GI SPECIAL 3C94:
HOW MANY MORE FOR BUSH'S WAR?
U.S. Army soldier 1st Lt Nancy Negron, left, is helped as
she hands a flower down to a worker to place on the coffin of her late husband,
fellow U.S. soldier Lt Carlos Diaz, at his burial in Yauco, Puerto Rico, Aug.
31, 2005. Diaz was killed two days earlier in a bombing attack in Iraq. (AP
Photo/Brennan Linsley)
2,000 Gone;
Asshole Military Spokesman Dismisses Importance;
Just An "Artificial Mark On The Wall"
October 25, 2005 TheKansasCityChannel & AP
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- The U.S. military has announced the
death of an American soldier who was wounded in Iraq.
That brings the U.S. death toll to 2,000.
The toll compiled by The Associated Press reached 2,000
with the death of an Army sergeant who was wounded by a roadside bomb north of
Baghdad. He died last weekend in Texas.
Staff Sgt. George Alexander of Killeen, Texas, was
wounded last week in Samarra, north of Baghdad. He was based at Fort Benning
in Georgia.
As for the 2,000 death, military spokesman Steve Boylan said
"It is an artificial mark on the wall set by individuals or groups with
specific agendas and ulterior motives."
"LETS NOT GIVE IN TO THEM"
"LET ALL THE TROOPS REST IN PEACE"
[This is a message
to Americans from Rose Gentle received today. Her son was killed in Iraq. She leads a campaign to bring all the Scots and other troops home from Iraq, now. T]
From: Rose Gentle
To: GI Special
Sent: October 25, 2005
Subject: its hard
2OOO, TROOPS KILLIED GOD WHEN
WILL THIS STOP
ALL I CAN SAY TO AMERICA,
IS WE ARE THINKING OF YOUS
I AM FEELING SO SAD TO DAY,
WHEN I LOOK AT THE PHOTOS
OF ALL THE ONES THAT HAVE
GOT KILLIED, JUST FOR LIES,
I WOULD LOVE TO GET A
HOLD OF BUSH, AND BLAIR, AND
GIVE THEM HELL, WE WILL
SOON GET TO 100, I HOPE
WE NIVER GET TO IT , BUT WE
ALL KNOW WE WILL
THINKING OF YOUS ALL, LETS
NOT GIVE IN TO THEM.
LET ALL THE TROOPS
REST IN PEACE,
ROSE X
IRAQ WAR REPORTS
Four, Not Two, U.S. Troops Killed Friday At Al
Amariyah
HEADQUARTERS UNITED STATES CENTRAL COMMAND NEWS RELEASE
Number: 05-10-34C
CAMP FALLUJAH, Iraq Two Marines assigned to Regimental
Combat Team 8, 2nd Marine Division, II Marine Expeditionary Force (Forward),
were killed in action while conducting combat operations against the enemy when
their vehicle was attacked with an improvised explosive device near al Amariyah
on Oct. 21.
These two Marines are in
addition to those announced in Combined Press Information Center press release
#A051022e, Oct. 22. Due to the circumstances of the incident, positive
identification could not be made in time for earlier reporting. The attack
killed a total of four service members.
In addition, the initial release erroneously states that
two Marines had died. Further review shows that they were a Marine and a
Sailor.
Final Bradley Crew Members Identified
Oct. 25, 2005 BY MICK WALSH, Staff Writer, Knight Ridder
Newspapers
After watching the invasion of Baghdad on television in
2003, then 28-year-old Jeffrey Corban chose to give up a promising career in
retail sales to join the Army and participate in the war on terrorism.
He was to give up a lot more than that.
Spc. Corban and four of his team members were killed Oct. 15
when an enemy's rocket-propelled grenade exploded inside their Bradley Fighting
Vehicle.
It would be days before officials could identify the bodies.
"They were 99 percent sure when I was notified the
evening they were killed," his wife, Joy Ellen Corban, said. "Due to
the condition the bodies were in, they couldn't be 100 percent certain."
A graveside service for Corban, a resident of Elkhart, Ind.,
is scheduled today at 1 p.m. at the Main Post Cemetery. Visitation will be
held at McMullen Funeral Home from 10 a.m. to noon.
Corban died along with fellow Bradley soldiers Staff Sgt.
Vincent Summers, Spc. Richard A. Hardy, Spc. Thomas H. Byrd and Spc. Timothy D.
