GI SPECIAL 5J5:

"I’m Getting Dizzy Chasing The Enemy In Circles," He Said

"He Is Disillusioned With The Political Leaders Who Sent Them To Iraq"

"They Have Made Some Companies Into Fortune 500 Companies," He Said

"But Otherwise, We Have Just Put A Lot Of Flags On Coffins For What Will Inevitably Be Nothing But A Giant Mess"

October 6, 2007 By Alexandra Zavis, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer [Excerpts]

As the soldiers of the 5th Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment "Regulars" started dismantling their fighting vehicles and turning in their ammunition after 15 months in Iraq, suddenly there was time to start taking it all in.

"At least we made it alive," Staff Sgt. Mark Grover said quietly into his Dr Pepper.

For months, they were the strike force of the troop buildup, going in where the violence was at its worst, clearing up, moving on.  Every place they went, they were told it was the worst, but it never seemed to be that bad when their armored Stryker vehicles lumbered in with their menacing canons, antitank missiles and heavy machine guns.

Until they reached Baqubah, the city that Sunni Arab insurgents had named the capital of their Islamic caliphate.

On the battalion’s first run through the city, it was pounded at every turn with automatic-weapons fire, rocket-propelled grenades and roadside bombs.  By the end of the day, one soldier was dead, 12 were wounded and two vehicles had been destroyed.

"That kind of overwhelming show, we had never seen before," Oliver said. "So we pulled back, took a deep breath and realized, yeah, this AO really is that bad."

By the time the Regulars left Iraq in September, 21 of their 300 or so soldiers had been killed. About 50 were so badly injured that they never returned to the fight.

Their 3,700-strong 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, based at Ft. Lewis, Wash., lost 48 soldiers in all, and nearly 650 were injured.

Spc. Ryan Muessig sat stiffly in the back of a Stryker, convinced he was about to die.

The vehicle lumbered along darkened country roads before coming to a grinding halt on the edge of a sleeping suburb on the west side of Baqubah.  As the back hatch lowered, he adjusted his night-vision goggles, grabbed his rifle and assault pack and followed the squad into the night.

"I had this romantic vision of going to war that just doesn’t exist anymore, not in this kind of war," he said.

In the movies, he said, there was always a "band of brothers" going after the enemy with honor and glory.

But in Iraq, it felt like the enemy was always one step ahead, melting away before a major assault, only to strike back with even greater fury.

"I’m getting dizzy chasing the enemy in circles," he said.

Looking back on 15 months, moments of drama stand out: the three-minute gunfight that felt like an hour, the earth-shaking explosions that could flip a 20-ton Stryker, pulling friends from the fiery wreckage.

********************************

By late 2006, it was clear that the U.S. strategy wasn’t working.  The Stryker battalions were the first wave in a new approach, which commanders called "clear, hold and build."

It was exciting at first, but the luster of the offensive soon started to wear off.

Searching homes became its own mind-numbing Groundhog Day.  

And until the additional brigades started arriving, there often were insufficient forces to hold the areas they had cleared.

Spc. Chris Martin, a medic] sat on a camp stool, hunched over and sucking on a cigarette.

For most of the deployment, the 24-year-old medic from Nashville was the court jester of the platoon, always ready with a quick comeback and irreverent aside intended to shock.

But as he tried to pick his way through the jumble of conflicting emotions that built up over 15 months in Iraq, he became deadly serious.

Inspired by the television series "M*A*S*H," Martin joined the Army 3 1/2 years ago hoping to make a difference.

"I came here feeling I could do great things. Not just bring all my guys home . . . but do something for people," he said. "I failed."

His friends call him a hero for leaping onto a wounded soldier to shield him from gunfire. But he can think only about the men he could not save.

He believes, fervently, that his unit made a difference in Baqubah.

But he is disillusioned with the political leaders who sent them to Iraq.

"They have made some companies into Fortune 500 companies," he said. "But otherwise, we have just put a lot of flags on coffins for what will inevitably be nothing but a giant mess."

The one person who still inspires him is his girlfriend, who volunteers at an orphanage in Honduras.

"She is one of the last great people on Earth trying to do something to help," he said, softening. "She wants to go to Africa next, and I want to go with her . . . if she’ll have me."

After May 6, many in the 3rd Platoon said, they lost faith in everything they were doing except trying to keep one another alive.

IRAQ WAR REPORTS

Oklahoma Soldier Killed In Iraq

Sep. 27, 2007 The Associated Press

OKLAHOMA CITY --A decorated soldier from Harrah who was nearing the end of his career in the military is the latest Oklahoma casualty in Iraq, his family said Wednesday.

Staff Sgt. Kevin Brown, 38, died Tuesday in Muqdadiyah, Iraq, after an improvised explosive device detonated near his vehicle, the Department of Defense said.

Brown was assigned to the 6th Squadron, 9th Cavalry Regiment, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division, based in Fort Hood, Texas.  He was deployed to Iraq in October and had been with the unit since April 2006, Fort Hood officials said.

"He was looking forward to retirement, so he could be with his family forever," said his mother, Glenda Brown.  "My son also wanted to go fishing with his dad again."

A Cavalry scout, Brown joined the military in 1988, a year after graduating from Harrah High School. 

He was inspired to join the military by his father, Richard Haynes Brown, a senior master sergeant who retired at Tinker Air Force Base after 22 years of service, Glenda Brown said.

