[Aberdeen] DAILY WORLD / DAVID SANDLER

Arthur Ruger of Bay Center talks about his

views of the Iraq war with Congressman

Brian Baird at a town hall meeting at

Raymond High School on Saturday. Ruger

and his wife, Lietta, have a nephew and

a son-in-law currently serving in the military.

Reference Today's Aberdeen Daily World:
Baird faces his constituents in Raymond

I like the article cause obviously they couldn't find a picture of some handsomer guy and were afraid to put up a picture of Lietta as a mother/grandmother being uppity and rude to a U.S. Congressman.

Actually, being uppity and rude was not at all what Lietta said and did. Within minutes after she started her first question you could sense how most of the audience was sitting up and paying attention rather than attempting to shush her or insist that she keep quiet so others could speak.

Furthermore, Brian Baird -  as he answered most  questions - kept returning and making eye contact with Lietta while speaking. That is what usually happens when a speaker comes to understand what constitutes the most serious concern of the audience.

It's not surprising that even in rural Pacific County, Iraq and flub-a-dub Republican presidents and politicians are on everyone's mind. Out here in the boondocks some thought the audience would be more willing to talk about Spartina grass in the Willapa Bay or road construction on State Highway 6.  

Fat chance.

Cross posted to Willapa Magazine and Daily Kos

Brian addressed most of my arguments and contentions about his his surge-supporting credibility before I ever had the opportunity to challenge him. His pre-emptive strike derailed what would have been my slam-dunk challenge items.

You know, the slogan stuff:

"military dog-and-pony show",
"I talked to one or two soldiers from our district,"
even one of my more cherished talking points: "an  abstract war unless you have skin in the game."

I had promised Lietta that I would keep my curmudgeon mouth quiet until later in the meeting - perhaps when folks stopped worrying about Iraq and were ready to go mow Spartina grass or whine about time delays on Highway 6.

After Lietta got his attention (and perhaps the audience got an opportunity to put faces to their neighbor's names about which they'd only read in the newspapers or online) my chance arrived.

I managed to somewhat govern the rage inside after listening to Brian present what I perceived as talking points typical of all Democrats who've caved to their fear of an electorate stampeded by lying republican sensationalized propaganda.

I did so by projecting an image of my two military family members sitting between Lietta and me - tied to their seats and unable to move out of them and  with duct tape over their mouths.

I asked Brian to give me the sort of thing we should expect from all our elected officials;
something I know I've never seen nor heard from any republican and few Democrats.

Our Democratic politicians must stop hiding behind form-letter responses and talking-point corn-flake answers. We need them to speak with us face to face with honesty.

To my best recollection, I said to Brian Baird,

"I've listened to what sounds like talking-point answers from you. These are the very answers and logic we've heard from the republican president and his party supporters.

Brian, you're sounding like Republican partisans who have talked to us voters for years as if we were stupid and gullible. It is personally insulting to be talked to that way and you're doing it once again today.

I'm asking you to look us directly in the eye and flat out tell us why my soldier-son's blood is worth the supposed six-month outcome you've described - which even you admit to be a house of cards.

Tell us right here and right now with no allusion to American foreign policy and nonsense about broken pottery barns and social chaos in Iraq.

What should I tell my soldiers about what their blood means to Brian Baird?"

I'll get to his answer in a moment, but first I think we need to talk civics.

For those of you who can't find America on a map because drinking liberally, watching sports, amateur entertainers and survivor contestants are far more interesting, you can go read somewhere else if you're bored.

As for you liberal orthodoxists for whom absolute adherence to pretend liberal doctrine means that any elected official who commits ANY act of heresy is immediately excommunicated, you need to grow up here and now!

Think about what Baird is doing and what he has been subjecting himself too in the name of genuine citizen civic duty, patriotism and his conscience.

Think about what Murray, Cantwell, Pelosi, Reid, and all the Democratic cave-in cowards have not done.

I watched one fellow stand up and wail on and on at the Congressman (not TO him, but AT him) about elected officials expected to merely vote the will of the people who sent him to Congress.

He insisted that Baird be our voice but not think for himself.

I've always mostly agreed with that notion - mostly,  but not totally. Cause I'm willing to concede that if my elected representative gets access to information affecting an upcoming vote and has no time to poll his constituents, he must used his wisdom.

I may not agree with his choices but how can I dispute his conscience and best effort?

Why would I fire him for doing what he thought he should? As a union shop steward I would go after management full bore for firing my co-worker based on such logic.

We don't always elect the smartest person to represent us. But not being the smartest isn't a representative's problem, it's ours for assuming we should elect smart robots. Our challenge is to elect representatives with integrity who don't place lobbyists and cash above the needs of those they represents.

