I Am A Patriot

Allow me to pose a question to you.

For the last 5 plus years, America has been the invading force in Iraq that has cost taxpayers and future taxpayers unaccounted trillions of dollars despite the very vocal and vehement objections of the American citizens. The cost in lives, American, Iraqi and others affected by the occupation of a foreign land is equally as repulsive, but that will be the subject of another article.

This article is about the financial toll the Iraq war has had on the American taxpayer.

A recent study has found that 71% of Americans believe that the funding of the Iraq war is hurting our struggling economy. (source) That is 7 out of every 10 Americans object to what their country is doing in Iraq, to which Bush and the Republicans thumb their noses at us saying “So what. Do something about it”

Which is my question: What can we do about it?

The answer to that is really quite simple. Daring, but simple.

Refuse to pay for it. That is actually your patriotic duty as an American to not pay for it. More than half of the federal income tax collected by the U.S. Government goes to fund military operations with $200 Billion estimated for 2009. (source) Helping pay this makes you an accessory to the crimes being committed. Do you want to take part in criminal activity?

More and more, people are protesting this government by refusing to pay all or part of their federal income tax, and the numbers increase with every passing day. But there are certain steps you must take to prevent you from getting in hot water. You can do this legally, even with the guidance of the IRS using laws that they have written.

You must take the following steps:

• Decide what proportion of your taxes you will refuse to pay. This decision will impact your further choices.


• Reduce the federal tax money that is withheld from you during the year. Make adjustments so that you owe money at the end of the tax year and can then choose to refuse.


• File your Form 1040, including a letter to the IRS that explains why you chose to hold back some taxes.


• Decide how you wish to redirect your refused taxes. There are many options.


• Examine the risks and consequences for refusing to pay war tax. Some of them are potentially negative, and many are definitely positive.
  (An explanation of these steps, along with other good information about this subject can be found at: http://www.nwtrcc.org/ )

In order for a movement like this to succeed depends on how many people are doing (refusing to pay federal income tax) it. The more people that protest in this manner, the better. There is strength in numbers, as the old saying goes. This becomes evident when you see any gathering in protest of illegal immigrants. Seldom, if ever, is any arrest made.

Become courageous and take a stand for your country. Become a patriot.

Think of Paul Revere, Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton. If they would have just sat idly by and did nothing, America would be a far different nation than it is today. We would be under British rule and bow down to a King.

I, for one, will fight for the America that I love. What about you?

Military Censorship (Attempt)

The highest-ranking U.S. military officer has written an unusual open letter to all those in uniform, warning them to stay out of politics as the United States approaches a presidential election in which the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will be a central, and certainly divisive, issue.

“Keeping our politics private is a good first step,” he added. “The only things we should be wearing on our sleeves are our military insignia.”

Mullen said he was inspired to write the essay after receiving a constant stream of legitimate, if troubling, questions while visiting U.S. military personnel around the world, including, “What if a Democrat wins?” and, “What will that do to the mission in Iraq?”

But I don’t buy that line because Kyra Phillips reported that:

CNN’s Kyra Phillips speaks to some Iraqi soldiers about the U.S. presidential election and democracy in Iraq. While they spoke enthusiastically about the American soldiers teaching them discipline and how to effectively combat their enemies in Iraq, the soldiers were less effusive in their praise for those managing the war and their plans for bringing about democracy.

Phillips tried in vain to locate any McCain supporters among the group.

“Just to be perfectly clear here, I did ask them are you following any of the republican candidates?…Do you want to talk about John McCain? Within that whole group, not one wanted a republican in the US presidential seat.

They were all for a democrat.

They were all for that type of change because they said they were living a republican war.”

SOURCE

Sure Fire Way To End The OCCUPATION Of Iraq NOW!

Take 1 Minute to End the Killing:

Congress Members have received thousands of phone calls, and some of them are committing to voting no on Iraq funding. The vote won't happen until next week, so keep the calls coming: Call your Congress Member now at 202-224-3121 and tell them to vote No on the war funding.

More Detail:

Pelosi does not have the votes to pass the Rule, a procedural vote that must pass prior to votes on each of the three amendments (1. war money, 2. a nonbinding "timeline goal," re-banning of torture and permanent bases, redundantly banning a Bush-Maliki treaty without consent of Senate or both houses of Congress, and forcing Iraqis to pay for the reconstruction, 3. other spending including military spending and veterans spending).

She doesn't have the votes because of Republican opposition to the whole maneuver (which will involve amending a bill that's already passed in order to avoid a vote on the whole package - except for the Rule vote), and because of "blue dog" (right-wing) Democratic outrage over spending some $11 billion on something useful when they want to stay focused on wasting over $100 billion on killing. Democrats who do plan to vote No on the war funding have not threatened to vote No on the Rule. But they should if they want to block this thing.

