Our Marines hard at work" to "Here are our Marines, giving out candy to Iraqi children." How disgusting. We have bombed that country back to the Stone Age, committed genocide, torn apart families and a culture that goes back thousands of years, and we give the kids candy! Are they nuts or is it me?

Here's an email on the network from one of the mothers:

'Hello Families of our Deployed Marines,

Just wanted to forward the attached update from (I omitted the name). please enjoy! If you have any questions, or if there is anything I can do to help you, please let me know. Hope to see all of you at Family Day on Saturday, May 20th!!! Take care.'

'May 1, 2006

I figured it out. Oh yea, see I have a new religion it is sort of like Tom Cruise's, not scientology though, it is Americantology. That is right. See I was looking at my new flag pole/light pole and listening to the usual Muslim prayer song when I thought about freedom of religion and how we all have different religions and can accept them all and by DOD policy and everybody's policy we have to respect them all and can not discriminate against religion. So that means they have to respect my religion, heck they even have the Wiccas now I've read. So here is what I see. As I need to express my religion, just like I listen to their prayers five times a day here, I plan to play my religious music once a day off the roof of my building in downtown Fallujah. I figure my religion will spread like wildfire through the boys if I could play the National Anthem, Marines Hymn, Lee Greenwood God Bless America, and some of the many patriotic songs written by people like Toby Keith courtesy of the red, white, and blue. They all fall under my religion. Brass can't make me take down my religion. I will run an extension cord with a converter up to power it. If it works as well as I think it will, maybe I will play it 5 times a day like my neighbors. They say everyone in a foxhole finds religion, I guess that must be true.'

Certainly, it's this kind of nationalism that will put James and our soldiers in even more danger.

My son agrees that this war is bad, but he was trained by our "New" military. They learned from Viet Nam that you must train in groups so there is now this buddy system. He fights to keep his buddies alive, and himself alive. What a dilemma this is for me! I want him to be alive, I want to hear about his life in Iraq, but am absolutely appalled that there is a sub-culture of loving death and destruction belonging to this "Military Family" which I want no part of, but find myself stuck in.

Pictures, emails, letters, parties, and stupid smiley faces are the way they group together, these people who have absolutely no clue as to what is really happening over there. Or maybe they do. One mother I spoke with said she has to believe her son is helping the Iraqi people, or she would go mad. I think she is already there. The devil inside me wants to send these flag-wavers every single horrible thing I find to scare them into seeing the stark reality of war. But then I stop myself, because maybe I envy their ignorance. My existence is one of raging daily against not only this war, but everything this Republican Administration is doing. They are crooks, pedophiles, megalomaniacs, and warmongers, only to name a few. I would love to wake up in the morning and have nothing better to do than think that my son is someplace nice, helping people. I wouldn't have grey hair, lines on my face, and a knot in my stomach and would stop screaming at everyone all day long.

So what to do? Be consumed by the Stepford existence of our rah-rah Military Family organizations packaging up candy, or fight the fight? I know which course I am taking, do you?

As peace organizations plan the Mother's Day Rally in DC, think about Elaine's challenge. There will be hundreds of thousands of "big-mouth" women in our Nation's Capital, calling for the immediate withdrawal of our troops from Iraq and Afghanistan and an end to future wars. Let's help Elaine bring James and all our soldiers home. NOW!

Missy Beattie lives in New York City. She's written for National Public Radio and Nashville Life Magazine. An outspoken critic of the Bush Administration and the war in Iraq, she's a member of Gold Star Families for Peace. She completed a novel last year, but since the death of her nephew, Marine Lance Cpl. Chase J. Comley, in Iraq on August 6,'05, she has been writing political articles. This was published online by Op-Ed News.

posted 11 may 2006

“Mission Accomplished” Day
by Cindy Sheehan

May 1st, 2006 will be the 3rd Anniversary of the end of "major combat" in Iraq. It was a glorious day when George Bush flew onto the deck of the Abraham Lincoln and was hailed by the rapturous throngs of toadie "news" persons such as Chris Matthews ("And that's the president looking very much like a jet, you know, a high-flying jet star," Hardball, May 1, 2003) and Bob Schieffer ("As far as I'm concerned, that was one of the great pictures of all time. And if you're a political consultant, you can just see campaign commercial written all over the pictures of George Bush." Meet the Press, May 4, 2003). What a fast and clean war! G. Gordon Liddy was enthralled with the president's package ("all those women who say size doesn't count -- they're all liars." Hardball, May 7, 2003) and a new era free from terrorism was ushered in.

This is the faith based fable of what happened almost exactly three years ago. The reality based scenario goes something like this:
• Over 2400 American soldiers (including my son who was killed almost a year after Mission Accomplished Day) have come home in cardboard boxes in cargo areas of planes in the secrecy of the night.

• Thousands of our young people wounded, many grievously also bused into Walter Reed and other hospitals in the dark of the night.

• Tons of rubble upon rubble in Iraq with inconsistent electrical power still and not much clean water or chance of future power and clean water.

• Hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians are dead, being punished for the sins of a leader who was propped up, armed and supported by many US Regimes.

The Mission Accomplished Day (or, Operation Codpiece) public relations' dream for the presidential pelvic zone has turned into a frighteningly real nightmare for so many people around the world who have had sons, daughters, mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, and oftentimes entire families wiped out and devastated by the strutting and smirking terrorist who was feeling mighty "chipper" last night at the Washington Correspondent's annual dinner as the 2400 th soldier was being killed and as the 2400th Gold Star Mother was falling on the floor screaming for her child. There are hundreds of thousands of people on our planet who will have a hard time ever feeling chipper again because of George Bush, no matter how good he looks in a flight suit.