Watkins. The five were members of the 2nd Battalion, 69th Armor Regiment,
which is attached to the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Marine Division, II
Marine Expeditionary Force (Forward).
Corban probably didn't have to be in Iraq. His enlistment
test scores were high, but he chose the Infantry over other options, said his
wife. And he had to overcome two knee surgeries, a stress fracture and
subsequent shoulder surgery just to gain clearance to rejoin his battalion.
"He wasn't a quitter," Joy Ellen Corban said.
"The Army was hard on him, physically. But it didn't deter him from going
to Iraq."
His shoulder surgery kept him from leaving in January with
the rest of the 2-69. But in March, he rejoined his unit, which at the time
was stationed in Baqouba with the rest of the 3rd Brigade Combat Team.
In mid-July, the 2-69 was attached to the Marines in the
Ramadi area.
"And they've been paying the price ever since,"
Joy Ellen said.
The couple would have celebrated their ninth wedding
anniversary on Christmas Eve.
Staff Sgt. VincentSummers
Summers' funeral is Saturday at 2 p.m. in Killeen, Texas,
the home of Fort Hood. His burial, with military honors, will follow at the
Killeen City Cemetery.
A native of Detroit and an Army veteran of 18 years, Bradley
commander Summers was on his third deployment to Iraq, having served in Desert
Storm and in Operation Iraqi Freedom I in 2003.
"He was Army all the way," said his mother-in-law,
Brenda Williford, who is staying with Summers' widow, Melissa, 33, and the
couple's 7-year-old son, Preston.
Out of uniform, Summers, 38, enjoyed racing
remote-controlled trucks. "He was passionate about a lot of things,"
Williford said. "But that was his latest passion."
Summers and Melissa, a native of Killeen, had been married 8
1/2 years.
Spc. Richard A. Hardy
Funeral arrangements also have been completed for Hardy. He
will be buried Friday in St. Stephen's Catholic Cemetery in Bolivar, Ohio,
after a funeral Mass at the Church of the Holy Trinity in nearby Zoar.
A graduate of Timken High School in Canton, Ohio, Hardy, 24,
was on his second tour of duty in Iraq when he was killed.
Hardy's father Rick, who lives in Dennison, Ohio, told a
Canton, Ohio, newspaper that his son's favorite pastime was riding dirt bikes.
"He was all over the place," his father said.
"The other thing was barbecue. Every time he came home, he had to have a
barbecue. He said it beat the MREs (meals ready to eat). He said there was
nothing like a home-cooked meal."
Richard Lebold, owner of the Lebold Funeral Home in
Bolivar, which is handling arrangements, said, "I believe he is the first
boy from the county to be killed in action. We are expecting two to three
hundred people for the funeral."
Spc. Thomas H. Byrd
Mykel Byrd, Spc. Byrd's widow, spent Monday making
arrangements for her husband's funeral in their hometown of Tucson. The two
were high school sweethearts at Santa Rita High School, Tucson.
A memorial service for the soldiers is tentatively scheduled
for 11 a.m. Thursday at the Kelley Hill Chapel.
Four Mercenaries Killed At Ramadi
Oct 25, 2005 By DPA
Baghdad - Four foreign nationals believed to be U.S.
security staff were killed by a roadside bomb targeting a convoy close to the
western Iraqi city of Ramadi, police said Tuesday.
Police said the bomb detonated at midnight, completely
destroying one vehicle. U.S. troops immediately sealed off the region and
arrested 11 suspects.
U.S. Patrol Targeted In Baghdad:
Casualties Not Announced
Smoke rises from the site of a car bomb blast targeting a
joint U.S. military and Iraqi police patrol in Baghdad October 25, 2005.
(Ceerwan Aziz/Reuters)
REAL BAD PLACE TO BE:
BRING THEM ALL HOME NOW
U.S army soldiers stand in the sand while waiting for a
helicopter landing at Forward Operation Base Ramagen in Tikrit, Iraq, October
23, 2005. (Jorge Silva/Reuters)
TROOP NEWS
Majority Of Americans Now Say Iraq War Wrong Thing To
Do
10.25.05 AFP News
For the first time, a majority of Americans believe the
Iraq war was the "wrong thing to do", according to a poll published
in The Wall Street Journal.
In the Wall Street Journal poll, 53 percent of those
surveyed said they felt that "taking military action against Iraq was
the... wrong thing to do", against 34 percent who thought it was correct.
The percentage of people opposing the US-led invasion of
the country in March 2003 was up from a figure of 49 percent in a parallel poll
in September, rising above 50 percent for the first time since the surveys
began.