If Pelosi buys off the blue dogs somehow, progressives could still step in and block the war money by blocking the Rule. There may be some progressive resistance to the Rule anyway, because Lee and Kucinich both want to be permitted to bring up amendments. (Lee's would resrict funding to a withdrawal. Kucinich's would ban the use of funds for attacking Iran, Syria, etc.)

So, call your Congress Member now at 202-224-3121 and tell them to vote No on the war funding and on any Rule that would bring it up for a vote! And tell them to make their position clear to the Speaker.

Tell them that you will REMEMBER IN NOVEMBER.

Make clear to them that voting for either of the other two amendments will be no excuse for voting for the war funding amendment.

You can remind them (92 of them) of this letter in which they committed to voting No.

Insanity

INSANITY is defined as repeating one mistaken action again and again, each time expecting a better result that never comes.

Prime example: the United States in Iraq.

Washington perceived a weapons of mass destruction threat from Saddam Hussein, but instead of responding with diplomacy - internationally coordinated weapons inspections - it went to war. When Saddam Hussein was toppled, the initiative should have passed from the Pentagon to a State Department-led program of stabilization and reconstruction, but instead a crudely violent military occupation was begun.

Diplomacy was once again rejected.

Today, the United States, fearing a geo-political setback that will undercut the broader "war on terror," is putting the diehard goal of military "victory" ahead of the diplomatic initiatives that alone can enable the reconstruction of Iraqi society. The needed spirit of cooperation among Iraqi factions, and from other nations, will never materialize as long as the United States pursues the fantasy that its armed might will at last prevail.

Once again, diplomacy is being rejected in favor of war.

This is insane.

Given the mayhem that continues to unfold in Iraq, bush is properly mocked for having stood before that "Mission Accomplished" banner five years ago. But a failure to distinguish between the aggressive war that overthrew Saddam Hussein and the collapse of Iraqi social order that followed is part of what fuels the ongoing US mistake.

However misconceived, the project of ridding the world of Saddam and his Ba'athist regime was indeed a military operation, and it succeeded. But bringing order to a post-Saddam Iraq, especially once sectarian rivalries were set loose, was not a project for which the US war machine was remotely suited.

The unilateral character of Bush's intervention made multilateral civic reconstruction after Saddam impossible, with other nations content to let Washington stew in its own arrogance. "Coalition" notwithstanding, the almost exclusively US occupation became the inflammable medium in which sectarian disputes flared, with Iraq's warring parties united only in seeing that occupation as an enemy.

Let's call this repeated insanity the mistake of "supermilitarism," choosing war over diplomacy, and expecting order to follow, instead of chaos.

Read the article in its entirety here.

Fits the definition PERFECTLY!

The Military Loves Its Women - A Bit Too Much

The Department of Defense statistics are alarming - one in three women who join the US military will be sexually assaulted or raped by men in the military.

The warnings to women should begin above the doors of the military recruiting stations, as that is where assaults on women in the military begin - before they are even recruited.

But, now, even more alarming, are deaths of women soldiers in Iraq and in the United States following rape. The military has characterized each death of women who were first sexually assaulted as deaths from "noncombat related injuries," and then added "suicide." Yet, the families of the women whom the military has declared to have committed suicide strongly dispute the findings and are calling for further investigations into the deaths of their daughters. Specific US Army units and certain US military bases in Iraq have an inordinate number of women soldiers who have died of "noncombat related injuries," with several identified as "suicides."

Ninety-four US military women have died in Iraq or during Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF). Twelve US civilian women have been killed in OIF. Thirteen US military women have been killed in Afghanistan during Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF). Twelve US Civilian women have been killed in Afghanistan.

Of the 94 US military women who died in Iraq or in OIF, the military says 36 died from noncombat related injuries, which included vehicle accidents, illness, death by "natural causes" and self-inflicted gunshot wounds, or suicide. The military has declared the deaths of the Navy women in Bahrain, which were killed by a third sailor, as homicides. Five deaths have been labeled as suicides, but 15 more deaths occurred under extremely suspicious circumstances.

Eight women soldiers from Fort Hood, Texas, (six from the Fourth Infantry Division and two from the 1st Armored Cavalry Division) have died of "noncombat related injuries" on the same base, Camp Taji, and three were raped before their deaths. Two were raped immediately before their deaths and another raped prior to arriving in Iraq. Two military women have died of suspicious "noncombat related injuries" on Balad base, and one was raped before she died. Four deaths have been classified as "suicides."

Time To Strike!

The following is a release put out by the Vermont AFL-CIO, with thanks to reader Richard M. for sending it along ...

The Executive Board of the Vermont AFL-CIO, representing thousands of workers in countless sectors across Vermont, have unanimously passed an historic resolution expressing their "unequivocal" support for the first US labor strike against the war in Iraq.

