GI SPECIAL 4H20: 20/8/06

[Thanks to Mark Shapiro, who sent this in.]

“Things Are Really Bad There, He’s Scared Out Of His Mind And Is So Edgy”
2 More N.Y. Marines Killed In Iraq

[Thanks to Marine’s Mom who sent this in.

[She writes: Just got off the phone with my son, he said he knows them. Things are really bad there, he’s scared out of his mind and is so edgy.]

8.19.06 New York Daily News

Two more Marines from New York have died in combat in Iraq, including the nephew of a city fire chief who led Sept. 11 rescue efforts.

Lance Cpl. Michael Glover, 28, and Capt. John J. McKenna IV, 30, were each shot in the head on Wednesday while together on foot patrol in the volatile Anbar province, the Pentagon said.

For Glover, the tie between the war in Iraq and the terror attack on the World Trade Center ran in the family.

His uncle, former FDNY Chief Peter Hayden, oversaw operations at the trade center’s north tower on Sept. 11, 2001. Hayden retired last month.

The attack also took the life of one of Glover’s best friends, Charles Heeran, 23, an equities trader for Cantor Fitzgerald.

Glover joined the Marines in March 2004, inspired by the firefighters killed on Sept. 11.

“He said to me that he had seen the sacrifice that the firefighters had given that day and he wanted to do something for his country,” Hayden told Newsday.

McKenna, of Brooklyn, joined the Marines in 1998 after graduating from upstate Binghamton University, where he studied history. He had grown up in Brooklyn’s Windsor Terrace neighborhood, graduating from Bishop Ford Central Catholic High School.

Before going to Iraq, McKenna was a New York state trooper.

Glover attended Xavier High School in Manhattan and studied business at the State University of New York at Albany. He interrupted his law studies at Manhattan’s Pace University to join the Marines.

Both men were fighting as reservists with the 25th Marine Regiment’s 1st Battalion, based in Albany. Glover was a rifleman, and McKenna an infantry officer.

The two Marines, along with their unit, were scheduled to return from their Iraq tour in October.

IRAQ WAR REPORTS

U.S. Soldier Killed In Anbar

Aug. 19, 2006 Associated Press

An American soldier was killed in combat Saturday in Anbar province, the stronghold of the Sunni Arab insurgency west of Baghdad, the U.S. military announced.

The soldier was assigned to the 1st Brigade, 1st Armored Division, a military statement said. It gave no details except to say the soldier “died from wounds sustained due to enemy action” while operating in Anbar province.

REALLY BAD IDEA:
NO MISSION;
HOPELESS WAR:
BRING THEM ALL HOME NOW

A U.S. soldier walks past a vehicle damaged in a car bomb attack in Kirkuk July 29, 2006. REUTERS/Slahaldeen Rasheed (IRAQ)

Granite City Soldier Killed

08/12/2006 By Kim Bell, ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH

One of two U.S. soldiers killed in a Black Hawk helicopter crash this week in Iraq was identified Friday as a Granite City resident.

Sgt. Steven P. Mennemeyer, 26, died Tuesday when a medical helicopter crashed into a lake in Rubtbah, Iraq, west of Baghdad, according to the Department of Defense.

Mennemeyer’s remains were recovered Wednesday. The remains of the second victim, Sgt. Jeffery S. Brown, 25, of Trinity Center, Calif., were recovered Thursday. Both soldiers were assigned to the 82nd Medical Company (Air Ambulance) out of Fort Riley, Kan.

Mennemeyer’s grandfather, Junior Mennemeyer of New Albany, Ind., said his grandson was a medic, working to be a doctor’s assistant.

“He had one class to go before he’d get that,” said the grandfather, 72. “He was very sincere about that. He was in training and the helicopter went down.”

Before joining the military, Steven Mennemeyer spent about five years as an EMT working for Abbott Ambulance in the St. Louis area.

He grew up in the Granite City area. His father and grandfather both served in the military. His grandfather was in the Army during the Korean War.

Junior Mennemeyer described his grandson as, “young and cocky. He was my buddy when he was a kid.” He said he last saw his grandson about a month ago when he came to visit in Indiana. They spent a few days at the lake.

“It’s quite a shock,” the grandfather said.

AFGHANISTAN WAR REPORTS

Four U.S. Troops Soldiers Killed, Three Wounded In Pech And Uruzgan

Aug 19 Reuters & AP & Aug 20 By NOOR KHAN, AP

Four U.S. soldiers were killed in two separate clashes in Afghanistan on Saturday, officials said.

Three soldiers with U.S.-led coalition forces were killed and three others wounded in a clash in Pech district of the eastern province of Kunar

“We know that three coalition soldiers were killed today in action in Kunar,” Sergeant Chris Miller, a coalition spokesman told Reuters.

An American soldier as well as an Afghan one were killed in a four-hour clash with more than 100 insurgents in the southern province of Uruzgan.

Three other American soldiers were wounded in Uruzgan’s incident, a spokesman for the force said.

The slain American was identified by family members as senior airman Adam Servais, 23, of Onalaska, Wis. The four-year veteran was with Air Force Special Operations.

Officials said they didn’t have details on insurgent casualties.

The fighting was reported to be some of the heaviest in recent months and came as war-battered Afghanistan celebrated its independence day.

How’s The Occupation Going In Kandahar?
“On The Street, We Cannot Be Responsible For Your Life”

Aug 19, 2006 By Pamela Constable, The Washington Post Company [Excerpts]

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan: Less than a year ago, this was a city on the rebound after years of conflict, drought and political isolation. Business was booming with an influx of international development aid, shops stayed open late, markets burst with locally grown fruit and traffic snarled hopelessly much of the time.

Today Kandahar is a ghost town, braced for the next suicide bomb and full of refugees from rural districts where Taliban insurgents are battling Afghan and NATO forces. Streets are all but empty of vehicles, foreign aid offices are reduced to skeleton crews and shoppers hurry home before dark instead of lingering at tea shops.

