GI SPECIAL
4F17:
How Many More For Imperial War?
Minnesota Army National Guard Spc. Brent W.
Koch, 22, of Morton, Minn., died in Iraq on June 16, 2006, of injuries
sustained when an improvised explosive device detonated near his military
vehicle in Ad Diwaniyah, Iraq. (AP
Photo/Courtesy of the family)
“They Are Grumbling”
“They’re Over There Unhappy With What
Is Going On, Displeased With The Policy; And They’re Opposing The War”
June 15th, 2006 Democracy Now [Excerpt]
We speak with Peter Laufer, a Vietnam war
resister and author of the new book, "Mission Rejected: U.S. Soldiers Who
Say No to Iraq."
AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about
the number of men and women who have refused to go to Iraq to begin with or to
redeploy – or Afghanistan?
PETER LAUFFER: It's an incredibly important
question, Amy, and we really don't have any way to have a hard figure on that total.
But, anecdotally -- as I did
the research for the book and talked to one after another of these soldiers
rejecting the mission -- anecdotally, I would have to say the numbers are big
and growing because they talk to me about members of their unit who, even if
they're not overtly rejecting the war by disobeying orders, or going AWOL, or
deserting, or filing for conscientious objector status, they are grumbling.
They’re over there
unhappy with what is going on, displeased with the policy; and they're opposing
the war.
MORE:
“He And His Whole Platoon Don’t Want
To Go Back”
16 June 2006 By Medea Benjamin, Truthout
Interview [Excerpt]
Diane Wilson, a
founding member of CODEPINK, announced at the Mother's Day peace vigil in
Washington, DC, on May 14 that she was going on a hunger strike to bring the
troops home from Iraq and invited others to join her. The Troops Home Fast,
which will begin on July 4, has already attracted hundreds of supporters.
Medea: Do you have family members fighting in
Iraq?
Diane: I've got nephews there, and my
daughter's fiancé is a gunner who already served in Iraq and is about to be
sent back again.
He told me about the checkpoints, how they
once shot up an innocent family.
He's totally traumatized.
When I told him about the fast
idea, he encouraged me to do it.
He and his whole platoon don't
want to go back.
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 WAR REPORTS
Death Number 2500:
He Was More Than A Number
June 16, 2006 By John Hoellwarth, Army Times
staff writer [Excerpts]
The 2,500th member of the U.S.
armed forces killed since the war in Iraq began is a Marine from California,
the Defense Department announced today.
Cpl. Michael Estrella, of Hemet, was killed
June 14 during combat operations in Anbar Province, Iraq, the Defense
Department said.
A field radio operator by military specialty,
Estrella was assigned to India Company, 3rd Battalion, 3rd
Marines, at the time of his death. His
unit has been in Iraq since March.
Estrella was on his second combat deployment
when he was killed.
The U.S. suffered its 2,000th
casualty in late October, when statistical data showed that more than half of
the fallen were under age 25.
Estrella, at 20, had already earned the
Combat Action Ribbon, National Defense Medal, Afghanistan and Iraq Campaign
Medals, and the Global War on Terrorism Service Medal at the time of his death.
Injured Soldier
6.12.06 WEAU
An Eau Claire Memorial graduate and former
teacher is in a German hospital after being injured in a roadside bomb attack
in Iraq.
Petty Officer First Class Dean Berlin
suffered four cracked bones in his back, cracked bones in his neck and a broken
shoulder, according to his father, Cecil.
Cecil Berlin says his son is expected to be
transferred back to the United States Friday. At that time, he, along with
Petty Officer Berlin’s wife, Amy, and their four children will come to
visit after receiving the news late Monday.
“I could hardly understand him,”
Berlin’s father said. “I
asked if he was sick. He said there was
a problem. I said roadside bomb? He said
yes.”
Berlin’s wife and children currently
live in Rock Falls in Dunn county.
Eyewitness To Blast That Injured CBS News Team
June 8, 2006 Bucks County Courier Times
[Excerpt]
LANDSTUHL, Germany
Sitting in a hospital room at the large Army
Regional Medical Center here, Specialist Kenneth Snipes talks about what he
remembers of the car bomb that ripped through the convoy in which he was riding
in Baghdad last week.
The 22-year-old soldier from Lakeview, S.C.,
a member of the 112th Infantry out of Fort Hood, Texas, had been on convoy duty
before. It was routine, if one could
believe that there was anything routine about driving in a convoy in Baghdad.