Our challenge is to elect representatives who won't take talking-point orders from party officials who are not supposed to be party leaders FIRST and elected officials SECOND;

and who won't threaten independent thinkers with party reprisals, retaliation or party discipline for not going along with official partisan-dictated policy.

And of course ... we elect representatives with courage - not only courage to vote their conscience with their best wisdom - but also courage to take responsibility and accountability for that vote; to go back to the people and stand in front of them.

I am in major disagreement with Brian Baird on his on his position on the surge and his confidence in General Petraeus. But in all honesty, I am in major agreement with Brian Baird on his ability to be a real elected representative of his people.

When you come down to it, Baird is the only politician I've seen in my lifetime who displayed the courage to willingly take an unpopular decision and then leap out of the frying pan from which his opinion was given and straight into the fire to take the heat.

That's what those of us who CAN find the United States on a map ought to be able to understand.

So what did Baird say when I asked him what I could share with our family soldiers about their blood?

Baird did not hesitate when he replied that "You probably won't like it, but ... " [and I have to paraphrase the rest of his lengthy response.]

Baird described himself as not only our elected representative but also a patriotic and civic-minded American citizen. Now all talk can be cheap talk. Any time any of us self-describe we run the risk of spouting cheap talk.

However, in this case, I saw nothing cheap in what Brian Baird said nor how he said it. Whether you agree or not, that's what we want in our officials.

Baird believes that contrary to my apparent assumption that he himself wants us to expend our most precious blood to pay the price of stupid Bush/Republican/Neocon policies, we must understand that leaving our blood in harm's way is a necessary  support of America's core values and to our being part of a global community and not the superpower that fools make us out to be.

It's as much a support of American core values as is advocating for the restoration of habeas corpus and the end of unlawful and unnecessary wire tapping.

We are part of a community where we may not like the price we are paying, but where in fact we have created a situation we have no right to reasonably ask other countries to clean up for us. We cannot expect other countries to willingly send their own blood into harm's way for something our fools-for-leaders did in our name.

He looked me in the eye and told me that yes, he felt that risking my soldiers' blood is worth it ... and that yes, if he had grown children and it meant sending his own children into harm's way he would not change his position.

I then felt challenged to look him back in the eye and without relying on my own political talking-points, tell him why and in what effective manner I would ask the leadership of any other nation to clean up the pile of crap we left laying in the world's living room.

I couldn't come up with any useful nor justifiable  notion with which I could suggest that some other family replace my family's solder.

Those rationales inside our anti-occupation repertoire were impotent and mindless rehashing of arguments that only go so far toward solving the problem.

Baird came over to Lietta and me after the meeting and agreed to Lietta's request for an on-going update exchange regarding our military family members in harm's way.

Another citizen who was talking with us at that moment turned to Brian and said, "When your children are 18, you'll think differently about sending them to war."

Lietta and I spoke about this on the way home. Our military son-in-law re-enlisted a few years ago.  

In preparation for his impending redeployment to Iraq within 3 weeks, he is not talking panic-talk nor shouting "Please Mr. Custer, I don't wanna go!"

No, he is quietly and bravely preparing himself for another 18-month tour.

THAT is the kind of soldier most military families have been sending to Iraq.

THAT is the kind of soldier even Brian Baird recognizes as coming from only a very small group of citizens who man this war for the rest of us;

a vast national majority of us who make up a not-to-be-bothered non-patriotic society worried about hard-ons, super bowls and spending money.

OUR soldier has also authorized us to keep at our government.

"Mom, you're the only voice we have," he said to her when Lietta first overcame her own reluctance to speak out and got involved.

So he's there taking responsibility for his enlistment contract. He's doing his duty while hoping and needing that we do ours - and you do yours.

Are we continuing our effots to go after Brian Baird and all those elected officials who are in a greater position to stop the crooks and liars who are the real villains?

You betcha!!

However, that confrontation in which I was a participant yesterday turned out to be much more clearly perceived than online videos or sensationalized news and internet accounts of angry constituents threatening and demeaning a U.S. Congressman for his position.

We absolutely must stay real with this stuff.

I only speak for me, and in spite of what I believe is Brian Baird's wrong-headed trust of General Betrayus's surge promises and his inappropriate criticism of Moveon.org, I saw the kind of elected official we need more of.

By insisting on some sort of pretend orthodoxy falsely perceived as connected to an anti-war position, we ask Brian and others to flip-flop;

to subject themselves to our own narrow manipulations rather than the manipulations of others.

