Tag: occupations

A Memorial Day Goal for Bob and Lee Woodruff

“Hey Friends —  Would you give a dollar to someone who risked their life for you?  We are in a big push this weekend to try to get every American to give $1.00 (or better yet $5.25 – to signify the date of Memorial Day) to help our wounded troops. This is what Memorial Day is all about.

“Yesterday by being on CNN and CNBC to talk about it– Bob and I raised $21,000 just from people twittering and going to the website to give.”…………

A number of reports have sprung up in the last few days following the very tragic shooting by one soldier in killing five of his fellow soldiers at an in country military stress clinic, of which he himself was receiving care.

Military training alone starts the process of the change needed from how most are brought up and what they are taught and told to be able to serve and defend, if needed, this country.

Place these now trained soldiers in a War Zone creating the Occupation of same lasting many years and now in these times many tours being served and not only in one but two and for many the stress of war, what they experience, their individual incidents, what they see, feel, and just know, is overwelming!

They aren’t the only ones, think of those who live in these occupied countries! It also isn’t only a war that creates the traumatic nightmares, individuals that experience trauma in theirs lives also can suffer, most silently, from those traumas!

Below is a number of recent reports, this subject should have been takin seriously many years ago after finally realizing what War and Trauma can do to a Human Being!

Mothers Speak about War and Terror”

Courage to Resist and Susan Galleymore. April 29, 2009

Courage to Resist co-founder Susan Galleymore made international headlines by taking the extraordinary and even dangerous step of traveling to Iraq to visit her US Army son stationed on a military base in the so-called Sunni Triangle, north of Baghdad. She is now on tour to promote her new book “Long Time Passing: Mothers Speak about War and Terror”.

What Susan found in Iraq – the horrors of war which was at once heartbreaking and compelling – challenged her to continue her journey interviewing mothers in war zones including Iraq, Israel and the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, Afghanistan and the US. These powerful first-person stories offer dramatic insight into the impact of war on mothers, families, communities, and cultures around-the-world.

Many of us, especially Veterans who are Advocates for our brothers and sisters and those Civilians who join that advocacy, have been writing about the Veterans Administration and especially Veterans Care, which in these times of conflicts also encompass the Military Care system as well. With this technology we can push our advocacy untill it’s paid the attention it should already have by those who do the job of reporting as a profession. And because of the extreme lack of oversight and concern by the representatives we hire, as the drums of war were first pounding and the years following, we find breaking stories far to often in these last months. Months that have brought out the problems with the care, the overwelming numbers needing care and being denied for months or just denied, the living conditions of those receiving the care and even serving, and so much more.

When we write about the needs or the lack oversight and funds we far to often, myself included though I try and remember in my rage, leave out the facts of the true dedication of the workers in the VA System. The workers, who like most of us working stiffs, give their all to the jobs and professions they perform and have to deal with what’s lacking from the administrations, top on down, of these agencies. In the government that administration starts with the Executive Branch, the Congress, the Political Appointee’s to head and the Political Appointee’s they bring in, and Especially to the Governed, Us, who fight the costs needed or follow political ideology leadership if not wanted.

Every once in awhile a report will surface of that dedication within:

A film by Neil Young

Due in theaters July 25

The Trailer

The war in Iraq is the backdrop as the Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young “Freedom of Speech Tour” crisscrosses North America. Echoes of Vietnam-era anti-war sentiment abound as the band connects with today’s audiences.

And what Anniversary would that be, you ask, Well:

Of President Franklin Roosevelt’s signing of the GI Bill, which enabled millions of veterans to go to college, and is credited for sparking the post-war economic boom.

There’s a reason I use the breakin line to Greg Mitchells book So Wrong for So Long: How the Press, the Pundits–and the President–Failed on Iraq.

Part of that reason is an article printed in the Asian Times, I just finished reading.

I use a ‘Live TV’ toolbar to get a number of stations, worldwide, which brings up a player that stays up as I’m browsing or working. Most aren’t worth watching or are not in english, but some interest viewing can be found as well as a few english language News Programs or Networks, like the BBC and Al Jazeera.

Checking in on Al Jazeera English to see what they were reporting, most of the time like the BBC and a few others, much more than the U.S. MSM, free press and all, on Iraq and Afganistan and other regions, I caught the near ending of a Special Program series they are running called ‘Veterans’.