Now that BushCo has done such a fantastic job with the invasion and occupation of Iraq that never should have happened, but now that it has happened is extraordinarily evil in its scope and tactics, he is warning Iran that if it doesn't shape up the US is going to come and impose freedom and democracy on that country. The rah-rah, "yes, sir" Congress who has an easy job of approving everything that George Bush does, thereby eliminating critical thinking, debate, or any semblance of rational discussion has voted for sanctions that will lead to an attack on Iran which will be devastating for our troops in Iraq and for that poor region that had the unfortunate luck to be built upon tremendous oil and natural gas reserves.

Only 21 Congress people voted "nay" on the Iran Freedom Support Act which is incredible considering what happened when they voted "yea" to give George Bush the green light for every sanction against Iraq and to invade it. I ran into one of the "yea" voters on the Iran Freedom Support Act, Rep. Major Owens, and I asked him why he voted that way. He said it was because he hated the "evil" regime of Iran. I asked him about our own evil, irresponsible regime! The radical President of Iran says very irresponsible and inflammatory things, but by all accounts is over a decade away from a nuclear weapon and is reigned in by the mullahs and the young population of Iran that is very westernized. We are in trouble with our one party system of government, which is the War Party.

Before we the people need to be subjected to another swaggering spectacle from George after he has bombed Iran back into the stone ages and has made we the people of the United States of America even more hated around the world, it is time to rein him in ourselves. Congress won't do it and the media is falling into lockstep behind the murder again.

It is time to fire the warniks whose bloodlust cannot be slated and hire people who will finally use their wisdom, integrity, and non-violence to solve problems, and won't create imaginary problems out of smoke and mirrors. We need a Congress that will hold George accountable not one that is complicit in the war crimes.

Martin Luther King, Jr. said: "We must live together as brothers, or perish together as fools." God protect us from the fools that we elected to protect us!

Cindy Sheehan is the mother of American war victim, Casey Sheehan who was killed on 04/04/04. She is a co-founder of Gold Star Families for Peace and is the author of Not One More Mother's Child.

posted 01 may 2006

IVAW applauds the strength and courage of undocumented immigrants!
(in English y Español)

In the name of human dignity and rights, Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) proudly stands in solidarity with the masses of undocumented immigrants as immigration policy persists on rearing its hypocritical head. As veterans who signed enlistment contracts and accepted commissions to defend the Constitution of the United States, we see clearly the racism inherent in the existing immigration policy. We have served with, and many of us are, the children of undocumented immigrants who are being feverishly recruited to protect the country against all enemies, foreign and domestic. IVAW knows that an escalating proportion of the military lives sacrificed and taxes paid are coming from undocumented immigrant families, even while those fathers, mothers, sisters and brothers are being denied the privileges of citizenship and the dignity of justice.

We, the members of IVAW, still hold these truths to be self-evident, that all are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. IVAW seeks an end to our nation's turn toward more racist immigration, military recruiting, and taxation policies. IVAW applauds the strength of courage and character of undocumented immigrants in the ongoing struggle for justice.
-- Iraq Veterans Against the War

IVAW Aplaude la Fuerza y el Valor de Inmigrantes Indocumentados
—Por Veteranos de Irak en Contra de la Guerra (IVAW por sus siglas en inglés)

En nombre de los derechos y de la dignidad humana, los Veteranos de Irak en Contra de la Guerra (IVAW), orgullosamente nos pronunciamos en solidaridad con las masas de inmigrantes indocumentados mientras la política migratoria continúe irguiendo su hipócrita cabeza. Como veteranos que firmaron contratos militares y aceptaron comisiones para defender la Constitución de los Estados Unidos, vemos claramente el racismo inherente en la existente política migratoria. Algunos de nosotros somos, y hemos cumplido nuestro servicio con, hijos de inmigrantes indocumentados que han sido arduamente reclutados para defender la nación en contra de todo enemigo, extranjero y nacional. IVAW reconoce que un creciente número de vidas sacrificadas, y de impuestos pagados, ha salido de familias de inmigrantes indocumentados, mientras a dichas familias se les están negando los privilegios de la ciudadanía y la dignidad de la justicia.

Nosotros, los miembros de IVAW, todavía consideramos estas verdades manifiestas, que todos fuimos creados iguales, que todos fuimos dotados por nuestro Creador de ciertos derechos inalienables, que entre ellos se encuentran el derecho a la vida, la libertad, y la búsqueda de la felicidad. IVAW persigue el fin al giro que nuestra nación ha tomado hacia políticas racistas de inmigración, reclutamiento militar, y fiscales. IVAW aplaude la fortaleza, el valor, y la fuerza de carácter de inmigrantes indocumentados en su continua lucha por la justicia.
--Veteranos de Irak en Contra de la Guerra (IVAW)

posted 21 april 2006

Walking Beyond New Orleans,
What are our next steps?
by Stan Goff

Territory: from terra, meaning soil or land.

They love it when we struggle over policy, because abstraction always works in their favor. They love it when we fight for an issue and not a program, because they can throw up more initiatives than we have to power to confront.

What they are doing in Iraq and the Gulf Coast is taking away other peoples’ territory… which is the geographic basis of sovereignty… and that sense we name “home.”

Home were the twin demands: Bring the troops HOME. Bring the survivors HOME. Bring us to our sense of place.

The basis of the struggle for social transformation is the struggle to assert POPULAR sovereignty against elite sovereignty.

Soldiers fight for territory, taking it from others, defending their own, or defending the territory of others. We just struck the first of many blows to defend the sovereignty of both Iraq and the residents of the Gulf Coast. We have adopted non-violence as a strategy, but that doesn’t mean we don’t understand that we are at war with war, that we seek to take the power of the powerful, or that we are coming off the defense and onto the offense. We have turned a corner, and now it is up to us to move forward on the other side of that turn.

We walked, and that is why we know the land, the homes — many shattered by wind and flood — that we are helping people defend. We have to understand the implications of this. We have become a Department of HOMEland Security for the oppressed, only we are talking about real homes and not some national-fascist fatherland abstraction.

This movement has struggled for some time with several questions. Why are we so white? Why do we have such minimal participation from black and brown? How do we reach out? How can we stop those in power from ignoring us?

