Category: Iraq

Water is essential for life.

But, America and much of the rest of the world is running short of clean, freshwater.

Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) will have hearings, reports and testimonials from the women and men who have fought in this war.  All three days of hearings will be broadcast on several outlets including, Pacifica FM Radio, warcomeshome.org, and speak peace tv.

Pacifica’s schedule is:

  Friday, 3/14 ….. 9AM to 7PM EDT.    Saturday, 3/15 ….. 9AM to 7PM EDT

                           Sunday, 3/16 …… 10AM to 4PM EDT  

More information and on-line streaming at kpfa or on war comes home, linked at kpfa.

The first Winter Soldier hearings were in early 1971 during the Vietnam war.  It was a forum where combat troops could voice their disillusionment at having found themselves in a crazy and illegal war.  Like today, Winter Soldier gave troops a safe environment to express their guilts, fears and anguish at participating in a war where atrocities were committed, where it felt like some wrongs had to be committed just to survive.

The name “Winter Soldier” comes from Thomas Paine in 1776:

These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.

When I first listened to the Vietnam Winter Soldiers, years ago, it felt as if my soul was ripped apart, but ripped apart in a necessary, righteous, imperative way.  I knew I must understand what these wars do to our soldiers, to the “enemy” and to all of us.  The hearings were a step toward healing.  They were also a major factor in raising awareness about the conflict.  Two other actions flowed from the Winter Soldier hearings: Dewey Canyon III, A Brief Incursion into the Country of Congress, and troops tesitfying at congressional hearings.  

Dewey Canyon III was named after an illegal invasion into Laos called Operation Dewey Canyon (I & II) where American troops met the NVA (North Vietnam Army regulars) and suffered heavy casualties.  Dewey Canyon III was a very powerful and effective action where troops camped for days on the capitol mall, and threw their medals back on the capitol steps.  As one vet said, while throwing his medals back —

I’m not proud of these medals.  I’m not proud of what I did to receive them.  A whole year, we never took one prisoner alive.  Just wasted them.

As for Winter Soldier I:

It is impossible to describe to you exactly what did happen in Detroit – the emotions in the room, and the feelings of the men who were reliving their experiences in Vietnam. They relived the absolute horror of what this country, in a sense, made them do.”

In one of the most famous antiwar speeches of the era, Kerry concluded: “Someone has to die so that President Nixon won’t be – and these are his words – ‘the first president to lose a war’. We are asking Americans to think about that, because how do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam? How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?

Since it is imperative that we:

         End the madness of War     and     Create the Sanity of Peace

It is also imperative to have as much information as possible and to do everything we can to reverse this course.  Bush has called for a war without end.  We must counter with a peace movement without end.  In a preview of this Winter Soldier II, one vet expressed this perfectly, saying that when a war ends, the peace movement just picks up and goes home; we must not do that again.  The peace movement must remain, ever vigilant, saying “No” again and again to any and every threat of permanent war.

Winter Soldier Begins Today, Live Coverage Begins Tommorrow

Posted on: March 13, 2008 – 5:27am by Aaron Glantz

Winter Soldier Iraq and Afghanistan kicks off in Washington, DC today, with hundreds of veterans of the two wars descending on the National Labor College in Silver Spring, Maryland to talk about what they saw, and did, in the name of America. Pacifica radio will be carrying the proceedings live beginning at 9am Eastern tomorrow morning. Audio will be streamed live from Warcomeshome.org and kpfa.org until 4pm EST on Sunday.

They Didn’t Hate Us Before!

Just One Of Tens of Thousands, NOW!!

Um Saad, a middle-aged woman living in the Sunni district of Khadra in west Baghdad, blames the Americans for the death of her husband and two of her sons and threatens revenge.

An Update to my post from last night, I also expect a Video report following a local TV Stations nightly news from the area, with the family press conferance.

Body identified as former Marine Hall

(Last updated: March 12, 2008 11:14 AM)  

The Charlotte County Sheriff’s Office has notified Eric Hall’s family this morning that the remains found in a culvert Sunday was the former Marine.

