GI SPECIAL #121

WASHINGTON – To chants of “Impeach Bush,” thousands of anti-war protesters rallied in the nation’s capital Saturday and delivered a scathing critique of President Bush and his Iraq policy.  Thousands more demonstrated in other cites across the U.S.

Police at the scene put the Washington number from 10,000 to 20,000. (AFP press service reported 20,000.)

Demanding an end to the U.S.-led occupation and the quick return of American troops, the demonstrators gathered on a sunny fall day at the Washington Monument to listen to speeches and songs of peace.

One man’s small cardboard sign gave his summing-up of the day: “This administration does not represent me,” it said in black capital letters typewritten on white paper.

The protest in Washington drew a diverse crowd — young, old, veterans, relatives with loved ones in the armed forces and American Muslims.  An activist group of older women called the Raging Grannies, singing anti-Bush songs, brought whoops of agreement from the protesters.

Waving signs reading “Make Jobs Not War” and “Bush is a liar,” the protesters marched down around the White House, on to the Justice Department and then back to the Washington Monument.

But the activists weren’t afforded the symbolic satisfaction of yelling protests to the White House gates, because the Secret Service put up barriers to keep them from marching directly in front of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.  Bush was spending the weekend at the Camp David presidential retreat in Maryland.

Michael McPhearson, a veteran from the 1991 Persian Gulf War denounced the president, saying he had misled the nation. “You have butchered the truth, George Bush.”

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 in Iraq, and information about other social protest movements here in the USA.  Send requests to address up top.  For copies on web site see:www.notinourname.net/gi-special/

San Francisco Chronicle, 10.26.03

In what organizers billed as the largest anti-war protest in San Francisco since the war in Iraq officially ended months ago, thousands of people from across California marched through the city’s streets Saturday calling for U.S. troops to leave Iraq.

Police estimated as many as 5,000 were on the streets — but the peaceful procession of sign-waving, chanting demonstrators stretched for at least 12 city blocks as it snaked from Civic Center Plaza through the Tenderloin, up Market Street to Hayes Valley and finally to Jefferson Square.

MORE:

Manny Fernandez, Washington Post Staff Writer, October 26, 2003

Organizers said a large number of veterans and military families with loved ones in Iraq participated. Around her neck, Nanci Mansfield of Burnsville, N.C., wore a heart-shaped sign with a picture of her son in military uniform and the words:  ”Love my soldier. Hate this war.”

Some of the biggest applause at the rally, which filled a corner of the monument grounds at 17th Street and Constitution Avenue NW, came when Fernando Suarez del Solar of Escondido, Calif., whose Marine son was killed March 27 in Iraq, addressed the crowd. “We need to make Mr. Bush understand: He’s not the owner of the lives of our children,” he said.

CHECK OUT TRAVELING SOLDIER

Telling the truth – about the occupation, the cuts to veterans benefits, or the dangers of depleted uranium – is the first reason Traveling Soldier is necessary.  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/

According to a Pew Research Center survey released Tuesday, 39 percent of US people support the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq as soon as possible, up from 32 percent answering the same question in September.

(For a beautiful poster “Bring The Troops Home Now” see the centerfold at www.socialistworker.org.)

BAGHDAD, Iraq – In a daring strike, insurgents attacked the heart of the U.S. occupation Sunday, unleashing a barrage of rockets against the Al Rasheed hotel where U.S. officials live and where visiting Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz was staying. Wolfowitz escaped, but an American colonel was killed and 15 people were wounded.

Scores of American officials fled the hotel in pajamas and shorts after the 6:10 a.m. assault, which apparently used a makeshift rocket battery on a timer that had been wheeled into a nearby park. More than a half-dozen holes pockmarked the hotel’s concrete facade and windows were shattered in two dozen rooms

Wolfowitz, who appeared shaken as he addressed reporters at a convention center across the street where most officials fled, vowed the attack would not deter the United States in its mission to transform Iraq

There are a few who refuse to accept the reality of a new and free Iraq,” he said. “We will be unrelenting in our pursuit of them.”   (As usual, he’s got it backwards.  The Iraqi resistance movement is “the new and free Iraq,” and it’s the resistance that is “unrelenting” in pursuit of their national independence and scum like Wolfowitz.  They are right to fight Bush’s occupation and for their liberation from the U.S. Empire.)