We may have stumbled upon the answers to some of those questions by doing what we just did.

Those with some social privilege are always — historically — the people who have the educational, financial, socio-cultural, and organizational advantages available to them to be more effective when they are politically radicalized. When movements are organized around issues like the war and foreign policy, those in the best position to struggle around these global issues are those who are less preoccupied with more immediate issues of survival for themselves and their families. So the privileges of class, race-nationality, and gender are reflected in the very movements that have declared themelves against expolitative power.

In many cases, these movements also reflect a kind of myopia. We have missed the struggles that are going on all around us, precisely because we have a degree of citizenship… we are listened to and taken seriously by the establishment. The struggles we have missed are those that affect those who are treated as less-than-citizens… be they African Americans, Hispano-Latinas, or Indigenous Nations… women, LGBT, young people.

We must grasp the difference between a citizen and a subject, because this is the difference between colonizer and colonized. And that colonial status breaks down when the citizen converts the privileges of citizenship into resistance by placing that privilege in the service of the subjects... of the subjugated. We turn the class privilege into a weapon against class. We turn the privileges of men against male supremacy, and heterosexual normacy against oppressive sexual norms. We turn the privleges of whiteness against white supremacy. We turn the valorization of the military in a militarized society against militarism. We turn territorial privilege into a weapon to regain the lost territory of the subject... and we redefine citizenship in a new country, in liberated territory, figurative and literal.

We went to the Gulf Coast and we connected the war aborad with a war at home. Let’s think about what we mean when we say “war at home.” What does it look like, this war? Who is this war aimed against? How is it fought? These are the things we need to know in order to fight back.

In both Iraq and the Gulf Coast, brown, foreign, and poor people have been subjected to at least two perfectly similar assaults: the attempt to take their territory, and the attempt to impose control over them as a population.

In our trip across the Gulf Coast, we took a couple of important first steps to deal with the questions raised above. We went to the heart of the nation’s Black Belt. We accepted Black leadership, male and female. We shared resources with African American organizers on THEIR home bases. We met with and formed relationships with everyday Black, Native Nations, Hispano-Latina, Vietnamese, and poor white people in the region. We collaborated with Black folk through the only institution over which they still retain control — the Black church — which is also the locus of African American community organizing. We prioritized THEIR issue, and committed to follow through. And now we have the potential to contest with those in power, in solidarity with the people with whom we have met and to whom we have committed, to defend their homes against the encroachments of what promises to be the most massive gentirifcation project in American history.

We have positioned ourselves for a fight to defend the homes — the territory — of our allies. This could become a new kind of fight, and making the issues land, popular sovereignty, and the fight against militarized population control (especially against the prison-industrial complex and felony disfranchisement), we have taken on a new quality of struggle… and one that applies equally to the occupation of Iraq and the occupation of the Gulf Coast.

Not only does the fight against gentrification and lockdown in the Gulf Coast go straight to the heart of the oppression unmasked there by the hurricane and the government’s response, these two issues can be linked to the issue of the war nationwide, and thereby centralize the immediate and emergency concerns of black, brown, and poor people all over the country.

These are talking points that can be developed and popularized, linked to ongoing struggles around the country, and that we can carry as a battle standard to the Gulf Coast as follow up.

Some folks at IVAW already want to organize a 2006 Summer Reconstruction Collective for the Gulf Coast. We find the funds for them. They stay at Slidell. They work in one community to build strong local relationships there throughout the summer — June through August. Over one selected week, with a few days fore and aft to total a week, the same IVAW Summer Reconstruction Collective organizes and runs a weeklong reconstruction blitz, with Vets for Peace, especially Vietnam Vets, coming down to work a plan conceived BY IVAW.

Dave Cline and I were talking, and he is suggesting a parallel, two-step campaign… one I want to endorse in its general outlines. “Home by Christmas” as part of the Bring Them Home Now! campaign, that whips the living hell out of Congress — followed by a build up of marches similar to the one we just did, but across individual states, culminating in state capitols across the country. Detroit to Lansing. Fayetteville to Raleigh. Bay Area to Sacramento. Albuquerque to Santa Fe. Portland to Salem. Newark to Trenton. And on and on. Four or five day walks and caravans, camping again, landing each night in some community under assault by thuggish police, by gentrifiers, or economic crisis. Linking with African Americans, Hispano-Latinas, Native Nations. Joining their issues, accepting their leadership, and sharing our resources. Converging in state capitols on the fourth anniversary of the war, with our motley marchers, led by vets, especially Iraq vets, and our peace-train convoys of cars… a new popular democracy struggle on the move.

A program that is not trapped in policy, but tied to territory. A revolution that knows how to dance (we did that well, didn’t we, in the street and in the camps?). A movement that is coming off the defensive and taking it to them, one day’s march at a time. Let’s teach people how we learned to love and lose our fear.

Just a riff in my head. I’m still padding down Highway 90, drinking Grumble’s coffee, hearing your drums, huggin’ y’all goodnight.

Cross country, like a fuken justice army… still can’t believe we did it.

posted 26 march 2006

Bring 'Em On?
by Stan Goff
[Originally published by CounterPunch, July 3, 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."

Stan Goff, of Raleigh, N.C., began his military career in the U.S. Army in 1970 and retired as a Special Forces Master Sergeant in 1996. He served in Ranger, Airborne and Special Forces counter-terrorist units, in eight conflict areas. He has since become a respected commentator on military matters and an outspoken critic of the U.S. occupation of Iraq. He is the author of Hideous Dream, Full Spectrum Disorder and Sex & War. Stan's son Jessie serves in the U.S. Army and has just been deployed to Iraq.

posted 13 july 2006

The Politics of PTSD
by Michael Uhl
[Reprinted from the Bangor Daily News, March 9, 2006]

Recent news articles have reported that nearly 216,000 veterans diagnosed with ptsd - post-traumatic stress disorder - receive benefits from the Veterans Administration. Most of these veterans are from the Vietnam period, and many, including myself, were granted their disability ratings only during the last decade. Since 1999, the VA's ptsd benefit payments have jumped 150% from $1.7 to $4.3 billion annually. Clearly, since the disorder's recognition in 1980 by the American Psychiatric Association (APA), ptsd - with its long silent history under other names from soldier's heart to combat neurosis - had finally become a cost of war to be reckoned with.

