[Vietnam Days]

GI COMING HOME LABOR DAY BLUES

[Then And Now]

1971:
SAM STONE

by John Prine, 1971

Sam Stone came home
To his wife and family
After serving in the conflict overseas
And the time that he served
Had shattered all his nerves
And left a little shrapnel in his knee
But the morphine eased the pain
And the grass grew round his brain
And gave him all the confidence he lacked
With a Purple Heart and a monkey on his back

[Chorus]
There’s a hole in daddy’s arm
Where all the money goes
And Jesus Christ died for nothing
I suppose
Little pitchers have big ears
Don’t stop to count the years
Sweet songs never last too long
On broken radios
Sweet songs never last too long
On broken radios

Sam Stone’s welcome home
Didn’t last too long
He went to work when he’d spent his last dime
And Sammy took to stealing
When he got that empty feeling
For a hundred dollar habit, without overtime
And the gold rolled thru his veins
Like a thousand railroad trains
And eased his mind in the hours that he chose
While the kids ran around wearing other people’s clothes

[Chorus]
There’s a hole in daddy’s arm
Where all the money goes
And Jesus Christ died for nothing
I suppose
Little pitchers have big ears
Don’t stop to count the years
Sweet songs never last too long
On broken radios
Sweet songs never last too long
On broken radios

Sam Stone was alone
When he popped his last balloon
Climbing walls while sitting in a chair
Well, he played his last request
While the room smelled just like death
With an overdose hanging in the air
But life had lost its fun
And there was nothing to be done
But trade his house that he bought on the GI Bill
For a flag draped casket on a local heroes’ hill

[Chorus]
There’s a hole in daddy’s arm
Where all the money goes
And Jesus Christ died for nothing
I suppose
Little pitchers have big ears
Don’t stop to count the years
Sweet songs never last too long
On broken radios
Sweet songs never last too long
On broken radios

2006:
GI COMING HOME LABOR DAY BLUES

From: Dennis Serdel
To: GI Special
Sent: September 01, 2006

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

GI Coming Home Labor Day Blues

His brother at 30 is still living at home,
he works most nights making pizza.
His Dad just sighs because he knows
he might have to work until he dies.

Old glory is torn and faded
the stars shine for only a few
leaving closed factories and generations
living these Labor Day blues.

His Dad voted Democratic
like his Union said,
but it looks like both of the parties
are sleeping in the same bed.
The government is for the new gilded age
companies are leaving the country,
and his Dad with a good job realizes,
he may never get to retire.

Old glory is torn and faded
the stars shine for only a few
destroying the Union made middle class
causing these Labor Day blues.

His Mom works for a lawyer
who gives her woman’s pay.
But she knows the law of the jungle,
she could never raise a family this way.
His Dad’s car is getting beat
and he’ll have to buy another soon.
They now cost more than his house did
after Vietnam and his honeymoon.

Old glory is torn and faded
the stars shine for only a few
leaving closed factories and generations
living these Labor Day blues.

IRAQ WAR REPORTS

Tucson Sailor Had Earned The Respect Of ‘His’ Marines;
Chadwick Kenyon Was 3rd Mountain View H.S. Graduate Killed In War

08.23.2006 BLAKE MORLOCK, Tucson Citizen

Navy Hospitalman Chadwick Kenyon posted his thoughts online about his tour in Iraq as a combat medic with the Marines.

“Comin home soon. words can’t describe how good it’s gonna be. this deployment sucked. never look forward to coming home because that’s when (it) goes down hill. lost 4 of my marines/friends in a truck bomb, God rest their souls. and then not even a week later an (bomb) hit my vehicle again and this time my block got knocked off and i was out cold…”

On Sunday, the 2004 Mountain View High School graduate was killed when an improvised explosive device blew up the truck he rode in. Kenyon was 20. He had been in Iraq since March.

On Tuesday, his mother, Charmain Wright, recalled one incident typical of Chad.

A pipe burst and flooded his bedroom while he was stationed in southern California. She told him what happened and he hung up. Ten minutes later he was back on the phone.

“Good news, mama,” he said. “I’m coming home.”

He’d gone to his commanding officer and gotten permission to drive to Tucson and help his mom.

“He was very protective of me,” she said.

A Navy chaplain showed up at her door Sunday to bring her the news that her only child was dead – the 11th Tucsonan to be killed in Iraq or Afghanistan and the third Mountain View graduate to die serving his country. Army Pfc. Sam Huff was killed in April 2005 in Iraq. Army Sgt. Kenneth Ross died in September in Afghanistan.

Wright described her son as a shy and nice kid who blossomed in high school.