Kevin Brown’s birthday was coming up on Oct. 12, and the family had just sent him a birthday package the day he was killed, his mother said.

"He was fun to be around.  He always made you laugh," she said. "He had the bluest eyes in the world - bluer than the sky.

"He was never a grownup.  He didn’t smoke and he didn’t drink.  He was always a little boy at heart.  He loved to have fun."

Brown kept in contact with his family either by phone or e-mails, and they got to see him in February during a two-week leave, his mother said.

He didn’t talk much about Iraq, except to say he was doing his job, Glenda Brown said. It was his second time in Iraq, having also served a tour there in 2005, she said.

Kevin Brown earned the Army Good Conduct Medal, the National Defense Service Medal, the Korean Defense Service Medal and the Global War on Terrorism Service Medal, among others.

Besides his parents, Brown is survived by his wife, Lena, of Killeen, Texas; the couple’s daughters, Maria, 13, and Charlene, 14; a sister, Brandy Ross of Moore; and two stepchildren, Jeremy and Pamela.

A funeral will be held at the Brown family plot in Rineyville, Ky.

ENOUGH OF THIS SHIT;

COME ON HOME NOW

A U.S. soldier of Bravo company, 2nd Battalion, 17th Field Artillery Regiment during a patrol in the Zafraniya neighborhood in the southeast of Baghdad, September 20, 2007. (Carlos Barria/Reuters)

AFGHANISTAN WAR REPORTS

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

TROOP NEWS

Iraq Veterans Tell Congress "You Have Failed Us And You Have Blood On Your Hands"

"We The People Are Fed Up.  We The People Are Ready To Rise Up And Take Back Our Democracy"

[Thanks to Katherine G, Military Project, who sent this in.]

Sep 17, 2007 By Mike Ferner, mikeferner.org [Excerpts]  Mike Ferner is a member of Veterans For Peace and a writer from Toledo, Ohio.

Other demonstrations against the war in Iraq have been larger, but the one that happened in Washington, D.C. this [September 15] was significant in another way because of a very different feel about it.

Contingents of Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW ) http://www.ivaw.org and Veterans for Peace http://www.veteransforpeace.org lined up at the front of the march, sponsored by the International A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition, stepping off on Pennsylvania Avenue near the White House. 

One sight, never before seen in a protest march nor certainly any parade in the nation, was the IVAW "color guard." Geoff Millard, President D.C. Chapter of IVAW, dressed in full desert camouflage barked, "IVAW.  Fall in.  Columns of four." Immediately, to the front of the rows of veterans marched seven of their number, each holding erect a different flag.  

Following tradition, the U.S. flag was in the lead, except this time it was upside-down.  In a straight line followed six more flags, all black, each with a different corporate logo—one for Halliburton Corp., Bechtel Corp., Lockheed-Martin Corp., Blackwater Corp., CACI Corp., and Dyncorp Corp — all on the very short list of winners in this conflict. 

Making the color guard stand out even more prominently in grim relief, Carlos Arrendondo solemnly pulled a small, flag-draped casket on a carriage.  On the casket stood the oversized photograph of his son that accompanies him everywhere, and a pair of empty, desert combat boots that belonged to him before he was killed in Iraq.

The words spoken by the solemn-faced IVAW members were even more arresting than the visuals they carried. 

A young vet led a sing-song, call-and-response cadence familiar to soldiers everywhere.  The answers echoed off the houses of power and back to him.  "Who Are We?" "IRAQ VETERANS." "Whatta We Say?" "WAR IS NOT A GAME!"

A platoon of America’s finest young men and women, raised in a society that idolizes all things martial, indoctrinated during months of basic training, highly skilled as riflemen, tank operators, police, satellite communications operators and medics — proficient in every skill needed to run the world’s most powerful military, marched confidently down the main street of their nation’s capital, chanting "Troops Out Now. Iraq for Iraqis" and "No Justice, No Peace.  U.S. Out of the Middle East!"

Minutes later, the IVAW’s confident message came under attack as their front rank approached a thousand or so angry, screaming people calling themselves "A Gathering of Eagles," occupying three blocks of sidewalk reserved for them by police.  

Their snarled taunts and invective were quickly drowned when the vets bellowed in unison, "Support the Troops.  WE ARE THE TROOPS!"

Then in one of the most memorable moments of the day, IVAW Board of Directors member, Adam Kokesh, marching in command alongside the color guard, ordered, "Column, HALT!  Left FACE!" whereupon he spun on his heel, faced the angry crowd, and held for several long seconds his best USMC salute. 

The surprise maneuver left the gathered eagles momentarily taken aback and the crowd cheering.

The final action began to move when Kokesh stood to read a letter he had sent to members of Congress:

********************************

Dear Congress,

We have come before you today with a simple message: as a representation of the people you have failed us and you have blood on your hands.

This is blood that the American people will not allow to continue to be spilled in our name any longer.

Today we are marching in solidarity with the Iraqi people who want the occupation to end.  

It is fully within your power to stop this tragedy.

You have just heard the testimony of General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker. General Casey was replaced by General Petraeus because he would not support the President’s agenda of keeping as many troops deployed as long as possible, keeping our military teetering at the breaking point.

General Petraeus was selected for this position not only because of his abilities as a soldier, but also for political purposes.  When he testified before you he was acting in his role as a political appointee. 

He told you the surge was working.  This is the same absurd optimism that we have been hearing since the beginning of this occupation from its proponents: the insurgency is in its last throes; we are turning the corner. Why do you still believe these people?

