Category: Iraq

We’ve written in the past about the hardy and dedicated folks up in Hayward, in northern Wisconsin, who have led the nation in participation in the Iraq Moratorium, which will be observed again on next Friday, May 16.

They’ve turned out 80 people in a city of 2,100 for the monthly Third Friday vigil at a highway intersection — a participation rate that would translate nationally into 12 million people in the streets.

Wisconsin has more events each month than any other state except California, with seven times the population, in large part because the Wisconsin Network for Peace and Justice, a statewide coalition of 150 groups, has encouraged its affiliates to take part.

Not resting on their laurels, two of the organizers of the Hayward vigils have written the following piece, which was distributed statewide by WNPJ. Please take the time to read it all the way through, so you don’t miss the powerful quote at the end from Martin Murie:

Dear Concerned Citizens,

When Russ Feingold was at his Sawyer County listening session in Hayward this last February, Peace North member Dan Krause (in front of one hundred people) informed him that Wisconsin is leading the nation, per capita, in Iraq Moratorium monthly events.  As north woods folks are sometimes inclined to do, Dan followed up with a bit of brag by telling Feingold that Hayward, per capita, is leading the nation in turnout for these events.  Much to our delight, Feingold responded that he was well aware of that fact!  After the session, he shook Dan’s hand and told him to “keep up the good work.”

Less than a week later Senator Feingold introduced troop re-deployment legislation, yet again, onto the floor of the Senate, telling his colleagues that at listening sessions throughout Wisconsin in January and February his constituents made it clear that they wanted an end to the war in Iraq.  Three weeks later almost 70 people came out again in Hayward for the March Iraq Moratorium Day to stand for peace.  Many folks said they felt like they owed it to Senator Feingold to take a stand.

And so it begins:

(Bloomberg)– The U.S. Army won’t be able to pay soldiers beyond June 15 unless Congress approves $108 billion more for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan or authorizes a funds transfer, a Defense Department official said.

If the supplemental spending legislation isn’t enacted by then, the Pentagon will be forced to seek congressional authority to use money designated for other services to fund the Army payroll, department spokesman Geoff Morrell said.

Pentagon budget officials briefed congressional staffers about the funding crunch earlier today, and Defense Secretary Robert Gates addressed the issue in a letter to lawmakers yesterday, Morrell said at a Pentagon briefing.

If those Democrats in Congress don’t knuckle under move quickly, we’ll just have to quit paying the troops.

5-07-08, NPR’s Talk of the Nation had a followup to a previous NPR Report on this, a Veterans Court setup in Buffalo NY. I previously did a post on the first report, and that report can also be found at todays Talk of the Nation site page, in the link below.

Vets in Legal Trouble Find Help in Buffalo Court

Talk of the Nation, May 7, 2008 · Earlier this year, Robert Russell, a judge in Buffalo New York, decided to address the increasing number of veterans he saw entering the criminal justice system. Russell established a special court that considers the experience of war before sentencing and helps former soldiers find treatment.

Guests:

Hank Parowski, project director for Buffalo City Court

Libby Lewis, NPR’s national desk correspondent {who put together the first report}

Tom Berger, national chair of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and Substance Abuse for Vietnam Veterans of America

This link brings up the NPR Player to listen to report

And an Update to the Conditions found at the Fort Bragg Army barracks that returning Afganistan and Iraq Military personal were living in:

Army Secretary: barracks repairs to cost $248 million

Army Secretary Pete Geren said today that the military will commit $248 million to repair dilapidated barracks around the world.

This is how the Pentagon envisions the Green Zone of Baghdad after a $5 billion tourist and development scheme.

A plan by US military planners for the “Tigris Woods Golf and Country Club” in the Green Zone in Baghdad, Iraq. Picture: U.S. Army/AP

There’s nothing like playing a relaxing 18 holes of golf for U.S. generals and big oil executives after a tough day in oil-rich, occupied Iraq. Or as The Guardian describes it in Luxury hotels and golf: welcome to the Green Zone:

Picture… a tree-lined plaza in Baghdad’s International Village, flanked by fashion boutiques, swanky cafes, and shiny glass office towers. Nearby a golf course nestles agreeably, where a chip over the water to the final green is but a prelude to cocktails in the club house and a soothing massage in a luxury hotel… Then, as twilight falls, a pre-prandial stroll, perhaps, amid the cool of the Tigris Riverfront Park, where the peace is broken only by the soulful cries of egrets fishing.