With the number of US
military fatalities in Iraq approaching 2,000, 44 percent of those polled said
the situation for US troops in Iraq was getting worse, compared to 19 percent
who thought it was improving.
Sixty-one percent were not confident US policies in Iraq
would succeed, two points higher than in September.
The latest poll also found that 66 percent of Americans
believed President George W. Bush was doing a "poor" or "only
fair" job of handling Iraq, against 32 percent who deemed it
"excellent" or "pretty good".
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.
U.S. Armed Forces Incapable Of Fighting Insurgencies:
The Good News;
Useful In Natural Disaster Work
Oct 25, 2005 (Reuters)
Western military powers are being forced to rethink strategy
because conflict in Iraq has shown the limits of their conventional armies, the
International Institute of Strategic Studies said on Tuesday.
In its annual report on global military might, "The
Military Balance", the London-based think-tank said strategists had hoped
new technology would let them target enemies accurately from ships and planes,
avoiding protracted ground battles.
But it said conventional armies have been sucked into
messy conflicts, often in towns, where they face enemies invulnerable to the
advanced gadgetry that was supposed to dissipate the fog of war and herald a
new era in warfare.
"Iraq, Afghanistan and Chechnya demonstrate the
limitations of modern conventional forces in complex environments that demand
more of them than traditional warfighting," wrote Editor Christopher
Langton in the introduction.
"The conflict environment of the early 21st century
certainly does represent a new era in warfare: but not the era that Western
military planners expected," it said in its handbook which lists the size
and capabilities of the world's armed forces.
The institute said one bright spot for Western
conventional armies was that they were still unrivalled in their ability to
respond quickly to natural disasters, such as the Tsunami.
Bush Regime Opposes More Pay For Reservists;
Tells Another Stupid Lie
October 25, 2005 By Rick Maze, Army Times staff writer
One hundred members of Congress have written the House
Appropriations Committee asking it to stand fast in the face of a veto threat
over pay-gap legislation for mobilized reservists who work for the federal
government in their civilian lives.
The letter, organized by Rep. Tom Lantos, D-Calif., asks the
House committee to support a Senate-passed provision to the 2006 defense
appropriations bill requiring the federal government to make up any difference
in military and civilian salaries when federal workers are mobilized for
National Guard or reserve duty.
The Bush administration opposes that idea, saying it
would be bad for the morale of active-duty members to have the government
provide more pay to some federal workers.
[These silly assholes want people to think that a regular
army soldier is going to foam at the mouth because a reservist who is called up
and loses his civilian pay, can't support her family, can't pay the mortgage,
and risks financial ruin, could get some financial help.
[These silly assholes don't have the slightest
understanding of anything about military service. Every active duty troop who
sees that reservists or Guard members will get some help will be absolutely
delighted, because after finishing active duty, they may end up in either the
Guard or reserves, and will see that they too will get help if called up.
Duh! Bush has billions to shovel out to his war-profiteer friends like
Halliburton, but when it comes to a few dollars for called up troops in financial
hardship, they have one simple message: fuck 'em. The enemies are in
Washington DC, not Iraq.
[One of the best reasons to bring all our troops home now
is to help protect us from the people who run the government.]
The White House Office of Management and Budget has warned
that Bush may veto the defense funding bill if the provision remains in it.
"John Was Against This War But Did His Job"
Melanie House, of Simi
Valley, California, whose husband, Petty Officer 3rd Class John D. House, age
28, was killed in a helicopter crash near Ar Rutbah, Iraq, on January 26, 2005.
When he was over there,
he ultimately made his decision that America should not be there. He said he
saw many terrible things ... most of which he couldn't tell me about over the phone,
but that he would tell me when he returned (however, he never had the chance to
do so).
25 October 2005 By Scott Galindez, Truthout Special,
[Excerpt]
Melanie House, of Simi Valley, California, whose husband,
Petty Officer 3rd Class John D. House, age 28, was killed in a helicopter crash
near Ar Rutbah, Iraq, on January 26, 2005, speaks with t r u t h o u t.
t r u t h o u t: Please introduce our readers to John.
Melanie House: John was a devoted husband, a proud father
and a loving son and brother. He was the love of my life, my soul mate, and my
best friend. We met 11 years ago and literally grew up together. We were
married for 5 years.