Now, with reports that the percentages, if not the absolute numbers, of returning Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans suffering from ptsd may exceed that of their Vietnam era counterparts, VA budgetary outlays for care and treatment of this malady are likely to skyrocket even further.

Naturally, the merits of a given veteran's case for ptsd care and treatment should be judged on the best scientific evidence and screening methodologies available. It is the need based on science that should dictate the size of the VA's budget to accommodate veterans traumatized by war, and not the size of the budget that shapes or manipulates diagnostic criteria to reduce the ptsd population among returning war veterans.

Concern has mounted in recent months among veterans and their advocates that it is money, and not science, that may set the VA's ptsd-related mental health agenda in the years ahead. Not only could this revised agenda have a potentially disastrous impact on the well-being and readjustment of today's returning veterans, but it has already caused considerable anxiety among veterans who have been rated with ptsd in recent years, and who fear their benefits may be unjustly curtailed. Apparently, the VA's ill-conceived plan to review the cases of thousands of veterans compensated for ptsd since the mid-1990s has been scuttled, owing to negative political fallout in Congress. But now the VA seems bent on pursuing its plan to limit future ptsd cases through a new strategy that will pit one prestigious scientific body against another, and which even Congress may have less influence to monitor or challenge.

The VA has contracted with the Institute of Medicine, a component of the National Academy of Sciences, to conduct a sweeping reexamination, not only of all medical and scientific literature on ptsd to date, but on issues related to ptsd's "treatment, prognosis and compensation." Such an initiative, given how much remains to be learned about ptsd, may be timely as long as objective science holds sway over politically-motivated cost-cutting. At the same time, the VA initiative threatens to second guess, and potentially delegitimize, the longstanding authority of the American Psychiatric Association under whose aegis ptsd research and treatment has been studied and advanced for more than a quarter century.

Anyone familiar with ptsd as researcher, clinician or long term client, is well aware of the competing hypothesis around the exact nature of the disorder, not to mention the rival claims of relative efficacy for one therapeutic method versus another in the treatment of ptsd's persistent and aggressive symptomatology. Psychiatrist and noted author Robert Jay Lifton, a pioneer in the early efforts to gain recognition for a condition initially observed in Vietnam veterans as post-Vietnam syndrome, and later defined systematically by the APA as ptsd, has long recognized the powers of human resilience among some individuals to survive horrifying episodes of war-related trauma. That's the good news. Where such individual hardiness is not present, many are not so fortunate, and the psychic damage incurred by such victims can lead to social dysfunction, social pathology, or even suicide.

Most veterans I know who are rated with ptsd, including myself, will tell you that after living with this condition, often for decades, their symptoms never go away, but that with self-vigilance, proper care, and the support of loved ones and friends, their symptoms can be managed and kept at bay. Given this well-documented collective experience, the most troubling aspect of the VA-mandated Institute of Medicine's ptsd review is not just the hidden assumption that something is wrong with the existing ptsd science or benefit adjudication criteria, but the introduction within the policy debate of an expectation that combat trauma can be prevented. Concepts like 'survivability' and 'resilience' offer hope of coping mechanisms to returning veterans who undergo disturbing changes of behavior because of their wartime experiences. Whereas the idea that an individual's response to trauma in warfare can be "prevented" prior to or immediately following the traumatic event, seems suspiciously convenient for those who would bend science to a conservative vision of social policy. Ironically, in this scenario, support for the troops in the field does not translate into support for veterans at home.

In July 2000, I had occasion to interview Daniel King, Ph.D., head of the Behavioral Science Division of the VA's National Center for PTSD. Dr. King is a quantitative psychologist. He and his team performed statistical analysis on data furnished by clinicians working with ptsd clients throughout the VA system. One unexpected finding King had begun to notice around the time we were talking, was a quantum leap in cases of "late-onset" ptsd. These were veterans, in their fifties like me, who were entering the VA system for the first time in the mid to late 1990s.

In fact, the VA's own surveys show that, of the vast majority of Vietnam veterans known to suffer from ptsd, less than one-fourth have ever benefitted from VA-related services. Under the circumstances, it seems as if the increased burden in compensation payments that the VA is experiencing should have come as no surprise. Prior to its official recognition, moreover, ptsd was frequently referred to as "delayed stress," while the prefix "post" in the current usage would seem to suggest, logically at least, that the syndrome's appearance can't be tied to a fixed time-line.

In my own experience, ptsd is an insidious disease, one which I went to great lengths to deny in my own life for decades. Denial, in fact, was my biggest enemy, in the sense that I failed to grasp for years that ptsd, perhaps all mental illness, has a life of its own, and is not subject to conscious regulation like the normal ups and downs most people experience. When I realized that ptsd often controlled me, and not the other way around, I was able to finally confront my condition, and learn how to better cope with and manage my symptoms. Without the safety net provided by the VA, that would not have been possible.

Michael Uhl, Ph.D., a writer and a charter member of Veterans For Peace lives in Walpole, Maine. He is also a member of the Disabled American Veterans. He led a combat intelligence team in Vietnam with the 11th Infantry.

posted 16 march 2006

Spirit of Gandhi—Passion of Jesus
Thoughts on the plight of Fernando Suarez Del Solar
By Pablo Paredes, February 2006

"I can't sit here and do nothing while this war keeps claiming kids and stealing souls." This was the response I received from Fernando Suarez Del Solar when I questioned his newest and boldest idea for bringing an end to the bloodshed in Iraq.

Many would find it a sad irony to know that the first Mexican to die in this war was of the name Jesús. Fernando's son Jesús Suarez Del Solar was a charismatic young soul who above all placed a premium on helping children. Jesús joined the Marines believing he would free the children of Iraq. This was his mission, and when he died, Fernando made it his.

