GI SPECIAL
4E14:
(www.ivaw.net)
Iraq war veteran David Adams of
Carbondale, Ill., talks about the death of a comrade, which prompted him to
oppose the Iraq War, during an anti-war demonstration, May 13, 2006 in
Washington. Other members of Iraq
Veterans Against the War console him. (AP Photo/Lauren Victoria Burke)
Bush Approval Rating Sinks Into The 20s:
56% Say Going To War In The First Place Was A
Mistake:
May 11, 2006 Washington Wire & ADAM NAGOURNEY and MEGAN THEE, The New
York Times
President Bush’s
job-approval rating has fallen to its lowest mark of his presidency, according
to a new Harris Interactive poll.
Of 1,003 U.S. adults surveyed in a telephone
poll, 29% think Mr. Bush is doing an “excellent or pretty good” job
as president, down from 35% in April and significantly lower than 43% in
January.
Approval ratings for Congress
overall also sank, and now stand at 18%.
Roughly one-quarter of U.S. adults say
“things in the country are going in the right direction,” while 69%
say “things have pretty seriously gotten off on the wrong
track.” This has been the trend
since January, when 33% said the nation was heading in the right direction.
The poll showed a further
decline in support for the Iraq war, the issue that has most eaten into Mr.
Bush's public support.
The percentage of respondents
who said going to war in Iraq was the correct decision slipped to a new low of
39 percent, down from 47 percent in January.
Two-thirds said they had little or no confidence that Mr. Bush could
successfully end the war.
More than two-thirds said the
war in Iraq was to blame for at least some of the increase in gasoline prices.
Seventy-one percent said they
believed that oil companies were profiting from higher prices,
and a majority said oil companies were much closer to the Republican Party than
to the Democratic Party.
On Iraq, two-thirds of poll
respondents said they disapproved of how the president had handled the war.
Fifty-six percent said going to
war in the first place was a mistake, up from 50 percent in January.
And 60 percent said things were going
"somewhat or very badly" in the drive to stabilize the country. Sixty-three percent disapproved of Mr. Bush's
handling of foreign policy in general.
Mr. Bush's political strength continues to
dissipate. About two-thirds of poll
respondents said he did not share their priorities, up from just over half
right before his re-election in 2004.
About two-thirds said the country was in worse shape than it was when he
became president six years ago.
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
Baghdad Roadside Bomb Kills MND
B Soldier
May 13, 2006 MULTI-NATIONAL DIVISION BAGHDAD
4th Infantry Division Press Release A060513a
BAGHDAD, Iraq: A Multi-National Division Baghdad Soldier was
killed May 13 at approximately 4 a.m. when his vehicle was struck by a roadside
bomb in south Baghdad.
“They Killed My Son”
May 4, 2006 By Bill
Hess, Herald Review
It was not a new tape, but one of him
speaking to her in 1991 from the desert during the first Gulf War. She smiled
and laughed at his antics, of the part-travelogue showing the austere
amenities.
“He was a funny guy,” Jennifer
said of then Spc. Bobby Mendez.
Sitting near her on a sofa in her living room
was 13-year-old daughter Thyiena, who Jennifer called
her Saudi baby, conceived after Rob returned.
Thyiena
had a soft slight smile on her face. A
wet smile, as tears flowed down her cheeks.
Jennifer said the family was waiting for him
to come home after his second tour in Iraq ended later this year.
Rob is coming home but not to sit down and
joke with his family, to make them laugh, to be funny.
Sometime today, 1st Sgt. Bobby Mendez will
arrive in Sierra Vista.
And, instead of his family seeing him as he
walks up to the front door of their home, they will have to go to the Hatfield
Funeral Home, where they will see husband, father, son, brother and uncle
resting in a casket.
Last Thursday, April 27, the intelligence
analyst was killed in action in Baghdad when an improvised explosive device
detonated near his vehicle.
That same day, the family had gone out to
watch younger daughter Chyanne, 7, play ball and to
celebrate Quentin’s 12th birthday.
Not long after returning home, there was a
knock on the door.