John had a tough exterior, covered in tattoos, and loved
riding his Harley. However, he was a sweet, gentle, caring person who would
have done anything for a friend or loved one. He was the biggest Johnny Cash
fan in the world but loved so many different kinds of music. He loved to
barbeque with friends and family, go to the beach, play darts and spend time
with his wife. John had the best sense of humor ... sometimes seen as sarcastic
or dark ... but he always made people laugh.
And even though he acted pretty reserved on the outside, he
loved practical jokes and being silly with friends and family. He loved
working with his hands, either mowing the lawn or woodworking or even playing
horseshoes. He wanted nothing more in the world but to be a father, and family
was so important to him.
When we found out we were pregnant, he was the happiest man
alive and wanted to tell everyone he knew. He carried around pictures of the
ultrasound in his pocket with him everywhere he went.
He was an amazing corpsman (medic) and was highly respected
and well liked among sailors and Marines. Even though he was thought to be a
smart-ass at times he always did his job the best he could and gave 100%. "His
Marines" in Iraq meant the world to him, and he did everything he could to
make sure they were healthy and safe.
What kept him going while in Iraq was knowing that he would
meet his newborn son when he returned home.
John was against this war but did his job in the very
best way that he could. He saved Marines' lives, limbs and kept their spirits
up.
He never did get to meet his son, James Cash (named for Johnny
Cash) who was just 4 weeks old when John was killed.
We had dreams of travelling and having more children and
growing old together. My life will never be the same without him, and I will
never stop grieving for losing my soulmate. My heart is so broken without him.
TO: What about advice for families who have loved ones
considering joining the military?
MH: I completely support the troops and always have, and
always will.
However, I am concerned with President Bush lying to our
troops about our mission in Iraq and why we are in Iraq in the first place. Personally,
I wouldn't want my son to join ... although it is very honorable, and I am so
proud of my husband and all of the service members ... I just believe that our
troops aren't given proper equipment, training or preparation for war, nor the
truth about why we are at war.
TO: I remember your mother-in-law reading from a letter
from John - please tell us what John thought about the war ...
MH: After 9/11, John was very pro-war. But as time went on
and the American people started learning more about 9/11 as well as the reasons
why we were at war, he soon started questioning it.
After learning of Iraq having no weapons of mass
destruction and that there were no ties with Iraq to 9/11 he wanted to know why
we were at war.
This was before he even found at he was going to go.
Once he found out he had orders to Iraq, he struggled
with it tremendously because he wanted to do his job ... "take care of his
Marines"... however, he didn't know why people were dying in Iraq every
day (Americans, our allies and Iraqis alike).
When he was over there, he ultimately made his decision
that America should not be there. He said he saw many terrible things ... most
of which he couldn't tell me about over the phone, but that he would tell me
when he returned (however, he never had the chance to do so).
We were pregnant at the time and he said he didn't know how
to explain to our baby why he had to miss his birth and why he had to go to war
(and now ultimately, why he never got to meet our son).
What he did tell me about
Iraq was that when the weather got freezing, they didn't have cold weather
gear.
When his Marines needed
medicine, he didn't have it available.
When they were going on
patrols, they didn't have the proper equipment.
He felt like they were so unprepared for what they
encountered.
And he spoke to several Iraqis through interpreters and he
learned that the Iraqi people felt no safer nor that their country was any
better after America was there. He told me that when he got home, he wanted to
get involved with Operation Truth, so that he could speak out about what he saw
and went through over there.
Every letter he wrote to me included how he prayed for
peace and dreaded that more of his friends wouldn't come home alive. Ironically,
he didn't get to either.
Petty Officer 3rd
Class John D. House
The Short Life And Violent Death Of Sgt Chris Hickey,
1st Battalion, The Coldstream Guards
[Thanks to NB who sent this in. He writes: Read this
please - don't weep, only wonder how the lives of such men as this can be
sacrificed by such boobies.]
Suddenly, with his death,
Mrs Geary and other villagers have a face and person to put to the name and the
number of war dead. "It just brought it home," she said. "How
many more of our lads are going to die like this? They've done what they
wanted to do, and it's time that they brought them home, all of them. Let them
fight amongst themselves, but don't involve our lads any more."
23 October 2005 By Severin Carrell, Independent News &
Media (UK) Ltd.
Life was looking up for Christopher Hickey. He had a job
he loved, and family and friends who loved him. He was due to come home to
Britain tomorrow after his second tour of duty with the Coldstream Guards in
Iraq.