Montpelier, VT -The Executive Board of the Vermont AFL-CIO, representing thousands of workers in countless sectors across Vermont, have unanimously passed an historic resolution expressing their "unequivocal" support for the first US labor strike against the war in Iraq. The strike, being organized by the Longshore Caucus of the International Longshore & Warehouse Union (ILWU), will seek to shutdown all west coast ports for a period of 8 hours on the day of May 1st 2008. The Vermont AFL-CIO is the first state labor federation to publicly back the Longshoremen; other state federations are expected to follow.

The resolution, among other things, calls the war in Iraq "immoral, unwanted, and unnecessary", states that the vast majority of working Vermonters oppose the war, and contends that the war will only be brought to an end by "the direct actions of working people." Many other Vermont labor unions and organizations, including the Vermont Workers' Center, have also made official statements condemning the war.

The resolution also calls on working Vermonters to "discuss the actions of the Longshoremen, to wear anti-war buttons, and to take various actions of their own design and choosing in their workplace on May 1st, 2008."

"Workers in Vermont and all across this nation are against this war. We have already demanded that the government end it, but they have consistently failed to heed our words. Therefore working people are beginning to take concrete steps to make our resistance known. If the war does not immediately end we, the unions and working people of Vermont, will also be compelled to take appropriate action," said David Van Deusen, a District Vice President of the Vermont AFL-CIO.

More Vets Speak Out

Just a few years back, Clifton Hicks was an M1 Abrams tank operator almost 7,000 miles away in Iraq.

As an active Army squad member, he'd seen buildings packed with families crumbled and burned. Watched women and children bleed and die. Killed insurgents and civilians alike.

Now 23 years old and back living stateside, Hicks attests that he is a changed man - yet the regret, he said, still remains.

Hicks' stories, along with the testimonies of five other Iraq war veterans, were shared Tuesday night with a group of almost 200 people who attended the local "Winter Soldier, Iraq at UF" event at the Presbyterian and Disciples of Christ Student Center across from the UF campus.

The event coincided with Tuesday's U.S. Senate interviews of head commander Gen. David Petraeus, who recommended that consideration of new American troops withdrawals from Iraq be delayed.

The Gainesville panel, organized by the Iraq Veterans Against the War, Gainesville Veter! ans for Peace, and a few student groups, was inspired by the Vietnam War-era protest of the same name. Last month, Iraq Veterans Against the War organized a similar national protest just outside of Washington, D.C., that drew several hundred U.S. veterans and allowed them to share their own horrors of the Iraq war in hopes of bringing an end to the fighting.

Many of the stories Tuesday night were harrowing and gruesome. Hicks told of a unit firing wantonly into a wedding party. Former Marine Jorge Alvarez told of civilian casualties and suicide bombers. Zollie Goodman, a former aircraft carrier worker, described the smell of burning flesh and the sight of dead bodies left to rot in the street.

"When you're in Iraq," said former infantryman Micah Goulet, "it's almost like you're in another world. You think very carnally. Brutally."

Yet the veterans agreed that they hadn't come to gross out listeners or to point fingers at wrongdoers. Their mission now, t! hey said, was to get their military compatriots home.

"! We're he re because we care about the guys that are still over there," Hicks said. "We're here because we want to bring them home."

But even outside of the battlefield, the veterans said, the dangers to the troops remain.

Hicks spoke of soldiers both in Iraq and back in America beginning to use ecstasy, heroin and prescription drugs to pass the time and block out bad memories. Goodman spoke of the "broken, underfunded and understaffed" Veterans Affairs hospitals that reportedly prescribed unregulated treatments and overlooked soldier suicides. Maggie Martin, a five-year sergeant in the Army and the panel's only woman, told of the military's lack of concern for troops' families and personal relationships.

"They just think soldiers' families are a burden to the mission," she said. "But this is their lives."

"I am more proud to be in this fight," she continued, as members of the audience began to clap, "than anything I did in the Army."

http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/latestnews/index.php?id=11266

Gap Between Fantasy And Reality

Today we have still more evidence of the enormous gap between:

(a) public opinion regarding whether we should withdraw from Iraq and
(b) claims by the political and media establishment about public opinion on that question.

A newly released Gallup poll asked this question, the central question -- really the only relevant question -- regarding what we should do about Iraq:

If you had to choose, which do you think is better for the U.S. -- to keep a
significant number of troops in Iraq until the situation gets better, even if
that takes many years, or to set a timetable for removing troops from Iraq and
to stick to that timetable regardless of what is going on in Iraq?

Here is the answer, consistent with virtually every other poll that has asked the same question for many, many months:

SET TIMETABLE FOR WITHDRAWL

All Americans - 60%

Democrats - 81%

Republicans - 32%

Independents - 61%

KEEP TROOPS IN IRAQ UNTIL SITUATION IMPROVES

All Americans - 35%

Democrats - 15%

Republicans - 65%

Independents - 32%

The reason why this is the central question is because it describes the two sides of the mainstream political debate. Keeping troops in Iraq until the situation is better, no matter how long it takes, is the Bush/McCain position. Setting a timetable for withdrawal and adhering to it regardless of what is happening there -- i.e., regardless of whether things are better or we're "winning" or "losing" -- is, roughly speaking, the view of the Democratic presidential candidates and, even more so, the defining premise of the Responsible Plan to End the War in Iraq sponsored by 42 Democratic Congressional candidates.