The bold strike from nearly point-blank range once again pointed up the vulnerability of even heavily guarded U.S. facilities in Iraq, where American forces sustain an average of 26 lower-profile attacks daily. Wolfowitz was wrapping up a tour to assess ways to defeat a stubborn six-month-old insurgency.  

The slain American was a colonel, Wolfowitz said, without identifying him. That would be one of the highest ranking U.S. military officers killed in the Iraqi insurgency.  Since President Bush declared an end to major combat in Iraq on May 1, 109 U.S. soldiers have been killed by hostile fire.

The 15 people wounded included seven American civilians, four U.S. military personnel and four “non-U.S. coalition civilian partners,” according to a statement by the U.S. command. One Briton was among the wounded.

The Al Rasheed, which houses civilian occupation officials and U.S. military forces, is the downtown Baghdad district at the heart of the U.S.-led administration of Iraq, about a mile from the palace housing the coalition headquarters and the offices of interim Iraqi Governing Council. Wolfowitz was in the Al Rasheed at the time of the attack, Maj. Paul Swiergosz said at the Pentagon.

The attackers had boldly driven to the edge of a park just 500 yards southwest of the hotel, towing what looked like a portable, two-wheeled generator, Iraqi police said. They quickly fled, and rockets suddenly ignited within the trailer, apparently on a timer, flashing toward the nearby hotel.  Their impact resounded across central Baghdad.  The heaviest damage was on what appeared to be the fifth and eighth floors of the modern, 18-story building.

Army Brig. Gen. Martin Dempsey, the commander of the 1st Armored Division, which is responsible for Baghdad security, said the attack probably took a couple of months to plan.

“No doubt it required some reconnaissance and some rehearsal … some time to weld this apparatus together (and) probably a rehearsal to pull this into position,” Dempsey told a news conference.

Calling the makeshift device “clever,” he said the launcher was disguised to look like a portable generator and contained a set of tubes with 40 pods to contain missiles.

He said about eight to 10 missiles — 65mm and 85mm — hit the hotel, and 11 were still in the launcher when U.S. troops examined it. He said he did not know how many missiles were fired but missed the Al Rasheed.

The launcher also was booby-trapped, and troops had to defuse explosives in the wheel wells before they could move it, Dempsey said.

Three approaching security guards were injured by the ignition blast, police said.

The top U.S. administrator in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, said he didn’t know whether Wolfowitz was the intended target of the attack.

“We certainly had a bad day,” Bremer told ABC’s “This Week.” “Freedom still has its enemies in Iraq, and we’ve got to expect that we’re gonna have to defeat these terrorists and these Baathists before we get to a more secure situation.”   (Babble babble babble bullshit bullshit bullshit.)

The hotel attack came two hours after coalition authorities ended the nighttime curfew in the Iraqi capital in preparation for the Muslim holy month Ramadan, which begins here Monday.

Officials cited improved security as the reason for ending the curfew.  (In a former life, these “officials” told Lyndon Johnson that they were winning the war in Vietnam.)

An Iraqi police commander, who refused to give his name, said the attackers, in a white Chevrolet pickup, had driven down a main road passing a few hundred yards from the hotel and stopped at the edge of the city’s main Zawra Park and Zoo. Security guards of the new Facilities Protection Service spotted the activity.

“We approached him (the driver) to tell him to move the car. When he saw us, he fled,” one of the injured guards, Jabbar Tarek, said at a nearby hospital.

As Tarek and others approached, the rockets fired off from the blue trailer, police said. Tarek said the guards weren’t armed, or “I would have fired on him.”