That’s when he decided to become a medic in the military, and he joined the Navy during his senior year in a delayed-entry program that allowed him to finish school before starting boot camp.

“He was perfect for the Navy,” Wright said. “He was very disciplined and sharp.”

Kenyon shipped out in March. And even though he was a sailor in the Navy, he was attached to the Third Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion of the First Marine Division.

He served as a corpsman to the troops who were performing combat sweeps against insurgents.

“He wanted to take care of his Marines,” Wright said.

What he was really proud of was how others in his unit took him as one of their own, even though Kenyon was a sailor and not a Marine, his mother said.

“He was very proud to have earned their respect,” Wright said. “He was a Marine to them.”

The Internet spread word of Kenyon’s death and proved a cyber-grief circle for those who knew him.

His MySpace.com page chronicles the typical back-and- forth and inside jokes that ended abruptly Monday.

“As unreal as unreal can be,” one of his friends described it. “We have been best friends since elementary school. We had ups and downs and so many unbelievable adventures. No one has ever had my back the way you did.”

The Baghdad Follies
Mission Ridiculous:
Every U.S. Troop Death Is A Death In Vain;
Every U.S. Commanding Officer Knows It

August 31, 2006 By Will Dunham, Reuters

Lt. Col. Barry Johnson, a military spokesman in Iraq, said there are now about 15,000 U.S. troops operating in Baghdad.

[Let’s assume something that everybody knows is false: that 75% of these 15,000 U.S. troops are combat troops, not support troops.

[That would leave 11,250 available to fight.

[Now let’s assume something else equally as silly: that every one of the 11,250 is out in the streets 7 days a week, 12 hours a day, no time off.]

[That leaves half of 11,250 in action at any given moment, or 5625.

[The population if Baghdad is over 5 million, mostly pissed off.

[The only thing 5,625 U.S. troops can do against millions of pissed off Iraqis is die.]

[Every U.S. troops’ death in this operation is in vain, and every U.S. commander knows it. By cooperating in the pretense that the U.S. forces in Baghdad can achieve anything durable, they betray their own troops, and participate in killing them.

[What is the punishment for that?]

MORE:

General With A Little Stick Thinks He Has Big One;
Fool Brags About Decreased Violence On A Day Of Mass Slaughter

[Thanks to David Honish, who sent this in.]

September 01, 2006 Associated Press

Col. Thomas Vail, commander of a 101st Airborne brigade operating in the mostly Shiite areas of eastern Baghdad, told reporters at the Defense Department’s Pentagon headquarters on Friday that an intensified effort to root out insurgents and quell sectarian violence in the capital is bearing fruit, leading to a decrease in sectarian murders in recent days.

“They understand a big stick,” he said, referring to a bigger U.S. and Iraqi force confronting militias and others responsible for violence such as the barrage of coordinated attacks across eastern Baghdad that Iraqi police said killed at least 64 people and wounded more than 286 within half an hour Thursday.

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

A U.S. Marine stands inside the courtyard of a house in Ramadi, June 28, 2006.(AP Photo/Jacob Silberberg)

AFGHANISTAN WAR REPORTS

UK Soldier Killed, Another Badly Wounded

2006/09/01 BBC NEWS

A British soldier has been killed by insurgents in Afghanistan, the Ministry of Defence has announced.

A further UK soldier is being treated for serious injuries after the attack by insurgents in northern Helmand, an MoD spokesman said.

District Governor Killed

Sep 1 (KUNA)

Officials say district governor Habibullah Khan was shot dead and his six security men injured in the ambush in Ghazni, one of the volatile provinces in the southern region of Afghanistan this morning. However, Taliban said none of the guards escaped alive.

Ghazni province is close to the central capital Kabul and is scene to attacks on officials and Afghan and coalition forces over the past four months.

The recent attack was carried out at a time when a joint anti-insurgent operation by the Afghan and coalition forces is going on in the province.

Police chief of the province Tafseer Khan confirmed the killing of the district. He said the official was coming to the provincial capital when his convoy was ambushed.

A day earlier, members of the ousted militia had beheaded a man in the southern Uruzgan province on suspicion of being spying for the US forces.

Assorted Resistance Action

Aug 31 By AMIR SHAH, Associated Press Writer

Militants used mortars, rocket-propelled grenades and heavy machine guns in the attack on Naw Zad, in volatile Helmand province, said Defense Ministry spokesman Gen. Zahir Azimi. He said the fighting between the Taliban and Afghan army troops was “intense.”

In Zabul province, an attacker plowed his explosives-filled car into a police convoy traveling on the main road linking the capital Kabul and the main southern city of Kandahar, wounding three officers, said Jailan Khan, provincial police chief.