We have come before you to ask that you consider the cost in human life of this conflict so far.

We are also here to tell you that we will not stand for this corruption of our democracy any longer.  We the people are in the streets.

We the people are fed up.  

We the people are ready to rise up and take back our democracy.

Signed,

The Empowered Patriots

THIS IS HOW BUSH BRINGS THE TROOPS HOME:

BRING THEM ALL HOME NOW, ALIVE

The casket bearing the co-mingled remains of Army Staff Sgt. Harrison Brown, Army Pfc. David Neil Simmons and Army Pfc. Todd Andrew Singleton during their joint funeral at Arlington National Cemetery Sept. 13, 2007.  They died April 8 in Baghdad after an attack on their vehicle. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

MRAPs DON’T CUT IT:

They Don’t Protect Against Explosively Formed Projectiles, So General Says Add Frag Kit 6 That Makes Them Deadly And Useless

[Thanks to Don Bacon, The Smedley Butler Society, who sent this in.]

October 05, 2007 By Christian Lowe, Defense Tech [Excerpts]

Remember that vehicle that we were supposed to frantically throw billions of dollars into, throw all previous tactical vehicle programs into a tailspin, hurriedly ship them to Iraq, buy them from anyone and everyone and, oh yeah, they were supposed to defeat the most lethal roadside bombs...?

Remember that one?

The "mine resistant, ambush protected vehicle?"

Well, it seems that vehicle isn’t all its proponents claim.

USA Today reports this morning that the general in charge of fielding the MRAP to Iraq has decided to add on armor that can protect the vehicle against Iranian-made explosively formed penetrator bombs.

Wait, I thought the MRAP could already do that?

Nope.

USA Today:

"The Marine general in charge of the program to send new armored vehicles to Iraq says the Pentagon has developed 'a solution’ to protect the Mine Resistant Ambush Protected trucks from the deadliest type of armor-piercing roadside bomb, called explosively formed projectiles, or EFPs.

"The Pentagon’s method for combating EFPs involves adding armor to the sides of MRAPs, Brig. Gen. Michael Brogan said in an interview with USA TODAY.

"The armor is a modified version of what the military calls Frag Kit 6, Brogan said. 'I have a solution for EFPs, and I’m going to put it on the trucks I’ve already bought,’ Brogan said."

The Frag Kit 6.

Really?  

Didn’t we already learn that the Frag Kit 6 is so cumbersome, you need a mechanical device to close the door and a driver can’t even tell how wide the vehicle is?

That’ll be fun for the troops.  Getting the Frag Kit 6 equipped MRAP wedged into an alley during a raid in Dorah.

USA Today:

"The MRAP’s V-shaped hull and raised chassis help protect troops inside the vehicle from the force of makeshift bombs known as improvised explosive devices."

"Brogan dismissed concerns from some military contractors - raised in an online discussion - that the added armor would make the vehicles too wide to operate on U.S. highways.

"'They’re going into a combat zone,’ Brogan said. 'So, yeah, they’re going to be wider than would be permitted if you were going to drive up Interstate 95.’

"This week, contractors will have an opportunity to submit other solutions to the EFP threat for testing.

"But their armor will have to rival the current solution to merit consideration. "'I’ve got great trucks,’ Brogan said. 'And I can put additional armor on those great trucks. ... You’ve either got the solution or you don’t.’"

"When You Have To Deal With The VA Or TRICARE, You Feel Beaten Down," Schick Said:

"You Are A Number, And You Feel Like A Number"

"To Get Anything Done, It Is Just Horrible"

Marine Cpl. Jacob Schick, 25, of Terrytown lost a leg in a roadside bomb in Iraq.  He was 22 when he was injured.  Schick said winding his way through the healthcare maze to get his benefits has been frustrating.  "To get anything done, it is just horrible," said Schick.  STAFF PHOTO BY SUSAN POAG

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

September 08, 2007 Bill Walsh, Washington bureau; New Orleans Times-Picayune [Excerpts]

WASHINGTON -- Marine Cpl. Jacob Schick says he was ready to die in Iraq. He wasn’t prepared to come home in pieces.

The bomb that tore through the floor of his Humvee in the fall of 2004 shredded his legs and left arm.  Forty-six surgeries later, Schick is an amputee still learning to cope with physical limitations that as a star high school athlete he never dreamed he would face.

Perhaps just as daunting has been learning to navigate the veterans’ health care system, which he says demeans the sacrifice of all veterans.

"When you have to deal with the VA (Veterans Affairs) or TRICARE (the federal health insurance program), you feel beaten down," Schick said.  "You are a number, and you feel like a number.  It’s a total, total beat-down."

Schick, 25, who grew up in Texas and Louisiana and now lives in Gretna, is one of the 10 injured veterans featured in an HBO film, "Alive Day Memories: Home from Iraq," that airs tonight. The title of the documentary, produced by "Sopranos" star James Gandolfini, refers to the date that the injured narrowly escape death and realize that they are still alive.

"When I went over there, this wasn’t even an issue," Schick said recently, glancing at his battered body.  "I was totally prepared to die.  I wasn’t prepared to come back learning how to walk, 46 surgeries, 23 blood transfusions.  I went from being one of the elite, the best of the best, to not even being able to go to the bathroom by myself."

Equally unexpected was having to contend with the maddening complexities of insurance claims, veterans’ hospitals and a federal health care bureaucracy that makes Schick yearn for the clarity of the battlefield.