A detective from the agency notified the family at 10 a.m. and relayed the cause of death has not been determined.

Becky Hall, Eric’s mother, plans a press conference at noon.

The family scheduled a military memorial service at noon Thursday at the Faith Lutheran Church, 4005 Palm Drive, Punta Gorda.

I certainly hope this Country is out of it’s collective Denial, about Vietnam, and it’s Apathy as to this World we live in, much of it created by our past policies and now the present, for the Future is Here!

Some day soon, the 4,000th American service member will die in Iraq, and antiwar activists will mark that grim milestone with vigils, marches, and other actions.

When similar events marked the 3,000th American death, on New Year’s Eve of 2006, the right wing accused us of “celebrating” the death toll.

It is anything but a celebration, of course.

We will mark the 4,000th death because it is an opportunity to remind the American people of the price we are paying for an unjustified war that will soon enter its sixth year.  Unfortunately, although they continue to say overwhelmingly that the war was a mistake and should be dended, Americans have become numbed to the casualties, which have long ago slipped from the front page.

The Associated Press reports:

Fewer people know how many U.S. troops have died in the war in Iraq, even as public attention to the conflict has gradually diminished, a poll showed Wednesday.

Only 28 percent correctly said that about 4,000 Americans have died in the war, according to a survey by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center.

That’s down from last August, when 54 percent gave the accurate casualty figure, which was about 3,500 dead at the time. In previous Pew surveys dating to 2004, about half have correctly given the rough figure for the approximate number of deaths at the time.

In the new poll, around a third said about 3,000 U.S. troops have died while about one in 10 said 2,000 deaths. Fewer overestimated the number of casualties: about a quarter put the figure close to 5,000.

The 4,000 figure, of course, is just the tip of the iceberg.  To many Americans, some deaths — those of Americans — count more than others.  And some don’t count at all.

The 4,000th coalition death was recorded last August, but went largely unreported. That includes deaths of troops from 20 US allies, most of which have small numbers there.

If you’re only concerned about American casualties, nearly 30,000 have been wounded. Many will never heal.  Their lives have been permanently destroyed — physically, emotionally, psychologically, or some combination of the three. They are brain-damaged, missing limbs and other body parts, scarred internally and externally. Those veterans, their families, our society, our country and its taxpayers will bear the costs of their injuries for the next 60 years or more, just as we continue to pay every day for Vietnam.  

Every day our troops remain there, it is guaranteed that more of them will be permanently damaged. If you have a strong stomach, a photo essay in the New England Journal of Medicine will give you a taste of what kind of casualties and injuries are being treated.  It’s not pretty.

How many Iraqis have been killed or wounded?  We don’t seem to have the foggiest idea.  Estimates range from 100,000 to more than a million, including military and civilian fatalities.

Another 4 million Iraqis have been driven from their homes, half having fled the country as refugees and the other have displaced within their own nation.

But none of those Iraqi numbers seem to count.  After all, the President says we’re there to do them a favor and bring them freedom — if they live to see it.

As we mark the 4,000th American death in Iraq, the war hawks will no doubt drag these numbers out again, revisiting the arguments from Death Number 3000, and remind us that there were 58,000 Americans killed in the Vietnam War, 36,000 in the Korean War, 405,000 in World War II and 116,000 in World War I.

So what’s the problem with 4,000?  Hardly worth mentioning, right?

That argument baffles me.

If you use use a false premise to launch an unjustified invasion, one death is too many.

Hundreds of thousands on both sides is inexcusable.  Some would say criminal.

Lest we think that opposition to the war and occupation of Iraq is limited to the left in this country, consider the lineup of speakers for a March 16 Iraq Moratorium event in San Francisco:

Several of the usual suspects: Sean Penn; Cindy Sheehan; the Rev. Gregory Stewart, senior minister of the Unitarian Universalist Church; Matt Gonzalez, ex-president of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and rumored vice presidential candidate on the Green Party ticket.