Later Sunday morning, U.S. soldiers could be seen removing at least two 3-foot-long rockets from the trailer.

“There is no guarantee we can protect against this kind of thing unless we have soldiers on every block,” said Lt. Brian Dowd of Nanuet, N.Y., a 1st Armored Division reconnaissance officer at the scene.

Barely a mile away, the road crosses the Tigris River at the 14th of July Bridge, which U.S. authorities reopened Saturday for the first time since the city fell to American troops in April.  

Iraqi security guard Dafer Jawad, 28, said that from the convention center he saw projectiles flying toward the hotel.

“There was a whooshing sound,” he said. “One landed in the front of the hotel. I saw very heavy white smoke in front of the hotel…. Many people started rushing across from the hotel into the Convention Center.”

The hotel also was attacked Sept. 27 with small rockets or rocket-propelled grenades, causing only minimal damage.   (Practice makes perfect.)

U.S. officials had warned that “Islamic extremists” planned to carry out a suicide bombing attack against an unspecified hotel in the city’s Karrada district used by Westerners.  But the warning did not specify a target, and the Al Rasheed is not in that district.   (Famed “military intelligence” strikes again.)

Also Sunday, a soldier from the 4th Infantry Division died Sunday from a non-hostile gunshot wound in the town of Baqouba, northwest of Baghdad, the military said

Some people were carried out of the hotel on stretchers and others walked away with blood on them after at least six rockets slammed into the building, destroying rooms on stories below Wolfowitz’s on the 12th floor, witnesses said.

The 11th-floor room in which an American may have died was destroyed, according to a journalist who saw the devastation. Part of the ceiling collapsed, the door was blown off, a hole was punched in the wall and smoke poured from the room.   (Missed his worthless ass by one floor; incredible shooting.)

An unshaven and tired-looking Wolfowitz, a major force behind the United States invading Iraq, wearing a blazer and open-necked shirt, was led away after descending a stairwell past thickening smoke and blood stains with a fire alarm blaring, witnesses said.

In one corridor, survivors waded calf-deep through water from a burst pipe.

Steve Marney, a journalist with Middle East Broadcasting based in Dubai, said the two ninth-floor rooms on either side of his were completely destroyed by the attack.

“I was a very lucky person. The rooms on both sides of me were hit,” he said. “It threw me out of bed.” He said the hallway was full of smoke and “it was pretty hard to see.”

A Reuters photographer saw five impact holes on the west side of the hotel. He said three of the rockets appeared to have gone through the wall, the others through windows.

TIKRIT, Iraq — A U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter was shot down Saturday by ground fire near the 4th Infantry Division base at Tikrit, north of Baghdad, a center of Iraq’s anti-U.S. insurgency, witnesses and U.S. soldiers said. At least one soldier was injured, U.S. military officials said.  Wolfowitz had left Tikrit by helicopter for Kirkuk just hours earlier.

The downing, apparently by a rocket-propelled grenade, raised concerns that insurgents’ attacks on U.S. soldiers were getting more sophisticated even as they grow more frequent.  The number of attacks on American troops in Iraq has been inching up to 26 a day recently.

Two helicopters were flying when witnesses heard a loud explosion and saw the second aircraft spinning out of control.  It crashed in farmland about a mile away. U.S. soldiers, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the helicopter was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade.

The last copter to be shot down was in June.

The downed craft could later be seen engulfed in flames and lying amid brush in a field as a plume of thick black smoke rose into the sky.  The second copter hovered overhead.  An injured person was seen being removed from the site on a stretcher.

In Baghdad, the U.S. military command said the Black Hawk, from the 12th Aviation Brigade, crashed while supporting a combat patrol but gave no cause. The statement said that once it crash-landed, it was hit by RPG and small arms-fire.

However, witnesses about a mile away, including an Associated Press reporter, heard no explosions once the aircraft was down. The U.S. statement said one soldier was injured.  An earlier statement put the injured figure at five.