A Taliban regional commander, Mullah Nazir, claimed responsibility for the blast and said the bomber was an Afghan man from Khost province.

Militants launched a pre-dawn raid on a police post in Ahmad Khel district, Paktia, wounding one policeman, before retreating.

Before dawn Thursday, two rockets slammed into central Kabul, the capital. One landed in an upscale residential neighborhood, about 10 yards from the army chief of staff’s house; the other landed in a park. There were no immediate reports of damage or injuries, witnesses and NATO said.

Occupation Government In The Shitter:
Presidents’ Brother A Heroin Dealer;
Officer Orders U.S. Troops To Stop Turning Citizens Into Resistance Fighters
[Lots Of Luck]

August 31, 2006 DER SPIEGEL

Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai is facing hard times. As his brother fights accusations that he’s involved in the country’s rampant drug trade, an increasing number of Afghans are disappointed by their government. Many are starting to think about potential presidential successors.

But Karzai’s latest troubles are closer to home in nature:

They center around allegations that one of his brothers is involved in drug trafficking.

His younger brother Ahmed Wali Karzai is influential among the Popalzai, a Pashtun clan, in Karzai’s home province of Kandahar and is the chairman of the provincial council. It is believed the Ahmed Wali is also the head of a group involved in opium and heroin trafficking that smuggles drugs to the West through Iran and Turkey. Sources in security circles claim that he provides protection for drug transports in southern Afghanistan.

Washington is still supporting Karzai, but the United States is having its own problems in Afghanistan at the moment.

The US high command has called on soldiers to use more reserve in their dealings with Afghan civilians.

Aggressive driving and behavior, obscene gestures and threatening people with weapons just serves to provide ammunition to the enemy, stated an e-mail sent by an lower-ranking officer that was later distributed by Peter Schoomaker, the Army’s chief of staff.

TROOP NEWS

Blinding Flash Of The Obvious:
“We Cannot Sustain 134,000 Troops In Iraq”

August 31, 2006 By Louise Roug and Julian E. Barnes, Times Staff Writers

In June, [Army Gen. George W.] Casey Jr. predicted “gradual reductions” in U.S. troop levels over the following year. But by last month, generals began shelving plans for troop cuts this year and instead ordered extensions of combat tours as violence worsened.

Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, the ranking Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, said he had been told that keeping the current force beyond 18 months would be difficult for the military.

“Gen. Casey is saying what everyone in the military knows,” Biden said. “We cannot sustain 134,000 troops in Iraq.

“I think everyone in the military knows these guys are stretched.”

MORE:

You Think This Can Go On Much Longer?
You’re Out Of Your Fucking Mind!
Stop-Loss Order Keeping 10,200 Soldiers In Or Primed For Bush’s Imperial Slaughterhouses

September 04, 2006 By Jim Tice, Army Times Staff writer [Excerpts]

Soldiers are placed in stop-loss status when the unit is alerted for mobilization and until 90 days after demobilization.

About 10,200 Regular Army, National Guard and Army Reserve soldiers are being retained on active duty beyond their separation and retirement dates because of stop-loss, according to service personnel records.

There are now about 200,000 active-duty and Reserve soldiers in units that are deployed or mobilized and subject to stop-loss restrictions.

Personnel files indicate that within that population, 6,100 active-component, 1,900 National Guard and 2,200 Army Reserve soldiers are serving beyond their scheduled separation dates, according to Lt. Col. Bryan Hilferty, spokesman for the Office of the G-1 (Human Resources) at the Pentagon.

Three years ago, when stop-loss restrictions largely were based on a combination of unit and specialty affiliation, the population of adversely affected soldiers was about 25,000.

While similar, the rules are slightly different for each of the components. For example, stop-loss restrictions for active-duty soldiers take effect 90 days before the initial elements of a unit are expected to arrive in the area of operations. Reserve units come under stop-loss restrictions as soon as they’re alerted for mobilization and remain in that status until 90 days after demobilization.

Stop-loss and stop-move restrictions for active component units are lifted 90 days after re-deployment to home station to give soldiers staying in the service a period of readjustment.

AWOL Iraq Veteran & War Resister Returns To Fort Hood Flanked By Members Of Iraq Veterans Against The War

Army Spc. Mark Wilkerson, waits outside a tent at Camp Casey III Thursday Aug. 31, 2006, near Crawford, Texas. (Photo/Rod Aydelotte)

[Thanks to Phil G and Z who sent this in. Z writes: When more people reject these damned wars, it’ll be the “authorities” who’ll do the surrendering. Solidarity, Z]

“I just could not in good conscience go back to a war I felt was wrong,” Wilkerson, 22, of Colorado Springs, Colo., said at Sheehan’s camp before the 40-mile trip to the post near Killeen where he had been stationed.

