Seattle Times weighs in; their coverage Iraq war

By Lietta Ruger at Washblog
Sun Mar 26, 2006 at 01:19:04 PM PST
Section: Diary Topic: General news/info

Posted by SwanDeer Project at 12:01 AM PST

Share This Post

Post Comment | Permalink

Military Families Speak Out on tragic 3rd Anniversary Iraq/Afghanistan war

Posted by SwanDeer Project at 12:01 AM PST

Share This Post

Post Comment | Permalink

CommonDreams.org

No Deals for Democrats: Quit Bargaining with the Lives of Our Loved Ones

Published on Sunday, March 5, 2006 by  Stacy Bannerman 

It’s easy to make deals with soldiers’ lives when it’s not your soldier. It’s pretty simple to postpone coming up with an exit strategy when your loved ones are already home.

What’s not so easy is sitting across from a familiar stranger, someone who looks like your loved one, but isn’t, not quite. What’s even harder is dining next to an empty chair, day after day, month after month, and year after year. Taking your meals at the bedside of what’s left of your son lying in intensive care at Walter Reed Army Medical Center is a whole different degree of difficult.

Diane Benson’s 26-year-old boy was still unconscious when he arrived at Walter Reed after being hit by a roadside bomb in Tikrit, north of Baghdad. Latseen Benson, in the 101st Airborne, had his legs blown off, along with part of an arm. If he survives—and it’s still a pretty big if—he will never again sit in his old chair at his mother’s table. Negotiate that, Senator Clinton.

Anne Roesler’s son just returned from his third deployment to Iraq in three years. Before he left in August, he told his mom that, if he made it back this time, it would take years for him to recover. Iraq War veterans are already exhibiting post-combat mental health challenges at unprecedented levels.

Part of the reason for the escalating psychological problems is that while soldiers were typically sent for one tour-of-duty in Vietnam, more and more troops are serving two, three, and sometimes four rotations in Iraq. Another complication is the moral ambiguity of fighting a war without front lines, and where the combatants are, or are dressed as, civilians, some of them women or teens. Iraqi law allows the use of children as soldiers, and at least 1,000 youths are believed to be serving in the Iraq military, a figure that doesn’t account for the adolescents providing assistance to insurgency forces.

There is considerable psychological distress associated with going into a country under the auspices of liberating and helping a people, only to have those people rise up against you, and it lingers long after the war has ended.

This nation’s leaders told our soldiers that the people of Iraq would be overjoyed to see them. Forty-five percent of Iraqis think that the insurgents’ attacks on American troops are justified. Eighty percent of Iraqis want the troops out now, as do a majority of Americans.

When this administration sent my husband to Iraq, they told him he’d be building schools. Instead, he killed schoolchildren. Now, how is he supposed to deal with that? How does the wife deal with being woken up in the middle of the night by her husband, holding an imaginary gun to her head?

The only deals that interest politicians are the ones that will keep them in office. They speak of “phased withdrawals,” a gradual drawing-down of forces, which has been tried before.

It didn’t work in Vietnam. It’s sheer arrogance or stupidity to think it will succeed in Iraq.

Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY) said an immediate pullout “would cause more problems for us in America." Does “us” refer to you folks on Capitol Hill? What about the nearly 70 percent of Americans who want the troops out of Iraq? Or do you mean the soldiers who are serving in Iraq, and the families left behind? Because, I assure you, the problem for “us” is not an immediate withdrawal of troops.

The problem, for those of us with loved ones in uniform, is that our soldiers are fighting and dying for a lie.

Bargaining with the lives of our soldiers is not leadership. It is moral cowardice and an egregious failure of office of the highest order. I’ve come to expect that from the Bush administration, but surely the Democrats can do better. With the exception of Rep. John Murtha (D-PA), too many Democrats are trying to make deals with the lives of our soldiers. Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean recently endorsed a report by former assistant Defense secretary Lawrence Korb. The ‘strategic redeployment’ concept sets out a plan for a phased troop withdrawal over an 18 month period.

Senator Joe Biden (D-DE) recently stated that he thinks: “In 2006, American troops will begin to leave Iraq in large numbers. By the end of the year, I believe we will have redeployed at least 50,000 troops."

But Biden, Dean, and far too many other Democrats are remarkably silent about the 80,000 or more troops that would remain in Iraq. And they’re mute when it comes to the 800-plus soldiers who will most likely get killed between now and then, bringing the U.S. body count to around 3,000. That’s playing Russian roulette with our loved ones. If the Democratic leaders don’t play that game with their families, they’ve got no right to play it with ours.

Stacy Bannerman is a contributor to Foreign Policy In Focus and on the Advisory Board of Military Families Speak Out. Her book “When the War Came Home: The Inside Story of Reservists and the Families They Leave Behind,” will be released by Continuum Publishing in March 2006. Her husband deployed to Iraq with the Army National Guard 81st Brigade in March 2004, and returned home on March 11, 2005.

Posted by SwanDeer Project at 12:01 AM PST

Share This Post

Post Comment | Permalink

Hello, I want to let you know that a budget proviso was included in the Senate's proposed budget for $150,000 for a Military Department to study the scope and adequacy of training on exposure to depleted uranium received by Washington state members of the National Guard serving during the first Gulf War or reccently in Iraq and Afghanistan. This is similar to the bill that you had contacted us about and I hope this comes as good news. Your message bringing it to our attention was very, very helpful.

Posted by SwanDeer Project at 12:01 AM PST

Share This Post

Post Comment | Permalink

Depleted uranium study WA Natl Guard IS funded! Tx Sen Doumit

By Lietta Ruger at Washblog
Thu Feb 16, 2006 at 08:23:36 AM PST
Section: Diary Topic: Legislation

Posted by SwanDeer Project at 12:01 AM PST

Share This Post

Post Comment | Permalink

... was deployed to Iraq from March to September 2003. He filed for conscientious objector status in late 2004; his application was denied.

Conscientious objectors are morally opposed to war.

Benderman was to leave for Iraq again in January 2005, but he refused. He was charged with desertion and intentionally missing movement for not boarding the plane for Iraq when his unit left. He was found guilty of the second, lesser charge and sentenced last summer to 15 months in prison. He is serving that sentence at Fort Lewis.

The activists did not have banner bridge to themselves. Apparently there are others who believe that since they have utilized the overpass with frequency they own that particular overpass and it should not be "desecrated".

At least three people did not share those sentiments and came to the overpass to hold a counter-rally.

"It's a disgrace," Shelley Weber of Olympia said as she waved a large American flag. "I rally here every Saturday and, upon arrival, I see these people on the bridge. I decorated this bridge. I bought the yellow ribbons and flowers."

"This is the weekend our troops come in for drill. Their protest demoralizes our troops," added Terry Harder, whose 23- and 26-year-old sons are in the military. Harder is a member of Operation Support Our Troops.

Who defines patriotism?

Who owns it - or think they do?

Is authority to define and ownership of patriotism based on the psychology of fear, blind trust and the supposed code of shut-up-and-obey-the-commander-in-chief?

... or perhaps just plain civic laziness and deferral to TV clickers, sports, American idols, celebrity dancers and those lost in Lost, Survivor and Greys Anatomny?

That old 1960's Democratic Foreign Policy expert, J. William Fulbright, would disagree with Weber and Harder.

"In a democracy dissent is an act of faith. To criticize one's country is to do it a service ... Criticism, in short, is more than a right; it is an act of patriotism - a higher form of patriotism, I believe, that the familiar rituals and national adulation ... My question is whether America can overcome the fatal arrogance of power."

Yeah, but he was a Democrat in the Kerry generation of the 1960's. Fulbright would have very little credibility after Flush Limbaugh, Nose Pin O'Reilly, Squawk Hannity and Angregious Coulter got through with him. Right?

Well then, how about that old "dove", Teddy Roosevelt, whose doviness - in the best tradition of flag-waving, incident-creating and all around Dubya-like global big-stick swaggering - soiled his doviness when he personally  marched off to war?

"The President is merely the most important among a large number of public servants. He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in
rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the nation as a whole.

Therefore it is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts, and this means that it is exactly as necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does right.

Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile.

To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.

Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else.

But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about any one else. - Theodore Roosevelt, 1918, Lincoln and Free Speech

What would Mr. "Shut-up!" O-Reilly and all those who use "liberal" or "progressive" or "democrat" as mere name-calling tools say to that?

Or "Mr. Republican", Robert Taft of Ohio, and  the WW II era, just 12 days AFTER Pearl Harbor? All by himself Taft rebuts and repudiates Republican pretend patriotism in one short declaration:

As a matter of general principle, I believe there can be no doubt that criticism in time of war is essential to the maintenance of any kind of democratic government ... too many people desire to suppress criticism simply because they think that it will give some comfort to the enemy to know that there is such criticism. If that comfort makes the enemy feel better for a few moments, they are welcome to it as far as I am concerned, because the maintenance of the right of criticism in the long run will do the country maintaining it a great deal more good than it will do the enemy, and will prevent mistakes which might otherwise occur.

About Taft's words, Michael Tomasky of the American Prospect Online wrote:

Twelve days after the worst attack on American soil in the country's history, perhaps with bodies still floating in the harbor, the leader of the congressional opposition said to the president, we will question, we will probe, we will debate.

That's a wonderful cue for lazy patriots: folks who stubbornly accept BushCo lies and constant fear-mongering. These are folks willing to trade civil liberties and a fissuring of the foundation of the Constitution for the appearance of "safety".

"Safety"?

Political proponents who have never adequately proven the truthfulness of over 95% of what they've solemnly declared have yet to  prove the evidential basis of war-mongering, fear-mongering and curtailing of constitutional rights.

This circumstance is right out of the political manipulation guru's playbook - and not intended for public consumption.

One of the principal claimants to ownership of banner bridge was asked by an activist if she knows who Kevin Benderman is.

"I couldn't care less," Weber said, while another man added, "Kevin's where he belongs."

These then are the more irresponsible lazy citizen caretakers of American freedoms.

These then are those who blindly believe and trust that if they go to America's Restaurant and get a meal they can't eat, the fault does not lie with the chef who has never successfully boiled water.

Rather, it's the fault of other diners who know a  poor chef when they see one but are supposed to shut up about the cooking and let the chef poison them with a menu and fare unfit even for livestock.

These are those who believe that if the chef wears a plastic flag on his shirt, he has more than sufficient cooking skill to out-chef all those who question him.

Here's the real problem - the one that the Bush folks, Republican leadership and national Republican elected congressional leaders won't own up to:

Their way has failed. The choices and actions of those running the kitchen have not and are not working out. The food has only gotten worse.

There is in fact a better way but too many are unwilling to look for and take action on establishing a better way.

Others in the dining room and on the streets can do it better, more effectively and with a greater eye to everything that has worked before and finding better ways to make things work now.

The current cooking committee waited years to be in charge. They have blown it badly and in fact have made of America's Restaurant not only a place  that harms the locals but also a place with whom residents in other global communities will not do business (unless they're extorted into doing so).

The current cooking committee has a need for Americans to stay dumb, to go out on banner bridge and tell those banner-waving thinking Americans to shut the hell up.

If dumbed down Americans don't continue following Republican promptings, our fare at America's Restaurant might become geniune nourishment rather than fast-food jingo-ized poorly prepared salmonella.

As for those who "own" banner bridge ...

You ought to care more.

If Kevin Benderman is "where he belongs" it's because his being there is part of an effort to clean up the Constitutional Menu at America's Restaurant. It's an effort that might include firing the chef in order to stop the poisoning that *hurts our military troops far more than anyone will admit.

*You might not be aware of one particularly important issue and the poisoning of our troops, but the Washington Legislature is - and they're learning more: Depleted Uranium Bill in Ways and Means Committee

Published by Arthur Ruger on Washblog, and Daily Kos

Posted by SwanDeer Project at 12:01 AM PST

Share This Post

Post Comment | Permalink