American public opinion isn't "divided" or "split" on this question. There are no pro-war trends here that signal the Iraq War is about to become a huge asset for the McCain campaign. Nor are any of the other cliches used repeatedly by the establishment press to claim that unconditional withdrawal is a politically unpopular position even remotely true.

To the contrary, Americans overwhelmingly favor unconditional withdrawal and it's not even close. They favor that by a 25-point margin, and it's a 29-point margin among independents. Those are huge margins. Very few public policy questions of any significance produce margins that large. And the whole point of asking the question this way -- do you favor withdrawal "regardless of what is going on in Iraq?" -- is to exclude the excuse made by John McCain, The Politico and Cokie Roberts that Americans only want to withdraw once we've "won" or once we've created a peaceful democracy there.

For many reasons, the pro-war political establishment doesn't want to leave Iraq. That's fine. They're entitled to that opinion. But Americans overwhelmingly reject that view. All evidence conclusively demonstrates that. While there are mild differences as to the amount of time the timetables should allow, Americans want, by large margins, to set a timetable to withdraw from Iraq unconditionally -- not if we're winning, not if things are improved, not if we've created a stable democracy, but regardless of those issues. War advocates who keep saying otherwise are just spouting factually false -- and profoundly anti-democratic -- propaganda.

ORIGINALLY POSTED HERE

Can Americans REALLY Be This Stupid?

Old soldiers never die, they just get young soldiers killed. (or go AWOL in bush's case but today we focus on McCain)

This week John McCain said for the third time in two days, that Iran, a Shi’ite stronghold was training al Qaeda a militant Sunni organization.

Is this mis-speak from the republican candidate for president or was it signs of his advanced senile dementia?

Or is it "planting the seeds" of another diabolical republican plan.

That the Hatfields of the Muslim world would be working with the McCoys is so not true even Dick Cheney hasn’t said it. Now the press, which loves McCain because he feeds them BBQ, dismissed this as just one of those senior moments.

Not to worry, he’s only going to have his finger on the nuclear trigger if America is stupid enough to vote for this senile old fuck.

But it’s not just a ‘gaffe,’ it’s what McCain really thinks. And therein lies the paradox of this campaign: McCain’s strength is really his weakness. He’s a warrior who’s dumb about war. Whoever read The Art of War, chapter three of The Art of War says, “Know thy enemy.” And John McCain plainly doesn’t. He thinks the solution is our presence in the Middle East. No, the problem is our presence in the Middle East.

That’s why I don’t care if John McCain is better than bush on global warming or torture or campaign finance, because he’s exactly the same as bush on the war. They both don’t get the same thing.

As long as we’re setting up shop in the heart of the Arab world, we’re not keeping America safer. Bin Laden goes ballistic over cartoons in Danish newspapers, and Goober and Grandpa want to put up a Hooters in Fallujah. They don’t “hate us for our freedom,” they hate us for our stupidity.

Winning the War on Terror comes down to this: what will make us safer from pissed off Arab teenagers who are willing to die? There are a number of good answers to that question, but occupying their land for the next 100 years is not one of them.

Some people look at McCain and see a tough guy who is going to protect us from the “Islamofascists.”

I look at him and see a walking Tom Clancy action figure who is going to get us all fucking killed.

And yet a new poll shows that a majority of Americans believe John McCain is the candidate best qualified to answer when that red phone rings at 3:00 a.m., mainly because he’d be up anyway, trying to pee.

Yes, 55% of Americans think it’s McCain who should answer that phone, because they know John McCain is a warrior. He will not waver or hesitate. He will answer that phone and give the order that sends men to die and it will turn out to be a recording asking him if he’s happy with his mortgage.

ANYONE that supports this "bush league" candidate needs to have their head examined or be tried as a traitor to America.

Five Years Later - bush's War Rages On

From the horror of 9/11 to the invasion of Iraq; the truth about WMD to the rise of an insurgency; the scandal of Abu Ghraib to the strategy of the surge -- for six years, FRONTLINE has revealed the defining stories of the war on terror in meticulous detail, and the political dramas that played out at the highest levels of power and influence.

Now, on the fifth anniversary of the Iraq invasion, the full saga unfolds in the two-part FRONTLINE special Bush's War, airing Monday, March 24, from 9 to 11:30 P.M. and Tuesday, March 25, 2008, from 9 to 11 P.M. ET on PBS (check local listings).

Veteran producer Michael Kirk (The Torture Question, The Dark Side) draws on one of the richest archives in broadcast journalism -- more than 40 FRONTLINE reports on the war on terror.

Combined with fresh reporting and new interviews, Bush's War will be the definitive documentary analysis of one of the most challenging periods in the nation's history.

HAPPY ANNIVERSARY!

In April 2007, US Rep. Dennis Kucinich introduced Articles of Impeachment against Vice President of the United States Dick Cheney.

On that day two articles were introduced that possibly thwarted the administrations efforts to invade Iran by exposing Cheney’s plan and holding Cheney’s feet to the fire about his role in defrauding the American people and Congress over the invasion of Iraq.

Less than a year later Kucinich has brought to the table over 50 more articles strengthening the impeachment campaign against Cheney and his pawn, bush, and vows to keep them coming.

Michigan congressman John Conyers is feeling the pressure from the voices of We The People and is being forced to do his job and seriously consider the impeachment issue and Florida state representative Robert Wexler is aggressively pushing for impeachment also.

Each day more and more members of congress are jumping on the impeachment bandwagon realizing that the people want to see these blatant criminals held accountable for their actions. The same voices of the people that voted them into the office they ever so fragiley hold, because these same voices that voted them in have the power and ability to vote them out.

This week Thursday marks the end of America’s fifth year in Iraq and things just keep getting worse every day that we remain there. The “surge” is NOT working and it NEVER has. It can in no way, by any stretch of the imagination be considered as a mission accomplished.

The results in Iraq reflect the actions of a bumbling oaf with no plan for American exit and looking back at the invasion’s beginning, there was no plan ever from the start. The senile actions of this cowboy run invasion and occupation have had a global impact and will no doubt place george bush as the worst president ever in our history books.

With an approval rating in the toilet and the end of his reign of terror coming to a close, it is imperative that we introduce that cheney/bush tag team to something foreign to them.

Accountability.

This month we have seen the courageous actions of the people of Brattleboro Vermont file criminal charges against bush and cheney issuing local warrants for their immediate arrest if they step foot in town. Other towns in Vermont are following suit and my hope is that this will morph into a nationwide movement.

If we, AS AMERICANS, don’t take action, what message does this send to future administrations? It’s time to wake up America and realize that the big red white and blue dildo being shoved up your ass is beginning to hurt.

Winter Soldier 2008

Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan was a 4-day event from March 13-16 in DC that brought together veterans from across the country to testify about their experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Although the news media has unsurprisingly ignored the event much as they did its predecessor in 1971, this time we have digital media and the intertubes to document it and bring it to a wider audience.

In 1776, Thomas Paine wrote: “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.”

In 1971, a courageous group of veterans exposed the criminal nature of the Vietnam War in an event called Winter Soldier. Once again, we will demand that the voices of veterans are heard.

Spencer Ackerman has had ongoing coverage of Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan and much of it is beyond disturbing:

“That was the first time I’ve ever seen a six year old girl dead. And it was not drowning in a swimming pool, but because she had been shot by a bunch of teenage American kids. Not because we want to, but because it happens.”

READ THE STORY HERE

and …

“My company commander personally congratulated me, “Turner continued. “That same individual said, ‘Whoever gets his first kill by stabbing them to death will get a four day pass when we get back from Iraq.”

READ THE STORY HERE

Mike Prysner’s testimony was particularly revealing about military commanders’ deliberate use of racism as a tool to motivate soldiers to fight and “die to control the market of another country.”

From Their Own Lips

Where is this story on our evening news?

If I were a far better writer, I might -- might -- be able to convey the intensity of these Winter Soldier hearings.

On the way in were a few dozen right-wing protesters organized by the "Gathering of Eagles" -- a spin-off from the "Vietnam Vets for Truth" started during the 2004 campaign to go after Kerry. I've seen them at antiwar protests, and what struck me was that their messages were unchanged -- 'support the troops.' The concept that those giving testimony inside were the troops -- several with chests weighed down with decorations and metals -- was the definition of cognitive dissonance.

There was a heavy police presence surrounding the site of the hearings -- the campus of a local college in Silver Springs, Maryland. Snipers watched from rooftops, a mobile command post was set up and cops outnumbered protesters 2-1.

The panels were heart-breaking and gut-wrenching. Many of these vets are so young, and yet they've seen more than most of us can imagine. We talk about what the military is doing in our names, but to hear from people who were there doing it themselves, is something quite different. They talked about getting their first "kill," of having no clue what the mission was, of being in a clusterfuck of unbelieveable scope.

I knew about everything of which the vets spoke in an academic sense, but to hear them tell the tales in their own words -- some choking up visibly with the telling -- was enough to make a person cry, and many in the auditorium did just that.

I've written about a dozen articles about military contractors, and I think I have a pretty good handle on how destructive the endemic corruption of this occupation has been. But hearing the frustration expressed by a young MP as she told of providing security to KBR convoys is something that can't be found in any report. 'Every day we'd provide security for these trucks,' she said, ' and they told us that they were strategic assets vital to military operations in the country. We were supposed to be prepared to use deadly force to protect them.' When the trucks broke down, the convoys would keep barreling along, and her team was left to provide security. Hungry, desperate Iraqis would gather around, and they'd hold them off using rubber bullets and, if necessary, live ammunition. Inevitably, they'd then get the call to just destroy the vehicles, along with their cargoes. 'I had no idea what we were doing -- if the payloads were so valuable, why would we inevitably get the order to destroy them?' She detailed burning trucks full of food in front of hungry Iraqis, destroying a full-outfitted and perfectly serviceable ambulance in an Iraqi district that had none. It wasn't just the futility of the job, it was the repeated futility, day in and day out. One got the sense that a lot of these soldiers went over their with lofty ideals -- they went to help the Iraqi people -- and instead they found themselves members of an occupation that places very, very little value on Iraqi lives.

There was a panel on the Rules of Engagement. More than a dozen soldiers testified that they had been trained stateside to be professionals -- to use minimal force to achieve their objectives, to respect the spirit as well as the letter of the Geneva Conventions. When they got to Iraq, that flew out the window, and the unofficial but universally observed ROE was that if they felt at all threatened, they should shoot to kill. And all agreed that in a country where the enemies are indistinguishable from the friendlies, and with a mission that was poorly designed, the rules became looser and looser. All reported that they regularly carried 'drop' weapons to put next to the corpses of any civilians they had killed by mistake, and were told by their superiors that they'd be protected in such circumstances. And that happened with alarming frequency.

And they repeated, again and again, almost as if desperate to prove that they were not monsters, that these were not isolated events -- the standards were systemic, and they came from above. The only time they played it straight by the book was when they had embedded journalists with them. "Everything was different when the media was around," remarked one Marine.

What I found most striking was the candor with which they spoke of the horrors they themselves had committed. A young sniper told of killing two guys in a field after curfew. Turns out they were farmers, and the only time they could run the pumps to irrigate their fields was during the few hours when the power was working -- they'd defied curfew to feed their family and the soldiers in his unit knew who they were and knew their situation before they opened fire.

A marine told of his first kill -- an old, unarmed man on a bicycle at the wrong place at the wrong time. He told of his commander congratulating him for the act.

Ever see a Marine choke up? A noncommissioned officer did so while recounting how he had had to call in artillery fire in Afghanistan, and instead of using his GPS system to come up with the coordinates -- which takes too long to get a bearing -- he used his compass. But he took the reading too close to a big gun, and the metal threw off the reading. He got the azimuth wrong. When he said that he had gotten it wrong, he had to pause to collect himself. Tears rolled down his face. One of his comrades brought tissues, and another put an arm around him for support. When he collected himself, he told about how he had kept calling in barrages of mortars, one after the other, and the shells fell into a sleepy little village. A few days later his unit went into the decimated village and told the survivors that if the Taliban ever mortared them again, they should call the U.S. troops.

I've never been in combat, and I have no idea how much bravery is required to shoot at someone you feel is threatening. But I do know that coming forward to talk about these things was the most profound act of courage I've ever witnessed.

They told story after heartbreaking story to the rapt audience, and at the end of the day an almost palpable sense of exhaustion permeated the space.

As I listened, two things jumped out at me. First, I was struck by what idiots people are for believing that we can't end this occupation -- or I should say how credulous they are. Anyone who believes that such a thing as a benevolent foreign military occupation exists is seriously deluded. Soldier after soldier agreed: it's not about "mistakes" or poorly defined missions or a "failure of command," although all of those things are endemic in Iraq. The problem is the occupation, and there was a consensus among these soldiers and Marines that ending the occupation is a prerequisite for the Iraqis to try to put their wrecked country back together.