September 01, 2006 By Angela K. Brown, Associated Press, KILLEEN, Texas & By Aaron Glantz, Common Dreams

A year and a half after going AWOL before his second deployment to Iraq, a Soldier surrendered at Fort Hood on Thursday with a dozen war protesters by his side.

When Wilkerson gave himself up at Fort Hood Thursday, he was flanked by members of Iraq Veterans Against the War and Gold Star Families for Peace, the group founded by Cindy Sheehan, the bereaved mother who garnered national headlines confronting U.S. President George W. Bush at his ranch last year.

In a statement, [Sheehan] asked for more people to follow in Wilkerson’s footsteps. “Mark served one tour in Iraq and what he saw there changed him to such a degree that he couldn’t in good conscience return again. It shouldn’t be his duty to enter combat once again. He has already done what has been asked of him, and fulfilled his oath,” Sheehan said.

“There is a belief on the part of the soldier that they will be used carefully, and as a last resort only when all other means to resolve a conflict have been exhausted. Instead, soldiers are put into harm’s way without proper training and equipment, and for reasons we have come to find were fraudulent.

“The social contract between the U.S. government and our society and the solider who serves has been broken,” she said.

Army Spc. Mark Wilkerson said he was tired of running and sought help from Cindy Sheehan’s protest camp in nearby Crawford, which helps educate Soldiers about their rights as war resisters.

“I just could not in good conscience go back to a war I felt was wrong,” Wilkerson, 22, of Colorado Springs, Colo., said at Sheehan’s camp before the 40-mile trip to the post near Killeen where he had been stationed.

Wilkerson would not be confined to a cell or other facility when he returns to his unit, said Maj. Joe Edstrom of the post’s public affairs office. He said he did not know whether Wilkerson would be restricted to the post or what punishment he faces, but said his company commander would decide.

“He’s back in the United States Army as a Soldier again,” Edstrom said.

Wilkerson, who said he never left the country but won’t reveal where he was, heard about Sheehan’s efforts to help war resisters after he had decided to surrender.

Wilkerson went to Iraq at the start of the March 2003 invasion and returned to the U.S. a year later.

“When I first got there, I was very supportive of our mission and our president’s decision to go in,” he told IPS before turning himself in. “But when I got there I started to wonder whether what we were doing was really important enough for people to be dying.”

During his time in Iraq, Wilkerson was stationed in Tikrit and Samarra, two strongholds of Saddam Hussein’s former regime. One of his jobs was to guard truck convoys that ran up and down the highway and through city streets.

Initially, he said, “Iraqi kids on the road were waving flags for us, but after a year they were now throwing rocks at us and that equates to more IEDs (improvised explosive devices) on the road and now you have the suicide bombers. The death toll is 2,639 American soldiers. That’s a lot.”

He said his views of the war changed, so he applied for conscientious objector status a few months before finding out his unit would return to Iraq.

His request was denied and he was told his appeal would not be considered until his unit came back. He said he then fled during a two-week leave before the January 2005 deployment.

www.ivaw.net

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.

Iraq Veteran Who Left His Post Last Year Because He Objected To The War Will Face A Desertion Charge

September 01, 2006 By Angela K. Brown, Associated Press

A Fort Bragg paratrooper who left his post last year because he objected to the war will face a desertion charge, his lawyer said Thursday.

Sgt. Ricky Clousing, 24, who left his barracks in June 2005, turned himself over in August to military authorities in Seattle.

Clousing’s battalion commander has referred the case to a special court-martial, a spokesman with the 82nd Airborne Division said.

Clousing’s attorney, David Miner of Seattle, said there’s plenty of evidence that his client always planned to turn himself in. “If they’re going to go the court-martial route, they have overcharged this case,” said Miner, a former military lawyer.

Prosecutors must prove that a Soldier charged with desertion intended to leave his post permanently.

Maximum punishment includes six months confinement, forfeiture of two-thirds of pay for six months, reduction in pay grade and a bad-conduct discharge. Or, a military judge or jury could decide to levy no punishment, Earnhardt said.

Clousing said in a statement that he remained comfortable with his decision.

“I followed my conscience, and if be, I would feel honored to join the ranks of others who have been prosecuted for doing the same,” he said in the statement, released through a spokeswoman in Seattle.

Clousing was an intelligence interrogator assigned to B Company of the 313th Military Intelligence Battalion.

His unit deployed in December 2004 for about five months to support the 325th Airborne Infantry Regiment.