Unbelievable.

One, America…..morally, financially and militarily. The last pretenses of democracy nearly destroyed as well, depending on the outcome of the next election.

One, Iraq, in just about every way a nation can be destroyed.

Good job George.

You have served your masters well, terrorizing and destabilizing the nation with the second largest remaining oil reserve on the planet, taking it’s oil off the market to help spiral crude to record prices…. AND record obscene profits for the Oil Corporations. Firing the opening shot in the Resource Wars. All while fending off any attempts to address the Climate Crisis that keeps your Masters rolling in money. And you only had to kill a million people to do it! So far.

All while accomplishing the largest transfer of wealth in history from America’s poor and middle class to the upper 1% of the wealthiest Americans. Our Ruling Class.

And turning America from the symbol of human rights and freedom…into a Torture State. That spies on it’s own citizens to terrorize them into passivity.

That’s a hell of a mission you’ve got there in the crotch of your flight suit. Way to screw the entire world for the sole benefit of your peeps, the Ruling Class.  

May 1, 2003, is another day of infamy for the Bush administration and America. In the kind of staged bravado dictators relish, George W. Bush donned a flight suit, pretended to fly, and then used an aircraft carrier as the backdrop for a speech to declare the mission in Iraq accomplished. Every cable news channel carried the event live as if history were somehow being made. It is time to look back at five years of accomplishments in Iraq.

“Let me say that no one has supported President Bush on Iraq more than I have.”– John McCain.

Five years since Mission Accomplished.  3,920 American deaths since then — 97% of US fatalities.

While we debate whether Barack Obama was too harsh to Jeremiah Wright, the killing continues.

While Americans say the price of gasoline is a more important issue than the war in Iraq, the blood keeps flowing.

While House Democrats try to pass a bigger appropriation for the war than anyone has aked them for, the death toll mounts.

Four thousand US service deaths.  Thirty thousand wounded.  Countless thousands damaged for life.

Perhaps a million Iraqis dead.  We don’t even try to count.  Four million forced from their homes.

Lives and families destroyed, here and in Iraq.

And the beat goes on.

Why can’t we stop this war?

What is wrong with this country?

Don’t talk to me about race or bitterness or the media or the economy.

What is wrong with us as a people?

How can we let this continue in our name?

And how can we possibly be considering electing a candidate who still talks about “victory?”

I can’t write any more; I’m making myself despondent.

I’ll let MoveOn have the last word.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news…

Thank you all very much. Admiral Kelly, Captain Card, officers and sailors of the USS Abraham Lincoln, my fellow Americans: Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed. (Applause.) And now our coalition is engaged in securing and reconstructing that country.

April 30, 2008

Fighting in Baghdad’s Shi’ite slum of Sadr City made April the deadliest month for Iraqi civilians since last August and for U.S. troops since last September, figures obtained on Wednesday showed.

http://www.nytimes.com/reuters…

Remember what McCain, GW Bush, David Petraeus, Vlad Cheney, Bill Kristol, Rush Limpbaugh and a whole slough of Right Wing comedians keep telling us!

The Splurge Is Working!

It is working SO well, that so far in April, 47 more US Soldiers have been killed in Iraq, the most since September of 2007.

From AP:

The killings of three U.S. soldiers in separate attacks in Baghdad pushed the American death toll for April up to 47, making it the deadliest month since September.

One soldier died when his vehicle was struck by a roadside bomb. The other died of wounds sustained when he was attacked by small-arms fire, the military said Wednesday. Both incidents occurred Tuesday in northwestern Baghdad.

A third soldier died in a roadside bombing Tuesday night in the east of the capital, the military said.

Back in January Ilona Meagher, of PTSD Combat-Winning The War Within posted about a Justice Court being set up in Buffalo NY to help Veterans who get into legal trouble you can read her post Here

This Court came together with the help of the local Buffalo chapter membership of Vietnam Veterans of America: