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

Bring The War Home Now!
This Is The Enemy In Action,
Here Is The Only War Worth Fighting;
Congressional Shitbags Cutting Budget For Helping Brain Injured Troops

8.29.06 Raleigh News & Observer

Brain injuries are so common among U.S. troops that they are called the signature injury of the Iraq war, but Congress is poised to cut military spending on researching and treating them.

House and Senate versions of the defense appropriation bill would chop funding for the Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center from $14 million to $7 million.

The center runs 10 facilities across the country, including one at Fort Bragg, N.C., that has performed research and treated soldiers’ injuries since 1998.

IRAQ WAR REPORTS

U.S. Marine Sgt. George M. Ulloa Jr., 23, of Austin, was killed Aug. 3 in Al Anbar province Iraq. He was assigned to the 2nd Tank Battalion, 2nd Marine Division, II Marine Expeditionary Force in Camp Lejeune, N.C. (AP Photo/Family Photo via Austin American Statesman)

“One Of The Most Lethal Weekends For American Troops In Recent Months”

August 29, 2006 By Sudarsan Raghavan, Washington Post Foreign Service [Excerpt]

Nine U.S. soldiers also were killed over the weekend in and around Baghdad, the U.S. military said Monday, making it one of the most lethal weekends for American troops in recent months.

MARINE KILLED IN AL ANBAR

8/30/2006 HEADQUARTERS UNITED STATES CENTRAL COMMAND NEWS RELEASE Number: 06-08-03C

CAMP FALLUJAH, Iraq: One Marine assigned to 1st Brigade, 1st Armored Division died from wounds sustained due to enemy action while operating in Al Anbar Province August 29.

MND BAGHDAD SOLDIER KILLED BY ROADSIDE BOMB

8/30/2006 HEADQUARTERS UNITED STATES CENTRAL COMMAND NEWS RELEASE Number: 06-08-03CL

A Multi-National Division Baghdad Soldier died at approximately 4:20 p.m. today when the vehicle he was riding in was struck by an improvised-explosive device southwest of Baghdad.

Ohio Soldier Killed

August 30, 2006 The Associated Press

POMEROY, Ohio: A 24-year-old soldier from southeast Ohio was killed in Iraq after his vehicle came under enemy fire, the Department of Defense announced Tuesday.

Spc. Joshua D. Jones of Pomeroy died Sunday in Baghdad.

Jones was assigned to the 3rd Battalion, 67th Armor Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division in Fort Hood, Texas.

Marine From Rutherford County KIA

08/25/06 By CLAY CAREY, Staff Writer, The Tennessean

James D. Hirlston, known to his family as J.D., had wanted to be a Marine his whole life — if for no other reason than to prove he could.

“He liked the uniforms, the style, the way they walked, their honesty,” J.D.’s father, James Hirlston, said Thursday.

J.D. Hirlston, 21, a native of Rutherford County, was killed Wednesday in combat in Iraq.

He was a lance corporal in the Marines, based at Camp Lejeune, N.C. He joined the Marines in June 2005 and went to Iraq early this summer.

As a rifleman, he was among the Marine class that serves as the primary scouts and assault troops.

The last time he talked with his father, James Hirlston, was at a family dinner in Murfreesboro right before J.D. went to Iraq.

“He told me if he didn’t come back, what he’d want to happen,” James Hirlston recalled Thursday.

“We told him we weren’t too worried about that, just that we wanted him to come back. Now I wish we had talked longer.”

Lance Cpl. Hirlston grew up in Rutherford County and attended Riverdale High School, his father said. He had worked at a grocery store and a fast-food restaurant in Murfreesboro before joining the Marines.

He loved athletics, wrestling and playing baseball as a teenager.

Lance Cpl. Hirlston’s competitive drive came through on the athletic field, his father said. As a wrestler, he didn’t mind losing a match by a decision.

“He just didn’t want to get pinned,” James said.

He also recalled a softball game J.D. had played in as a boy. “A guy hit a line drive that hit him right in the ankle. We had two innings left, and he wouldn’t come out,” James Hirlston said.

“He was one of a kind. Nobody else had a personality quite like him,” his father said. “Anything he got into, he was dedicated. He wanted to see it through.”

That drive to win at sports, James said, also drew J.D. to the Marines.

“It takes a whole lot to be a Marine. He wanted to prove he could be one,” his father said. “I kept telling him he didn’t have to prove he was the best. He was the best of the best.”

“He was a good boy, a Christian boy,” J.D.’s grandmother, Mary Hirlston, said Thursday. “His lifelong goal was to be a Marine. “He thought it was the roughest thing, to defend your country. That’s what he wanted to do,” she said.

Mary Hirlston described her grandson as an outgoing, loving person with a lot of friends.

She said J.D. had called her the day before he was killed. She wasn’t home at the time, she said; J.D. left a message on her answering machine.

“He said he’d been patrolling,” Mary Hirlston said. “He said, ‘This is my sleep time, but I wanted to talk to my granny.’

“I didn’t get to talk to him,” she said.

Lance Cpl. Hirlston was part of the 2nd Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Division, II Marine Expeditionary Force.

His survivors include eight brothers and sisters, his father said. Most of his family lives in Rutherford County.

Hebron Marine Killed

August 30, 2006 BY RYAN CLARK, ENQUIRER STAFF WRITER

HEBRON: A Hebron Marine died Tuesday while serving in Iraq’s western Anbar Province, family members said Wednesday.

U.S. Marine Cpl. Tyler Warndorf, 21, gained local fame in June when Associated Press photographers took a picture of him and other soldiers in combat. The Enquirer then provided the photographs to the Warndorf family, who enjoyed seeing him for the first time in months.

Tuesday night, Marines told the family of his death.

“Obviously, we’re devastated,” said Lillian Warndorf, Tyler’s grandmother. “We never could have imagined this.”

But in June, when Lillian and Tyler’s grandfather, Gerald, saw the pictures, they expressed concern for their grandson, who had returned to Iraq for a second tour of duty.

“He’s going to get himself killed over there,” Gerald Warndorf said at the time.

Warndorf was serving in and around Ramadi, a dangerous area for insurgent attacks.

He attended Conner High School. His father passed away 10 years ago and he is survived by his mother, Tina, 42; brother, Nick, 18; and sister, Katelyn, 14, all of Covington.

He was scheduled to come home Sept. 14.

“He looks all muscular,” Lillian Warndorf said while sitting in her Burlington home in June, studying the photographs of her grandson. Her hands shook a little as she touched the paper. “He’s well-built. It seems the Marines have taught him a lot.”

Gerald Warndorf took one of the pictures, which showed his grandson sitting in a chair, leaning on his weapon, and looking at something in the distance.

“He looks tense,” Gerald said. “Like a man with something on his mind.”

Tyler Warndorf grew up playing knothole baseball and video games. After his father died, he began to help take care of his siblings. He became a Marine after high school, and after one tour in Haiti and another in Fallujah, he was called back to Iraq in March.

When Tyler was last home, he gave his car to his brother, who uses it to drive to his pre-law classes at Northern Kentucky University. Nick said his brother was not excited about going back to Iraq.

“He lost a couple friends in Iraq the first time,” said Nick Warndorf.

Lillian Warndorf said she remembered the chilling message her grandson gave her the last time he visited.

“He looked at me and he said, ‘Just don’t ask me how many people I had to kill,’” she said.

Funeral arrangements are incomplete, family members said.

Great Moments In U.S. Military History:
More Civilians Massacred In Baghdad

August 29, 2006 By Sudarsan Raghavan, Washington Post Foreign Service [Excerpts] & By REBECCA SANTANA, Associated Press Writer

Relatives and neighbors of seven civilians shot dead during a gun battle in a Baghdad neighborhood on Sunday said U.S. soldiers had stepped out of their vehicles and randomly fired at their car.

“The soldiers decided to kill everyone on the streets, and my mother was one of them,” Mohammed Sabah al-Dulaimi, 19, an engineering student said in a telephone interview. “They were angry. There’s no other reason for killing. They took revenge.”

Dulaimi’s mother, Suad Jodah Yaseen, was returning from work in a company car, which stopped some distance away from the scene where a roadside bomb had struck a U.S. military vehicle, according to her brother, Hadi Jodah Yaseen, 50.

“But random shooting by American soldiers hit her in the head and the chest, and one bullet pierced her chest and came out of the back,” Yaseen said.

A civilian driving in his car in northern Mosul was shot and killed, apparently after U.S. troops opened fire when the man’s vehicle came too close to them.

Ishikawa and Kuroshima would understand: insert troops into a hell on earth and there’s no way to prevent atrocities. Yet the real fiends in their capital suites are never spattered with a single drop of blood. Solidarity, Z

Stupid Occupation Command Pushes
Stupid Collaborators To Pick Fight With Mahdi Army:
Collaborator Attack Repulsed;
Mahdi Army Holding In Diwaniyah

August 29, 2006 By Sudarsan Raghavan, Washington Post Foreign Service [Excerpts] & By Damien Cave and Edward Wong, The New York Times & AFP

The southern part of Iraq could emerge as the biggest challenge for U.S. and Iraqi forces. Upon taking office, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki vowed to eradicate the host of militias and death squads operating in the country. But 100 days after his coalition government was sworn into power, the militias, especially the Mahdi Army, remain key players in a struggle for power from Baghdad to the southern city of Basra.

Monday’s clashes in Diwaniyah underscored the militias’ growing influence.

Tensions were already high. Three days earlier, the Iraqi army had arrested three prominent supporters of Sadr, said Abdul Razak al-Nadawi, the head of the cleric’s office in Diwaniyah.

“They did this without any warrants,” Nadawi said in an interview. “Usually, people are arrested by the police. But it was the Iraqi army who arrested them.”

Soon after the arrests, Mahdi Army militiamen flooded the streets, clutching guns and engaging in minor clashes with police, said Kareem al-Musawi, 33, a resident.

“Then all the police withdrew from the streets,” he said. “Then the armed men covered every street in the city.”

Monday’s clashes erupted after Iraqi soldiers, backed by Polish troops, attempted to raid three neighborhoods controlled by the Mahdi Army. The fighting began after midnight as explosions and gunfire rattled different parts of the city, residents said. Shops, markets and government offices shut down, and frightened residents stayed inside their houses.

By late afternoon, the fighting had subsided.

It was soon clear who had won.

“The city is fully controlled by the militia of Jaish al-Mahdi now,” said Ahmed Fadhil, 45, a school teacher living in the center of Diwaniyah, using the Arabic term for Sadr’s militia. “There are no police or Iraqi army in the streets of the city. I can see only the fighters of Mahdi Army in the streets.”

At a news conference, the governor of Diwaniyah, Khalil Ibrahim said that he visited Sadr in the Shiite holy city of Najaf on Monday. He said Sadr had requested an investigation into what had happened in Diwaniyah.

For now, he said, the Mahdi Army still controls two big neighborhoods, “and neither the American forces nor Iraqi forces were able to enter these neighborhoods yet.”

“The police refuse to go back to the streets, especially after three of their cars were set on fire Thursday,” Ibrahim said.

On Monday, residents were stunned by their city’s transformation.

“We had a stable city,” said Musawi. “Now all the shops are closed. The streets are empty. No one is going out to the streets, and there is a curfew. It is a ghost city.”

According to [Nasir al-Saadi, a spokesman for the Sadr bloc in Parliament] the army started attacking a Mahdi-dominated neighborhood late Sunday night. He said the soldiers killed civilians and damaged houses while Sadr militants “did not participate” at first, refusing to return fire.

Gunfire riddled the streets from around 2 a.m. to the early afternoon.

Polish troops responsible for the area helped Iraqi soldiers encircle the most violent areas, as American helicopters hovered overhead without dropping bombs, according to an American official who declined to be identified because the information is supposed to be released by the Iraqi Army

According to someone who identified himself as a Mahdi fighter involved in the clash, a prisoner exchange was still being negotiated Monday night. In a telephone interview, the fighter, who called himself Abu Abbas, said the Mahdi Army had taken several soldiers captive and would trade them for the detainee that Iraqi commanders accused of being involved in the roadside bombing. He was reached through a known member of the Mahdi Army, who vouched for his membership.

He said that a local judge had approved the militant’s release before the fighting started but that the Iraqi Army refused to accept the ruling.

When asked why the Mahdi militants killed more than a dozen other Iraqis, he said, “We know they are our brothers, but the Americans are pushing them against us.”

Meanwhile Iraq’s Defence Minister Abdul Qader Jassim declared the army’s truce with the Mahdi Army in Diwaniyah null and void on Wednesday and demanded an inquiry into the murder of 13 soldiers.

He denounced the truce under which the army agreed to pull out of residential areas, and rejected the idea of concessions to the Mahdi Army.

AFGHANISTAN WAR REPORTS

Army Officers Charge British Government With Hiding Afghanistan Casualties “Because Of The Negative Messages It Would Send To The Public”
“The Officer Added That There Was A Great Deal Of ‘Bad Feeling’ Within The Military”

20/08/2006 By Sean Rayment, Defence Correspondent, Telegraph Group Limited

Defence chiefs have been accused of covering up the number of soldiers injured while fighting Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan.

Senior officers have revealed that up to 40 soldiers may have been injured in a series of bitter battles with militants in the southern province of Helmand since the arrival in May of the 3,600 strong British task force. Many have life-threatening injuries and are being treated in hospitals in Britain.

Despite the growing casualty rate, however, the Ministry of Defence has no figures for combat injuries on its website, despite promises by John Reid, the former defence secretary, earlier this year that details would be made public.

The MoD’s website, which is supposed to update casualty figures every month, reports fatalities but states that no figures for combat injuries are currently available. No reason is given.

MPs and senior officers have accused the Government of trying to “cover-up” the sacrifices being made by the British troops in Afghanistan, and one senior officer claimed that the MoD’s policy of not releasing full details of injured soldiers was for “purely presentational reasons” because of the negative messages it would send to the public.

The officer added that there was a great deal of “bad feeling” within the military over the treatment of casualties, many of whom believe they have become the forgotten victims of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

One of the injured soldiers, a ranger in the Royal Irish Regiment, was shot through the head by a sniper 10 days ago and is fighting for his life in a Karachi hospital. Two weeks earlier, two members of the Parachute Regiment were seriously injured in an ambush during which one soldier was shot in the stomach and another received severe shrapnel injuries to his leg.

In June, three soldiers received gunshot and shrapnel wounds in an ambush that left one officer, Captain Jim Philippson, dead.

British Army Running Out Of War Supplies:
Officers Puke Out Happy Talk About War Progress But They’re Afraid To Let Reporters Go To Forward Bases To See The Truth

The statement was one of a number of optimistic assessments issuing from senior British officers, including one last week suggesting that the Taliban had “gone away to lick their wounds”.

Objective reporting of the fighting in Helmand is lacking due to the refusal of commanders to have journalists at forward bases.

28/08/2006 By Neil Tweedie, Telegraph Group Limited [Excerpts]

British forces suffered their 14th combat death in Afghanistan yesterday as commanders admitted that intense fighting against the Taliban meant they were using up missiles, rockets and spares at an alarming rate.

The vital Apache attack helicopters have been particularly hard hit with a senior Army source claiming that stocks of weapons and components meant to last until April next year could be used up “well before Christmas”.

British combat troops are so few on the ground in Helmand province – effectively one battalion, 500-600 fighting troops, to cover an area the size of Scotland – that they are having to call in air strikes by American B1 bombers and other aircraft on a daily basis.

The eight Apaches in Helmand are operating at full stretch, answering calls for help from British patrols and small outlying garrisons.

The £1 billion in funding promised by the Treasury for the intended three-year deployment is being used up at a much faster rate than predicted and Apache units in Britain will have to be stripped of their weapons, spares and flying hours to cope.

The soldier killed in the early hours of yesterday was today named as Lance Corporal Jonathan Hetherington, 22, a member of 14 Signal Regiment, which specialises in electronic eavesdropping and jamming. He died during an assault on what was described as a “platoon house” in Musa Qaleh in the north of Helmand.

Brigadier Ed Butler, the commander of the British contingent in Helmand, said: “The Taliban are a determined enemy, and the challenge of bringing security to Musa Qaleh is a continuing one. But we are well on track to succeed.”

The statement was one of a number of optimistic assessments issuing from senior British officers, including one last week suggesting that the Taliban had “gone away to lick their wounds”.

Objective reporting of the fighting in Helmand is lacking due to the refusal of commanders to have journalists at forward bases.

The intensity of the air support needed to keep the Taliban attacks at bay is far beyond anything Government ministers expected when they authorised the deployment in January.

US Air Force data show that Musa Qalah has been bombed by USAF B-1s, A-10 ground-attack aircraft and RAF Harriers on almost every day this month. US aircraft have attacked the town on more than 20 occasions and there was only one day this month that US aircraft did not bomb targets in Helmand province.

Before British troops arrived there was barely one call a week for air support.

In January, Mr Reid distanced Britain from US tactics that relied on heavy bombing. He said: “We are not going to Afghanistan to wage war – we are going in order to help the Afghan people.”

Although it was intended that only six of the Apaches should fly daily, demands for air support mean that all eight are being flown to help troops pinned down.

A number of the helicopters have been hit by Taliban fire but none has been seriously damaged.

The Boeing-made Apaches must have key components replaced after a set number of hours flying. Army Air Corps officers now say these are being used up at an alarming rate.

Spares and usage of Hellfire missiles, rockets and 30mm chain gun ammunition is much higher than expected. One officer predicted the Apache budget for the financial year April 2006 would be used up well before Christmas.

The UK force, due to number 4,500 by the autumn, is conducting operations from its desert base, Camp Bastion, near the provincial capital Lashkar Gah. Reinforcements announced last month by Des Browne, the Defence Secretary, and the retention of the RAF Harrier force will further strain the defence budget.

It was reported last week that the Army’s Land Command is having to make £40 million of emergency cuts to cope.

TROOP NEWS

138,000+ To Go:
Bring Them ALL Home Now!

Judi Duclau, left, of North Scituate, R.I., embraces her son, Sgt. Jonnathan Duclau, a member of the Keene, N.H.-based 220th Transportation Company, after the soldier’s unit arrived for a reunion ceremony, Aug. 29, 2006, in Boxborough, Mass. (AP Photo/Chitose Suzuki)

South Korean Cuts Troop Strength In Iraq Again;
Down 1000 From Initial Commitment, So Far

08-30-2006 The Korea Times

The Army held a farewell ceremony here yesterday for hundreds of troops to be dispatched to Iraq to replace returning soldiers at the end of their duty tour.

The number of troops in the replacement group is less than those returning as this is also part of a reduction plan, the third of its kind since April, which will take place in six stages until mid-September.

“A total of 1,179 soldiers are leaving for the Middle Eastern country, while about 1,800 will be returning home,” Lt. Col. Son Byeong-hwan, a spokesman for the Army, was quoted as saying by the Yonhap News Agency in Seoul.

Earlier this year, South Korea started cuts in the number of troops stationed in Iraq, sending about 1,100 soldiers to the war-torn country and bringing home about 1,350.

The government plans to downscale its military contingent there to some 2,300 by the end of this year.

South Korea deployed some 3,300 troops in Irbil at the request of the U.S. government.

Romania Getting The Fuck Out Of Iraq In 2 Months

Aug. 30 (Xinhua)

Romanian President Traian Basescu announced on Wednesday that in two months Romania will withdraw from Iraq its battalion deployed for a peacekeeping mission.

Basescu made the announcement in a speech at the Annual Meeting of Romanian Diplomats held in Bucharest.

“The Iraqi Government announced today that in 45-60 days at the most, the Dhikar province where a Romanian battalion is deployed will be transferred under the control of the Iraqi army,” Basescu said.

Under such circumstances, the presence of Romanian troops in Iraq is “no longer necessary,” said the president, adding that troop withdrawal and related issues will be discussed very soon.

Romania has 628 troops in Iraq, and another two battalions in Afghanistan, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo, according to the president.

900 Soldiers From 10th Mountain Division Off To Bush’s’ Imperial Slaughterhouse

August 28, 2006 Army Times

Nearly 900 soldiers with the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division, began the brigade’s second deployment to Iraq as they left Fort Drum on Aug. 12 and 13, according to a post press release.

The brigade will be assigned to the Baghdad region.

REALLY BAD PLACE TO BE:
BRING THEM ALL HOME NOW

A U.S. soldier at the site of a car bomb explosion, in Baghdad Aug. 24, 2006. (AP Photo/Hadi Mizban)

“He Said We Had No Business In Iraq And Should Not Be There”
“Many Like Him Died In Iraq For Nothing”

August 27, 2006 By FRANK RICH, NY Times [Excerpt]

A representative and poignant example, brought to light by The Los Angeles Times, is Patrick R. McCaffrey, a Silicon Valley auto-body-shop manager with two children who joined the California National Guard one month after 9/11. He was eager to do his bit for homeland security by helping protect the Shasta Dam or Golden Gate Bridge. Instead he was sent to Iraq, where he was killed in 2004.

In a replay of the Pentagon subterfuge surrounding the friendly-fire death of Pat Tillman, another post-9/11 enlistee betrayed by his country, Mr. McCaffrey’s death was at first officially attributed to an ambush by insurgents. Only after two years of investigation did the Army finally concede that his killers were actually the Iraqi security forces he was helping to train.

“He said we had no business in Iraq and should not be there,” his mother, Nadia McCaffrey, told the paper.

Last week’s belated presidential admission that Iraq had nothing to do with the attacks on America that inspired Patrick McCaffrey’s service was implicitly an admission that he and many like him died in Iraq for nothing as well.

The Universal Code Of Military Injustice Strikes Again

August 28, 2006 Army Times

Facing the real possibility of prosecution for patronizing a prostitute, service members have to be careful to avoid being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The offense of “patronizing a prostitute” was added to the Manual for Courts-Martial in October.

At a hearing on human trafficking, Rep. Vic Snyder, D-Ark., asked Pentagon officials what protections are in place for a service member who innocently walks into an establishment and does not immediately realize it’s a brothel, and whether that service member is able to tell someone without getting into trouble.

Bad Idea Of The Week

August 28, 2006 Army Times

A Brazilian man who tried to open a military-issue grenade with a sledgehammer has died, Reuters reports.

The man, not identified by name in the wire service report, was in a workshop on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro when the explosion occurred. Police pieced things together by talking to another man who was in the workshop when the blast occurred and who was severely burned. Police also found other unexploded rocket-propelled grenades piled in the shop.

Police suspect the army-issued munitions, probably stolen by gangs from area military bases, were intended to be sold as scrap metal. Authorities theorize that the errant effort to remove the grenade innards was part of the process of preparing the weapon for quick sale.

IRAQ RESISTANCE ROUNDUP

Matched Pair:
Resistance Blows Up Would-Be Collaborator Army Recruits:
Collaborator Police Shoot Would-Be Collaborator Army Recruits

August 30, 2006 Guardian Unlimited

In central Hilla, about 60 miles south of the capital, a man posing as a potential army recruit planted the bicycle early in the morning outside the recruiting centre, police Lieutenant Osama Ahmed said.

The man walked off as volunteers gathered outside to sign up for the army, and the bomb exploded at about 8am (5am BST), killing at least 12 and wounding 38, police said.

Clashes between Iraqi police and civilians turned away from an army recruitment centre killed one civilian and wounded nine, including five policemen. Iraqi police said hundreds hoping to land jobs turned violent after they were turned away and threw rocks at policemen, who fired at the crowd.

Assorted Resistance Action

30 Aug 2006 Reuters & By REBECCA SANTANA, Associated Press Writer

Baghdad: Three police officers were killed and 14 wounded, including five policemen, when a nearby car bomb exploded after police responded to a small bomb blast near a petrol station, police said.

Guerrillas killed Nadia Mohammed, a director general at the Justice Ministry, along with her driver and two guards in western Baghdad’s Nafaq al-Shurta area, a hospital source said.

Two border guards, including a captain, were killed in Badra, a town east of Baghdad near the Iranian border, after their vehicle was hit by a roadside bomb, border guards said.

A police patrol was hit by a roadside bomb overnight in the town of Balad Ruz, 20 miles north of Baqouba, leaving five policemen dead and one wounded.

A mortar round fell near the home of an Iraqi army officer in a district of Baqouba, killing him.

A roadside bomb targeting a police patrol in Muqdadiyah, 30 miles northeast of Baqouba wounded three policemen.

An Iraqi army major was killed in Kut, 100 miles southeast of Baghdad, by a roadside bomb.

A police captain was killed by a roadside bomb on a road leading from southern Basra to the Iranian border.

IF YOU DON’T LIKE THE RESISTANCE
END THE OCCUPATION

Class Issues Emerging

Aug 29 (Reuters) [Excerpt]

In Samawa, the first province to be handed over by foreign troops to Iraqi control last month, tension between Sadr followers and the SCIRI governor has frequently boiled over into clashes, with Sadr’s supporters in the vanguard of complaints about poverty and lack of local amenities.

FORWARD OBSERVATIONS

“Terrorism is the war of the poor, and war is the terrorism of the rich.”
[Sir Peter Ustinov, quoted by Eric Margolis]

White Trash, Niggers And Wetbacks

From: Dennis Serdel
To: GI Special
Sent: August 30, 2006

Written by Dennis Serdel, Vietnam 1967-68 (one tour) Light Infantry, Americal Div. 11th Brigade, purple heart, Veterans For Peace, Vietnam Veterans Against The War, United Auto Workers GM Retiree, in Perry, Michigan

White Trash, Niggers And Wetbacks

“Mark, Mark, come over here,”
his girlfriend waved like a flag.
“Check this out,” she pointed to.
It was a statue of three grunts
like in “Nam,”
a white boy white trash like himself,
a nigger and a mexican.
It was a lot better
than the big tombstone The Wall,
but not by much.
Oh, we were “brothers” over there
like politics makes strange alliances.
War is a good way to get rid of
societies’ unwanted.
Some remembered we were brothers
when we came back,
some forgot.
The blacks went back
to their burning ghettos,
the mexicans went back
to their carved out,
rundown part of town.
The white trash went back
to their trailers in the woods,
working now and then,
collecting welfare checks,
smoking pot.
He wished his girlfriend
had never talked him into this.
As time stretched out,
they forgot the names
of their brothers in arms.
All they had was distorted
fading memories,
some said,
“It wasn’t so bad over there.”

“Why America Has To Have The Whole Pie”

Arlington Northwest in Seattle. 2610 Americans dead in Iraq

From: Mike Hastie
To: GI Special
Sent: August 24, 2006
Subject:

Why America Has To Have The Whole Pie

America is a diabetic, and the insulin is in the Middle East.
If America’s dinosaur economy does not get that insulin, it
will die. The only way to save America, is to kill the dinosaur
in our economy. Will greed allow this to happen?

Mike Hastie
Vietnam Veteran
August 23, 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.

“He Will Have Our Children And Grandchildren Sacrificed To The Ancient Gods Of Babylon”

August 29, 2006 By Wag, firebase-news

His Royal Highness King George The Third Emperor of the North American Triad of Canada, The Fifty United States Of American And the Ancient Empire of Aztlan of Mexico Has decreed that we own the oil under the land of Iraq and he will have our children and grandchildren sacrificed to the Ancient Gods Of Babylon to keep the rightful owners from getting it back!!!!!!!!

OCCUPATION PALESTINE/LEBANON

Proud Lebanese stand on an abandoned Israeli army armored personnel carrier 27 August 2006. (AFP/File/Patrick Baz)

[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.”]

DANGER: POLITICIANS AT WORK

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

Rumsfeld Says Bush Can’t Be Appeased

Can we truly afford to believe that somehow, some way, vicious extremists can be appeased?” Rumsfeld at the American Legion National Convention, Aug 29 Quoted by ROBERT BURNS, AP Military Writer

REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

LIAR
TRAITOR
SOLDIER-KILLER
DOMESTIC ENEMY
UNFIT FOR COMMAND

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.

“War Is,’ As Clemenceau Said, ‘A Series Of Catastrophes That Results In Victory.’”

[Rumsfeld at the American Legion National Convention, Aug 29, Quoted by Robert Burns, AP Military Writer]

[Thanks to PB, who sent this in. He writes: NOW WE KNOW WHAT RUMSFELD BASES HIS DOCTRINES ON]

[Joe Balshone, Firebase-Humor, August 30, 2006]

CLASS WAR REPORTS

New Orleans One Year Later:
Baghdad On The Mississippi

[Thanks to Ward Reilly, Veterans For Peace, who sent this in.]

22 August 2006 By Bill Quigley, Truthout Perspective [Excerpts]

The City of New Orleans says it is half its pre-Katrina size, around 225,000 people.

But the US Post Office estimates that only about 170,000 people have returned to the city and 400,000 people have not returned to the metropolitan area.

The local electricity company reports only about 80,000 of its previous 190,000 customers have returned.

Only half the homes in New Orleans have electricity.

Power outages are common, as hundreds of millions of dollars in repairs have not been made because Entergy New Orleans is in bankruptcy.

Entergy is asking for a 25 percent increase in rates to help it become solvent. Yet Entergy New Orleans’ parent company, Entergy Corporation, reported earnings of $282 million last year on revenue of $2.6 billion.

A friend of mine, a lawyer with health insurance and a family physician, went for an appointment recently at 11 a.m. The office was so crowded he had to sit out in the hall on the floor to wait his turn for a seat in the waiting room. Three hours later he met his doctor. The doctor thought he might have a gall stone. The doctor tried to set up an ultrasound. None were available.

He ordered my friend to the emergency room for an ultrasound.

At 4 p.m., my friend went to the hospital emergency room, which was jammed with people: stroke victims, young kids with injuries, people brought in by the police.

At 5 a.m. the next morning, my friend finished his ultrasound and went home. If it takes a lawyer with health insurance that long to get medical attention, consider what poor people without health insurance are up against.

Half the hospitals open before Katrina are still closed.

The state’s biggest public health care provider, Charity Hospital, remains closed and there are no current plans to reopen it anytime soon. Healthcare could actually get worse. Dr. Mark Peters, board chair of the Metropolitan Hospital Council of New Orleans said that within the next two to three months, “all the hospitals” will be looking seriously at cutbacks.

Why?

Doctors and health care workers have gone, and there is surging demand from the uninsured, who before Katrina went through now non-existent public health care.

There is a shortage of nurses. Blue Cross Blue Shield officials reported, “About three-quarters of the physicians who had been practicing in New Orleans are no longer submitting claims.”

Before Katrina, there were over 630,000 workers in the metropolitan New Orleans area – now there are slightly over 400,000.

Over 18,000 businesses suffered “catastrophic” damage in Louisiana. Nearly one in four of the displaced workers is still unemployed. Education and health care have lost the most employees. Most cannot return because there is little affordable housing, child care, public transportation and public health care.

Women workers, especially African-American women workers, continue to bear the heaviest burden of harm from the storm.

The Institute for Women’s Policy Research reports that the percentage of women in the New Orleans workforce has dropped.

Low-income women remain displaced because of the lack of affordable housing and traditional discrimination against women in the construction industry.

Public transportation to and from low-wage jobs is more difficult. Over 200 more public transit employees have been terminated, cutting employment from over 1300 people pre-Katrina to about 700 now.

Single working parents seeking child care are in trouble. Before Katrina, New Orleans had 266 licensed day care centers. Mississippi State University surveyed the city in July 2006 and found 80 percent of the day care centers and over 75 percent of the 1912 day care spots are gone. Only one-third of the Head Start centers that were open pre-Katrina survived.

Before Katrina, 56,000 students were enrolled in over 100 public schools in New Orleans. At the end of the school year there were only 12,500.

Right after the storm, the local school board gave many of the best public schools to charter groups. The State took over almost all the rest. By the end of the school year, four schools were operated by the pre-Katrina school board, three by the State, and eighteen were new charter schools.

After thirty-two years of collective bargaining, the union contract with the New Orleans public school teachers elapsed and was not renewed and 7500 employees were terminated.

For this academic year, no one knows for certain how many students will enroll in New Orleans public schools. Official estimates vary between a low of 22,000 and a high of 34,000. There will be five traditional locally-supervised public schools, eighteen schools operated by the State, and thirty-four charter schools.

As of July 1, not a single teacher had been hired for fifteen of the state-run schools. As of August 9, 2006, the Times-Picayune reported there are no staff at all identified to educate students with discipline problems or other educational issues that require special attention.

Whatever the enrollment in the new public school system is in the fall, it will not give an accurate indication of how many children have returned. Why? Many students in the public charter schools were in private schools before the hurricane.

In the suburbs across the lake, Sheriff Jack Strain told the media on TV that he was going to protect his jurisdiction from “thugs” and “trash” migrating from closed public housing projects in New Orleans. He went on to promise that every person who wore “dreadlocks or che-wee hairstyles” could expect to be stopped by law enforcement.

The NAACP and the ACLU called in the US Justice Department and held a revival-like rally at a small church just down the road from the jail. Though the area is over 80 percent white, the small group promised to continue to challenge injustice no matter how powerful the person committing the injustice.

Recently, the same law enforcement people set up a roadblock and were stopping only Latino people to check IDs and insurance. I guess to prove they were not only harassing black people?

FEMA officials in Austin are also warning people about returning to New Orleans.

They wrote: “Before you return … New Orleans is a changing place … you should consider the conditions you may be returning to. Many neighborhood schools will not be open by August. Your children may have to travel some distance to get to school …

“Grocery and supermarkets have been slow to return to many neighborhoods. Sometimes there aren’t enough residents back in your neighborhood for a store to open and be profitable. You may have to travel a large distance to groceries. Walking to the store might not be an option …

“If you or your family members require regular medical attention, or if you are pregnant or nursing, the services you received before the storm may be scattered and in very different and distant locations. Depending on your medical needs, you may have to drive across the river or even as far away as Baton Rouge …

“If you or your family members have allergies, remember that there is lots of dust and mold still in the city. While you may have suffered from allergies before the storm, please consider that being in the city will only worsen your allergies. If you have asthma, other respiratory or cardiac conditions, or immune system problems, you would be safer staying out of flooded areas due to the mold, particles and dust in the air.

“If you must return to the city, wear an approved respirator when working in moldy or dusty areas…

“Additionally, police, fire and emergency personnel are stretched to their limits … If you own a car, gas and service stations are limited in many areas. You may need to purchase a gas can in the event you cannot get gas near your home …

“Public transportation (buses) are also limited and do not operate in all areas… Available and affordable housing is extremely rare.

“Waiting lists for apartments are as large as 300 on the list, depending on how many bedrooms you need. Living inside your home could be dangerous if mold has set in of if your utilities are not in top working condition … Living in New Orleans may be easier said than done until we have fully recovered from the storm.”

This is New Orleans, one year after Katrina.

Despite open attempts to divide them, black and brown and white and yellow workers have started to talk to each other. Small groups have started to work together to fight for living wages and safe jobs for all workers.

Thousands came together for a rally for respectful treatment for Latino and immigrant workers. Seasoned civil rights activists welcomed the new movement and pledged to work together.

Ultimately, the people of the Gulf Coast are the greatest sign of hope. Despite setbacks that people in the US rarely suffer, people continue to help each other and fight for their right to return home and the right to live in the city they love.

On Sunday morning, a 70-year-old woman told a friend where her children are.

“They are all scattered,” she sighed. “One is in Connecticut, one in Rhode Island, one in Austin.”

When he asked about her, she said, “Me? I am in Texas right now. I am back here to visit my 93-year-old mother and go to the second line of Black Men of Labor on Labor Day. But I’m coming back. Yes indeed. I will return. I’m coming back.”

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

Telling the truth – about the occupation or the criminals running the government in Washington – is the first reason for Traveling Soldier. But we want to do more than tell the truth; we want to report on the resistance – whether it’s in the streets of Baghdad, New York, or inside the armed forces. Our goal is for Traveling Soldier to become the thread that ties working-class people inside the armed services together. We want this newsletter to be a weapon to help you organize resistance within the armed forces. If you like what you’ve read, we hope that you’ll join with us in building a network of active duty organizers.  www.traveling-soldier.org/  And join with Iraq War vets in the call to end the occupation and bring our troops home now! www.ivaw.net

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