Riding convoys is the most hazardous duty in
Iraq. Every convoy is a potential target
for the insurgents' roadside bombs.
Their IEDs (improvised explosive devices) are their major means of
inflicting casualties upon U.S. and coalition forces.
They lack the numbers and
firepower to stand and fight, so they use electronic devices to detonate lethal
bombs from afar as a convoy drives by.
[He gets it, unlike the idiots who yowl about cowardly Iraqis.]
Snipes remembers that the convoy had stopped
a couple of times, and soldiers had gotten out of the vehicles to check the
area.
On the last such stop, he later learned, a
nearby parked vehicle, apparently packed with explosives, was detonated. His back was toward the vehicle, about 20 or
25 meters away, when he heard the blast. He instinctively turned his head in
its direction and the explosion slammed into his face.
His mouth and nose were severely
damaged. He lost some teeth. He didn't want to be photographed. He had difficulty speaking.
He was not the only casualty.
Other soldiers were hit, two
members of a CBS-TV news team were killed and reporter Kimberly Dozier was
seriously injured.
REALLY
BAD IDEA:
NO MISSION;
HOPELESS WAR:
BRING THEM ALL HOME NOW
U.S. soldiers at the scene after a car bomb
exploded in Mosul, May 31, 2006. (Khaled al-Mosy/Reuters)
AFGHANISTAN WAR REPORTS
G.I. Sniper Found And
Killed
6.15.06 New York Daily
News
An Army sniper was discovered in his hiding
place and killed by enemy fighters in the rugged mountains of Afghanistan’s
Kunar province on the eve of a major U.S.-led operation to crush a Taliban
uprising.
Officials have not released the soldier’s
name but confirmed he was from the 10th Mountain Division at Fort Drum,
N.Y.
Assorted Resistance Action
June 16, 2006 By Jason Straziuso, Associated Press
& 14 June 2006, By Joan Smith. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer
On Friday, Taliban militants attacked a
coalition patrol in southern Uruzgan province, forcing troops to retreat to a
nearby compound to fire back with mortars and call in air support, said
coalition spokesman Maj. Quentin Innis.
No soldiers were hurt, although it was unclear whether there were any
casualties among the militants.
A coalition convoy also was ambushed in nearby Zabul
province but no casualties were reported, he said.
The Taliban are back. Less than five years after British and US
troops drove them out of Afghanistan, they are launching increasingly audacious
attacks, including an ambush of British troops in Helmand province last
weekend.
“The
Taliban Have Gone From Operating In Company-Size Units Of About 100 Men Last
Year To Battalion-Size Units Of About 400 Men This Year”
June 18, 2006 By Thomas E. Ricks, Washington Post
Staff Writer
As fighting in Afghanistan has intensified
over the past three months, the U.S. military has conducted 340 airstrikes
there, more than twice the 160 carried out in the much higher-profile war in
Iraq, according to data from the Central Command, the U.S. military
headquarters for the Middle East.
The airstrikes appear to have increased in recent
days as the United States and its allies have launched counteroffensives
against the Taliban in the south and southeast, strafing and bombing a
stronghold in Uruzgan province and pounding an area near Khost with 500-pound
bombs.
The airstrikes between early March and late May
concentrated on two areas -- the provinces of the south-central mountains that
are the Taliban's major redoubt and eastern Afghanistan near the border with
Pakistan, where al-Qaeda and its allies operate. But U.S. warplanes have also
hit targets near the capital of Kabul, near the main U.S. base at Bagram, and
near other major cities such as Jalalabad and Ghazni.
The attacks have been executed by aircraft ranging
from large B-52 bombers to small Predator drones, and have employed attacks
including 2,000-pound bombs and strafing.
Retired Army Gen. Barry McCaffrey, who
recently returned from a visit to Afghanistan, said the Taliban have gone from
operating in company-size units of about 100 men last year to battalion-size
units of about 400 men this year.
The enemy in Afghanistan is "adaptive" and
"very smart," Freakley said. One
tactic they have used lately to counter U.S. dominance in the air is to
withdraw, when fighting, into compounds where civilians are located, which has
resulted in civilian deaths in two sets of airstrikes near Kandahar.
The spate of recent civilian deaths caused by the
bombing has hurt the U.S. image in Afghanistan.
NEED SOME TRUTH? CHECK OUT
TRAVELING SOLDIER
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. http://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)
Big Surprise!