Originally appearing at: http://www.alternet.org/blogs/waroniraq/79782/

Proud To Be An American - Well I Used To Be

"I just want you to know that, when we talk about war, we're really talking about peace."
~~~ George W. Bush ~~~


With the fifth anniversary of our illegal, immoral, ill conceived and idiotic incursion into Iraq fast approaching, perhaps it's time to take an accounting of our actions.

Supposedly, we've lost about 4,000 dead American boys and girls. That's the official toll but the real toll maybe many times that as any one who dies off of Iraqi soil isn't counted.

Even if they're brain dead when the evacuation flight takes off they won't be counted dead in the official count. Nor will they if they succumb to their wounds if they die in the air or in a hospital in Germany or America.

Isn't that special?

Again the official toll for those wounded in Iraq is slightly more than 16,000, many with head wounds that leave them just shadows of their former selves. The cost in treasure is well over two trillion dollars and rising, something that we, our children and their children will be paying off for decades to come.

Now you would think that when we combine our losses in Iraq with those in Afghanistan we'd know we have enough on our plates and have paid a high enough cost in blood and treasure. All this just so our masters in the oil cartels can rake in record, obscene, profits while various other corpo-rat entities and private armies of soldiers of fortune fill their coffers with riches supplied by American dead. You might think this but you'd be wrong.

Everyone in the Junta from Smirky on down to Proconsul Admiral William Fallon, the former commander of this flying circus, keep dropping hints that there is more death and destruction awaiting across the border in Iran.

As costly as this war has been on America, it is but a drop in the bucket compared to what it has cost the Iraqis and the surrounding countries. The current count by the rest of the world stands at 1.3 million Iraqi dead. I say the world count as we don't bother counting the dead in Iraq since they're not considered human and, thus, not worth counting by the Pentagoon.

Add to that another 2 million wounded Iraqis and another 4 million who were forced to flee their homes and become refugees. Count in this group most of Iraq's educated and skilled workers, couple that with the damage we've caused to the infrastructure and Iraq may never recover from our Imperial scams.

Throw in Bush's constant demands on the puppet government for an invite to maintain those permanent bases we've built all over the country and any hope the Iraqi's have is gone.

If they hated us for our freedoms, they wouldn't hate us now as our freedoms are all but gone. They never hated us for our freedoms to begin with. They respected us for our freedoms.

They hate us for what we do to them and others!

Let me close on our five years in Iraq with a very funny joke.

Have you heard the one about Tony Blair, co-architect of this war crime and star of the Blair Bitch Project?

He is going to be teaching "religion" at Yale.

I guess the Church of England doesn't have the commandments "Thou shalt not kill" and "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbor's" in their Bible?

Support The Oops

When last we actually heard any substantial news reporting about Iraq the line was about how "the surge" had reduced violence...and it's effect upon ice cream shops or some such nonsense.

That was sometime in the Fall.

And then...poof, the occupation, it disappeared.

I know it's vitally important that all news be focused upon a prominent governmental office holder liking to pay for sex, because THAT'S never happened before and all.

I also know there's a Presidential Election on so it's vitally important that the candidates positions be covered for sixty seconds a day and the horse race aspect be for the remaining 23 hours, 59 minutes.

But the occupation still rages on.

People still die.

$12 billion a month still gets spent over there.

And yet, the occupation is not discussed at all. And somehow the end result is this:

Twenty-eight percent of the public is aware that nearly 4,000 U.S. personnel have died in Iraq over the past five years, while nearly half thinks the death tally is 3,000 or fewer...

The survey, by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, found that public awareness of developments in the Iraq war has dropped precipitously since last summer, as the news media have paid less attention to the conflict. In earlier surveys, about half of those asked about the death tally responded correctly.

And it's really unfortunate because up until now, the media has done such a fine job on covering Iraq have they not?

After all, just a few days ago McClatchy reported the Pentagon had authorized an exhaustive study of Iraq Saddam-era documents and the report was coming out having found no relationship between his government and Al Qaeda.

But then the bush Administration decided to just be wankers and not allow the study to be released on-line (it was supposed to be released yesterday). Now, you have to actually write and ask for it and eventually they will send you a CD-ROM ["how does late January 2009 work for you?"]

I'm sure this was given a prominent mention on all of the news broadcasts last night because even our media could see what was afoot. Right?

Yeah right.

Iraq Veterans Against The War Decend On Washington

This week, on March 13-16, a new generation of "Winter Soldiers," veterans of the war in Afghanistan and Iraq, will descend on the nation's capitol to tell America in their own words what they saw during their service in the asshole presidents faux war on terror.

They'll give a ground's eye perspective on the occupation's toll on the people of those countries and the costs to the military, and they'll tell stories of what it was really like in places like Fallujah and Ramadi, places that are just names on a map to most of the people in America.

They'll be following large footsteps.

In the early months of 1971, a group of Vietnam vets, organized by Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW), gave two days of testimony about the Vietnam that they had seen, up close and all-too-personally, in the original "Winter Soldier" investigation. While largely dismissed by the political establishment, their wrenching testimony redoubled the peace movement's efforts to end that war.

In his opening statement 37 years ago, William Crandell, a 26 year-old lieutenant who served in the 199th Light Infantry Brigade, Americal Division, the division that committed the infamous My Lai Massacre, told the hushed room, The Winter Soldier Investigation is not a mock trial. There will be no phony indictments; there will be no verdict against Uncle Sam." He promised "straightforward testimony, direct testimony, about acts which are war crimes under international law.

Acts which these men have seen and participated in.