We expect them to be threat-driven, but only to OUR  threats and not the mindless threats of some other fools.

Being anti-war is but a small part of how I feel in  my role as a responsible civic-minded citizen.

In my own larger context as a veteran, as the father of soldiers and probable grandfather of soldiers, I must stand with each of you and we must be genuine patriots who will make wise decisions when called upon.

We are a military family opposed to war in the abstract but understanding that crap happens;

that despite our highest ideals of peace and global  harmony, our warrior blood is what Americans need when it's time to be grown-ups;

when our maturity recognizes the need take the gloves off.

On War & the Military

I thought that back when the broadcast debate about whether or not Iraq was another VietNam was interesting but too focused on literal comparison.

For me the legacy of VietNam was the massive expansion of the idea of dissent as a patriotic act.

Further, VietNam legitimized a permanent change in society in the sense that a larger segment remains willing to question the motives and speak out against the administration with considerable less risk of being isolated and marginalized by pseudo-patriotic politics.

In our experience of speaking out, the most consistent disagreement with our point of view is not the political disagreement of our contemporaries, but that of the generation older than ours that remembers World War II more than it remembers VietNam.

Arthur Ruger 

Since you are a former AF brat, wife of a Viet Vet and mother to soldiers still serving, I would appreciate it if you would contact me. You have been gravely mislead by a bunch of frauds about DU.

What made you even go looking for them (or did they come to you) -- you are the perfect person for them to make a dupe as they have made Congressman McDermott who was sent a forged document that is purported to be from 1943.

He is LTC. Roger Helbig, USAF (ret). and is not and has not been an on-going member of our Washington Veteran's Google group. Rather, Helbig seems to have made it his practice to insert himself into every anti-DU rally, debate, symposium and forum including and primarily those on line.

For those interested in the use of Depleted Uranium in military weapons, I make no apology for this lengthy update.

In the spirit of Fair Use, I'm posting the entirety of the following piece from the Axis of Logic Site

"April 11, 2005 -- (Oklahoma City) "Individuals on web sites throughout the United States have complained over a period of months about the abusive and aggressive actions of an Air Force Lieut. Colonel named Roger Helbig," stated Project Censored Award Winning writer Bob Nichols.

"Col. Helbig has consistently misrepresented himself and his participation, voluntarily or on a paid basis, as a "minder" or enforcer for the DOD lie about Uranium Munitions in direct contravention of US Army Regulations and Orders," Nichols stated.

"Col. Helbig apparently is fervently following the Secret Los Alamos Memo about Uranium Weapons (UW), aka so-called "Depleted Uranium," instructing personnel to lie about Uranium Weapons to maintain the political viability of continued use of the Genocidal Weapons: "weaponized radioactive and poisonous ceramic uranium oxide gas and dust" in Iraq and throughout Central Asia," added Nichols.

[Ed Note: They are not kidding. A copy of the actual memo encouraging lies and misinformation is online. AR]

Nichols stated "Dr. Doug Rokke, Ph.D., is the former Army Officer in charge of the Pentagon's Depleted Uranium Project. Dr Rokke is a career officer, loyal to the Constitution of the United States of America, not to any political party. He is the man the people of the United States can turn to for "on the level information" about the true nature of Uranium Weapons (UW.)

Dr. Rokke commented, "LTC Roger Helbig, United States Air Force: I would suggest that since you claim to be so knowledgeable about DU and my specific activities during Gulf War 1 and while I was the Director of the U.S. Army Depleted Uranium that you produce the actual official documents, not some comments by Bob Cherry or Ed Battle or Mike Kilpatrick, your bosses up the line, verifying your comments."

Rokke added "Unless you can do so, please cease and go away. But before you go away you still have not answered; why you, as an United States Air Force officer, refuse to support my / our actions to ensure that United States Department of Defense officials provide medical care to all DU casualties and clean up all environmental contamination as required by AR 700-48 and TB 9-1300-278; and, that medical care is provided to all DU casualties as required by Lt General Ron Peake's April 29, 2004 order."

"Will you provide us a public endorsement supporting full compliance of these mandatory actions?"

"Yes" or "No"?

Dr. Rokke concluded "It is time for you to decide. The question is not about me, but whether or not United States Department of Defense personnel comply with their own requirements to provide medical care and clean up all environmental contamination as specified in AR 700-48, TB 9-1300-278, and all of the orders mandating medical care for DU casualties."

Copyright 2005 by AxisofLogic.com

Lietta,

Since you are a former AF brat, wife of a Viet Vet and mother to soldiers still serving, I would appreciate it if you would contact me.