A soldier who said he was among the first to reach the crash site said four people were aboard the aircraft. Three were evacuated away and one was taken to a clinic here for treatment, he said on condition of anonymity.

“A helicopter did go down,” Capt. Jefferson Wolfe, a spokesman for the 4th Infantry Division, said. “We can confirm it. It was a Black Hawk. We are investigating.”

Black Hawk pilot managed to maintain control after the hit and crash-landed, said division spokeswoman Maj. Jossyln Aberle. One crewmember was injured, she said.

“We can confirm the helicopter took fire from an RPG while in the air,” Aberle said Sunday. Two persons with the RPG launcher were captured, she said.

Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, on a three-day tour of Iraq, was in Tikrit earlier Saturday visiting the main U.S. garrison there. He left the city hours before the helicopter was shot down and was in the northern city of Kirkuk, U.S. officials said.

Wolfowitz told reporters at the garrison in Tikrit. “It is a wonderful success story that speaks volumes.”

Separately, officials said Saturday that the coalition-backed police chief of the southern Iraqi city of Amarah was shot to death as he left a mosque after prayers.

Brig. Hamid Hadi Hassan al-Abe was leaving the al-Hussein mosque after Friday prayers when he was gunned down by assailants firing from several locations, police Maj. Kathim Mohsen Hamadi said.

The attackers escaped, Hamadi said. He added that al-Abe had a good relationship with British occupation authorities, who are responsible for the city, about 75 miles north of Basra.  (Not any more.)

Iraqis who work with the U.S.-led coalition have been targeted by insurgents, but Amarah is populated primarily by Shiite Muslims, who have been generally more accepting of the occupation because of their suffering under former Sunni-dominated regime.

“We can’t accuse anyone right now,” Hamadi said. “We face many problems here, mostly tribal problems.”

A mortar attack killed two American soldiers and wounded four others Friday at an outpost north of Baghdad, and a third American died in a gunbattle in the northern city of Mosul, the U.S. military said. A total of 108 U.S. soldiers have been killed by hostile fire since May 1.

In a videotape delivered to Associated Press Television News, a heretofore unknown group — Ansar Saddam al-Jihadiya or Saddam’s Jihad Supporters — claimed responsibility for attacks on Americans.  The tape showed three men — their faces covered — holding a weapon and a picture of the ousted leader.  ”Our organization, with the help of God, has carried out attacks on many American targets and a number of local traitors and agents,” one of the three said. “These operations will continue until the atheist army will leave Iraq.”

Saturday, the commander of allied forces in Iraq said Saturday the country’s security problems were “manageable.”

“All these security problems are in our view manageable and with the growing help of Iraqis will be dealt with effectively,” said Gen. John Abizaid, head of the U.S. Central Command.

Iraqi eyes tell a deeper one, in such places as Fallujah, where 82nd Airborne Division troops came under attack every day this week, and where the main crossroads is adorned with graffiti proclaiming, “Fallujah will be the graveyard of Americans.”

“Whenever they enter Fallujah, they’ll be attacked,” Assou Nadim Hamid told a reporter.  The fact that he was a policeman may give Americans some insight into the quandary their forces face in parts of Iraq.

Near the flashpoint city of Fallujah, three civilians were killed and two wounded when their convoy came under fire. An American engineer and an Iraqi security guard said U.S. troops shot at their vehicles,

In the incident near Fallujah, three SUVs of the European Landmine Solutions, a British-based private contractor, were hit by gunfire, according to an American engineer with the firm, David Rasmussen, who was hospitalized with wounds.

Asked where the shots came from, Rasmussen replied: “from the USA.”

The Iraqi security guard traveling with the convoy, Laith Yousef, gave the same account.

“We were the target of an attack by the Americans,” Yousef said. “They shot at our car. The translator burned to death in the car. A man with us was killed. He was going to get married next week.”

Also near Fallujah, Iraqi civilians reported a roadside bombing Saturday night in the town of Khaldiyah. They said several U.S. soldiers appeared to have been wounded; the U.S. command had no immediate information.