Fernando learned his son fell to enemy fire and was devastated but his heart was yet to be further shattered. He soon learned by his own merit on a humanitarian mission to Iraq that the military had lied to him. His son was the victim of the only weapons of mass destruction so far encountered in Iraq. Jesús stepped on an illegal US mine. Since learning the truth Fernando has made it his mission to shed light on the multitude of lies that surround the invasion and occupation of Iraq and to help in every way possible the children in Iraq as well as his son's fellow troops.

After countless visits to high schools to shed light on the reality of war and two trips to Iraq bringing clothes and medicines for Iraqi children, the bloodshed continues. Countless peace demonstrations and local marches and the number of fallen soldiers continue to rise. This year on the third anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, Fernando cannot be satisfied by a local protest or a rally with some interviews calling for an end to the madness. So he seeks to evoke a tradition long established in Chicano History, the spirit of Gandhi. Cesar Chavez was a disciple of the late Mahatma, once quoted as saying; "There is no such thing as defeat in non-violence." And the words of Benito Juarez were antecedents to the marriage of the Gandhi and Chicano struggles when he proclaimed "Entre los individuos, como entre las naciones, el respeto al derecho ajeno es la paz."

Fernando recalls last years seventy fifth anniversary of "The Salt March", but he isn't content to conmemorate such a milestone every 25 years. Instead he seeks to put in practice the spirit of Ghandi that has marched with Cesar Chavez, and to reclaim our Latino Legacy of men like Benito Juarez. This nation undoubtedly opposes this war but it will take action and sacrifice, and Fernando is twice willing. On March 12, the seventy-sixth anniversary of "The Salt March," Fernando Suarez Del Solar Will begin a 241 mile march that will trace the life and passion of his son Jesús from Tijuana to Camp Pendleton. From here Fernando will continue where his son left off and walk in the footsteps of sections of the great Cesar Chavez-led march from Delano to Sacramento. The march will end on the anniversary of the death of Jesús, March 27 in San Francisco, where Fernando plans to lead a large scale blood drive for those in need in Iraq, by being the first to give his blood. In hopes of emphasizing the equal value of every human life, the blood will be equally divided to help Iraqi civilians and coalition forces.

I will not allow, 50 year old, Fernando to walk alone on March 12th, and I call on anyone who agrees that the violence in Iraq must end and that the will of this country must be upheld, to join us in demanding an end to the Bloodshed. Let's not sit around anymore.

For more information on this 241 mile journey in the spirit of Cesar Chavez, check out the support page on Fernando Suarez del Solar's Proyecto Guerrero Azteca web page.

Pablo Paredes

Navy war resister who refused boarding an Iraq bound ship on
Dec. 6th 2004. He was court martialed, sentenced and now
speaks out for Peace.

posted 08 march 2006

Occupying Maine Senators Offices to Demand "Bring Them Home Now!"

This past Wednesday, January 11th, fifty antiwar activists, including eight members of Veterans For Peace, Chapter 1,divided their forces and simultaneously occupied the Portland, Maine offices of Senators Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe, both Republicans. My partner Susan and I went to Collins' office, and it is that event I will briefly refer to here. But the experience in Snowe's office was apparently quite the same. There were thirty of us who entered Collins' office en masse at 11 a.m., announcing our purpose to occupy the space and stay there until we had read the lists in our possession that named the war dead in Iraq. We seated ourselves on the floor encircling the room along the office walls, then commenced to read, alternating between the name of a U.S. or coalition force fatality, and that of an Iraqi victim, who, given the preponderance of women, the young and the aged, was almost always unquestionably a non-combatant.

With each reading two members from the group, on a rotating basis, would inscribe an X with a grease pencil on an unfolding shroud of muslin cloth, four feet wide and perhaps fifteen feet in length that was spread on the floor before them: a red X for Iraqis, a black X for the fallen soldiers. Someone else would chime a pair of Tibetan bells after each name was read. On occasion, when hearing a reading like, "Mr. So & So, an Iraqi male of middle age, and seventeen members of his family," both the inscriber and the bell ringer would attempt to improvise a response - a quick flourish of markings on the cloth, a rapid succession of chimes - that would give recognition to these compressed entries of anonymous, collective deaths, without failing to record or chime the next name in line. For the most part, when not engaged in one of these revolving tasks, we mostly sat in silence around the room.

In the background, Collins' staffers attempted to go on with business as usual. The effect of these incompatible, but parallel, activities cast the staffers' movements in the realm of the surreal as the they tip-toed around us, at the same time straining to ignore our presence. None of the organizers knew how this action would play out. Several weeks back, a similar event in Snowe's Bangor office led to the arrest of nineteen activists. Whereas yesterday it appeared that neither Senator wanted a repeat of that outcome. Weighing the political costs, they may have reasoned that any arrests would lend more moral force to our action, and perhaps intensify the media's interest in linking the two Senators to their unambiguous support for the war. It became clear after five-thirty in the afternoon, when Collins' office would normally have closed, and when the activists might have been invited to leave, and risked arrest had they refused, that the word had come down from D.C. to wait us out. When Susan and I left at 5:45, others remained behind to finish the readings. While we have had no news on the exact outcome, the brief report the following morning on Maine Public Radio News made no mention of arrests.

It is legitimate to ask what such actions as these occupations and incantations of the names of the dead are capable of achieving in terms of political objectives. We were not just making the maximal demand that the U.S. occupation of Iraq be ended, and all the troops brought home NOW, but that both Senators immediately agree to hold Town Meetings to allow our fellow Mainers to publicly air their own doubts and concerns about the war. Both Collins and Snowe have refused to call for, or attend, such a meeting, preferring, they say, to meet with constituents on an individual basis.