A thick-chested former high school football noseguard whose swagger appears undiminished by the explosion, Schick said he knew early on that the U.S. Marine Corps was his calling.  At 18, he presented himself to the local recruiter in Coppell, Texas, a Dallas suburb, and signed up.  "I want to be on the front," Schick told the recruiter.

By the summer of 2004, he was in Iraq’s deadly al Anbar province leading a "React Team" charged with checking suspicious activity in the vicinity of an ammunition dump. Insurgents had discovered that burying improvised explosive devices in the roads was an effective guerrilla tactic against a better-armed and better-trained U.S. fighting force.

On Sept. 20, 32 days after he arrived, Schick was roused from sleep and ordered to deploy his team immediately.  His friend David Woods hopped in the driver’s seat of the lead Humvee. Schick ordered him to move over.

"I don’t know why. It felt like I needed to drive.  We were in a big hurry," Schick said. "Most of these guys drive like grannies, white-knuckling it waiting for an IED (improvised explosive device) to go off."

It was a fateful decision, but not his only one.  He also decided to wear the protective goggles that always fogged up and the bothersome neck guard that he usually let flap in the wind. He gunned the Humvee’s engine, driving with one hand and working the radio with the other.

He never heard the explosion.

An anti-tank mine had been buried in the soft sand.  The driver’s side tire triggered it. The bomb ripped open the floor of the vehicle, launched the steering wheel into Schick’s chest and catapulted him to the side of the road.

His "Alive Day" had begun.

Face-down in the sand, he tried to pull himself up to check on his men. He couldn’t move.  His chest had collapsed, and he struggled to breathe.  Shrapnel protruded from his face and neck guard.  His limbs were a bloody, mangled mess.

"Schick! Schick!" he heard Woods calling out.  Then he heard his friend toss aside his Marine bravado and cry out, "Jacob!"

"That freakin’ crushed me.  I know he thinks I’m dead," Schick said.

He spent the next hour looking for clues about how bad he was.  He recalls lifting his arm and seeing daylight through the exposed muscle and bone.  He saw his right foot "flopping around."  Worse, though, was the reaction of the soldier on the helicopter ride to Al-Asad Airbase.

"This dude wouldn’t even look at me," Schick said. "I think they were honestly just waiting, waiting for me to stop (living).  I know I was close."

Through the end of August, 3,792 Americans were killed in Operation Iraqi Freedom, and 27,004 were wounded.

Owing largely to better medical care, protective equipment and speedier evacuations, more soldiers are surviving their injuries than ever before.  In World War II, the rate was 62 percent. In Vietnam, 73 percent.  Today, it is 88 percent.

In anticipation of his son’s return, Schick’s father, Woody Schick, checked out Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., and was appalled.

More than two years before the media would expose the poor care, mold and cockroaches, Schick’s father told him, "You will not go to Walter Reed."

Instead, Schick was taken to Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, Texas, where he would spend the next 18 months undergoing surgery after surgery.  The doctors amputated his right leg and fit him with a carbon-fiber prosthetic. He had it emblazoned with the Marine Corps seal.  They removed skin from other parts of his body to patch his left arm and leg.

Throughout, Schick tried to maintain a brave demeanor.  He refused to accept his Purple Heart until the rest of his comrades returned from combat.  In an Internet posting, he taunted the Iraqi insurgents, calling them "cowards."  The facade crumbled the day he fell out of his wheelchair. He had momentarily forgotten he didn’t have a right leg.

"I held his head in my lap, and he cried for 45 minutes," said his mother, Debby.  "I said, 'Let it out.  Let it out.’"

Schick views therapists warily and has put off counseling.  His anger is never far from the surface.  He has learned to shrug off the stares from children who think he is a robot or a pirate.  It irks him, though, when adults do it.

"Ask me," he said. "Just ask me."

What makes him angriest, though, are the administrative hassles involved with his health care.  Even getting officially designated "disabled" proved time-consuming as the VA faced a backlog of 650,000 claims.

"It took me two or three days to sign up for the Marine Corps," Schick said. "It took me a year and five months to get a compensation check.  You do the math."

The VA is often touted for the quality of its medical care, but Schick loathes the thought of walking through the front doors.

"No matter what, we have to wait an hour and a half, guaranteed," he said. "Then you see these doctors who are 190 years old, and you have to repeat everything you say."

Dealing with veterans’ health insurance was another unexpected obstacle Schick has encountered.

Not long ago, he was treated at West Jefferson Medical Center for a tear to a skin graft on his left leg.  The bill was $16,000. TRICARE, the insurance program, took so long to pay that it showed up as a debt on his credit report.

Literally adding insult to injury, Schick said his medical status will be reviewed by the military every five years.

"I guess they want to see if my leg grew back," he said.

Despite it all, Schick remains loyal to the Marine Corps. He misses the camaraderie, the brotherhood.  He said he would go back and fight if he could. 

But he sees his fight on the home front now, drawing attention to the way injured veterans are treated when they return from the war zone. He wants to see the nation provide the same commitment to injured veterans that he gave to the nation.

"I didn’t do this to get a pat on the back," Schick said.  "I did it to do my part.  And I did my part."

MORE:

Fuck Those Useless Iraq Vets:

This Is The Medical Care That’s Important:

9.9.07 WASHINGTON (CNN)

First lady Laura Bush was "resting comfortably at the White House" on Saturday after successful surgery to relieve pressure on pinched nerves in her neck, her press secretary Sally McDonough said in a statement.