You have been gravely mislead by a bunch of frauds about DU. What made you even go looking for them (or did they come to you) -- you are the perfect person for them to make a dupe as they have made Congressman McDermott who was sent a forged document that is purported to be from 1943.

Roger Helbig Vietnam Era vet Retired USAF (5 years active; 20 Guard/Reserve)
DoD Civilian (ret)

grew up with the Army Reserve (my Dad was both reserve officer and civilian employee
- I helped him run preenlistment tests when he got over run by applicants in 1965)
Geologist - that makes me a Geoscientist too --
Trained to recognize and protect against nuclear fallout Contracts Director, Navy Nuclear Shipyard - got to befriend nuclear engineers and technicians, people who know their stuff, not frauds who pretend that they do
Tireless researcher (that's the real me, not the Axis of Evil variant perpetrated by Rokke and Nichols
-- they made me so mad, I FOIAed Rokke's records and have been on his tail and the entire anti-DU crusade's tail ever since -
lying about me was a big mistake on their part)

There is one major flaw in this study ..
Uranyl Acetate does not exist in nature and thus is unlikely to ever contaminate a soldier or civilian bystander's lungs.  

Another major flaw is that the material that was used in the study contains natural, not depleted uranium.  If anyone wants to write me or come to DUStory in Yahoo Groups, I will put you in touch with chemists who have analyzed this.  

I am surprised that it was funded by a grant and intend to ask questions of the granting organization about why they funded this flawed study which seems made to order for the anti-depleted uranium crusade that wants to convince you that your soldiers are in danger, that you are in danger and that your children are in danger when their real goal is convicting your soldier of a non-existent war crime for intentionally poisoning the Middle East.

So, aroused from my aging veteran reverie, I knocked over my coffee, forgot to feed that cat and pounded on my keyboard.

On major flaws ...

(1) Uranyl Acetate - whether or not it exists in nature - "is unlikely to ever contaminate a soldier or civilians bystander's lungs."

Chemists have analyzed this you say?

So what is it we are discussing, the legitimate danger of depleted uranium or why the hell we are using it or need to use it in the first place?

And why would you say that any weapon - possessed of DU or not - is safe for civilian bystanders? What kind of doofus statement is that?

(2) Unless someone with an impressive educational and vocational pedigree (such as yours) can justify/defend America's need to involve nuclear crap in our weaponry as vital to the defense of the nation, what's the problem with crusading against the use of DU?

Are you trying to say that without DU our military is somehow emasculated and insufficiently potent to get the job done?

Do we need to go around shooting field  mice with elephant guns because our generals and defense contractors need the viagra effect of DU to effectively rattle sabers?

(3) I'm not aware of any accusations of war crimes against soldiers  for being in a war zone where their own government has authorized the use of depleted uranium. Who is doing the accusing of our troops? I'll help you smack them.

Actually, it sounds like you're on your own narrow and biased justify-the-use-of-depleted-uranium crusade.

Bottom line is that you can call everyone else's opinion flawed as hell, but in all honesty should you not state and clarify your own particular bias?

As a Veteran with a big mouth and an opinion I'm entitled to, I'll admit to the following biases of concern:

- I am the patriarch of our particular military family with it's own tradition going back decades. My deceased WWII father's flag sits on the wall in my study. My own medals and uniform fruit salad ribbons are in the special box I put them upon receipt of an honorable discharge thirty two years ago.

- I don't wear a silly little flag on my lapel nor stick cheap metal ribbons on my vehicle to prove how patriotic I am. I leave that to gullibles who think Fox News is honest broadcasting.

- I was against Bush's invasion and occupation of Iraq from the get-go.

- I still am. Bush is the one most guilty of war crimes. More innocent civilian "bystanders" have been killed on Bush's orders than those killed by the dictator Bush lied about to justify an invasion that included the DU viagra.

- My family is not anti-war nor part of that political crowd. But we are also nobody's gullible puppets and nobody's pretend patriots conforming to false logic.

- Invading Iraq was never justified, necessary and is a false prop for Bush & Company's flawed definition of what a "war on terror" is or should look like.

- In that context, using depleted uranium - serious as that may be in terms of risk -  is secondary to blowing up our soldier family members and innocent by-standing civilians based on what does or does not naturally occur in nature.

As a Veteran with a big mouth, you owe us clarification, not rhetoric.

- Your position regarding the invasion and occupation of Iraq is what?

- your position regarding the reality of a "war on terror" and whose definition of that "war" is drinkable bathwater is what?

- you absolutely promise that depleted uranium has no lethal side effects based on nuclear radiation - being  essentially then harmless except for the traditional lethal intent of those weapons with or without DU inclusion?  You do acknowledge that original intent don't you? Blowing up people and things?