One would only need to recall a similar Town Meeting hosted by Maine Congressman Mike Michaud, a Democrat, in late December in Bangor to understand the reluctance on the part of the two Republican senators, who are wedded to the Bush administration's position on Iraq. In Michaud's meeting, despite the manipulation of the Q&A exchanges to project a balance between pro and anti-war views, it was abundantly clear that the vast majority of those in attendance - as was fairly reported in the state and local media - was soundly opposed to the war. Facing what would almost certainly be a similar public response, Collins and Snowe would prefer to ignore the voices of the people, and by-pass any democratic participation at the grassroots, in order to keep faith with their party bosses and the special interests who strongly influence our government's policy of aggression against Iraq.

On the way home the night of our sit-in, Susan and I discussed what we had both registered as a revelation, that the American GIs killed in action were substantially in the same age range as our own two sons, early to mid-twenties. Of course, this should have come as no surprise. But it added to the emotional burden we both felt after the day's intense immersion in the representational carnage of this war, transmitted by the simple act of reading and recording the names of the dead. For me, this was the most immediate accomplishment of our day long protest, an increased consciousness, not required to buttress my own self-satisfied view of the war's fundamental wrongness, but of the mounting weight of evidence in blood and bone we have in our possession to sway the public to increasingly concrete expressions of its own mounting opposition. It is the struggle to give that public the voice it is denied by the indifference of our media and our many elected representatives, that confronts our movement now.

Michael Uhl

Coordinating  Committee, Bring Them Home Now! campaign
Combat Intelligence, 11th  Infantry, Vietnam

posted 17 january 2006

Military Families Not Amused By Pentagon's "Ha-Ha-Ha" Routine

Dear Military Families,

Below is an article that appeared in USA Today -- titled "Pentagon to families: Go ahead, laugh" -- about a Pentagon training program for National Guard families. It was sent to us by a member of Iraq Veterans Against the War -- an outraged Massachusetts National Guard soldier recently returned from Iraq, whose wife and two children are long-time members of MFSO. The article says that the Pentagon thinks the appropriate response of National Guard families to the stress of the war in Iraq is to walk like penguins, waddling and flapping our hands like fins --and tells about the Pentagon's training program to help families learn to do this.

If you would like to write a response to this article in the form of a Letter to the Editor, you can email it to: editor@usatoday.com or fax it to 703-854-2053. USA Today states that Letters to the Editor have a greater chance of being printed if they are 250 words or less. If you do send a letter, please email a copy to Military Families Speak Out at mfso@mfso.org Thank you.

We believe that "When the stress of the war in Iraq becomes too severe" (a direct quote from the article below) -- we need to come together -- in our communities and across the country -- support each other through all we are going through, and raise the demand louder and stronger than ever: "Bring 'em home now, and take care of them when they get here!"
 
In Peace and Solidarity, and not laughing here,
Nancy Lessin and Charley Richardson
for Military Families Speak Out
www.mfso.org
www.bringthemhomenow.org
 
PENTAGON TO FAMILES: GO AHEAD, LAUGH
By Gregg Zoroya
USA TODAY January 13, 2006

When the stress of the war in Iraq becomes too severe, the Pentagon has a suggestion for military families: Learn how to laugh. With help from the Pentagon's chief laughter instructor, families of National Guard members are learning to walk like a penguin, laugh like a lion and blurt "ha, ha, hee, hee and ho, ho." No joke. "I laugh every chance I get," says the instructor, retired Army colonel James "Scotty" Scott. "That's why I'm blessed to be at the Pentagon, where we definitely need a lot of laughter in our lives." Scott, 57, is certified as a laughter training specialist by the Ohio-based World Laughter Tour, a group that promotes mirth as medicine. It touts scientific research that suggests chuckling can boost the body's immune system and decrease stress hormones. A Pentagon spokeswoman, Lt. Col. Ellen Krenke, says the Pentagon is committed to the program and values Scott's skills. "We sent him to the training," she says. The laughter program was Scott's idea. It costs the military virtually nothing, because Scott already travels to states as a director of military family support policy.

KEEPING THEM IN STITCHES Ways military families are being taught to laugh:

Penguin exercise: Waddle and flap hands as though they're fins.

Lion laugh: Open eyes and mouth wide while repeating "ha ha's."

Repeat "ho, ho, ha, ha, ha," while clapping on each sound. He has taught National Guard family group leaders in Alaska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas and Idaho, and will do so in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Florida, he says. Another laughter trainer is working with folks in North Carolina. "We believe our program prevents hardening of the attitudes," says Scott, in one of his wordplay aphorisms that beg for a rimshot. The founder and chief executive of the World Laughter Tour is psychologist Steve Wilson, who calls himself "Cheerman of the Bored." "The guiding principle is to laugh for no reason. And that's one of the reasons it works so well for military families," Scott says. "There's a lot they have to be stressed over, a lot of worries, a lot of concerns."

As foolish as students might feel, Scott says he's lost only one participant: a Marine sergeant major who, Scott says, fled the room with a bad case of the giggles. Mary Frances Booth, the wife of a retired soldier, took the class last year and is an ardent devotee. She and her two daughters — Meaghan, 10 and Sarah, 8 — were sobbing after Booth dropped her husband at the Boise airport Sunday; he was headed for Afghanistan for work as a civilian contractor, she says. Then Booth called for one of the laughing drills.

"They rolled their eyes at me and thought, 'Mom's on her laughing thing again,' " Booth says. "(But) it made it a little bit better."

posted 15 january 2006

A Mother Writes: Don't let Bush create an army of "Gold-Star Moms"!

Cindy Sheehan writes: This is from a friend of mine whose son is in the Army, stationed in Baghdad. And the Peace Community is accused of not supporting our troops??? This is fu**ing barbaric and we are letting this stuff continue in our names.

Excuse my launguage, but my friend almost became a Gold Star Mom on the 27th.... but for the grace of god or whatever, she didn't. Our government is creating Gold Star Moms at a very rapid clip and the Iraqi people that they are killing or turning into people who have to fight to survive is obscene.