He would see Gemma, his wife of two years. He would be
nipping out for a pint with his mates at his old local. After closing time, he
might even get to the nearby Chinese restaurant for his favourite meal of
crispy duck, soy sauce and pancakes.
But all the things young men might have been and might
have done were frozen in time last Tuesday night when Chris Hickey walked into
trouble on a dusty street in Basra, southern Iraq.
Recently promoted to sergeant, he was on a routine patrol,
leading his 30-strong platoon through the streets of the city. Hickey pressed
on ahead of his men, reconnoitring a quiet street to ensure there was no
ambush. A bomb exploded. His men rushed to give Sgt Hickey first aid.
Medical workers battled to save him in a military
ambulance. A helicopter was scrambled to airlift him to the British military
hospital in Shaiba. During the flight, Sgt Hickey died from his injuries. He
was 30 years old.
But who was Christopher Hickey? What had taken him from
the streets of East Brierley, a picturesque village on the outskirts of
Bradford, with a chestnut-lined green, to the violent uncertainty of the
streets of Iraq? This is the story of Christopher Hickey, an unknown soldier
to all but the people of his home town.
As rain dripped from the eaves of the East Brierley cricket
club, Robert Spence sat on a bench last week and thought about his best
friend. In front of him were the Pennines, covered in a dense, grey sheet of
rain and low clouds. And beyond, the lights from cars as people hurried along
the M62 motorway.
Hunched against the cold, his face tense and tired, Spence
became more relaxed as he remembered old times and high jinks with his mate.
As kids, they used to run races over their neighbours' back gardens, vaulting
the hedges as parents shouted after them.
There was Hickey, the teenager, who used to try his best at
picking up girls in the area. "He never got very far, but he tried,"
said Robert. "To be fair, he was a scrawny little kid."
There was the Hickey he used to make illegal cocktails with,
by mixing Taboo with lemonade. And there was his dress sense. "He liked
owt with a zip," said Robert, shaking his head ruefully. "Bad for
zips, he were. If it had a zip on it, he would wear it, really bad jumpers
with zips."
He remembered other landmarks in his young friend's life:
the time he bought an ancient white BMW convertible, which he called his
"pimp mobile", a joke at his own expense on account of his failures
chatting up girls. That car, his friend said, was so ugly "it was
offensive".
He had other eccentric - and endearing - habits. He loved
yoghurt and rarely went anywhere without a pot in his pocket. He once provoked
fury among stuffier members of the cricket club by strolling over the ground's
pristine wicket one day, nonchalantly scoffing a yoghurt.
Remembering this made Robert grin. Speaking as if Hickey
were still alive, he said: "He's mad on yoghurt. Loves yoghurt ... On
several occasions, when we were out drinking, he would pull a yoghurt out and
just drink it, and get the rest out with his fingers. Yoghurt's good for you,
he would say."
Hickey "were the life and soul", Robert added.
"He had a wacky sense of humour; he were just funny, and as we got older,
his sense of humour just got worse. He knew everybody. It were weird. He was
always going to some wedding or some do or some birthday when he was home.
Everybody in the village knew him. If he didn't wash their cars, they just
knew him."
Although an unremarkable pupil with little interest in
school - he was disciplined on his first day at Whitcliffe Mount - Hickey
showed as remarkable a talent for entrepreneurship as he did for having fun.
As a boy, he was always looking to make a few quid. He
built up a thriving business washing his neighbours' cars on Saturday and
Sunday mornings, walking the streets with a bucket in one hand and a cigarette
in the other. He made up to #50 a week, which wasn't bad for a teenager 15
years ago. He also worked at an Italian restaurant, as a kitchen boy washing
dishes, and odd-jobbed.
Immediately after leaving school, Hickey tried several jobs,
including working as a mechanic. But he could not settle, and felt himself
drifting. He had seen schoolmates sliding into crime and drug abuse. One day,
he got up, got dressed, went to the local Army careers office and signed up.
For 22 years. He was serious. Like generations of his young countrymen,
Hickey joined the Army to find out about himself and find his own place in the
world.
"He thought if he stayed around here he would've ended
up getting into trouble," Robert said. "I never thought he would
make it in the Army. I thought he would be back, but when he passed out, me
and our mate Matthew went down for the passing-out parade, and he was one of
the best new recruits. He won an award for being fittest recruit or
something." All of Hickey's friends shared Robert's surprise and
misgivings about Hickey's new career. It seemed entirely out of character, the
disciplined, structured life of a Guards regiment was a long way from the
anarchic, irreverent and wacky Hickey they had grown up with.