And one Justin Raimondo, libertarian and paleoconservative (look it up; we did) author who also runs the website Antiwar.com, where he writes things like:

Our foreign policy has put us in mortal danger, and not only because it empowers the worldwide Islamist insurgency that aims to attack the American homeland, but also because the “Iraq recession” is fast threatening to become the Iraq depression. The U.S. is teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, and the $3 trillion war is going to sink us if it isn’t stopped.

It’s an interesting mix, to say the least, and helps explain how Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich could at least agree on one thing – that the invasion of Iraq was a terrible mistake, and we should bring our troops home now. (It was interesting, at the Oct. 27 regional antiwar march in Chicago, that Ron Paul’s was the only presidential campaign represented, with signs, campaign material and even an airplane flyover with a banner.)

When I posted this on another unnamed blog, some commenters pointed out that Raimondo’s politics leave a little to be desired, and that I probably wouldn’t agree with him on much besides the war.  OK, granted.  My whole point here (aside from some shameless promotion of the Moratorium) is that if antiwar sentiment in this country includes nearly two-thirds of the population, the Iraq Moratorium must be a big tent — or big umbrella, if you will — that brings together people who have the common cause of ending the war and occupation of Iraq.  That single issue unifies us.  I met a Ron Paul enthusiast at our March Iraq Moratorium vigil in Milwaukee, so it’s not just hypothetical; people are uniting to end this war.

Details on Sunday’s event, sponsored by the Iraq Moratorium-SF Bay Area, are listed in the March events on the Iraq Moratorium website .

I’m not one of the IGTNT Posters, that do such a Great Honor for those who have lost their lives to this Countries Failed Policies. And I doubt they’ll mind me using the initials for I bring Sad News!

Back on Febuary 21st I posted an Alert about a missing Marine, Eric Hall {that link takes you to my site}.

I started that off with this:

This week’s Litchfield County Times has a fascinating and instructive article on CT State Senator Andrew Roraback (R-30th District). Universally known as Andy in the NW Corner of Connecticut, where he is widely respected as honest and effective, especially on environmental issues, he is one of an endangered species, moderate New England Republicans.

His rep is good enough that he was one of 24 local elected officials (half and half) from around the nation given a Aspen Institute-Rodel Fellowship, this one with a focus on helping foster further understanding of foreign governments and policy issues.

Well, this crop of Fellows were just shipped to the Middle East and it was evidently quite the wake-up call to Sen. Roraback. He learned first hand that that a lot of Iraqis have bailed out of their country in desperate fear:

“When you see a room crowded with people who have fled Iraq, you see the human cost [of the war],” he said. “We know the cost to American lives, but there are 500,000 Iraqi refugees in Jordan and they’ve fled their home because of the war. It put a face on the cost of this war in this country.”

Moving through the streets of Portland. Me in the back of a town car, after a short chat about the weather…

Me: You sound like you’re from the Middle East.

Him: Iraq.

Me: Really? How long have you been–

Him: I left after the first Bush war.

KBR Inc. may have supplied U.S. troops fighting in Iraq with tainted water according to a Pentagon inspector general’s report that was released today: Audit of Potable and Nonpotable Water in Iraq (PDF). KBR is a private contractor that, at the time they were supplying American bases in Iraq with polluted water, was owned by Halliburton.

According to the AP, Water makes U.S. troops in Iraq sick.

Soldiers experienced skin abscesses, cellulitis, skin infections, diarrhea and other illnesses after using discolored, smelly water for personal hygiene and laundry at five U.S. military sites in Iraq.

On Sunday, 3-9-08, a fundraiser was held at the First Congregational Church of Long Beach for Iraq veterans eager to talk about the war they saw; a war rife with death, anger, courage and lies. The fundraisers intent was to help defray the costs needed to send the same vets to speak in Washington D.C. at Winter Soldier II, to be held from Thursday March 13 to Sunday March 16, prior to that  The District Weekly of Long Beach asked several of them to tell them their stories.

Below you will find some snips about each and what they had to say, with the link above taking you to the rest.