What are we willing to do to stop the inhumanity and war crimes?

Cindy

**WARNING** FYI.....This is pretty graphic.....

I was thrilled yesterday to wake to an email from Micah. The last correspondence I had from him was the email on Dec. 26. Then 2 guys in his battalion were killed and one wounded on the 27th (the wounded soldier has since passed away from his injuries). All communications were shut down until notification of their deaths by the Army to their families....but still no word from Micah. I knew that he would contact us as soon as he could...but that didn't make the waiting any easier. He emailed yesterday to reassure me that he was "fine"....which of course I was glad to hear. Then he called me later in the day.....

It was wonderful to hear his voice....be able to talk to him. I asked him about the incident that ended those 3 guys lives.....ages 26, 23, and 20. He said he hadn't planned on telling me about it, but then knew that I already knew about it...aware that I had received the email from the military explaining why we may not be hearing from our soldiers. I asked him if he knew what happened....he hesitantly told me....."Yes".....he was there when it happened! That....I wasn't prepared for. He wanted to spare me the details....but Micah and I can and do talk very frankly about everything.....I knew he needed to talk to someone about it....so I told him not to hold anything back. I told him I already know he is in harms way, I know there are horrible things going on there....things I can't even imagine.....but I wanted to know....and I wanted him to be able to talk about it with me.

He said it was their first mission since arriving in Baghdad. A group of them had to walk through a field to a "destination". He said just in front of him....about 100 yards was an explosion. Someone had stepped on a buried mine that exploded.....they were walking in a mine field! He said nothing was left....except an arm....a leg.....fingers..... They continued walking....then a second explosion.....the next two victims. They radioed for a helicopter that was not to come. So they were instructed to turn back and walk BACK thru the field......9 hours they walked......4 1/2 one way....4 1/2 back....nothing accomplished.....3 lives lost. The tension and fear that your next step, placement of your foot would be you.....your friend at any moment.....

This is our war..........

Why not take a high school class out on the edge of the expressway and have them run back and forth....who gets hit does...who's lucky enough not to....well is just lucky.

It was horrifying knowing he witnessed it, knowing he was filled with fear and images that will stay with him forever.

I asked him about the Iraqis.....the Iraqi soldiers he was with. "Their crazy" was his reply. He said that morning a dog was running down the street and an Iraqi man beat it to death with a shovel then threw it on the side of the road. He said, "That's normal here."

I immediately knew when I started talking to him that he had a cold.....he said, "Yeah, I do, but I'm ok." I asked if he was eating good....what did they have for them to eat?....American food....Iraqi food? He said they get ONE meal a day. A "meal" that is either a 6 inch cold pizza, or well, he had 5 cold chicken wings one day, oh and a hotdog one day....well a lone hotdog....no bun. One meal a day!!! Prisoners in this country are required to receive 3 full meals a day in prison or it's infringing on their rights??!!! He said they have 2 microwave ovens that are broken and a toaster oven that doesn't work well....the government is apparently spoiling them! Our sons and daughters are in the U.S. military.....fighting for our country.....have committed no crimes and this is what they feed them??? It's like the Twilight Zone or some parallel universe.....a bad dream that upon waking makes no real sense....

He took his first shower yesterday.....his first since Dec. 20. That was good he said.

The Army is wondering why no one wants to join??? Why no one wants to go back??? Are the American people really that dense to think that we are doing the right thing.....doing good? The government wants to spin this into that they're protecting us from terrorists.....payback for 9/11. Osama Bin Ladin is no where near Iraq! So is anyone on his trail?

I know they're in harms way.....thousands of miles away from home and family but can they for God's sake treat them better than a prisoner....than an animal? You mistreat an animal in this country and all kinds of organizations are on your back.....you go to jail. Our government is mistreating our soldiers and we stand back and watch......well not really because we don't see THIS on the news. We only see what they want us to see.

Most of the guys that joined were promised to be able to go to college....on the government...and could start even while in the military. Micah was included in this group. He was met with....you don't have time for college you can go when you get out. But....our prisoners are receiving college degrees while serving their sentences! Is it me or is it just backwards?? Micah is already skinny as a rail.....how do they expect a 20 yr old boy to live on what they are feeding them? Guess it doesn't matter much....why waste food on people you make walk thru mine fields? Doesn't this sound a little like the Holocaust?

So.....Micah says....he's "ok". I'm sorry to vent but THIS HAS TO STOP!!!!

PLEASE!!!!!! Email, write, call your congressmen, state representatives....etc. Go to some of the websites I have listed below....read the stories of the people....one after another..... I will email the links again to find your state officials. EDUCATE YOURSELF!!

I don't want to wait over the next year for a knock at my door....and I don't want one more mother, wife, family member to either. These Iraqi people apparently have no regard for life.....theirs, their women and children, ours, even animals. WHY ARE WE THERE??

And I voted for Bush.....TWICE! You don't see the Bush twins in Iraq.....no manicures or shopping sprees.

Don't want to ruin your day.....just want to get you thinking.....and MAD!!!

Send what you can to our troops....they definitely need it...apparently especially FOOD!!!

posted 11 january 2006

Did You Get An IRR Activation Notice?
Don't Panic (And Consider Your Options)

Are you in the IRR and did you get your marching orders for Iraq?

Individual Ready Reserve members have been called to active duty throughout the country. The orders state that you are headed for Iraq. The military does not have enough troops and has decided that you will fill its needs.

Many of you have simply not shown up and, as of yet, have not had warrants issued to pick you up and have not been arrested. There have been reports from IRR members who have received threatening phone calls and mail from the military, but still were not arrested. Others of you do not feel comfortable remaining in this no-man's land.

The Military Law Task Force and GI Rights Hotline continue to receive many calls from Army and Marine IRR enlisted and officer members who have been called up.

Here are some things to consider:

Do you have a DD 214 in your hands that says you have been discharged? What is the stated basis for the discharge? What obligation were you discharged from? Too often GIs think they are discharged only to discover that they weren't.