U.S. Occupation Relies On Local Rapists, Torturers
And Mass Murderers
6.16.06 Boston Globe
A sensitive United Nations
report that has been shelved for the past 18 months accuses leading Afghan
politicians and officials of orchestrating massacres, torture, mass rape and
other war crimes in the country over 23 years of conflict.
Human rights activists involved
in producing the report say that the international body has been worried about
identifying former warlords who are now in positions of power and who could
upset Afghanistan’s fragile political balance.
Among those identified in the report are an
ethnic Uzbek warlord whom President Hamid Karzai appointed as an adviser and
several former mujahideen commanders who were elected last fall to the
country’s new parliament
“They Do Not Have The Right To Shoot At
Afghans. Let Them Shoot At People In Their
Own Country, Not Here”
3.25.06 Socialist Worker (Canada)
“I don’t hate Canadians. But I cannot forgive them. You cannot come to our country and kill
us.”
These were the heart-rending words of Semen
Gul, grieving widow of Nasrat Ali Hassan, gunned down by Canadian troops in
Kandahar, Afghanistan.
“You say sorry” she
said to the journalist from the Toronto Star. “What does sorry mean to
me? Will sorry feed my children?”
This weekend the Toronto Star reported that
Nasrat Mi Hassan, a 45-year- old tin pot maker and father of six, was shot and
killed without warning by Canadian troops, while returning to his home in a
rickshaw with his family.
In the post-shooting spin control, military
officials played the terrorism card, telling the Globe and Mail that “. .
.former Taliban and other insurgents (were) eager to exploit any incident in
order to incite violence against coalition troops” and reiterating the
insulting racist notion that Afghanis were incapable of rebuilding their
country without western help.
To appease outraged Afghanis and Canadians
alike, the soldier who fired on Hassan and his family was removed from duty
pending investigation, and the death was antiseptically conveyed to the media
as “regrettable”.
Semen GuI, Hassans bereaved wife, made a
point of telling the Toronto Star that she did not think all Canadians were
bad. But in the midst of her anguish,
she asked hard questions: if “sorry” was going to feed her
children, and why troops were behaving as if all Afghanis were Al-Qaeda or
Taliban.
She maintained that if the Canadians had
given any kind of warning, the rickshaw driver would have stopped.
“They do not have the
right to shoot at Afghans. Let them
shoot at people in their own country, not here,“ she told the Star.
Tuesday March 14, Nasrat Au Hassan was
driving a motorized rickshaw coming back, with his family, from dinner at the
home of a relative in Kandahar, Afghanistan.
There were seven people packed in with him.
As it rounded a corner, in the black of
night, a Canadian-staffed road block was just 15 metres away. Somehow, the Canadians saw this rickshaw as a
threat, even though its top speed is a hardly threatening 20 kilometres per
hour.
The Toronto Star quoted
Hassan’s widow Semen Gul saying; “I lived for many years in
Iran. I know all about police
checkpoints. We were not stopped by the
Afghans. And there was no warning shot
from the Canadians, no shouting, no shots fired in the air, no light shining on
us. There was only this sudden gunfire,
three shots, and my husband falling out of the rickshaw into the street.”
There are conflicting reports
about what happened next. According to
one source, her husband lay bleeding to death on the street for 15 minutes,
while Canadian soldiers remained holed up behind the checkpoint. According to another source, a Canadian medic
did attend to the fallen man, but determined that his injuries were not
life-threatening.
All agree, however, that the
Canadians did nothing to get the wounded man to a hospital. He was taken there eventually, not by the
Canadian troops who had shot him, but by Afghan police.
TROOP NEWS
“When I Was In Iraq, We Were Killing
Innocent People For Oil”
“It Was Obvious They Didn’t Want Us
There”
Jun 18 By CAROLYN THOMPSON, Associated Press
Writer
A group of American military deserters
publicly embraced their new lives in Canada on Saturday with the support of “peace
mom” Cindy Sheehan, who said she wished the son she lost in Iraq was
among them.
“They’re trying to deport me,”
said Darrell Anderson of Lexington, Ky., who arrived in Canada by way of
Niagara Falls in January 2005. He spent
seven months in Iraq with the Army’s 1st Armored Division and
received a purple heart following a roadside bomb attack before deciding during
a leave he would not go back.
“When I was in Iraq, we
were killing innocent people for oil. It was obvious they didn’t want us
there,” said Anderson, 24, who is petitioning to remain in Canada.
The gathering at a park in the town of Fort
Erie, across the border from Buffalo, N.Y., was organized by peace groups on
both sides of the border.
“They say we’re
traitors, we’re deserters,” said former Marine Chris Magaoay, 20,
of the Hawaiian island of Maui.