The surgical procedure -- called a posterior cervical foraminotomy -- lasted 2˝ hours.

It was described as minimally invasive.

The surgery was conducted at the George Washington University Hospital, McDonough said.

After the procedure, the first lady spoke with President Bush, who was aboard Air Force One on his way back from the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Australia, McDonough said.

"He said she sounded very well," said White House deputy press secretary Dana Perino, according to The Associated Press.

"He looks forward to getting back to help her in the recovery."

The pinched nerves led the first lady’s doctors to recommend that she skip the trip because of the long flights, CNN’s Ed Henry reported.

Doctors aren’t sure how long Bush has had the pinched nerves, but they were aggravated by hiking in Utah in the spring, McDonough said.

"(Doctors) have been treating it conservatively for months," she said of the treatment that led to the decision to have the surgery.

Join The Army And Rape A Soldier;

Nothing Much Will Happen To You

[Thanks to James Starowicz, Veterans For Peace.]

October 4, 2007 All Things Considered [Excerpts]

Since 2002, the Miles Foundation — a private, nonprofit organization that tracks sexual assault within the armed forces — has received 976 reports of sexual assault in the Central Command Area of Responsibility, which includes Iraq and Afghanistan.

Christine Hansen, executive director of the foundation, says the group is seeing a steady upward trend in the number of reported cases of sexual assault — increases of 10 percent to 15 percent each quarter.  The figures are higher than those reported by the Department of Defense, she says, because the Miles Foundation provides private and confidential services to women, making it more likely for them to report incidents of sexual assault.

Among the organization’s findings, Hansen says, are reports from female service members of cases of gang rape and rape involving serial offenders.  She says that the most predominant type of assault is acquaintance or date rape, which in the military is termed "offender-known rape."

The commanders of alleged assailants have a spectrum of disciplinary responses: from zero response to a criminal-justice proceeding within the military, or court martial.

But Hansen says her group has found that the predominant response is that of administrative action, such as a letter of reprimand in a personnel file or forfeiture of pay and allowances.

"We do not see that the predominant response is that of a criminal-justice response leading to court-martial proceedings," Hansen says.

Many of the women who have been assaulted "desperately try to maintain their career in the military," Hansen says.  She estimates that less than one-third of the women tracked by the Miles Foundation have been able to do so.

THE BAY RIDGE PEACE FAIR

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 13, 2007

BAY RIDGE UNITED METHODIST CHURCH PARKING LOT

FOURTH AVENUE & OVINGTON AVENUE

BROOKLYN, NEW YORK

11:00 A.M. UNTIL 5:00 P.M.

COME AND HEAR SPEAKERS (from Code Pink, Granny Peace Brigade, Military Families Speak Out, and more!)

ENJOY PERFORMANCES

VISIT INFORMATION TABLES

JOIN IN THIS COMMUNITY EVENT TO PROMOTE A FUTURE OF PEACE FOR OUR CHILDREN AND GRANDCHILDREN

Sponsored by Bay Ridge Neighbors for Peace:  For further information, email us at bayridgepeace@yahoo.com

[Thanks to Elaine Brower, Military Project, who sent this in.]

FORWARD OBSERVATIONS

"I Have Covered Numerous Guerilla Wars In My Time And Have Never Seen Western Powers Win A Single One"

 "

[Thanks to Phil G, who sent this in.]

September 9, 2007 By ERIC MARGOLIS, Toronto Sun [Excerpts]

We all know what "deja vu" is.  But I recently read of a condition psychiatrists call "jamais vu."  That’s where one sees something very familiar, but cannot identify it.  Both the White House and U.S. military seemed gripped by jamais vu.

Many of the same mistakes made in the Vietnam War are being repeated in Iraq and Afghanistan, but neither the White House, Pentagon, nor U.S. field commanders seem to recognize or understand them.

U.S. commanders in Iraq, like their Canadian counterparts in Afghanistan, keep proudly reporting how their men have occupied villages or towns, killed scores of "suspected terrorists" (usually thanks to air attack), and forced the enemy to flee.

They do not seem to understand they are fighting a fluid guerrilla war in which territory and body counts mean little.

The "successes" being reported from Iraq and Afghanistan are illusory.

We heard exactly the same story during the Vietnam War, when U.S. military spokesmen trumpeted daily glowing reports about enemy body counts, strategic hamlets created, Viet Cong tunnels blown up, hearts and minds won over, and smiling children waving little American flags.

Most of Vietnam’s bitter lessons, paid for by the blood of 58,000 Americans, have been totally forgotten by the White House and Pentagon.

But don’t blame the soldiers.

Once again, U.S. fighting men in Iraq and Canadians in Afghanistan have been sent into no-win wars by their poorly informed, badly advised civilian masters, and ordered to keep coming up with rosy progress reports.

I have covered numerous guerilla wars in my time and have never seen Western powers win a single one.  Yet we keep forgetting this hard lesson.

Bush appears determined to keep the war going until his term expires to avoid blame for defeat in Iraq.

Congress is trying to lay all the blame on Bush, get him to admit defeat, and evade its own shameful role in authorizing the trumped-up Iraq War. 

But Congress is in a jam.  If U.S. troops do withdraw, Iraq may fall into even worse chaos than it now suffers -- which a Democratic president will inherit.

In an election year, Republicans will blast Democrats as "defeatists" for "cutting and running" and "losing Iraq."