But people here also express deep disappointment in the Karzai government, saying it has failed to bring security or services to a region that expected much of its president and native son. They also resent the foreign military forces that have raided their homes and bombed their villages and yet have been unable to stop the insurgents.

“People feel so hopeless and frustrated with the government that some support the Taliban, because they have nowhere else to turn.”

The danger is much greater outside this provincial capital, especially in districts such as Panjwai, a grape-growing area about 30 miles west, which has been the scene of near-constant fighting all summer. Many families fled the district in May after a fierce battle between Taliban and pro-government forces led to a U.S. airstrike that killed 16 civilians as well as numerous insurgents.

“The Taliban used to be mostly hit and run, but now they have certain areas they want to fight for and keep,” said one NATO official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The city has suffered, too. Businessmen, who invested in hotels, restaurants or appliance stores as the city began springing back to life after the overthrow of the Taliban in 2001, said they have incurred heavy losses as foreign visitors and aid workers have been evacuated, the rebuilt highway to Kabul has become too dangerous to travel and Kandahar’s feisty spirit has succumbed to fear.

“A year ago, I had a waiting list and was taking in $50,000 a month. Now I am lucky if I have 10 rooms occupied, and my income is $5,000 a month,” said Nasir Ahmad, who invested $2 million to build a luxury guesthouse in 2002. “Business from A to Z is zero, the government is zero, security is zero. The Taliban are everywhere, and we are just waiting in the hope that NATO will push them back.”

Many residents of Kandahar knew and supported the Taliban in the 1990s and may still come closer to its views than to those of the Karzai government, which includes Westernized technocrats and promotes women’s rights.

“The Taliban were good Muslims, and when they were here our business was good,” said Abdul Ahad, 50, who was selling grapes on the sidewalk. “Since the infidels came to power, what have we gotten besides television? What we need is security and an improved religion so we can build our society according to Islam.”

As a reporter was speaking with Ahad next to his basket of grapes, a man in a dark suit approached her driver and whispered urgently that she should get back in the car.

“The security situation is too dangerous now,” the plainclothes officer said, turning to her with an apologetic smile. “On the street, we cannot be responsible for your life.”

Assorted Resistance Action

Aug 20 By NOOR KHAN, AP & (AFP)

Scores of rebels attacked the town of Panjwayi in Kandahar province late Saturday, sparking a five-hour series of battles involving Afghan and NATO security forces, officials said.

Scores of Taliban stormed the town, about 35 kilometres (20 miles) west of the main southern city of Kandahar, from three directions and began fighting with the local police.

Reinforcements from the Afghan army and police and NATO’s International Security Assistance Force surrounded the area and returned the attack, a police official said.

ISAF ground forces called upon air and artillery support, the force said in a statement.

Three police and five soldiers were wounded. The bodies of the some of dead militants were found scattered through orchards alongside their weapons, Sarhadi said.

A mine in the country’s restive south killed a local police commander. The officer was killed when his vehicle hit a freshly planted mine in Sori district of southern Zabul province on Friday, said Noor Mohammad Paktin, the provincial police chief.

Six policemen and four Taliban rebels were killed when militants attacked a border police patrol in the western province of Nimroz.

Three policemen and five Taliban were also wounded in the clash Saturday in Delaram district.

TROOP NEWS

[Thanks to David Honish, Veterans For Peace]

Class War Breaks Out Inside The Israeli Army:
“The Soldiers Quickly Surrounded Him, The Tempers Flared, The Tones Rose Very High”
“A Moment Before There Was Real Violence, The Brigade Commander Carried Out A Brilliant Withdrawal”

[Thanks to Max Watts, who sent this in.]

18/08/2006 By Staff Sgt. (res.) Ori Berzak, Haaretz [Excerpt]

On a hill overlooking the bloody battleground of Waterloo, Meir, a British Jew, stood at noon on June 18, 1815. By 10:00 PM, when the battle was over and the sides began counting their dead – 25,000 French and 15,000 British and Prussian dead – Meir was already on the other side of the English Channel in a boat he had readied in advance. He was in a rush to buy stock on the London Stock Exchange while prices were still low. At the end of a single day of trading, on June 19, by the time Wellington had found the time to send letters summing up the battle and Napoleon’s defeat, Meir Rothchild was a millionaire. Just like in any war, there are winners and losers.

On a hill near Jebel Bilat, on the evening of August 7, 2006, a supply convoy with reinforcements was being delayed. The cause: brigade commander Colonel Shlomi Cohen’s convoy was getting public relations services from Yedioth Ahronoth reporter, Nahum Barnea.

The Colonel received another dose of “promotion coverage,” and his soldiers, who did not receive supplies, had to break into local shops and steal foodstuffs.

On a hilltop overlooking the bay of Tyre at 8:30 AM, on August 15, 2006, slightly more than 24 hours since the cease-fire went into effect, reconnaissance unit 609 is sitting in a Lebanese house, taking cover from the anti-tank missiles that could appear at any moment. They are not sure about what the next day will bring.

The sniper on team 3 is waiting to receive a warning that he will be fired. He has been away from his new job for a month. The medic, the team leader and the guy handling the grenade launcher are unsure about what to do with the semester exams that they have missed.

Those who are single are planning to flee the country.

The family men are due home to wives who have not slept for a month, to children dying for their embrace, but also to mortgages and the rest of the payments that need to be made.

On the map, the company’s movement looks like a green arrow, cutting through on the right of the security zone in a semi-circle.

On the generals’ maps, it is yet another promise to increase the defense budget, salaries for the career staff and for their stock options in their own personal, crazy start-up called “the next war.” Just like in any war, there are winners and losers.

On the hills covered in pine and cypress trees in Israel, the fighting class is burying its dead and licking its wounds. The commanding class is granting another interview to reporters and waiting for the findings of the committees of inquiry.

The debate over the budget has already been won, and the aid from the U.S. is already on the way. Just like in any war, there are winners and losers.

On a hill between Mount Meron and Safed, at 2:00 PM on August 16, 2006, the brigade commander talked with his troops from the reconnaissance unit. In response to the claims there had been no orders, no relevant training, about the hunger, the lack of equipment, and the journalists that risked our lives with their camera flashes prior to our entry into Lebanon, Colonel Cohen lectured us for lacking motivation.

The soldiers quickly surrounded him, the tempers flared, the tones rose very high. Pretty soon there was booing. A moment before there was real violence, the brigade commander carried out a brilliant withdrawal. If he had a smoke grenade available, surely he would have used it.

A class war is a war between winners and losers. A new chapter was written in the age-long book on class war: the IDF class war.

MORE:

“Soldiers Bled To Death Because They Were Not Rescued In Time”
“We Fought For Nothing”

Aug 18 By BENJAMIN HARVEY, Associated Press Writer [Excerpts]

Israeli soldiers returning from the war in Lebanon say the army was slow to rescue wounded comrades and suffered from a lack of supplies so dire that they had to drink water from the canteens of dead Hezbollah guerrillas.

“We fought for nothing. We cleared houses that will be reoccupied in no time,” said Ilia Marshak, a 22-year-old infantryman who spent a week in Lebanon.

Marshak said his unit was hindered by a lack of information, poor training and untested equipment. In one instance, Israeli troops occupying two houses inadvertently fired at each other because of poor communication between their commanders.

“We almost killed each other,” he said. “We shot like blind people. … We shot sheep and goats.”

Some of the harshest criticism has come from reservists, who form the backbone of the army. Israeli men do three years of mandatory service beginning at age 18, but continue to do reserve duty several weeks a year into their 40s.

Israeli newspapers quoted disgruntled reservists as saying they had no provisions in Lebanon, were sent into battle with outdated or faulty equipment and insufficient supplies, and received little or no training.

“I personally haven’t thrown a grenade in 15 years, and I thought I’d get a chance to do so before going north,” an unidentified reservist in an elite infantry brigade was quoted as telling the Maariv daily.

Israel’s largest paper, Yediot Ahronot, quoted one soldier as saying thirsty troops threw chlorine tablets into filthy water in sheep and cow troughs. Another said his unit took canteens from dead guerrillas.

“When you’re thirsty and have to keep fighting, you don’t think a lot, and there is no time to feel disgusted,” the unidentified soldier was quoted as saying.

The newspaper said helicopters were hindered from delivering food supplies or carrying out rescue operations because commanders feared the aircraft would be shot down.

In some cases, soldiers bled to death because they were not rescued in time, Yediot Ahronot said.

MORE:

Betrayed Soldiers Say “The Next Time They Call, We Will Not Show Up”
“Those Last 30 Casualties Were In Vain”

August 19, 2006 By Doug Struck and Tal Zipper, Washington Post Foreign Service [Excerpts]

Sgt. Lior Rahamin’s Israeli reserve unit had not trained in two years. When its members were called up for the Lebanon war, they didn’t have straps for their guns, spare ammunition, flak jackets or more than one good radio. There were other shortages: Twice their operations were canceled because they had no water to take; once they went two days without food.

“Hezbollah didn’t surprise us. We were surprised by the Israel Defense Forces,” said Rahamin, 30, a paratrooper who was wounded fighting in Lebanon in 1997 and who volunteered to go with his unit again.

The next time they call, he said, “we will not show up.”

From the failure to get food and water to the troops, to complaints of an uncertain war plan and overconfident generals, the Lebanon war is fast being viewed within Israel as a major stumble.

The returning reserve soldiers tell of confusion, contradictory orders and missing supplies and equipment.

“We were getting ready to board the bus in Lebanon with faces painted for combat, but they called us back,” said Sgt. Yuval Drori, 30, a reservist who works at a software company. “Another time we were at the border, with bullets in the chambers, but they canceled again.

“The mission changed every 30 minutes. There was a great sense of a big mess.”

Public criticism was intense after Israel broadened the ground war inside Lebanon in the last two days before the cease-fire.

More than 30 Israeli soldiers were killed during the fighting that weekend to seize ground that the army then abandoned Monday morning when the cease-fire took effect.

“We were called up to go in, and on that night I told my friends, tonight and tomorrow people will die for nothing,” said Drori, the reserve sergeant.

“The cease-fire agreement was there, and everybody knew what was to be achieved, and people will die.

“It seemed the IDF was trying to drop every single bomb in its arsenal. You could hear the blasts and bombs whistling around you. Then at 7:55 Monday morning, it all went still. Those last 30 casualties were in vain.”

Drori’s squad escorted combat bulldozers. Then the bulldozers left to be refueled and did not come back. “Nobody told us about it. We finally called the army engineering commander, and he told us to come back because the bulldozers are parked. He said we did a great job. In fact, we didn’t do anything.”

Gerald Steinberg, who heads the conflict management program at Bar-Ilan University in suburban Tel Aviv, said: “The screw-ups could have been avoided. The hesitations and lack of leadership — go in, don’t go in, go there, go here. We all knew almost daily of troops being told to go in, then being called back. Had the war gone well, that would have been forgotten. But it didn’t.

“Then in the last couple days, a mad rush when we all knew there was going to be a cease-fire. We lost 33 soldiers, and so many crippled and badly wounded. Wasn’t there a better way to do it?”

MORE:

160 Reserve Soldiers Very Pissed:
Officers Stopped Them From Attending Demonstration Against Government And Their Commanders

They wanted to protest not only the army’s moves in Lebanon but the decisions of their commanders, whom they accuse of sending them needlessly to their death.

[Thanks to Clancy Sigal and Garett Reppenhagen, Iraq Veterans Against The War.]

18/08/2006, By Nir Hasson, Haaretz Correspondent

Some 160 infantry reserve soldiers are accusing their commanders of preventing them from participating in a demonstration against the war in Lebanon, which they called a “debacle.” The soldiers said they had been used as “sitting ducks.”

“I’ve been in the army and reserves for 26 years and what happened this time was not merely a fiasco, it was a complete debacle. We felt like tin soldiers in a game of Olmert and Peretz’s assistants and spin masters,” said Avi, a soldier in the brigade.

At noon Thursday 160 brigade soldiers signed a request to take part in the demonstration that would call on the resignation of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Defense Minister Amir Peretz. However, their release was put off until Friday, preventing them from reaching the protest.

They wanted to protest not only the army’s moves in Lebanon but the decisions of their commanders, whom they accuse of sending them needlessly to their death.

“They sent us into a village they knew 15 Hezbollah fighters were holed up in at mid-day, we were like sitting ducks, it was total insanity. Two of our comrades were killed because of that. We are being used as though we were in the Chinese army, where it doesn’t matter how many are killed,” he said.

A few dozen demonstrators arrived at Rabin Square Thursday to take part in the protest that had been organized on Internet sites.

They called for Olmert’s resignation and blasted halting the war before its goals were achieved.

Ariella Miller, one of the protest’s initiators, said she was not acting on behalf of any political body. We are family people who used the Internet to form a group. When we went to war they promised us to bring back the soldiers and restore Israel’s deterrent force.”

“Among A Contingent Of Younger Iraq Veterans Against The War Were Several Current Service Members”

www.ivaw.net

[Thanks to PB, who sent this in.]

August 11, 2006 By MIKE BARBER, Seattle Post-Intelligencer [Excerpts]

It was at the Veterans for Peace national convention in Dallas last year that Cindy Sheehan says she was galvanized to seek a meeting with President Bush at his Crawford, Texas, ranch.

The result was a 26-day sit-down protest near Bush’s ranch that attracted common folk and luminaries from across the nation, rejuvenating the anti-war movement.

On Thursday, Sheehan, who became a peace activist after her soldier son, Casey, was killed in Iraq in 2004, was at the Veterans for Peace national convention at the University of Washington.

Among a contingent of younger Iraq Veterans Against the War were several current service members.

One not wearing a name badge declined to reveal his identity. He said, with confirmation from his peers, that he was from the Seattle area, in his 20s, and had been “away-without-leave from a combat unit now in Iraq” for an undisclosed period of time.

The AWOL soldier said he decided to flee the Army after the invasion of Iraq because he believes the war illegal. He said he joined the military before 9/11 “because I had been to five different high schools and went through family problems. The military was a way to get friends and family structure.” He said he first began considering risking prosecution for desertion after the invasion of Iraq in March 2003.

Being AWOL, however, has been “hell,” he said, not only because of rifts in his family, but also because of “the uncertainty of not knowing if I will be caught as a deserter or if I should go public and turn myself in. I am constantly back and forth; it’s always on my mind.”

He will have more to think about at 9 a.m. today, when a fellow soldier he knows who also is AWOL — Ricky Clousing, a 24-year-old Army sergeant and interrogator from Seattle who served in combat in Iraq — appears outside the HUB with lawyers, relatives and supporters to announce he is turning himself in to authorities. He left Fort Bragg in 2005 after returning from Iraq with the 82nd Airborne Division.

Several members of the military supporting efforts against the war said they were careful to attend the convention on military leaves.

Christina Taber, 26, of Madison, Wis., is an Army reservist activated for 18 months who works in behavioral health at Camp Atterbury, Ind., where she hears stories from soldiers returning from war.

“I think hearing their powerful war stories motivated me to get involved” in the veterans efforts to end the war, Taber said.

Taber said she became a veteran for peace after a fellow soldier died in April 2003 before deployment to Iraq. The death was linked to the mandatory anthrax inoculation she received.

Damon Murphy, 26, of Minneapolis, meanwhile, a U.S. Navy submariner based in San Diego, said he joined the anti-war movement seven months ago. Murphy, who has 10 weeks to go on his enlistment, said he has no orders for Iraq but acknowledged that if he did, “I’d be in jail” refusing to go.

Do you have a friend or relative in the service? Forward this E-MAIL along, or send us the address if you wish and we’ll send it regularly. Whether in Iraq or stuck on a base in the USA, this is extra important for your service friend, too often cut off from access to encouraging news of growing resistance to the war, at home and inside the armed services. Send requests to address up top.

Military Recruiters Prey On Potential Enlistees;
“Women Were Raped On Recruiting Office Couches, Assaulted In Government Cars And Groped En Route To Entrance Exams”

[Thanks to Alan Stolzer, The Military Project, who sent this in.]

Aug 20, 2006 The Associated Press

More than 100 young women who expressed interest in joining the military in the past year were preyed upon sexually by their recruiters. Women were raped on recruiting office couches, assaulted in government cars and groped en route to entrance exams.

A six-month Associated Press investigation found that more than 80 military recruiters were disciplined last year for sexual misconduct with potential enlistees. The cases occurred across all branches of the military and in all regions of the country.

“This should never be allowed to happen,” said one 18-year-old victim. “The recruiter had all the power. He had the uniform. He had my future. I trusted him.”

At least 35 Army recruiters, 18 Marine Corps recruiters, 18 Navy recruiters and 12 Air Force recruiters were disciplined for sexual misconduct or other inappropriate behavior with potential enlistees in 2005, according to records obtained by the AP under dozens of Freedom of Information Act requests.

That’s significantly more than the handful of cases disclosed in the past decade.

The AP also found:

The Army, which accounts for almost half of the military, has had 722 recruiters accused of rape and sexual misconduct since 1996.

Across all services, one out of 200 frontline recruiters — the ones who deal directly with young people — was disciplined for sexual misconduct last year.

Some cases of improper behavior involved romantic relationships, and sometimes those relationships were initiated by the women.

Most recruiters found guilty of sexual misconduct are disciplined administratively, facing a reduction in rank or forfeiture of pay; military and civilian prosecutions are rare.

The increase in sexual misconduct incidents is consistent with overall recruiter wrongdoing, which has increased from just over 400 cases in 2004 to 630 cases in 2005, according to a General Accounting Office report released this week.

In the Army, 53 recruiters were charged with misconduct last year.

A pattern emerged. The sexual misconduct almost always takes place in recruiting stations, recruiters apartments or government vehicles. The victims are typically between 16 and 18 years old, and they usually are thinking about enlisting. They usually meet the recruiters at their high schools, but sometimes at malls or recruiting offices.

“We had been drinking, yes. And we went to the recruiting station at about midnight,” begins one girl’s story.

Tall and slim, her long hair sweeping down her back, this 18-year-old from Ukiah, Calif., hides her face in her hands as she describes the night when Marine Corps recruiter Sgt. Brian Fukushima climbed into her sleeping bag on the floor of the station and took off her pants. Two other recruiters were having sex with two of her friends in the same room.

“I don’t like to talk about it. I don’t like to think about it,” she says, her voice muffled and breaking. “He got into my sleeping bag, unbuttoned my pants, and he started, well …”

Her voice trails off, and she is quiet for a moment. “I had a freak-out session and just passed out. When I woke up I was sick and ashamed. My clothes were all over the floor.”

Fukushima was convicted of misconduct in a military court after other young women reported similar assaults. He left the service with a less than honorable discharge last fall.

In Gainesville, Fla., a 20-year-old woman told this story: Walking into an Army recruiting station last summer, she was greeted by Sgt. George Kirkman, a 6-foot-4, 220-pound soldier. Kirkman is 41.

He was friendly and encouraging, but told her she might be a bit too heavy. He asked if she wanted to go to the gym with him. She agreed, and he drove her to his apartment complex.

There, he walked her to his apartment, pulled out a laptop, and suggested she take a basic recruiting aptitude test. Afterward, Kirkman said he needed to measure her. Twice. He said she had to take her pants off. And he attacked her.

Kirkman, who did not respond to repeated requests for an interview, pleaded no contest to sexual battery in January and is on probation and a registered sexual offender. He’s still in the military, working now as a clerk in the Jacksonville, Fla., Army recruiting office.

Not all of the victims are young women. Former Navy recruiter Joseph Sampy, 27, of Jeanerette, La., is serving a 12-year sentence for molesting three male recruits.

“He did something wrong, something terrible to people who were the most vulnerable,” State District Judge Lori Landry said before handing down the sentence in July, 2005. “He took advantage of his authority.”

One of Sampy’s victims is suing him and the Navy for $1.25 million. The trial is scheduled for next spring.

Kimberly Lonsway, an expert in sexual assault and workplace discrimination in San Luis Obispo, Calif., said “even if there isn’t overt violence, the reality is that these recruiters really do hold the keys to the future for these women, and a 17-year-old girl often has a very different understanding of the situation than a 23-year-old recruiter.”

Weirick, the Marine Corps defense attorney who has represented several recruiters on rape and sexual misconduct charges, said it’s a problem that will probably never entirely go away.

“It’s difficult because of the nature of nature,” he said. “It’s hard to put it in another way, you know? It’s usually a consensual relationship or dating type of thing.”

When asked if victims feel this way, he said, “It’s really a victimless crime other than the institution of the Marine Corps. It’s institutional integrity we’re protecting, by not allowing this to happen.”

Anita Sanchez, director of communications at the Miles Foundation, a national advocacy group for victims of violence in the military, bristles at the idea that the enlistees, even if they flirt or ask to date recruiters, are willingly having sex with them.

“You have a recruiter who can enable you to join the service or not join the service. That has life-changing implications for you as a high school student or college student,” she said. “If she does not do this her life will be seriously impacted. Instead of getting training and an education, she might end up a dishwasher.”

Ethan Walker, who spent eight years in the Marine Corps including a stint as a recruiter from 1998 to 2000, said he was warned.

“They told us at recruiter school that girls, 15, 16, are going to come up to you, they’re going to flirt with you, they’re going to do everything in their power to get you in bed. But if you do it you’re breaking the law,” he said.

Even so, he said he was initially taken aback when he set up a table at a high school and had girls telling him he looked sexy and handing him their telephone numbers.

“All that is, you have to remind yourself, is that there’s jail bait, a quick way to get in trouble, a quick way to dishonor the service,” he said.

All of the recruiters the AP spoke with, including Walker, said they were routinely alone in their offices and cars with girls. Walker said he heard about sleepovers at other recruiting stations, and there was no rule against it. There didn’t need to be a rule, he said. The lines were clear: Recruiters do not sleep with enlistees.

“Any recruiter that would try to claim that, ’Oh, it’s consensual,’ they are lying, they are lying through their teeth,” he said. “The recruiter has all the power in these situations.”

Although the Uniform Code of Military Justice bars recruiters from having sex with potential recruits, it also states that age 16 is the legal age of consent. This means that if a recruiter is caught having sex with a 16-year-old, and he can prove it was consensual, he will likely only face an administrative reprimand.

MORE:

Disgusting Predators Strike Again:
Recruiters Forged Parental Consent Signature
“It Is 100 Percent Fraudulent. That Is Not My Signature”

Pfc. Steven Price: “I want out. Right now. It’s all, it’s all bull. It’s all a game. It’s terrible.”

August 16th John Hollenhorst, KSL

The Army has launched an investigation into claims by the parents of a young soldier from Utah that recruiters used false promises and forged documents to enlist him.

The 17-year-old was recruited from a youth prison in Ogden.

In a coincidence of timing, a Congressional report was released today detailing hundreds of complaints of recruiting irregularity and fraud.

In the Utah case, is it fraud or just a homesick kid who wants to come home?

To take the oath and join the military, a 17-year-old must have parental approval in writing. Steve Price of Brigham City was barely 17 when he enlisted last January. He was recruited while serving time at a youth prison in Ogden.

He’s now a PFC at Ft. Stewart Georgia. He told us by phone, he believes his parents’ approval signatures were forged.

Pfc. Steven Price: “I want out. Right now. It’s all, it’s all bull. It’s all a game. It’s terrible.”

Staffers say they don’t routinely bring in recruiters. But they did in this case because the boy asked for it and because they thought the army might be a good thing for him.

Counselors say the boy’s divorced mother went hot and cold on the idea.

Levine Tupe, Youth Counselor: “Sometimes she was, and other times in our visits she wasn’t in favor of him being deployed to the military.”

The parental consent form provided to us by the boy’s mother, Lisa Jensen, has what purports to be her signature on January 10th. But she told us, “That’s not my signature.”

Counselors say she did sign, in the presence of an Army recruiter.

Levine Tupe, Youth Counselor: “I know she did, because we were all there in the same room.”

But the boy and his mother say she actually signed a different form a month later when it was too late to say no.

Pfc. Steven Price: “That paper was signed after I’d already signed and enlisted into the military.”

The boy’s divorced father apparently wasn’t even at the signing, but his name is on the form too.

“I don’t know if it’s a big conspiracy,” Dean Price told us. “But it is 100 percent fraudulent. That is not my signature.”

John Hollenhorst “How do you explain the dad’s signature being on here?”

Levine Tupe, Youth Counselor: “I have no idea. I can’t explain that. Because, my recollection, he wasn’t there.”

The Army is appointing an outside officer to investigate.

Maj. George R. Bacon, U.S. Army Recruiting Battalion: “And that’s what we’re doing right now to basically ascertain the allegations if there was any wrongdoing. And that’s where we are at this point.”

P.F.C. Price says Army recruiters are using fraudulent tactics because enlistments are in short supply. For obvious reasons.

PFC Steven Price: “The war-time, sir. Nobody wants to go to war.”

Price told us he initially did want to go in, but now he wants to come home. He says recruiters made false promises that he wouldn’t have to join a combat unit until he was 18.

A veteran recruiter told us he would never make such a promise because once you’re in, you’re a soldier.

IRAQ RESISTANCE ROUNDUP

Assorted Resistance Action

19 Aug 2006 Reuters & (AFP) & 8.20.06 Reuters & (KUNA)

A roadside bomb targeting the Iraqi army convoy of Brigadier-General Jamil al-Haji, killed four of his bodyguards and wounded four others in Diwaniya, 40 km (25 miles) south of Baghdad, police in the town said. Haji escaped unhurt.

A policeman was killed and another wounded when they were shot by a sniper whilst on patrol in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, police Brigadier Saeed al-Jubouri said.

A policeman and a fighter were killed in clashes in the holy Shi’ite city of Kerbala, 110 km (68 miles) south of Baghdad, police said. A further two policemen were wounded.

The Defence minister says 14 soldiers were wounded and 30 suspected insurgents and militants arrested in violence against pilgrims in Baghdad on Sunday.

BAQUBA: Guerrillas killed two brothers in the local police force.

Iraqi police said today that four police officers among them two brothers were killed in the Diyali province north east of Baghdad.

A police statement from the Diyali office said unknown attackers killed two brothers from the same police security force and injured their father in the Tahrir area in Baqouba city.

IF YOU DON’T LIKE THE RESISTANCE
END THE OCCUPATION

FORWARD OBSERVATIONS

Methodical Killing

From: Richard Hastie
To: GI Special
Cc:
Sent: August 16, 2006
Subject: Methodical Killing

While I was in Vietnam, Lt. William Calley was found guilty for his part in the My Lai Massacre.

This APC drove up to my aid station, because a crew member had a minor injury. Before it left to travel back to its firebase, I took this picture.

Little did I realize, I would visit the My Lai Massacre site in 1994. It was probably one of the most difficult experiences I have had in my life.

504 Vietnamese civilians were murdered at My Lai. If it had not been for Hugh Thompson, many more would have been slaughtered.

My Lai was a military operation!! And, for the most part, Lt. William Calley was a scapegoat. He took the rap for the upper echelon of the U.S. Military command in that area.

He was just the hit man for the Skin Head Brass.

**********************************************************

I was born in the military.

My father was a military officer, and combat engineer in North Africa during WWII. I was raised on military bases.

I know the horse shit and gun smoke of the military like the back of my hand.

You always protect the upper echelon of the chain of command. Always!!!!!!!!!!

Some of that command is honorable, and some of that military high command are nothing but cold blooded killers. When they get through killing, the insects are dead.

The U.S. military was so brutal during the Indian wars, they hung children by the neck in trees like Christmas ornaments. It was a calling card.

My Lai was that kind of war crime. I stood next to a ditch were the U.S. Government butchered 175 innocent civilians. The shame I felt at that moment, would eventually put me in a padded cell when I got back to the States a month later.

I came close to driving my car off of a cliff.

*********************************************************

As an added note, My Lai was not an aberration in Vietnam.

As Earl S. Martin wrote in his book, Reaching The Other Side, “The American and Korean “allies” had spared little in their attempts to “pacify” the Batangan and the surrounding villages in this northeastern part of Quang Ngai province.

“In addition to the notorious My Lai Massacre in 1968, there had been numerous other massacres in the region, most frequently carried out by Korean troops in the area. Diane and Michael Jones, former representatives of the Quaker Rehabilitation Center, researched this region and documented no fewer than twenty massacres by the Korean Blue Dragon Marine Brigade between 1966 and 1968. Each slaughter averaged about ninety persons killed—mostly old men, women, and children.”

***********************************************

When the war in Iraq is over, American soldiers will come out of the woodwork to tell their stories.

Some will be very difficult, because it will seem like a betrayal to their units and their country.

I have heard many atrocity stories by Vietnam Veterans. Half of them were personally involved, and the other half knew it was going on.

Many B-52 pilots refused to fly toward the end of the Vietnam War, because they knew their payloads were hitting civilian targets.

The Killing of Innocent Civilians during most wars are done on purpose.

Geneva Convention Rules are for the most part to convince the people back home, that there are rules in warfare.

War is about killing people, and sometimes that killing is a methodical rampage.

Whenever the truth threatens one’s belief system, there is a strong tendency to deny its reality.

What the U.S. Government did in Southeast Asia, would make Saddam Hussein look like a gang banger.

Saddam was our hit man in Iraq, and when he got out of line, we destroyed his country.

This was all done very methodically, one lie at a time.

Mike Hastie
U.S. Army Medic
Vietnam 1970-71
August 16, 2006

Photo and caption from the I-R-A-Q (I Remember Another Quagmire) portfolio of Mike Hastie, US Army Medic, Vietnam 1970-71. (For more of his outstanding work, contact at: (hastiemike@earthlink.net) T)

What do you think? Comments from service men and women, and veterans, are especially welcome. Send to contact@militaryproject.org. Name, I.D., withheld on request. Replies confidential.

OCCUPATION REPORT

“The Shia-On-Shia Violence Is To Some Extent A Class Conflict”

August 19, 2006 By Amit R. Paley and Saad al-Izzi, Washington Post Foreign Service [Excerpts]

BAGHDAD, Aug. 18: Two Shiite Muslim parties on Friday accused Iran of instigating violence in Iraq and attempting to destabilize the country, exposing a growing rift within Iraq’s largest sect that many fear will exacerbate the nation’s slide into full-scale civil war.

“All of this violence is because of the Shiism in Iran,” Adnan Aboudi, head of the Islamic Allegiance Party, said in a telephone interview. “There are external infiltrating fingers playing now throughout the Iraqi arena.” The party is the political wing of cleric Mahmoud Abdul Ridha al-Hassani, who is virulently anti-Iranian and anti-American.

Juan Cole, a professor of the modern Middle East at the University of Michigan, said the recriminations toward Iran were directed at two of the largest Shiite blocs in parliament, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq and the Dawa party.

He said the hostility among Shiite factions can be traced to the gap between wealthy members of parties tied to Iran, such as the Supreme Council and Dawa, and impoverished cadres of groups critical of Iran, such as followers of Hassani.

“The Shia-on-Shia violence is, in my view, to some extent a class conflict,” he said.

Although Hassani was originally aligned with anti-American cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, he is now becoming the more radical of the two, said Cole, the professor of Middle Eastern history. “The people that are really dissatisfied with the status quo might be more likely now to follow Hassani,” he said.

OCCUPATION ISN’T LIBERATION
BRING ALL THE TROOPS HOME NOW!

OCCUPATION PALESTINE/LEBANON

“Cease Fire”?
Incompetent Zionist Master Racists Launch New Attack;
Insertion Fools Nobody:
IDF Officer Killed In Clusterfuck Commando Raid

Israeli soldiers prepare their weapons before entering southern Lebanon, in northern Israel Saturday, Aug. 19, 2006. Israel on Saturday warned that a raid against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, its first since a cease-fire went into effect, may not be its last. (AP Photo/Baz Ratner)

[Thanks to J and PB, who sent this in. J writes You will know Israel broke the truce. I waited more information.

[This news from the Daily Star makes it look like an assassination attempt. Israel assassinates a lot of people in Palestine. One successful way of doing this is to send a squad of men into the area dressed as Arabs. They gain access to the victim and shoot to kill.

[It works in Palestine because almost all the population are unarmed. It didn’t work here. This shows Israel still believes it can act any way it chooses and no one will dare to stop it. The fact Israel refuses to permit Malaysia and Indonesia to send peace keepers is proof of its racist arrogance and the power it can wield.]

BUDAY, Lebanon, Aug 19, 2006 (AFP) & By Amos Harel, Haaretz Correspondent, and News Agencies

An Israel Defense Forces officer was killed and two other officers were wounded – one seriously – during a commando raid near the Hezbollah stronghold of Baalbek in eastern Lebanon early Saturday.

Hezbollah’s Al-Manar TV said the Israeli unit was transported by helicopter which landed before dawn and was driving into the village, when the soldiers were intercepted by guerrillas, who forced it to retreat under the cover of warplanes.

Hezbollah officials on the scene said overflights from Israeli jet fighters drowned the clatter of helicopters as they flew into the foothills of the central Lebanese mountains, dropping commandos and two vehicles they used to drive into the village when the Hezbollah fighters intercepted them in a field.

Witnesses at the site saw a destroyed bridge about 500 meters (yards) from the area where the landing took place. The witnesses said they believed it was destroyed by Israeli missiles.

In the eastern Lebanese mountain village of Buday, residents say Hezbollah’s strength combined with Israeli soldiers’ unconvincing Arabic accents proved fatal for Saturday’s daring commando raid.

And they have little doubt that the raid, which saw one soldier killed in clashes with Hezbollah fighters, targeted an Iranian-linked senior official from the Lebanese Shiite fundamentalist movement, Sheikh Mohammed Yazbek.

Israel said its raid, which drew harsh criticism from Lebanon’s premier and threatened to throw off course a six-day-old truce, was aimed at preventing weapons shipments to Hezbollah from Syria and Iran.

But villagers in Buday, nearly all of them self-described supporters of Hezbollah which in recent days has doled out thousands of dollars in cash to those whose homes have been destroyed in southern Beirut, see a different motive.

“They came to capture Sheikh Yazbek,” says one man who refuses to give his name but describes himself as an interior ministry employee in a town where Hezbollah’s yellow and green flags fly proudly from every corner.

As soon as he divulges his opinion, others rush to join in. Some say Yazbek, who is a senior member of Hezbollah’s Shura consultative council and representative in Lebanon of Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in charge of financial grants from Khamenei’s office, was seen in the area as recently as Friday.

Yazbek, who is originally from Buday but does not reside in the village, was glimpsed attending the funerals of Hezbollah fighters who were killed during Israel’s month long offensive in Lebanon, they say.

Yazbek’s influence on the impoverished Bekaa Valley village is clear to see — an imposing complex whose construction Yazbek sponsored, including a school, mosque and meeting rooms, stands in stark contrast to a dim conglomeration of cement apartment blocks.

The dawn battle between Israeli soldiers and Hezbollah guerrillas took place just a few hundred meters (yards) away.

Late Friday, under cover of darkness and shielded by warplanes launching mock air raids, Israeli helicopters landed two Humvees near the eastern town of Baalbek some 20 kilometers (12 miles) from Buday.

The vehicles were painted in Lebanese army colors and the Israeli soldiers were wearing Lebanese army uniforms, so the Israeli soldiers were able to move freely for several hours, residents say.

But on the outskirts of Buday, Hezbollah guerrillas were maintaining a strict patrol, and they stopped the Israeli vehicles.

After brief questioning, the Israeli soldiers responded in Arabic that they were on the same side.

Their unusual accents gave them away. The Hezbollah watchman sounded the alarm and the clash erupted.

Hezbollah fighters then rushed in from throughout the surrounding areas, says Suheil Qana, 37, who says he slept with his Kalashnikov in his hand to be ready to defend his family.

Qana awoke in the night to the sound of explosions caused when Apache helicopters fired missiles and machine gun rounds as F-16 fighters and Israeli drones overflew the area to provide cover for the commando launch.

By 6 am on Saturday, it was all over, the hen farmer says. Residents point out bloodstains in the fields. Civil servant Hajj Mashuri Msheikh says the spots of blood are in the area where helicopters took off with the disguised vehicles and soldiers after the fighting ended.

Enormous craters are visible in the roads nearby, artillery shells are strewn across the fields and trails, and an irrigation canal is riddled with holes bored by bullets and explosions.

Eventually, two beefy men carrying pistols and walkie-talkies approach to check the identities of correspondents on the scene. Asked what happened here, one of them, a bearded man, responds.

“There were fewer than 30 Israelis. They fell during a clash,” he says.

They take out a few items from a bag, war trophies. A bloodied bandage, a shell cartridge, a page written in Hebrew.

Asked for his name, the bearded man says only: “That’s impossible,” before climbing into a car and driving off.

“This Is Not A Mere Military Defeat. This Is A Strategic Failure Whose Far-Reaching Implications Are Still Not Clear”

August 18, 2006 By Reuven Pedatzur, Palestine Chronicle [Excerpts]

The United States’ defeat in the Vietnam war started becoming evident when Gen. William Westmoreland, commander of the U.S. forces in Vietnam, started using body counts as an alternative to military victories.

When he could not point to achievements on the battlefield, Westmoreland would send a daily report to Washington of the number of Vietcong soldiers his forces had killed.

In the past few weeks, the Israel Defense Forces has also adopted the body count approach.

When the largest and strongest army in the Middle East clashes for more than two weeks with 50 Hezbollah fighters in Bint Jbail and does not bring them to their knees, the commanders are left with no choice but to point to the number of dead fighters the enemy has left behind.

It can be assumed that Bint Jbail will turn into a symbol of the second Lebanon war. For the Hezbollah fighters it will be remembered as their Stalingrad, and for us it will be a painful reminder of the IDF’s defeat.

Ze’ev Schiff wrote in Haaretz on August 11 that we had “gotten a slap. “It seems that “knockout” would be a more appropriate description.

This is not a mere military defeat. This is a strategic failure whose far-reaching implications are still not clear. And like the boxer who took the blow, we are still lying dazed on the ground, trying to understand what happened to us.

Just like the Six-Day War led to a strategic change in the Middle East and established Israel’s status as the regional power, the second Lebanon war may bring about the opposite.

The IDF’s failure is eroding our national security’s most important asset – the belligerent image of this country, led by a vast, strong and advanced army capable of dealing our enemies a decisive blow if they even try to bother us.

This war, it soon transpired, was about “awareness” and “deterrence.” We lost the fight for both.

It does not matter one bit what the IDF’s true capability is. There is also no importance to the assertions that the IDF used merely a small part of its force and that its arsenal still contains advanced weapons that did not come into play.

What really matters is the image of the IDF – and in fact of Israel – in the eyes of our adversaries in the region. And herein lies the most serious failure of this war.

In Damascus, Gaza, Tehran and Cairo, too, people are looking with amazement at the IDF that could not bring a tiny guerrilla organization (1,500 fighters according to the military intelligence chief, and a few thousand according to other sources) to its knees for more than a month, the IDF that was defeated and paid a heavy price in most of its battles in southern Lebanon.

And most serious of all: an IDF that has not neutralized Hezbollah’s ability to fire rockets and keep more than 1 million Israeli citizens sitting in shelters for more than four weeks.

The arrogance and the overconfidence that characterized the top brass left the home front unprotected.

If it was clear that the air force would destroy the rocket launch pads within a few days, why call on the residents of the north to prepare the air raid shelters and stockpile food? We know the outcome: More than one million people sat for more than one month in stinking shelters, some of them without food or minimal conditions.

In this context, the inquiry commission should look into the home front command. Millions of shekels were invested in this command. A major general, brigadiers general, colonels and many other officers and soldiers man this command. And what was its contribution to the war?

Warning notices broadcast over the radio and televisions about alarms and sirens. That’s it. For more than a month, the entire command made do with drafting public notices about seeking shelter and staying in interior rooms. Where was this command over the past six years?

The state allocates some 11 billion dollars annually for the defense budget. Almost 15 percent of the GNP is devoted to security. (The official figure is 10 percent, but this does not include all the investments in security issues).

But when the reservists are called up, they discover that they lack basic equipment: flak jackets, helmets, vehicles and even stretchers. Entire units were forced to fight more than 24 hours without food or water.

Where did the money go?

[To check out what life is like under a murderous military occupation by foreign terrorists, go to: www.rafahtoday.org The occupied nation is Palestine. The foreign terrorists call themselves “Israeli.”]