HAVE A WONDERFUL VETERANS' DAY!
Gulf War Vet turned DC Sniper Executed by Lethal Injection
The man known as the DC sniper has been executed for the October 2002 killings of ten people in DC, Virginia and Maryland. John Allen Muhammad was killed by lethal injection Tuesday after Virginia Governor Timothy Kaine denied a last-minute appeal for clemency... Defense attorneys had argued for sparing Muhammad’s life on grounds he suffered mental illness worsened by the Gulf War syndrome he developed while serving in the first US invasion of Iraq.
Army Psychiatrist who massacred 13 at Fort Hood out of Coma
President Obama visited Fort Hood, Texas on Tuesday to pay tribute to the thirteen soldiers and civilians killed in a shooting rampage last week. The suspect, Army psychiatrist Major Nidal Malik Hasan, remains hospitalized after emerging from a coma.
Anti-Arab Marine Reservist Assaults Greek Priest
In Florida, a Marine reservist has been arrested after allegedly attacking a Greek Orthodox priest he mistook to be of Arabic descent.
Parents of deceased Iraq Veteran Receive VA letter asking son to show up for PSTD treatment
The parents of US Army Reserve Specialist Chancellor Keesling, an Iraq war veteran, received a letter yesterday from the VA asking that their son complete his “Post Deployment Adjustment.” The only problem is, Chance Keesling had killed himself in Iraq nearly five months ago.
US Blackwater Mercenaries who killed 17 Civilians in Nisoor Massacre prepared bribes
Former executives at the private military firm Blackwater have revealed the company authorized around $1 million to bribe Iraqi officials in the aftermath of the September 2007 killings of seventeen Iraqi civilians in Baghdad’s Nisoor Square.
US Citizen Sues FBI for Kidnapping, Mistreatment in Africa
The American Civil Liberties Union has filed suit on behalf of a US citizen over the FBI’s alleged role in his imprisonment and mistreatment abroad. Amir Mohamed Meshal was detained in Kenya, transferred to Somalia, and then sent to Ethiopia, where he wasjailed for three months without charge. Meshal says US interrogators held him in inhumane conditions and threatened him with torture, forced disappearance and execution unless he confessed to belonging to a militant Islamic group.
Obama to send 30,000 Additional Troops in Afghanistan
Reports continue to surface that the Obama administration has decided on a major troop increase in Afghanistan.
Sexual Assaults, Inadequate Healthcare Among Spate of Issues Facing Women Servicemembers
http://www.democracynow.org/2009/11/11/sexual_assaults_inadequate_healthcare_among_spate
The rate of sexual assaults within the US military also exceeds that of the general population. A Pentagon report earlier this year found one in three female servicemembers are sexually assaulted at least once during their enlistment. Sixty-three percent of nearly 3,000 cases reported last year were rapes or aggravated assaults. Despite what some have called an epidemic of military sexual trauma, the delivery of healthcare to women veterans remains grossly inadequate.
Unfortunately, health insurance is just one of many serious problems vets face. Veterans account for up to a quarter of all homeless in the country. Up to one-in-five veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan suffers from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and male vets face suicide rates double the national average.
Meanwhile, the rate of sexual assaults within the US military also exceeds that of the general population. A Pentagon report earlier this year found one in three female service members are sexually assaulted at least once during their enlistment. Sixty-three percent of nearly 3,000 cases reported last year were rapes or aggravated assaults. Despite what some have called an epidemic of military sexual trauma, the delivery of health care to women veterans remains grossly inadequate.
Veterans Day or Rulers Day?
Wednesday 11 November 2009
by: Bob Richards, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed
How is it that Veterans Day gets turned around into US Military Hegemony Day? The airwaves were buried under an avalanche of lip service about veterans, but the moving lips were all about the myth that the warfare decisions this country's rulers make have something to do with anyone's freedom. Just as soldiers and sailors are doing around the world today, I did in my time. I was there as a teenager, ignorant of the forces moving me, believing whatever line I was being fed.
I grew up on the hundreds of war/propaganda movies that came out of WWI, WWII and Korea. Today we are deluged with more nationalistic propaganda than ever before in my lifetime. It can't be avoided. The TV spews the images nearly nonstop. Recruiters are in our schools, along with the pop machines. The words Army, Navy and National Guard are on race cars at the drags and the ovals. "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" has been replaced with "America the Beautiful" with cordons placed at Yankee Stadium to keep fans from going to the bathroom while the dose of nationalism is served up.
Once a year the veterans are rolled out, but without a real veterans' voice. The physical support for veterans comes nowhere near what is needed. Suicides of veterans always wind up taking more lives than the wars that set them up.
It is important to some vets to keep believing the myth they fought for, that going into that foreign country had a bearing on anyone's freedom here. These are the vets who get a voice, as this is the only voice acceptable to the ruling powers. The Revolutionary War and the Civil War may have had some bearing on someone's freedoms, but even then, not everyone's. The former held only for white male property holders, and the latter for humans who were property themselves. In both of these cases, those native to these lands could not be included, as they were busy at the time being relieved of their homelands and freedom.
If you want to thank anyone for your rights and freedoms, thank an activist. No soldier ended segregation in the 1960's. No sailor got women the vote. No National Guardsman got you the 40-hour week or took children off the shop floors or out of the mines. No, they were called out by the states to kill the very people who were fighting for the rights they eventually won for you.
Mostly what the vets have done is to be tricked into serving the forces that have used them, and in many cases, used them up. The vets deserve your support mostly because they believed, and gave what was asked, and were promised something in exchange. When promise-keeping time comes up, they find they have to get in a line and wait and then they must fight to receive what was promised. In many cases, what they get is enough for a little cheap wine and a bed at a shelter. These aren't the vets that get dragged out before the game or race, or at half-time. Nope, those vets are the believers. The "presentable" ones.
So, here we are at war to get Unocal's dream pipeline route across Afghanistan secured and prop up that ex-Unocal employee's stolen election. Then there's still that war we don't talk about so much anymore. The one that the lie to get us in there changed nearly every day, when the truth may have been as simple as the Decider told us himself, that Saddam tried to kill his daddy, and that he would use that war for his own ends.
These two wars send home more corpses and vets every day. These vets are more often acute cases needing the highest levels of attention, overloading the system and triaging the old farts back down the waiting lines. The government will front load the wars with the drones, missiles, guns, mines, ships, planes and trained bodies as its priority. It will use up more than it gets from its taxpayers and hand the debts to the future, and vets will fight for crumbs. This is the record from every war the country has ever done. Still, its propaganda works, and it won't have any trouble finding believers to march in the parades. It can parlay that percentage into a rock-solid myth and keep the guns-and-butter gravy train rolling along.Ha
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