That’s why worried leading Democrats are now backing off calls for total withdrawal and mumbling about partial pullbacks and "training Iraqi forces."

Polls show 80% of Iraqis want U.S. forces out.

History does not repeat itself, but men’s mistakes and follies do.

The latest somber example is Iraq, where our memory of Vietnam is ... jamais vu.

OCCUPATION REPORT

U.S. OCCUPATION RECRUITING DRIVE IN HIGH GEAR;

RECRUITING FOR THE ARMED RESISTANCE THAT IS

A foreign occupation soldier from U.S. Bravo Company, 1st Battalion, 5th Cavalry Regiment, 2nd Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division searches a house during a armed night home invasion in the Amariyah neighborhood of west Baghdad Aug. 12, 2007. (AP Photo/Petr David Josek)

[Fair is fair.  Let’s bring 150,000 Iraqi troops over here to the USA.  They can kill people at checkpoints, bust into their houses with force and violence, butcher their families, overthrow the government, put a new one in office they like better and call it "sovereign," and "detain" anybody who doesn’t like it in some prison without any charges being filed against them, or any trial.]

[Those Iraqis are sure a bunch of backward primitives.  They actually resent this help, have the absurd notion that it’s bad their country is occupied by a foreign military dictatorship, and consider it their patriotic duty to fight and kill the soldiers sent to grab their country.  What a bunch of silly people.  How fortunate they are to live under a military dictatorship run by George Bush.  Why, how could anybody not love that?  You’d want that in your home town, right?]

CLASS WAR REPORTS

Millions Dying In Agony, Thanks To The "War On Drugs" And Poverty:

"Pain Is So Bad That They Have Chosen Other Remedies: Hanging Themselves Or Throwing Themselves In Front Of Trucks"

"The Government Elite Who Can Afford Medicine For Themselves Are Indifferent To The Sufferings Of The Poor

September 10, 2007 By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr., New York Times [Excerpts]

[Thanks to Katherine G, Military Project, who sent this in.  She writes: This is torture by capitalism.  Utterly disgusting and inhumane.]

WATERLOO, Sierra Leone — Although the rainy season was coming on fast, Zainabu Sesay was in no shape to help her husband. Ditches had to be dug to protect their cassava and peanuts, and their mud hut’s palm roof was sliding off.

But Mrs. Sesay was sick.  She had breast cancer in a form that Western doctors rarely see anymore — the tumor had burst through her skin, looking like a putrid head of cauliflower weeping small amounts of blood at its edges.

"It bone!  It booonnnne lie de fi-yuh!" she said of the pain — it burns like fire — in Krio, the blended language spoken in this country where British colonizers resettled freed slaves.

No one had directly told her yet, but there was no hope — the cancer was also in her lymph glands and ribs.

Like millions of others in the world’s poorest countries, she is destined to die in pain.

She cannot get the drug she needs — one that is cheap, effective, perfectly legal for medical uses under treaties signed by virtually every country, made in large quantities, and has been around since Hippocrates praised its source, the opium poppy.

She cannot get morphine.

That is not merely because of her poverty, or that of Sierra Leone.

Narcotics incite fear: doctors fear addicting patients, and law enforcement officials fear drug crime.

Often, the government elite who can afford medicine for themselves are indifferent to the sufferings of the poor.

The World Health Organization estimates that 4.8 million people a year with moderate to severe cancer pain receive no appropriate treatment.  Nor do another 1.4 million with late-stage AIDS.

For other causes of lingering pain — burns, car accidents, gunshots, diabetic nerve damage, sickle-cell disease and so on — it issues no estimates but believes that millions go untreated.

Figures gathered by the International Narcotics Control Board, a United Nations agency, make it clear: citizens of rich nations suffer less. Six countries — the United States, Canada, France, Germany, Britain and Australia — consume 79 percent of the world’s morphine, according to a 2005 estimate.  The poor and middle-income countries where 80 percent of the world’s people live consumed only about 6 percent.

At pain conferences, doctors from Africa describe patients whose pain is so bad that they have chosen other remedies: hanging themselves or throwing themselves in front of trucks.

About half the six million cancer deaths in the world last year were in poor countries, and most diagnoses were made late, when death was inevitable.  But first, there was agony. About 80 percent of all cancer victims suffer severe pain, the W.H.O. estimates, as do half of those dying of AIDS.

Morphine’s raw ingredient — opium — is not in short supply.  Poppies are grown for heroin, of course, in Afghanistan and elsewhere.  But vast fields for morphine and codeine are also grown in India, Turkey, France, Australia and other countries.

Nor is it expensive, even by the standards of developing nations.

One hospice in Uganda, for example, mixes its own liquid morphine so cheaply that a three-week supply costs less than a loaf of bread.

Nonetheless, it is still routinely denied in many poor countries.

"It’s the intense fear of addiction, which is often misunderstood," said David E. Joranson, director of the Pain Policy Study Group at the University of Wisconsin’s medical school, who has worked to change drugs laws around the world.

"Pain relief hasn’t been given as much attention as the war on drugs has."

Pain experts argue that it is cruel to deny them to the dying and that patients who recover from pain can usually be weaned off.  Withdrawal symptoms are inevitable, they say — as they are if a diabetic stops insulin.  But the benefits outweigh the risks.

In Mrs. Sesay’s case, Alfred Lewis, a nurse from Shepherd’s Hospice, is doing what he can to ease her last days.