In the Bulgarian capital Sofia, the Foreign Ministry said it had asked its diplomatic staff to leave Baghdad and move to Amman, citing “the current priorities of our diplomatic mission.”  The Bulgarian newspaper Trud said the decision was taken because of threats of terrorist attacks.

The newspaper said the 50 Bulgarian citizens in Baghdad had been advised to leave, too. Bulgaria has about 480 troops in Iraq as part of the U.S.-led mission.

The first thing Anne Roesler does every morning is check the Internet for news of the 82nd Airborne.

It’s the same anxious routine followed by thousands of American parents with children stationed in Iraq. But with Roesler there’s one major difference:

She passionately opposes the war fought by her son, an Army staff sergeant with the 82nd Airborne Division.

Thousands of peace activists, many carrying placards, march up Pennsylvania Avenue toward the U.S. Capitol building, during an anti-war demonstration in Washington, October 25, 2003. REUTERS/Gregg Newton

If most military parents are consoled by “support our troops” patriotism, Roesler and others opposed to the U.S. occupation say theirs is a special isolation.  Yes, they support the troops. But when they oppose the war, some people question not just their loyalty to their country, but also to their children.

Roesler was communicating with other Bay Area military parents until the war started. “And then several of them felt that we had to close ranks (and support the Bush administration) because that was what patriotism was all about,” Roesler said. “And I said, ‘Absolutely not. That’s not what patriotism means to me.’“

On Saturday, Roesler will join a contingent of military parents in an anti-war march in San Francisco.

Demonstrations are drawing energy from parents and spouses who go to the mailbox each morning hoping to see a letter from Iraq, and go to bed each night dreading a knock at the door.

In recent months, hundreds have joined organizations like Military Families Speak Out and the newly formed Bring Them Home Now. Several parents have publicly shared the demoralization, fear and concern gleaned from letters and calls from their children in Iraq.  A Pennsylvania mother made headlines in September by shopping for body armor for her son after hearing that the Pentagon wouldn’t be able to supply every soldier with updated vests until December.

Yet the moral authority that the voice of the military parent lends to the peace movement comes with a price.

“There is a social pressure not to speak out,’’ said Judith Ross, a 57- year-old San Franciscan with a son in the Marines. She is organizing a contingent of families for Saturday’s demonstration, but like many military parents, she asked that her son’s name not be used so backlash about her activism wouldn’t touch him.

At one Washington, D.C., demonstration earlier this year, a man approached Military Families Speak Out co-founder Charley Richardson and told him, “You’re a disgrace to your son,’’ Richardson said.  He was carrying a sign reading, “Our son is a Marine. Don’t send him to a war for oil.”

Asked how his son feels about his activism, Richardson said, “We don’t speak for him, but he supports our right to speak out.”

In Saratoga, Roesler also asks that her son’s name not be used. But otherwise, her heart races and mind wanders just like any other parent with a child in combat.

Anxiety nearly paralyzed her from the moment her 25-year-old landed in the Middle East in February until the first time he called her in June.

Her son is not a letter-writer; the only note he has sent was scribbled on the back of an MRE box shortly before the U.S. invasion in March. Roesler began sobbing as she recalled the few lines on the back of the makeshift postcard.

“He just said, ‘I’m OK, I’m going to be OK, I’ll be home soon,’ “ Roesler said. “But I live in fear of getting that knock on the door. I don’t know what my life would be like without him, but I refuse to believe that anything bad is going to happen to him.”

The 50-year-old Roesler grew up in a military family. Her father was wounded in World War II, and her grandfather fought in World War I. Now, however, her home office is covered with peace banners, bumper stickers and a photo of her son in uniform.

When her son said he wanted to join the military, she wasn’t happy and she told him so. He didn’t need money for college, but felt he needed to have more structure and discipline in his life.

Eventually, Roesler understood that and respected his reasons for enlisting. Likewise, she said, her son respects her activism; he has since he was in the fifth grade. That’s when somebody asked him what his mother did for a living. He responded, “She wants to save the world.”