“No, I’m a Marine
and I stand up for what I believe in, and I believe the Constitution of the
United States of America is being pushed aside as a scrap piece of paper.”
The soldiers thanked Canadians
for their hospitality and were cheered by about 100 in an audience that
included Iraq veterans opposed to the war and Vietnam-era resisters who sought
refuge in Canada decades earlier.
Sheehan, who energized the anti-war movement
last summer with her monthlong protest outside President Bush’s Texas
ranch, said she has spent time with many of the resisters.
“They’re moral human beings who
don’t want to go to Iraq and kill innocent people to line the pockets of
George Bush and the war machine,” she said.
Mission Rejected:
U.S. Soldiers Who
Say No To Iraq
06/15/06 Democracy Now! [Excerpts]
Jeremy Hinzman, a veteran of
the war in Afghanistan who fled to Canada to avoid fighting in Iraq; Aidan
Delgado, who became a conscientious objector after fighting in Iraq; and Camilo
Mejia, the first Iraq War veteran sent to prison for refusing to fight.
AMY GOODMAN: We begin with Jeremy
Hinzman.
JEREMY HINZMAN: Based on all the pretenses
and rationale that we – we, the U.S., gave for invading, none of them
held true.
And there were no weapons, there was no link
between the secular Baathists, Al Qaeda, and the fundamentalist Islamic
terrorists, and the notion of installing a puppet regime doesn’t really
sound like democracy to me.
And I just couldn’t bring myself to
kill or be killed for the sake of that.
AMY GOODMAN: Aidan Delgado.
AIDAN DELGADO: The idea to become an objector
before was kind of abstract, you know, ‘cause you’re not really a
soldier, you’re just going to these weekend drills. But then when you’re
in war and you’re seeing it face to face, it becomes much more immediate
and you just can’t ignore it anymore.
And, ultimately, I was at such ill ease and
so miserable in the conflict doing what I was doing, that ultimately I had to,
and that’s when I – I turned in my weapon and said, “take
this back. I want to become a
conscientious objector.”
AMY GOODMAN: Camilo Mejia.
CAMILO MEJIA: You see yourself in a situation
where you end up doing really, really bad things, and those are the kind of
things that soldiers who come home and, you know, they’re, you know,
they’re not missing any body parts – have to deal with. You know?
I mean, you see that soldiers come home and,
you know, they’re not physically injured and you think they’re fine
and you’re completely wrong. There’s
a lot of things that we have to deal with that people don’t even know
about, you know—things that we carry in our hearts and in our memory. And
a lot of times soldiers don’t deal with that for a long time, you know.
I see it happen too often, you know,
especially when you go to prison, and you start going to see counselors and
stuff like that, you know, they tell you without you even knowing it that you
had P.T.S.D. and, you know, other psychological problems that you didn’t
know you even had. And that’s one
of those things, you know?
I mean, you see yourself in a hostile
situation, you see somebody with a weapon and you shoot without asking
questions or anything, and next thing you know you just killed a child. You know?
Or, you know, you get into a firefight and
you shoot at the enemy, and then at the end, you see a lot of civilians who were
caught in the middle are dead, you know, and maybe the guys who started
shooting at you just got away.
So, it’s a lot of stuff that, you know,
you just question, you know. Once you have the time and, you know, you come to
terms with what you have done, it just haunts you. For some people it happens
soon, for some people it takes longer. But, you know, sooner or later, you’re
always accountable for your actions.
Straws In The Wind:
Glynn County, Georgia, Turns Against The War
[Thanks to D who sent this in.]
Jun 13, 2006 By JOE OVERBY, The Brunswick
News
Robert Randall of Brunswick and
other concerned Glynn County residents have decided enough is enough and want
American forces in Iraq to come home.
"A sizable amount of
people in Glynn County ... agree that we need to be getting out of Iraq,"
Randall said.
It is that opinion that prompted him and
others to organize GlynnPeace, a group pushing for an end to the war.
Randall said he hopes GlynnPeace can be an
outlet and voice for local opposition to the war.
"We're looking to become, how would you
say, a magnet for that sentiment to gravitate toward," he said.
The group opposes the war in Iraq on numerous
levels, including its cost in lives. The death toll has already topped 2,450,
and that's just American lives, he said. Upwards of 10,000 Iraqis have died.
There is also the monetary cost of waging
war, he said.
"It creates a situation where we're not
able to meet the human needs that exist within our own country," Randall
said.
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