Category: Iraq

There’s another Very Important House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs hearing taking place Today. As important as all that have in both the House and the Senate since the 110th Congress, covering issues that weren’t even mentioned nor as the many complaints rose, over a number of issues, were meaningful Congressional Investigations nor Hearings held, as two invasions and still ongoing occupations were started and only grew over these last close to a decade now!

It wasn’t only with the do nothing politicians, it also came from those that supported them and these wars. As they slapped magnetic ribbons on their vehicles, quickly to disappear and not be replaced and claimed they were the true patriots who really supported the troops. It’s carried into the last couple of years under a label that shows the total hypocrisy of these same citizens, the so called TEA Party, outraged at everything Government with no mention of their own complicity. They use the Military and Veterans in their false patriotism, in word and symbol, but Never Once Demading that they even start ‘Sacrificing’ themselves after all these years, quite the opposite is their stand!

Many may want to catch this discussion, for a number of reasons, but one being it shows as others have that this country Needs an Inquiry into what went on during the previous administration. I want Indictments, but the country Has To Clear This Up one way or another as it was All Done In Our Names!!

They talk about a number of issues but Wilkerson tears into bush, cheney, condi, rumsfeld and others.

We had a great time last night in a Q+A with John Waltz, a disabled veteran and Progressive who’s running for Congress in Kentucky’s 4th district. This answer cracked me up and at the same time made me yell out.. RIGHT ON!

Spandan Chakrabarti John, another question about the military, specifically defense contractors. I understand some are needed, but how do you view the Bush era explosion in defense contracting and contractors who operate outside the UCMJ, and is there a way to rein them in?

John Waltz  When you privatize military functions, you’re creating an incentive, specifically a profit, to go to war and stay in war. Use of military contractors should be kept to an absolute minimum. Maybe cafeteria services and that’s about it.

The full Q+A is below the fold

Crossposted to the Daily Kos and Progressive Electorate

Add another in the growing list of extremely tragic, luckily no one was hurt in this potential deadly incident, and potentially leading to more that the Hate Rhetoric and Actions are bringing forth!

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1984 much anyone? Come to the land through the looking glass yet again; where attacking an innocent Country and destroying it is Victory, where leaving means staying, where Oil spills become the Norm, where both Parties are One and Slavery is the best end-game for our economic system.

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Phyllis Bennis is a Senior Analyst at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington DC, and is the author of Before and After: US Foreign Policy and the September 11 Crisis, of Challenging Empire: How People, Governments, and the UN Defy US Power, and of Understanding the US-Iran Crisis: A Primer.

Bennis has in the past argued for US reparations to be paid to Iraq for the years of US occupation and the destruction and damage inflicted on Iraq and the country’s peoples by the 2003 invasion and the occupation.

In an interview recorded Tuesday with Real News CEO Paul Jay, Bennis analyses Obama’s Oval Office Address on Iraq, August 31, 2010, talks about how Obama has adopted the Bush narrative about Iraq, and touches a bit on Iraq’s future and on the future of US foreign policies in the region, as well as somewhat about how those policies affect Iran and Afghanistan.

I just listened to this interview and can now say what many, me included, have thought all along, not only about him but as to our own previous administration, he’s certifiably crazy! I mean that in the so called World View, especially of righteousness, he just spoke. What’s going on has Nothing to do with any religious ideology but does for those who want to use that as their excuse, boy do they got some splanin to do at the pearly gates. He seems to Not Understand that humans going into others countries and Destroying Them as that Kills and Maims Tens of Thousands plus and Millions of Refugees is Not going to create Rage and Hatred, not only in those countries but from others on the planet. He and like are beyond nuts, Way Beyond!!

Hat tip to David Swanson.

Recent American casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan, as listed at the Washington Post.

Pfc. Bradley D. Rappuhn died at Zhari Kandahar, Afghanistan, August 8, 2010. He was 24 years old.

From the Lansing State Journal…

“He was supposed to come home in the end of July,” said his mother, Roxanne Rappuhn, 53, of Grand Ledge. “But they tacked 45 more days on.”

“If he were here right now, he’d be telling me to suck it up,” she said.

Spec. Faith R. Hinkley died in Baghdad August 7, 2010. She was 23 years old.

From the Denver Post…

Hinkley, who had been in her high school’s marching band, surprised her family after the first year of college at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs when she announced she had enlisted in the Army.

“She really couldn’t tell us what she did,” Orene Hinkley said. “She didn’t want us to worry about her.

Lance Cpl. Kevin M. Cornelius died in Helmand province, Afghanistan, August 7, 2010. He was 20 years old.

From the Ashtabula Star-Beacon…

One of Kevin’s favorite times was the bicycle trip he took in 2006, when he rode his bike from East Glacier, Mont. to Ashtabula, a distance of 1,975 miles.

Pfc. Vincent E. Gammone III died in Helmand Province, Afghanistam, August 7, 2010. He was 19 years old.

From the Murfreesboro (Tennessee) Daily News-Journal…

Gammone’s father, Vincent Gammone, II, suffers from multiple sclerosis, a disease that affects the ability of nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord to communicate with one another. West said when the older Gammone learned of his son’s death he “didn’t believe it was his son” at first. “Yesterday (Monday) it finally hit him.”

     (Photo by: Ahmad Al-Rubaye)

An Iraqi girl gingerly makes her way through oil spilled on a Baghdad street on Wednesday.

Also posted at DailyKos. (Link)