“And it’s become a family joke since then,’’ Roesler said. “Everybody says I want to save the world.”

Lately, she says, she’s noticed a change in her son in the phone calls she gets from him every five weeks or so.  He’s been having tea with Iraqi families, trying to understand their culture and the source of the differences between the United States and Iraq.

He’s told his mother that after his hitch is over in 2007, he wants to return to the Middle East as a civilian to help the two cultures understand each other better and “prevent all this miscommunication that leads to war,” Roesler said.

Jane Bright’s son joined the military three years ago for many of the same reasons as Roesler’s son. The discipline. The structure. A natural leader,

Evan Ashcraft was promoted quickly, rising to the rank of sergeant in the 101st Airborne Division.

A year ago, his mother began attending anti-war demonstrations in Los Angeles, where she lives, hoping to keep the war from starting and stop her son from being sent to fight it.

When she failed and Ashcraft was sent overseas, she continued to lobby to bring American soldiers home. Mother and son never discussed her protests; she didn’t want her son to feel that she disagreed with what he was doing.

On July 24, the Jeep in which Ashcraft was riding was ambushed by a grenade attack. Ashcraft died instantly, leaving behind his wife of three years. He was supposed to come home this month.

A few weeks after Ashcraft’s death, the military sent home the contents of his pockets to his wife. “I don’t want to know what was in there,’’ Bright said. “I can’t. It’s too poignant.”

Instead, she will honor his memory by continuing to speak out against the war that killed her son. No matter what other people say to her.

“To me,” Bright said, “supporting the troops means bringing them home now.‘’

What do you think?  Comments from service men and women, and veterans, are especially welcome.  Send to the E-mail address up top.  Name, I.D., withheld on request.  Replies confidential.

Captain Christopher Cirino of the 82nd Airborne was trying to explain to me the nature of the attacks so regularly carried out against American forces in the Sunni Muslim Iraqi town. His men were billeted in a former presidential rest home down the road – “Dreamland”, the Americans call it. “The men we are being attacked by,” he said, “are Syrian-trained terrorists and local freedom fighters.” Come again? “Freedom fighters.” But that’s what Captain Cirino called them – and rightly so.

Here’s the reason. All American soldiers are supposed to believe that Osama bin Laden’s “al-Qa’ida” guerrillas, pouring over Iraq’s borders from Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia
are assaulting United States forces as part of the “war on terror”. Special forces soldiers are now being told by their officers that the “war on terror” has been transferred from America to Iraq.. Note too how the Americans always leave the Iraqis out of the culpability bracket – unless they can be described as “Baath party remnants”, “diehards”
or “deadenders” by the US proconsul, Paul Bremer.

Captain Cirino’s problem, of course, is that he knows part of the truth.

Ordinary Iraqis – many of them long-term enemies of Saddam Hussein – are attacking the American occupation army 35 times a day in the Baghdad area alone. And Captain Cirino works in Fallujah’s local police station, where America’s newly hired Iraqi policemen are the brothers and uncles and – no doubt – fathers of some of those now waging guerrilla war against American soldiers in Fallujah.  Some of them, I suspect, are indeed themselves the “terrorists”.

No wonder morale is low. No wonder the American soldiers I meet on the streets of Baghdad and other Iraqi cities don’t mince their words about their own government. US troops have been given orders not to bad-mouth their President or Secretary of Defence in front of Iraqis or reporters (who have about the same status in the eyes of the occupation authorities).

But when I suggested to a group of US military police near Abu Ghurayb they would be voting Republican at the next election, they fell about laughing. “We shouldn’t be here and we should never have been sent here,” one of them told me with astonishing candour. “And maybe you can tell me: why were we sent here?”

Sometimes, the evidence of low morale mounts over a long period. In one Iraqi city,
for example, the “Coalition Provisional Authority” -which is what the occupation authorities call themselves – have instructed local money changers not to give dollars for Iraqi dinars to occupation soldiers: too many Iraqi dinars had been stolen by troops during house raids.