When he first saw her, her tumor was wrapped with clay and leaves prescribed by a local healer.  The smell of her rotting skin made her feel ashamed.

She had seen a doctor at one of many low-cost "Indian clinics" who pulled at the breast with forceps so hard that she screamed, misdiagnosed her tumor as an infected boil, and gave her an injection in her buttocks that abscessed, adding to her misery.

Nothing can be done about the tumor, Mr. Lewis explained quietly.  "All the bleeders are open," he said.  "Her risk now is hemorrhage.  Only a knife-crazy surgeon would attend to her."

Earlier diagnosis would probably not have changed her fate. Sierra Leone has no CAT scanners, and only one private hospital offers chemotherapy drug treatment.

The Sesays are sharecroppers; they have no money.

So Mr. Lewis was making a daily 10-mile trip from Freetown, the capital, to change her dressing, sprinkle on antibiotics, and talk to her.  He asked a neighbor to plait her hair for her, so she would look pretty. Mrs. Sesay said she could not be bothered.

Life has become hard, she added, and her husband is getting too old for farm labor. She, too, is getting old, she said — she is somewhere in her 40s.

"We are really being punish."

For her pain, Mr. Lewis gave her generic Tylenol and tramadol, a relative of codeine that is only 10 percent as potent as morphine.  It was all he could offer.  "I would consider putting her on morphine now, if we had morphine," Mr. Lewis said.

In New York, she would have already started on it, or an equivalent like oxycodone or fentanyl.

Even if his hospice could get it, Mr. Lewis could not give it to her.

Under Sierra Leone law, morphine may be handled only by a pharmacist or doctor, explained Gabriel Madiye, the hospice’s founder.  But in all Sierra Leone there are only about 100 doctors — one for every 54,000 people, compared with one for every 350 in the United States.

In only a few places — in Uganda, for example — does the law allow trained nurses to prescribe morphine.

And pharmacists will not stock it.

Esther Walker, a British nurse who sometimes works with Mr. Lewis, said she once gave a lecture on palliative care at the national medical school.

There were 28 students, and she asked them, "Who has seen someone die peacefully in Sierra Leone?"

"Not one had," she said.

In the poorest countries like this one, even babies suffer.

Momoh Sesay, 2, (no relation to Zainabu) is a pretty lucky little guy — for someone who tumbled into a cooking pot of boiling water.

He lost much of the skin on his thighs, and his belly is speckled with burns as if he had been sloshed with pink paint.

But he was fortunate enough to live close to Ola During Children’s Hospital, the leading pediatric institution.

No doctor was in.  There was not even any electricity.  At night, nurses thread IV lines into babies’ tiny limbs by candlelight. "And our eyes are not magnets," one of them, Josephine Maajenneh Sillah, complained.

But they knew Momoh would die of shock and pumped in intravenous fluids and antibiotics.

If he had been born in New York, Momoh would have had skin grafts.  Here, that is unthinkable.

Momoh was given saline washes, and his dead skin was scrubbed off with debridement, a painful procedure. In New York, he would have had morphine.

So probably would Abdulaziz Sankoh, 7, in another bed, who has sickle cell disease.  He moans at night when twisted blood cells clump together and jam the arteries in his spindly legs, slowly killing his bone marrow.

As would Musa Shariff, an 8-month-old boy whose scalp is so swollen by meningitis that his eyelids cannot close.  Dr. Muctar Jalloh, the hospital director, said he would not prescribe morphine to babies or toddlers if he had it. Only in the case of third-degree burns, like Momoh’s, did he say: "I would consider it — maybe."

The strongest painkiller that Momoh, Abdulaziz and Musa can take, if their parents can afford $1.65 per vial, is tramadol.

It is impossible to know what morphine would cost if it were here, but it is sold in India at 1.7 cents a pill by the same company that makes tramadol.

The nurses know the prices because they sell the drugs that are available.  They have not been paid for three years, they say, so they support themselves in part by filling the prescriptions that the doctors write.  Kind as they are — they do extend credit, and are sometimes moved to charity by the children — it is a business.

Wiltshire C. N. Johnson, the chief of the enforcement arm of the National Pharmacy Board, explained why painkillers were not imported.

Scarce funds must go to the top five causes of death, he said: diarrhea, pneumonia, tuberculosis, malaria and sexually transmitted diseases. "I’m not saying that palliative care doesn’t top the list, too," he said.  "But it’s officially a very small percentage of the requirement."

Mr. Madiye, who predicted exactly those answers before the interviews started, vented his frustration later.

He founded Shepherd’s Hospice in 1995, saw it destroyed in the civil war and rebuilt it.  But he cannot get the one drug that would let him give people like Zainabu Sesay the dignified deaths that in the West would be their birthright.

"How can they say there is no demand when they don’t allow it?" he asked.  "How can they be so sure that it will get out of control when they haven’t even tried it?"

United Auto Worker’s Bureaucrats Doing Their Job:

[Kissing Management Ass And Cutting The Workers’ Throats]

"Gettelfinger Will Be Golfing With Pfizer And Kaiser," The Pharmaceutical And Health Insurance Companies

October 5, 2007 By Lee Sustar, Socialist Worker

THE UNITED Auto Workers’ concessions to General Motors allow the company to shed $50 billion in obligations to pay retiree health care and destroy a 70-year tradition of equal pay for equal work with a new two-tier pay scale--all in exchange for a weak promise by GM to keep investing in U.S. plants.