Sam Metcalfe, another of his closest friends, said: "He
joined the Coldstream Guards, which was hilarious because I didn't think he
would last a minute. We never thought he'd make it. But it turned him around,
didn't it?" And now, looking back, it all fitted into place. Hickey
badly wanted to make it work. When he applied to the Army, he was too skinny.
The recruiting office told him he needed to put on weight, so he came home and
ate like a horse.
"I remember he wanted to join when he was 16 but they
told him he was too light, so he went away, put on half a stone and went back
when he was 17," said Robert. "He just loved it. He thrived on it.
He would come back and he was always the same Chris, but the stories he would
tell; how much he had enjoyed it."
Hickey's jump into adulthood and a new-found sense of
responsibility was also evident from his marriage to Gemma two years ago. He
had met her at a nightclub near Catterick training camp in North Yorkshire.
Brought up near the base, she had been prepared to move wherever he went,
embracing the upheavals and uncertainties of being an army wife. "She was
his life," Robert said. "She had packed up everything to move with
him. She would've gone wherever she wanted, and she was more than happy to
go."
With Gemma in mind, since she had never been to the United
States, the couple and Robert and his wife had planned their Christmas holiday
in Florida. Robert expects the trip to be cancelled. Gemma was too
grief-stricken to talk publicly about her husband's death last week.
There was only one topic his friends were unwilling to
discuss last week: the politics of the Iraq war, due chiefly to his parents'
strong wishes. Robert Spence's father, Kenneth, is adamant about that.
"That's one thing we do know for certain: that there's no political side
to this at all. He was a professional soldier. He went where he was told, and
he did his job, and was good at his job. His family don't want to put any
political slant on whether we should be there or shouldn't have been
there."
But the political background to Hickey's death was never
far from the conversation around the lager glasses in the snug at the New Inn,
where Hickey should have been enjoying a pint this week.
Chris Hickey's death has given life to a growing anti-war
sentiment among some people in the village, and increased resentment of Tony
Blair's government. This is a naturally Conservative neighbourhood, says
Joyce Geary, the popular landlady of the New Inn pub for the past 10 years.
Hickey was a regular at the New Inn, the hub of his social life in the village.
Suddenly, with his death, Mrs Geary and other villagers
have a face and person to put to the name and the number of war dead. "It
just brought it home," she said. "How many more of our lads are
going to die like this? They've done what they wanted to do, and it's time
that they brought them home, all of them. Let them fight amongst themselves,
but don't involve our lads any more."
Mrs Geary, trim and smartly dressed, with a ready smile, has
contempt for the Prime Minister and is derisive about his relationship with the
US President, George Bush. "He's like a lapdog isn't he? Wagging his
tail, just following Bush around. Everything he says 'Yes' to, and he's
sending our lads over there. If the Americans want to do it, let them get on
with it."
Sam Metcalfe agreed. "I have never encountered a lot of
death in my family. It's my first taste of grief. This is my first friend
who's died. It's not like he had an illness. We were expecting him home.
When you heard a soldier got killed, a month or two ago, you always feel it's
going to be someone else, not one of your mates. It's shite, really. You know
what I mean?
"I think it's a waste, because he's a hell of a good
mate of mine. But at the end of the day, Chris was doing his job: 'I've been
sent and I know what I have got to do.' Chris was a soldier through and
through."
The word "waste" crops up often, the waste of a
great friend. What his mates remember were his pranks and his pratfalls.
"People say once someone has been killed they grow
wings and they're suddenly special, but he actually were," added Sam.
"He was one of the best lads I've ever known. I never saw him fall out
with anybody. He got done for drink driving, but he could make that funny.
There wasn't a bad bone in his body."
IRAQ RESISTANCE ROUNDUP
GUESS WHAT HE'S THINKING
An Iraqi boy looks at a US soldier from the First Battalion,
17th Infantry in an alleyway as his platoon conducts a sweep in neighborhoods
close to downtown Mosul. (AFP/Cris Bouroncle)
Assorted Resistance Action
Iraqis watch the remains of a
suicide car bomb which exploded near a regional government ministry in a
predominantly Kurdish province of Sulaimaniyah, near Kirkuk, Iraq, Tuesday,
Oct. 25, killing at least nine people and wounding four, a security official
said.(AP Photo/Yahya Ahmed)
October 25, 2005 TheKansasCityChannel & YAHYA BARZANJI,
AP & By DPA & Reuters & AFP News
Police said a policeman in Baghdad and a policewoman in
Mosul were killed in drive-by shootings.