Women Raped By Recruiters Go On The Offensive:
They’re Suing And Prosecuting;
“I Want To Put A Stop To It. He Has No Excuse For What He Did”

September 04, 2006 By Martha Mendoza, The Associated Press

Dissatisfied with the military’s handling of sexual assault and misconduct cases involving recruiters, some local prosecutors and victims are challenging the misconduct on their own, charging everything from a violation of an Indian treaty to racketeering.

Of the 19 Air Force recruiters whose misconduct was confirmed since 2004, three got letters of reprimand in their personnel files and fines ranging from $200 to $1,200, nine were sent through Article 15 proceedings and seven were court-martialed or prosecuted in civilian courts.

In seeking greater penalties, victims and local authorities have taken unusual tacks.

In South Dakota, a young Oglala Sioux woman, Laveeta Elk, is suing the federal government under an 1868 treaty that says if “bad men” among government officials commit “any wrong” upon the person or property of any Sioux, the U.S. will reimburse the injured person for the loss sustained.

Elk chose to have her name released when filing her lawsuit.

She says she was assaulted by Army recruiter Sgt. Joseph Kopf in his government car, when he stopped in a remote area while driving her to a military evaluation center. Kopf has been demoted and reassigned within the Army, officials said. He could not be reached for comment.

“I decided to file a lawsuit because I know I’m not the only girl he did this to” Elk said. “I want to put a stop to it. He has no excuse for what he did. It shouldn’t happen to anybody.”

Her attorney, Adam Horowitz, said this is the first time this law has been tested. In April, a federal judge denied the government’s request to dismiss the lawsuit.

In another case, prosecutor Barbara Trathen of Hamilton County, Ind., has charged National Guard recruiter Sgt. Eric Vetesy, accused of assaulting seven young women, with racketeering along with 31 charges of rape and sexual battery. His trial is scheduled for later this summer.

Vetesy, a married father of three, met most of his alleged victims, ages 16 to 20, while recruiting at Indianapolis-area high schools, according to the indictment.

Victims told the grand jury he threw them against a wall of the armory, raped them on a countertop and forced them to fondle him.

Trathen said she charged him with racketeering under the section that bans corrupt business influence and official misconduct. “It’s rape, yes, and it’s sexual assault. But it’s more than that. He had a pattern of misusing his position of power,” she said.

In another case, two teenage women who claim a pair of former Marine sergeants raped them in a recruiting office sued the military in federal court in San Francisco in May. They’re seeking a requirement that all Marine Corps recruiters receive proper training and supervision.

One of the victims, 17, shared portions of her handwritten journal with the AP.

“I lost my virginity to (the recruiter) … in the back room on the sofa. I didn’t want to have sex, but I didn’t want him to be upset with me and make me go all the way back to my old recruiter. He was also the type of guy to bad mouth a person if he did’t get what he wanted,” she wrote about their first encounter.

Both recruiters were demoted after court-martial proceedings, but acquitted of the most serious charges they faced. Both have since left the military.

Vets Exposed To Radiation Fucked Over By Bush Buddy Judge:
Pentagon Can Keep Their Records Secret

[Thanks to Tim Goodrich, Iraq Veterans Against The War, who sent this in. He writes: Vets screwed again. And guess which judge wrote the decision? None other than one appointed by Bush.]

“You send a Freedom of Information Act request,” Broudy said, “and you wait and you wait and you wait, and then maybe you get a piece of it, or you get nothing at all because they say it’s classified.”

August 29, 2006 Knight Ridder [Excerpts]

WASHINGTON: Radiation exposure took Alice Broudy’s husband a generation ago.

This week, a court ruling sliced away at her bid for redress.

In a quiet ruling that nonetheless resonates nationwide, a federal appellate court rejected efforts by Broudy and others seeking claims on behalf of “atomic veterans.” The same court simultaneously rejected bids by other veterans exposed to biological and chemical agents.

Taken together, the dual rulings by the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals will likely impede many veterans hoping for compensation. At the very least, it will complicate future claims.

“It’s a significant ruling,” Washington-based attorney David Cynamon, who represented veterans in both cases, said Friday. “Unfortunately, it’s a significantly bad ruling.”

Broudy, a resident of California’s Orange County, has long been seeking full compensation for the death of her husband, a Marine major who was repeatedly exposed to radiation. She has company.

George Woodward, who lives north of Wichita, Kan., in the town of Miltonvale, was exposed to radiation during a 1955 test blast. Kathy Jacobovitch, a resident of Vashon Island, Wash., lost her father through exposure to contaminated ships in Puget Sound. Ernest Kirchmann, a 62-year-old Navy veteran who lives south of Minneapolis in tiny West Concord, who’s filed a separate lawsuit, was exposed during a 1964 nuclear submarine accident.

“It isn’t just my personal case,” Broudy said Friday. “It’s the entire veterans community. It makes me so angry.”