The daily attacks on Americans outside Baghdad – up to 50 in a night – go, like the civilian Iraqi dead, unrecorded.  Travelling back from Fallujah to Baghdad after dark last month, I saw mortar explosions and tracer fire around 13 American bases – not a word of which was later revealed by the occupation authorities.

At Baghdad airport last month, five mortar shells fell near the runway as a Jordanian airliner was boarding passengers for Amman.  I saw this attack with my own eyes. That same afternoon, General Ricardo Sanchez, the senior US officer in Iraq, claimed he knew nothing about the attack, which – unless his junior officers are slovenly – he must have been well aware of.

FORT STEWART, Ga. – Spc. Joseph Eason came to Fort Stewart for medical treatment in August after leaving Iraq with five metal shards lodged in his lower body from a mortar round.

Eason, a citizen-soldier in the Florida National Guard, says he would prefer to go home and let a civilian physician treat his wounds.  But that’s not an option as long as he remains on active duty.

Instead, he’s spent the past two months living in spartan concrete barracks at Fort Stewart, where he says his treatment has amounted to one doctor appointment, a visit to a physician’s assistant and one physical therapy session.

“The medical care here, in my personal opinion, I feel is substandard if any,” said Eason, 35, from Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.

Reports that sick or injured reservists complained of long waits for health care and uncomfortable housing put the Army on the defensive Monday.

Col. Joe Barthel, commander of Winn Army Hospital at Fort Stewart acknowledged that the wait for orthopedic procedures is six weeks and “we like to keep that below four weeks. … Our other surgical services are two to three weeks.”

There are 633 National Guard and Army Reserve troops on what the Army calls “medical hold” for treatment of injuries or illnesses at Fort Stewart, with problems ranging from sprained ankles to war wounds.

The citizen-soldiers aren’t considered sick enough for hospitalization, so they stay in the same minimal barracks, some without air conditioning or private bathrooms, used by healthy reservists.

Spc. Chris Rinchich, an Army Reservist from Myrtle Beach, S.C., says he’s waiting for knee surgery after tearing a ligament in his left knee in Kuwait in May. He said he doesn’t expect to leave Fort Stewart until next summer.

“It’s pending. I’m on a waiting list, I heard,” said the 21-year-old Rinchich, who spent last summer in a cement-block barracks without air conditioning.

Cadence Count

Vets For Peace NY City

Dubya’s lies should make him choke

He must still be snortin coke

Saddam’s secret poison gas

Must be stashed up Rumsfeld’s ass

We’re veterans against the war

We know what we’re marchin for

Bring the troops back to our soil

We say no more blood for oil

The top brass of the South Dakota Army National Guard met with family members of the local 842nd Engineer Co. at a recent support meeting.

Adjutant General Michael Gorman said he wanted to help – to answer questions, put certain fears to rest, to thank the heroes behind the soldiers and to garner support for the men and women in Iraq.

“We’ve had our ups and downs here lately,” Gorman told the 50-some family members of the 842nd gathered at the Donald E. Young Center. “We were pushing for news (of their return), … We got it, but it wasn’t the news we wanted.”

The communiqué Gorman was referring to was the “one-year boots on the ground” deployment time frame that was communicated to him via the Washington Post Sept. 6.

For the 150 members of the National Guard unit of Spearfish, Sturgis and Belle Fourche, June 3 was the first day they were on the ground in the Iraqi-Southwest Asia theatre.

“If that’s the case, is June 3 (2004) the date they’ll be home?” one of the soldiers’ wife asked.

“I don’t know,” Gorman replied. “I’ve been told one year boots on the ground. … Let’s see what happens to the April guys (another South Dakota unit that deployed earlier).  If they aren’t (back according to the terms U.S. Central Command outlined) there’ll be some mad tags on the ground.”

“And what’s the chance of their time being extended over a year or the chance of them being home by June 4?” asked another.