In Baghdad, insurgents used three bombs and five
shootings on Tuesday to kill a policeman - and wound 34 Iraqis, most of them
police officers, officials said.
A blast in Sulaimaniyah occurred on the outskirts of the
city right outside the ministry that houses Kurdish forces known as peshmerga.
It killed six peshmerga and three civilians and wounded two
peshmerga and two civilians, said Lt. Col. Taha Redha, a peshmerga
official.
About 45 minutes earlier, a car bomber rammed his vehicle
into a seven-car convoy carrying Mullah Bakhtiyar, a senior Kurdish official in
President Jalal Talabani's Patriotic Union of Kurdistan party, said police Col.
Najim Al-Din Qader. Bakhtayar was slightly injured
The blast in Sulaimaniyah city wounded two of the
convoy's guards and damaged two of its cars, Qader said.
Sulaimaniyah - the city and province have the same name - is
where the PUK party is based, and it is considered one of the most peaceful
areas of Iraq. [Not any more, right?]
The bodies of eight Iraqi border guards, blindfolded and
with their hands bound behind their backs, were found near the Saudi border in
western Iraq on Tuesday, police said.
RAMADI - Three corpses of Iraqi army soldiers wearing
civilian clothes were found in Ramadi. Doctor Hamdi al-Rawi from Ramadi
General hospital said the bodies had gunshot wounds to the head.
BAGHDAD - Two policemen were killed and another seven
wounded when gunmen ambushed a vehicle transferring prisoners in the western
Ghazaliya district of Baghdad, police said. It was not clear if there
were casualties among the prisoners. [Translation: the prisoners were
freed.]
Two security officials shot dead in the violent southern
neighborhood of Dura.
IF YOU DON'T LIKE THE RESISTANCE
END THE OCCUPATION
FORWARD OBSERVATIONS
"It's An Unreal, Unspeakable Pain"
25 Oct 2005 PRESS RELEASE: Vigil On Staten Island TOMORROW
To Mark 2000
US Troops Killed In Iraq, WAGE PEACE CAMPAIGN Co-Sponsored
by Gold Star Families for Peace, Iraq Veterans Against the War, and Military
Families Speak Out
"My husband who has served in the Army National
Guard for over 23 years and counting, serving and protecting our country, was
sent to Iraq for a year and a half where he lost many many friends and
comrades.
"Althouh he is home now, he will never be the same. For
the families of those soldiers lost in Iraq, it's an unreal, unspeakable
pain", said Debra Anderson, organizer of a weekly vigil at Staten Island's
Borough Hall - across from the Ferry Terminal.
"My Army Right Now Is Truly In Bad Shape"
"Problems Are Brewing"
19 october 2005 Interview with Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson,
Former US State Department Chief of Staff. New America Foundation American
Strategy Program Policy Forum. [Excerpt]
We may have to do that anyway because my army right now
is truly in bad shape - truly in bad shape.
And I'm not talking about the billions and billions of
dollars of equipment it's burning up in Iraq at a rate 10 or 15 times the rate
its life cycle said it should be burned up at, but I'm also talking about when
you have officers who have to hedge the truth, NCOs who have to hedge the truth.
They start voting with their feet, as they did in
Vietnam, my war.
They come home and they tell their wife they've got to go
back for the third tour and the fourth tour and the wife says, uh-uh, or the
husband says, uh-uh, and all of a sudden your military begins to unravel.
And the signs are very concrete right now that the Army
and the Marine Corps - to a lesser extent the other services because they're
not quite as involved in the deployments that we're talking about here and the
frequency thereof, the op tempo as we say it - problems are brewing. Problems
are brewing.
Wanted: Moral Avengers
Cindy Sheehan is a moral
avenger and those are rare in the public life of our time. This is our
misfortune.
October 17, 2005 by Samuel Bostaph, LewRockwell.com
The other day the editorial page of my local newspaper
included a letter to the editor expressing bewilderment at the continued media
coverage of Cindy Sheehan's speeches and actions. The letter writer accused
the media of an anti-war or anti-Bush bias, and said that it was time for Cindy
to return to obscurity.
It's not that time, and Cindy's not going. All you have
to do is look in her eyes and see the obvious sorrow, and the absolute
conviction that she is right to do what she is doing, to know why the
interviews and speeches will not stop.