Broudy married her husband, Charles, in 1948. Three years earlier, he’d walked the war-poisoned streets of Nagasaki. Within a decade, he was facing radiation in the Nevada desert. He died of lymphatic cancer in 1977. Though she has since received partial compensation, Broudy has been confronting the federal government for more. She has now lost three separate lawsuits.

“This closes the door,” Cynamon said of the latest appellate court ruling, which was issued Wednesday. “It will make it very difficult, if not impossible, for individuals who are victimized by government cover-ups.”

All told, an estimated 220,000 U.S. soldiers were allegedly exposed to radiation in the 1940s and 1950s. Some, such as William Yurdyga of Sacramento, Calif., claimed in an earlier lawsuit that they were exposed following the Hiroshima or Nagasaki atomic blast. Others claimed exposure during Cold War testing.

The three-member appellate panel wasn’t ruling on whether the atomic veterans deserve compensation. A 1988 law provides that.

To succeed, though, veterans must prove they were present at a radioactive site and that they contracted a radiation-related illness or were exposed to a cancer-causing radiation level. Required military test records can be elusive. A 1973 fire destroyed many veterans’ records, and veterans consider alternative “dose reconstruction” estimates inaccurate.

“You send a Freedom of Information Act request,” Broudy said, “and you wait and you wait and you wait, and then maybe you get a piece of it, or you get nothing at all because they say it’s classified.”

The latest lawsuit sought to force Pentagon officials to release all relevant records.

In the opinion written by Appellate Judge Thomas Griffith, appointed by President Bush last year, the court panel agreed unanimously that atomic veterans couldn’t compel a massive release of all the Pentagon’s relevant documents.

Instead, individual veterans must file individual claims.

If the Pentagon is “covering up records of medical tests that describe the amount of radiation to which these veterans were exposed, FOIA (the Freedom of Information Act) provides a potential remedy,” Griffith wrote.

A new study by Melinda Podgor for the Elder Law Journal found that 18,275 atomic veterans had filed for compensation as of October 2004. Only 1,875 claims were granted.

On a separate but related legal track, veterans such as Columbia, S.C., resident John Goricki and Homestead, Fla., resident Richard B. Holmes were pursuing claims following exposure during the Shipboard Hazard and Defense project of the 1950s and 1960s.

Project SHAD allegedly exposed up to 10,000 soldiers and sailors to biological and chemical agents. Like the atomic veterans, SHAD survivors claim that the Pentagon clings to secret information.

Like the atomic veterans, they couldn’t persuade the appellate court to order the release of all relevant documents.

IRAQ RESISTANCE ROUNDUP

Bomb Hits Oil Pipeline;
Power Cut To Diwaniyah;
[Where Mahdi Army Was Attacked Earlier This Week By U.S. & Collaborator Troops]

Sep. 01, 2006 AP

A bomb targeting an oil pipeline south of Baghdad exploded Friday, sparking a fire and cutting supply to a major electricity station, but causing no casualties, police said.

The bombed pipeline was on the outskirts of Musayyib, about 40 miles south of Baghdad, police Col. Salah Salman Mudir said.

The pipeline feeds Musayyib’s electricity station, which provides power to the cities of Karbala, Najaf, Hillah and Diwaniyah, he said. The damage will lead to longer power cuts in the cities, said Ahmed Hassan, the chief engineer of the Babil province electricity department.

He said the power supply would now be cut for six-hour stretches and be turned on for two hours, rather than the previous four hours off and two hours on.

“If this pipeline is not fixed within three days, the hours of power cuts will be increased,” he added.

Assorted Resistance Action

9.1.06 Evening Echo & VOI & Reuters

Armed militants shot and killed a policeman in Numaniyah, a town near Kut, after breaking into his house last night.

A policeman was killed in a drive-by shooting in Ramadi, 70 miles west of Baghdad.

A roadside bomb targeting a police patrol exploded in central Kirkuk, 250 km (155 miles) north of Baghdad, seriously wounding three policemen, local police said.

A roadside bomb killed three Iraqi policemen in Baghdad’s southern Doura district on Friday, police said.

IF YOU DON’T LIKE THE RESISTANCE
END THE OCCUPATION

FORWARD OBSERVATIONS

Bring Them Home

From: Richard Hastie
To: GI Special
Sent: August 30, 2006

Support Our Troops — Bring Them Home

When the first American soldier was killed in Iraq,
he died for a dollar bill.

When I came back from Vietnam, I had a hard time
being in a room alone
with an American flag.

I had anxiety when I stayed in the room too long.

It became like a punishing parent to me.
It was a symbol that betrayed me
everyday I was in Vietnam.