And they did just that. Over two days, more than a 100 vets of the Vietnam conflict bore witness to the horrors that they had seen with their own eyes, "the inexorable result of national policy." One panel examined the question, "What are we doing to Vietnam?" and another asked "What are we doing to ourselves?"

The media largely ignored the hearings. The East Coast papers, with the exception of a New York Times article a week after the event, refused to even cover them. The VVAW complained of an "official censorship blackout."

That was before the right had built its formidable echo chamber, before Fox News, the Washington Times, the New York Sun and the emergence of the right-wing blogosphere, with its instinctive attacks on any who question the morality of the "war on terror." It's difficult to imagine the kind of character assassinations the soldiers who gather in Washington this week will face from the war's supporters, but it's likely that they're going to redefine courage and genuine patriotism in the face of withering criticism.

But the progressive community is also better prepared to push back against those attacks this time around. A robust alternative media, of which I, FED UP AMERICAN am proud to play a role, will at least allow this new generation of Winter Soldiers to be heard.

What Have We Gained?

Within the next two weeks, the number of American troops killed in Iraq is likely to reach 4,000, assuming that the average number of fatal casualties per day remains steady.

It is an arbitrary number, given meaning by the fact that the nation may briefly take notice, but a day will come in this presidential campaign when Sen. John McCain must explain what he thinks we have gained by the sacrifice of those men and women.

But I would like to pose that question to every idiot war monger out there that supports bushies OCCUPATION of Iraq.

What have we gained?

At what cost?

Is it worth it?

Consider the costs...

• $275 million per day.
• $4,100 per household.
• Almost 4,000 U.S. soldiers killed and more than 60,000 wounded. Not to mention those that have come home with UNTREATED PTSD and other diseases and war related illnesses being brought back home that will haunt America for generations to come.
  
• Over 100,000,000 Iraqis killed and 4 million refugees created.
• America, under bush, has become the disgrace of the world.
• Exponential growth of global terrorism.
• Funding the war has bankrupted the U.S. and is rapidly pushing us toward a severe economic recession if not a full blown depression.
  
• A war that will be paid for by our children's children.

So I ask again: What the fuck have we gained???

Bruce Rocks

A great couple of protest songs from "The Boss"

From the Today show last September.

Enjoy!

Cost Of Iraq Occupation

American Resolve

It is time that America return to its previous self to rediscover that "utmost reward of daring" and continue to dare against the storms of political malfeasance and subversion of the principles of our Constitution and Founding Fathers.

America is a trial by existence for democracy, a trial for the whole world to see, and now is the time to be daring and faithful to the American dream for the betterment of citizen and government alike.

But what about terrorism, you ask?

Terrorism is not a single identifiable enemy. Terrorism is an affliction of the human spirit, an evil malady of hopelessness and violence. Terrorism is the sickness of our age, a plague of the heart and soul whereby the few instill the fever of fear in the many and paralyze the very core of freedom and democracy.

And the cure for terrorism is American daring to refuse to buckle to fear by turning against our fellow citizens and spying on them and imbuing them with the stain of distrust as though We the people cannot be trusted except as we comply to the will and whim of government. We are the government. We must dare to refuse to turn our privacy into a corporate profit center for data mining and Orwellian guardianship; dare to embrace constitutional rights rather than shredding them as though the Constitution were nothing more than an inconvenient cluttered piece of paper.

So let us begin to reclaim the dream and the daring vision that is America.

Let us have the daring vision to enact universal healthcare for every citizen and child in America. We have been to the moon on a promise and a dream. Surely we have the means to ensure preventative healthcare for our children and each other.

Let us dare to care for our veterans. Suicide and PTSD are not acceptable collateral damage.

A nation that cannot care for its veterans or its children cannot face the world in good conscience.

We must hold fast to our Founders' vision of democracy. We must and will refuse to surrender our civil liberties and privacy to the fear-mongers who seek to line their pockets with our lives. A nation that spies on and fears its own citizens is not America; it is a totalitarian regime.

We must reclaim the vision of affordable education for our children. Surely we can see an imbalance just from the 2007 budget figures: $481 billion for defense, $100 billion supplemental spending for the war in Iraq and Afghanistan and $56 billion for education. Has our vision become so frightened and distorted that we choose to put more money into war and the destruction of the world than into educating our children?

Let us dare to confront the control of the public airwaves. The hands of corporate conglomerates seek to strangle the very air that belongs to We the people and squeeze out every nickel possible. We must and shall fight the battle of the people's grassroots communication through support of Net Neutrality. The people's voice, our voice, must be heard, whether liberal or conservative, religious or atheist, the public forum must be held above the fray of profit and censorship. The benefits of technology cannot be controlled by the rich and powerful. It failed in 1776 and it will fail now if we dare it to be so.

We must restore faith in voting in America. One person, one vote - fully counted and fully enfranchised. Our election process must be restructured and made accessible for every citizen without intimidation, phone jamming or any of the other so-called political tactics that have become standard practice of the republicunt party. We must dare to restore sanity through reform to campaign finance in this country. No lobbyist or conglomerate should have more access or more rights than We the people.

So now we vote.

Our vote is not just the passivity of choice. but also a vote for our own action and participation in the American dream and in our own government. Activists and dissidents and great debate founded America. It was good enough for the Founding Fathers. it is good enough for us.

We are Americans. Daring and visionary. As we emerge from the darkness of the past 7+ years, we see the light of hope and promise and of course change.