For those who were actually discharged, you will need to "document" clearly the reason for the discharge to the military.

Have you been discharged, but are still being "held" in the IRR for some reason?

Have you previously been discharged and had your orders for discharge revoked? (You are in a good position here, and a simple letter to the command might correct the situation.)

Have you requested delays or exemptions? Are you medically fit or is there a need for you to care for family members? Do you have grounds for financial hardship?

If an officer, have you resigned your commission?

Two different viewpoints have been expressed by experienced MLTF members concerning how to deal with this situation.

The first viewpoint asserts that nothing happens when IRR members do not report, and as one attorney states, "It is unfortunate that too many IRR members cave. A warrant is not the end of the line, but rather an opportunity to get a discharge from the IRR through turning themselves in at Forts Sill or Knox." A "bad" discharge from the IRR has no effect on the benefits otherwise accrued.

The second viewpoint urges IRR members to always ask for extensions to delay their reporting dates as long as possible and to have attorneys assist them. One attorney states, "In my experience -- just as we experienced with the Selective Service System years ago -- the military personnel commands will frequently back off rather than fight over a particular person who effectively (and publicly) resists." BACKGROUND ON IRR CALL-UP--ANOTHER PENTAGON SNAFU!

Army to Halt Call-Ups of Inactive Soldiers

Thousands on Reserve List Seek Delay or Exemption on Return to Active Duty

By Ann Scott Tyson Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, November 18, 2005; Page A11

The Army has suspended plans to expand an unwieldy, 16-month-old program to call up inactive soldiers for military duty, after thousands have requested delays or exemptions or failed to show up.

Despite intense pressure to fill manpower gaps, Army Secretary Francis J. Harvey said the Army has no plans for any further call-up of the Individual Ready Reserve (IRR) beyond the current level of about 6,500 soldiers. The IRR is a pool of about 115,000 trained soldiers who have left active-duty or reserve units for civilian life, but remain subject to call-up for a set period.

The Army also announced, in a memo released this week, that it will no longer involuntarily mobilize from the IRR an estimated 15,000 Army officers who have already completed their eight years of required military duty, stating that under a new policy it will offer them a chance to resign instead.

Poor records management has hampered the Army's efforts to draw on the pool, intended to fill holes in existing Army units, Harvey told defense reporters last week.

Since June 2004, the Army has begun mobilizing 6,535 people from the IRR. Of those, about 3,300 have reported for duty, and 1,450 have been granted exemptions on medical and other grounds, according to Army figures from October. The Army is trying to locate more than 400 who were supposed to report by October but have not.

Stretched thin by the war in Iraq, the Army began calling up IRR soldiers last year for the first time since the 1991 Persian Gulf War to meet its growing manpower needs. The Army taps the IRR for replacement troops and to bring undermanned units to full strength.

Officials said a year ago that they anticipated a similar dip into the IRR in 2005, but the Army is struggling to complete the first group.

"It's profoundly irritating to me. It's not good management," Harvey said. The Army said it has lacked resources to modernize its IRR record-keeping. Harvey said an initiative is underway to allow the Army to better track IRR members and how much time they have left to serve.

IRR call-ups -- in the form of Western Union Mailgrams -- have arrived as a welcome call to duty for some former soldiers and as a shock to others, many of whom have been out of uniform for years.

More than 3,000 of all those facing mobilization have asked for delays or exemptions, which have been granted so far primarily on the grounds of illness or the need to care for family members, but also because of financial hardship. Others have contested the call-ups on legal grounds.

One of the most contentious issues involves thousands of Army officers who have completed their eight years of military duty but have been kept in the reserve pool indefinitely because they have not formally resigned their commissions -- a requirement some officers say they knew nothing of.

Paul Davison, a 1995 West Point graduate, served six years as an infantry officer and two more in the IRR, ending in 2003. Now a freelance television producer, he thought there was some mistake three weeks ago when he opened the mailbox at his apartment on New York's Upper East Side and pulled out orders summoning him to report for training and deployment to Iraq.

The next day, Davison, 32, dialed a phone number printed on the Mailgram to correct the error, giving a clerk his Social Security number.

"You're still in," he recalled the clerk telling him.

"No, I'm out," Davison replied.

"You're in."

"It was the most shocking, stressful, horrible thing," Davison said.

Davison and several of his West Point classmates were among about 800 people issued mobilization orders in the Army's latest batch of IRR call-ups between August and November, said Sgt. 1st Class Keith O'Donnell, spokesman for the Army's Human Resources Command in St. Louis.

Together with his classmates, Davison badgered mobilization officials and scoured the Internet looking for a way out of the predicament. One officer discovered a new clause in a July 16, 2005, Pentagon directive that in effect forbids the Army from keeping officers in the IRR against their will once their time is up.

"Dude! I think we've got the smoking gun!" the classmate said excitedly in a phone call to Davison earlier this month.

Initially, Army officials argued that the new policy did not apply to their cases. So Davison and his classmates hired a lawyer, who last week advised the Army of his intent to seek a restraining order. Meanwhile, the Army issued an interim memo to implement the new policy.

"Effective immediately the Army will cease mobilization of officers beyond their MSO [military service obligation] unless they positively elect to remain in the IRR," states the memo, which the Army provided to The Washington Post.

On Nov. 10, Davison got a call from an official at the Army's Human Resources Command offering him a chance to resign. "My ordeal is over," said Davison, who was scheduled to report for duty at Fort Jackson, S.C., on Nov. 13.

But for others, the shift came too late. The Army will allow officers who fall under the policy to resign if they are still in the United States. But if they have already left for Iraq or other assignments, they will have to stay for the entire deployment. "If they have already been deployed, they'll be required to fulfill the terms of their mobilization orders," said Lt. Col. Bryan Hilferty, an Army personnel spokesman.

Marti Hiken
Co-chair Military Law Task Force, National Lawyers Guild
<http:/www.nlg.org/mltf>

posted 05 january 2006

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