This is also the reason why Cindy Sheehan continues to get
media coverage: Cindy is for real. She's not running a game like so many of
the other public figures who cluster about her in public meetings, basking in
the celebrity and looking for an opportunity to plump for their own rackets.
What the letter writer, and those who agree with him, fails
to see is the remarkable rarity and attractiveness of a public figure who is
not only intelligent and articulate, but also is possessed of an absolute
clarity and integrity of purpose.
Many interviews with Cindy Sheehan have been published since
she caught the attention of the media during her vigil in Crawford, Texas, last
August. There is a unifying thread among the longer ones: the reporters are
captivated by her. In the October 14 issue of LA Weekly, Judith Lewis classes
Cindy's charisma with that of Bill Clinton and Warren Beatty in an attempt to
explain Lewis's own attraction to a woman who possesses none of the artificial
glamour and studied poise that Hollywood and politics rewards with the
limelight.
Lewis is wrong about Cindy, just as she demeans her subject
with the comparison.
Cindy Sheehan's honest face and the depth of her sincerity
simply break through the skepticism of those who interview her. Prepared
through long experience to be both user and used in the game of politics and
public advocacy, and jaded by that past experience, they succumb to her basic
humanity.
They also know that George Bush can't answer the question
Cindy Sheehan puts to him.
All of his past excuses for the war and occupation have
fallen by the wayside, one by one. Bush's public speeches make it clear that
he doesn't know the answer; he lacks clarity himself. And if the President of
the United States cannot give a truthful and coherent explanation of why he
broke his oath to uphold and preserve the Constitution of the United States by
waging an undeclared war, then Cindy Sheehan speaks for all of us in demanding
that he bring our troops home so that no more pointless casualties will occur.
In what she has done, as overused as the term is now, this
lone woman has become a modern hero.
Her son's death may have been the spur for her demand
that George Bush explain his actions.
The fact that the most powerful man in the world can't do
it, and runs from her, is what keeps her in the news.
Cindy Sheehan is a moral avenger and those are rare in
the public life of our time. This is our misfortune.
Legal Nonsense:
The "War on Terror" Devoid Of Substance
October 13, 2005 An Interview with Prof. Francis Boyle,
J.D., Ph.D. [Excerpts. In the posting, LID is not identified, and no
publication source was given.]
Francis Boyle: Let's be clear about all this. Bin Laden
is our guy.
The Carter administration, as well as the Reagan people,
worked hand-in-glove with bin Laden and the CIA. That's where he and al-Qaeda
came from! As long as he was fighting the Soviet Union, he was "a freedom
fighter," part of the Mujahideen.
But once these Islamic warriors turned against the U.S.
and its view of the world - assuming that they ever believed it - they became
"terrorists" overnight.
These terms are devoid of
any substance. They are designed, quite simply, to squash dissent. We used to
throw around the term "Communist" a lot in the old days, even when
the accused were very far from being such. It was a convenient way of ridding
oneself of problems through the use of the smear technique.
LID: You mentioned that one of the real problems making
this war on terror so vague, so sweeping and so meaningless - to the point of
allowing it to encompass just about anything the Bushites want it to - is that
all the normal protections afforded to people on the opposite side of an armed
force can be twisted, manipulated, or just dispensed with.
FB: It's dehumanizing to Arabs, Blacks, Muslims, Asians,
Coloreds. We cannot forget the racist element of the war here, very much like
Vietnam.
In Vietnam, we had to dehumanize them in order to kill
them - so we called them "gooks."
Now instead of looking at these people as human beings,
with grievances and a cause that they have not made known to our people but
might like to, we call them "terrorists."
We dehumanize them in order to make it easier for the
American people to do terrible things to them that we otherwise would not be
doing in all likelihood. I doubt seriously that we would be treating white
Christians or white Jews this way.
These terrorists, as we call them, are throwaway people.
LID: On a side (but related) note, one of the pretexts
we have heard that was supposed to have justified our aggression in Afghanistan
is the phrase, "Afghanistan is a failed state." It
appears everywhere in the political literature on the subject and it seems to
say that, as a consequence, the norms of international law between one
sovereign State and another simply don't apply. Would you say that is
gibberish?
FB: Yes, it means nothing. It's just a category, a
description, pulled out of thin air and developed.
LID: The Afghans don't see things the way we do, so they
can be dismissed as a nonentity, right?
FB: Yes. In fact we were actually negotiating with the
Taliban government in