To this day, I watch my back,
because the U.S. government keeps invading
countries that can’t defend themselves.

Mike Hastie
Vietnam Veteran
August 30, 2006

Photo and 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.

“Don’t Tell Me That Terrorists Are Manipulating Rumsfeld, Too!”

August 30 Paul Craig Roberts, www.smirkingchimp.com [Excerpts]

I thought that I had Rumsfeld pegged as the complete dolt, but I was stunned when I read Associated Press reporter Robert Burns’ account of what Rumsfeld told 200 Navy aviators in a question and answer session at Fallon Naval Air Station on Aug. 28. “The thing that keeps me up at night,” said Rumsfeld, is the success of terrorist groups in “manipulating the media.”

Rumsfeld told the pilots that terrorists “are actively manipulating the media in this country” by falsely blaming U.S. troops for civilian deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan. All that “collateral damage” we hear about, the tens of thousands of dead and maimed civilians, is just terrorist propaganda.

Now I get it. When Fox News’ Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly assured us that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction that would be used against us if we didn’t strike first, they were being manipulated by Osama bin Laden, who used America to get rid of the secular Saddam Hussein and to create a new training and recruitment ground for al-Qaeda and fundamentalist fanatics.

When the New York Times let Judith Miller serve as a propagandist for war with Iraq, the Times was being manipulated by Muslim terrorists, not by neocons.

When CNN and columnists like Ann Coulter and Michelle Malkin reassure us that we will win the war unless we pull out prematurely, they are being manipulated by terrorists.

Finally I understand what the Weekly Standard, National Review, the Wall Street Journal editorial page, the American Enterprise Institute, and the online site FrontPageMag are all about.

Obviously, I misjudged Rumsfeld’s intelligence.

Anyone who can figure out the Muslim conspiracy is off the charts. What I can’t figure is why Rumsfeld is willing for America to continue to be sucked in.

Don’t tell me that terrorists are manipulating Rumsfeld, too!

OCCUPATION REPORT

U.S. OCCUPATION RECRUITING DRIVE IN HIGH GEAR;
RECRUITING FOR THE ARMED RESISTANCE THAT IS

Foreign fighters from the U.S. Marines shine a flashlight on an Iraqi citizen sitting in the courtyard of his own home after dark in Ramadi June 26, 2006. (AP Photo/Jacob Silberberg)

And if they don’t like anything about what he does, the foreign fighters will kill the Iraqi citizen sitting in the courtyard of his own home.

There’s nothing quite like invading somebody else’s country and busting into their houses to arouse an intense desire to kill you in the patriotic, self-respecting civilians who live there.

But your commanders know that, don’t they? Don’t they?

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

Occupation Follies Roll On:
The Ignorant Leading The Blind

8.31.06 Christian Science Monitor

Travel outside the Green Zone is dangerous and limited.

Moreover, practically none of our diplomats stationed in Iraq today speak Arabic and most consort primarily with top-level Iraqi officials who are isolated and unfamiliar with “ground truth.”

OCCUPATION PALESTINE/LEBANON

“Israel As A Jewish State Will Not Be Able To Exist”

[It has been said that it is impossible to forgive people to whom one has done a great wrong. T]

August 26, 2006 Issa Khalaf, Palestine Free Voice [This is an excerpt where Issa Khalaf quotes Ari Shivit.]

“I am not a psychologist, but I think that everyone who lives with the contradictions of Zionism condemns himself to protracted madness. It’s impossible to live like this.

“It’s impossible to live with such a tremendous wrong.

“It’s impossible to live with such conflicting moral criteria. When I see not only the settlements and the occupation and the suppression, but now also the insane wall that the “Israelis” are trying to hide behind, I have to conclude that there is something very deep here in our attitude to the indigenous people of this land that drives us out of our minds.

“There is something gigantic here that doesn’t allow us truly to recognise the Palestinians, that doesn’t allow us to make peace with them.

“And that something has to do with the fact that even before the return of the land and the houses and the money, the settlers’ first act of expiation towards the natives of this land must be to restore to them their dignity, their memory, their justness.

“But that is just what we are incapable of doing. Our past won’t allow us to do it…

Even if “Israel” surrounds itself with a fence and a moat and a wall, it won’t help. Because… “Israel” as a Jewish state will not be able to exist.”

(Ari Shavit interview, in Haaretz, with Haim Hanegbi and Meron Benvenisti, 28 August, 2003).

“Gaza Is The Same In Nature As The Warsaw Ghetto”

August 29, 2006 Khalid Amayreh, thepeoplesvoice.org [Excerpt]

Over a year ago, a Jewish British Member of Parliament, Paul Kaufman, remarked that “Sharon has made the Star of David look like the Swastika of Hitler.”