“One would be good, one would be bad,” he said.  ”I’m holding those guys (at Central Command) to it,” Gorman said.  (Gee, that must be the talent it took to be a general.)

Currently, the 842nd is stationed at the Baghdad International Airport.  Families questioned the general about rumors that the 842nd was moving its command post and mobile barracks elsewhere in Iraq. “They are not going anywhere. They are just changing missions,” he said.  ”The new site is just a short drive, a slight commute outside the airport proper.”

High on the general’s list of priorities is communication from Southwest Asia to home. It is their biggest frustration, family members told Gorman. The group described the difficulties communicating via the Internet and the intermittent cell phone and satellite phone usage, not to mention the cost.

The general listened. “I’m going to try to attack this from the top,” he said. “We are working on these things for you.”  (Sure you are.)

Repeated noisy demonstrations and picket lines by veterans groups to prevent the Department of Veterans Affairs from taking steps that could lead to the closing of the V.A. Medical Center on 23rd St. and First Ave. appear to be paying off.

Representative Carolyn Maloney said this week that V.A. Undersecretary Robert Roswell indicated in a face-to-face meeting with her in Washington on Friday that he agreed that the 350-bed hospital was an important health resource for veterans.

“He made a point of saying that he would recommend keeping the hospital open,” said Maloney. “He agreed that it was a top-quality hospital with important connections to research and education organizations like the Rusk Institute for Rehabilitative Medicine and New York University Medical Center.”

Roswell also recognized that the V.A. hospital has superior accessibility for veterans throughout the city, Maloney said.

“I’m going to continue to urge the V. A. Secretary Anthony Principi to keep all the services at the hospital until the final decision is made,” Maloney said.

Maloney met with Roswell on Oct. 17 with Representative Joseph Crowley, whose district includes parts of Queens and the Bronx, to plead on behalf of the 1.3 million Armed Services veterans in the region.

A V.A. commission is reviewing plans to restructure the department’s healthcare that could involve the closing of several hospitals around the country, including the Manhattan facility. The department is contemplating the transfer of all inpatients to the V.A. hospital in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, and the transfer of many special services to hospitals in East Orange, N.J., the Bronx and Brooklyn.

A City Council hearing on Sept. 16 convened by Council member Margarita Lopez attracted veterans from World War II, Korea, Vietnam and the Gulf War who denounced the potential closing of the hospital.

Veterans and politicians have mounted protests outside the hospital against its possible closing.  The most recent, last Saturday, was organized by John Penley, a Vietnam veteran and East Village activist.

WASHINGTON, Oct. 20 (UPI) — The Army said Monday it is sending doctors to Fort Stewart, Ga., to help hundreds of sick and injured soldiers, including Iraq veterans, who say they are waiting weeks and months for proper medical help.

Many of the Army Reserve and National Guard personnel in “medical hold” at the base are living in steamy cement training barracks that they say are unacceptable for sick and injured soldiers.

On Friday, United Press International reported that the soldiers were languishing in hot cement barracks here while they wait — sometimes for months — to see doctors. They have to walk to a nearby latrine.

Steve Robinson, a veterans advocate with the National Gulf War Resource Center who visited the barracks last week, said Monday he was glad the Army acted.

“When you’re dealing with people who are in a marketplace looking exactly like everyone else, and are pulling a weapon out, or are controlling a place where someone is shooting at you out of second-story window with rocket-propelled grenade, you’ve got to back off one layer and say:  ’How did that grenade get there? How did those people arrive at the places they were?’”

United Nations – The United Nations has suspended operations in four southern Afghan provinces due to increasing violence and concerns that aid workers could be seen by local militants as targets, a top UN official has announced.

Guehenno said the insecurity came from extremist attacks, factionalised government ministries and the weakening of the political compact that supports the provisional government.

He cited a tank battle between two rival Afghan factions earlier this month,

According to Guehenno, every border district in the country except one has been labeled “high risk” by the UN security co-ordinator.

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