The deal was finalized after a two-day strike that UAW rank-and-file dissidents and business analysts alike dismissed as an effort by UAW President Ron Gettelfinger to let off steam from the membership and position him to better sell the givebacks.

Even after decades of givebacks to the Detroit automakers, the proposed GM deal marks a radical break for the UAW.

If approved by members, GM will hand over $35 billion in stocks and other assets to a union-controlled Voluntary Employee Beneficiary Association (VEBA), a trust fund that will pay for retiree health care beginning in 2010.

GM gets a 30 percent "discount" on its current obligations, which would leave the VEBA managers of the future scrambling to make up for both a $15 billion shortfall and future increases in health care costs, currently rising at a 10 percent clip.

The UAW has negotiated VEBAs in the past at engine maker Detroit Diesel and the heavy equipment makers Caterpillar and Case--and all ran out of money, eliminating retiree health care other than Medicare.

Nevertheless, the prospect of a vastly larger VEBA apparently won over UAW President Ron Gettelfinger, who said he first proposed such a deal to GM in 2005.

"This is UAW, Inc.," said Gregg Shotwell, an activist in the Soldiers of Solidarity network, which is organizing opposition to the agreement. "Gettelfinger will be golfing with Pfizer and Kaiser," the pharmaceutical and health insurance companies.

The VEBA alone is a break from precedent, as a letter three former UAW regional directors explained.

"We believe it irresponsible by the parties to this negotiation to shift the burden of risk to the retired workers and their families and release General Motors from its commitment to the full and perpetual coverage of health care for the workers who built the wealth of the corporation in the first place," wrote Paul Schrade, Warren Davis and Jerry Tucker in an open letter to UAW members.

Business, however, is cheering the VEBA.  As the Wall Street Journal headline put it, "Street Salivates Over VEBA Cash Pile."

If Ford and Chrysler reach a similar deal, the UAW’s VEBA "presents an opportunity for investment advisers and money managers totaling upward of $66 billion," the article stated. "That pile of cash from the three companies, if managed as one fund, would rank among the 40 largest pension funds in the country...bringing in tens of millions of dollars in fees to its managers. It would be nearly twice as large as the Harvard University endowment, the nation’s largest college endowment."

THE VEBA is only the biggest of many other catastrophic concessions in the deal.

The agreement allows GM to introduce permanent lower-tier pay for workers in so-called "non-core" positions, such as janitorial work, forklift driving and materials handling.

These jobs were popular among high-seniority workers, who bid on them in order to move away from high-pressure assembly line jobs.  Now, under the proposed deal, workers newly hired in those jobs will make just $14 to $16 per hour, or about half the pay of current workers. The UAW estimates that there are about 16,000 such jobs held by union members at GM, out of a total of 73,000.

What’s more, future hires will no longer be eligible for traditional retiree health care plans or pensions, but will receive a 401(k) retirement account instead.

They will pay more for health care--with a $300 deductible for singles and $600 per families, plus 10 percent co-pays. They won’t be eligible for dental coverage for three years or receive full vision coverage for five years.  Nor will they be paid for the traditional Fourth of July weeklong auto industry shutdown.

Thousands of new hires won’t even get these substandard benefits, though.

The new contract allows GM to hire long-term temporary workers for one year, with no benefits at all (the proposed agreement would turn more than 3,000 temporary workers into full-timers--but at the lower tier).

Current workers will lose out, too.

Base pay would be frozen. Instead of raises, workers would get a $3,000 signing bonus and annual lump-sum payments worth 3 percent, 4 percent and 3 percent of annual pay over the rest of the four-year deal.

Most of the annual cost of living adjustment (COLA) would be diverted to pay for health care, which would put base pay at just 68 cents an hour higher in 2011 than today.

To speed the transition to the lower-paid workforce, GM is expected to offer an early retirement package, similar to the deals that slashed UAW jobs at the Big Three automakers by 40 percent--some 127,000 workers--since just 2003.

At GM, UAW jobs have declined from 350,000 in 1980 to about 246,000 in 1994 to today’s total of 73,000. This radical downsizing occurred despite various "job security" guarantees in contracts negotiated over that same period.

If the proposed deal is approved, Shotwell said, high-seniority workers like him--in a "non-core" job at a GM parts warehouse--will "have a target on our backs. The company has an incentive to get rid of us and replace us with lower-tier workers. About 65 percent of GM workers are eligible for retirement in five years. A lot of people will be jumping off this sinking ship as fast as they can."

That transition, he said, sets the stage for the 2011 contract talks. "If, by then, GM doesn’t have a majority of lower-tier workers, they’ll hire a bunch of temps a few months before the contract, and they’ll have the right to vote."

After negotiating for months over a complex deal, the UAW is giving workers only a few days to analyze the agreement before voting ends around October 10.

And the more workers find out, the less they like it. Many UAW members at a regional informational meeting in Memphis reportedly walked out when they learned that the previously desirable "non-core" jobs would pay at the lower tier.

The supposed sweetener in the deal is a specific commitment by GM to invest in 16 of 17 assembly plants.  But the fine print allows GM to break that promise, depending on market conditions.

This agreement is designed by UAW leaders and GM to pressure workers into looking after their individual interests--rather than defying union leaders and upholding the UAW’s traditions of solidarity and collective action.

The question now is whether the UAW’s unprecedented surrender is too much for members to swallow.

DANGER: POLITICIANS AT WORK

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

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