Oona King, another British Jewish MP and a member of the Jewish Council for Racial Equality, remarked that “Gaza is the same in nature as the Warsaw Ghetto.”

She added that “as a Jew, I hoped I would never live to see the day I was ashamed of the actions of the Jewish state.”

The honorable Jewish lady knew what she was talking about. She was referring to Pregnant Palestinian women shot dead or forced to give birth at Israeli roadblocks, having been barred access to nearby hospitals by Zionism’s heroic soldier

[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

Bush Says He Will Be Defeated In Iraq War

Aug 31, 2006 AP Bush speaking in Salt Lake City 8.30.06

“This war will be difficult. This war will be long. And this war will end in the defeat of the terrorists,” Bush said.

TRAITOR
SOLDIER-KILLER
DOMESTIC ENEMY
TERRORIST-IN-CHIEF

(AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

The Politicians’ Dictionary

August 31, 2006 K Hager

Alternative energy sources n. New locations to drill for gas and oil.

Bankruptcy n. A punishable crime when committed by poor people but not corporations.

Cheney, Dick n. The greater of two evils.

Compassionate conservatism n. Poignant concern for the very wealthy.

Democracy n. So extensively exported that the domestic supply is depleted.

Free markets n. Halliburton no-bid contracts at taxpayer expense.

Growth n.
1. The justification for tax cuts for the rich.
2. What happens to the national debt when Republicans cut taxes on the rich.

Habeas corpus n. (Lat.) Archaic Legal term no longer in use (See Patriot Act).

Healthy forest n. No tree left behind.

Honesty n. Lies told in simple declarative sentences—e.g., “Things are going well in Iraq.”

House of Representatives n. Exclusive club; entry fee $1 million to $5 million.

Laziness n. Term used to describe any period of time when the poor are not working.

Leisure time n. Term used to describe any period of time when the wealthy are not working.

9/11 n. Tragedy used to justify any administrative policy.

No Child Left Behind n. Government policy that insures success for all through guaranteed jobs in the military.

Ownership society n. A civilization in which 1 percent of the population controls 90 percent of the wealth.

Patriot Act n. The pre-emptive strike on American freedoms to prevent the terrorists from destroying them first.

Pro-life adj. Term used to describe those who value “human life” from conception until birth.

Senate n. Exclusive club; entry fee $10 million to $30 million.

Stay the course interj. Slang. Saying and doing the same stupid thing over and over, regardless of the result.

Wal-Mart n. Model for the future nation-state.

Water n. Arsenic storage device.

Woman n.
1. Person who can be trusted to bear a child but can’t be trusted to decide whether or not she wishes to have the child.
2. Person who must have all decisions regarding her reproductive functions made by men with whom she wouldn’t want to have sex in the first place.

[Thanks to Jim W, who sent this in.]

CLASS WAR REPORTS

Adjusted For Inflation, Men’s Earnings Were Lower In 2005 Than They Were In 1973

01 September 2006 By E.J. Dionne Jr., The Washington Post [Excerpt]

Perhaps the release of the Census Bureau’s annual report on income, poverty and health insurance coverage in this particular week is a sign that God and statisticians have a sense of humor. The report reinforces what we knew at the time of Katrina – that the poor are still with us and that the middle class keeps losing ground.

Want to know why so many men out there are mad? Check out Table A-2 on Page 38 of the Census report. (I’m grateful to my friend Bill Galston for calling it to my attention.) Adjusted for inflation, men’s earnings were lower in 2005 than they were in 1973.

The census had some very good news for the well-to-do. The top fifth of American households received 50.4 percent of all income last year, the highest proportion since 1967, when the Census Bureau started following that trend. The biggest gains were concentrated in the top 5 percent.

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

All GI Special issues achieved at website
www.militaryproject.org/
The following have also posted issues; there may be others:

gi-special.iraq-news.de
www.notinourname.net/gi-special/
www.williambowles.info/gispecial
www.traprockpeace.org/gi_special/
www.albasrah.net/maqalat/english/gi-special.htm
www.uruknet.info/

GI Special distributes and posts to our website copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in an effort to advance understanding of the invasion and occupation of Iraq. We believe this constitutes a “fair use” of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law since it is being distributed without charge or profit for educational purposes to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for educational purposes, in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107.  GI Special has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of these articles nor is GI Special endorsed or sponsored by the originators. This attributed work is provided a non-profit basis to facilitate understanding, research, education, and the advancement of human rights and social justice Go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml for more information. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. 

If printed out, this newsletter is your personal property and cannot legally be confiscated from you. “Possession of unauthorized material may not be prohibited.” DoD Directive 1325.6 Section 3.5.1.2