- You guarantee that my family and I and all who read here can absolutely sleep at night without concern about DU cause you've done our homework for us? We have absolutely no reason to worry about DU as the cause of any potential "agent orange" kind of illness or sterilization in our  military sons and daughters? DU absolutely will not be the reason if our soldier families become parents of grandchildren with birth defects?

- You can guarantee that any increased incidence of sterilization and birth defects in the innocent by-standing Iraqi civilian population is not going to be a consequence of DU and that America should have no guilty conscience about DU's inclusion among the rotten eggs we've laid and left laying around in the Middle East?

If you can't make that guarantee then perhaps you should go do more homework before calling anyone or anything flawed.

all American cowards to shout praises in one mighty self-serving patriotic war cry.

08/04/2007

Entonces, digame ... como es que necesitamos cuerpos Latinos sin papeles para sostener el Imperialismo Americano al mismo tiempo que los necesitamos como objetos de discuros de pretensa de odio politico Americano?

So tell me, how is it that we need the bodies of undocumented Latinos to sustain American Imperialism at the same time we need them as debate subjects based on pretended American political hatred? 

Why are we debating the ejection of illegal aliens at the same time we desperately need them to body-up the supposed mighty military arm of American freedom?

While Mr. Bush, Mr. Romney, Mr. Tancredo as well as all the rest of those Republican and Democratic candidates preening for nominations rap piously on and on about our illegal immigrants, this nation continues to mine deeply among undocumented immigrant families for young sacrificial victims to murder on the alter of American Imperialism.

In the spirit of Mel Gibson's villains in his Apocalypto, the Bushco priesthood is sending out mind raiders to kidnap young Latinos and spirit them into another world beyond imagining. It will be a world where the taking of their  lives continues in ever-increasing numbers.

While doing so, the Republican incumbent hypocrites - with the tacit silent cooperation of Democratic weak sisters - incite the national crowd by then tearing out the hearts - not of the young soldiers who have already been sacrificed - but the hearts of thier grieving Latino families;

... in a grandstand play worthy of any self-serving demagocracy, proudly hold up those torn and bleeding family hearts solemnly for all to see

... and all American cowards to shout praises in one mighty self-serving patriotic war cry.

We are, or should be the grownups in this country.

Right here and right now we should forget our leisure leanings and start shouting, start the cascading exploding righteous and overdue indignation.

If you are too busy or too lazy to speak out, to join a rally or to surround and disrupt a network TV station, then by God take ten minutes to send someone you voted for (or voted against) the message of a mature and  grown-up American citizen.

In the meantime, while you and I make up our minds, there are more dying - warriors and civilians - for no legitimately noble reason.

... not for broken pottery barns and certainly not to support inappropriate surges rationalized as supposed prevention of unavoidable chaos

... a chaos supposedly delayed at a cost way to high for this nation to keep paying.

The shame is ours too ...

although I am not a Latino, my children - all born in this country - are. Latinos then I consider partly my own people. Although viewing their lives from my primarily inadequate  "gringo perspective," I do speak their language and work with these families in my profession. What they are told by the American government that simultaneously needs and despises them is our shame.

Reference the following chronicle of national shame:

The whole article is worth reading unless you are a moral coward turned off by reality or convinced that we can justifiably limit ourselves to small and token  political steps now - letting more people die - while telling yourself how we'll fix it all in late 2008 - when it will be of course too late for many.

[Short excerpt] 

Illegal Immigrants: Uncle Sam Wants You

 

Latino teenagers, including illegal immigrants are being recruited into the military with false promises.

By Deborah Davis

In These Times.com 

Jesus had been an easy mark for the recruiter-a boy who fantasized that by joining the powerful, heroic U.S. Marines, he could help his own country fight drug lords.

He gave the recruiter his address and phone number in Mexico, and the recruiter called him twice a week for the next two years, until he had talked Jesus into convincing his parents to move to California.

Fernando and Rose Suarez sold their home and their laundry business and immigrated with their children to Escondido, where Jesus enrolled at a high school known for academic achievement. But the recruiter wanted him to transfer to a school for problem teenagers, since its requirements for graduation were lower and Jesus would be able to finish sooner. He was 17 and a half when he graduated from that school, still too young to enlist on his own, so his father co-signed the enlistment form, as the military requires for underage recruits.

Three years later, at the age of 20, his body was torn apart in Iraq by an American-made fragmentation grenade during the first week of the invasion. In the Pentagon's official Iraq casualty database, his death is number 74.

 

Don't wimp out on me now! Click and read it all