When it was opened, Fort Huachuca soldiers
were standing there. Their uniforms
telegraphed that Jennifer was about to receive bad news, the type families
dread.
It was an emotional punch to the head, the
stomach. It is almost an automatic
reflex when such news is given.
“Quentin is still upset that his father
died on his birthday,” the mother said.
The boy did not wish to talk for this story. A call was made to Florida, where Rob’s
mother, Gladys Acre, lives.
Rob’s mother arrived Tuesday night with
her daughter Ivette Muniz and granddaughters Melissa,
13, and Victoria, 8. When the
mother-in-law was called, it was after midnight in Florida.
There was initial disbelief, “then came
that scream,” Jennifer said.
Ivette
said Gladys then called her and said in Spanish, “They killed my
son.”
The daughter didn’t believe it, saying
she told her mother, “You’re lying.”
Living in the same complex in Florida, Ivette and her children ran to Gladys’ apartment
while wearing their night clothes.
It is still difficult for
Gladys to accept the reality of Rob’s death. What she is hoping is that the body in the
casket will not be his. “I’m
hoping it’s a mistake,” Gladys said. “He promised me he would come
home. But not like this.”
A small woman, Rob’s mother remains
defiantly hopeful. “I will not
believe it until I see him,” she said, as a heavy flow of tears fell from
her eyes, indicating in her heart she already knows the truth.
Thyiena
also cannot accept the fact and will not until she gets to see her dad.
For Chyanne, the
news has not yet been absorbed into her young mind. She got up from the couch and went to the
kitchen to play with her cousin Victoria.
Jennifer said the days since the notification
have been long. Yes the days are still
24 hours, but those seconds, minutes and hours seem to creep along, exhausting
the family.
Sunday’s visitation will be hard.
But, Monday’s funeral service on the
fort and the symbolic farewell, with the 21-rifle volley, folding of the flag
and sounding of Taps at the post cemetery will be the ultimate down day,
Jennifer said.
On a coffee table in front of the couch were
a number of photos of Rob.
They are memories of the time of him being in
the Army and with the family.
“Army units are close-knit
families,” Jennifer said.
But the most important family unit in a
military organization is a soldier, wife and children, she said.
The photos were to remind her, and others, of
the times they traveled, the promotions, the barbecues and other events caught
on film.
Rob enlisted in the Army in 1987 and met
Jennifer in 1989, when he was stationed in Frankfurt, Germany.
Jennifer described herself as a military
brat. She married Rob in Brooklyn. They returned to Germany where her soldier
husband served in that country for many years.
“When I met him he had no stripes.
He was always in trouble and getting Article
15s,” she said with a smile, followed by a returning laugh.
Gladys said her son promised her he would do
well in the Army to make her proud of him.
“He did,” she said.
Rob straightened out and went on to achieve
high rank. At the time of his death he
was a master sergeant serving as a first sergeant.
His death in Iraq was his
second tour in that country since 2003 and his third deployment since 1991 to
that troubled part of the world, Jennifer said.
He served with the 4th Infantry Division in
Iraq from April 2003 to early 2004 and went back with the unit’s 2nd
Special Troops Battalion of the 2nd Brigade in November 2005. He was assigned
to Fort Hood, Texas, in January 2002.
He has been awarded a number of military
decorations, including the Bronze Star Medal, Meritorious Service Medal and
Army Commendation Medal.
Rob spent from 1997 to 2001 as an instructor
at the Noncommissioned Officer Academy on Fort Huachuca, a post where he took
his initial intelligence training in the late 1980s. In 2001 he went to Korea.
Jennifer said he was supposed to return to
Fort Huachuca at the end of his current deployment.
When he returned he planned to put in his
retirement papers, ending his Army career next year, she said.
Outside the Mendez home an American flag
flies.
In the living room window facing the street
is a simple indicator that a person in the home is serving in combat, the red
and white cloth with a single red star.
Soon, the red star will turn to a gold one, signifying the death of the
GI member of the Mendez family.
There have been some hard decisions Jennifer
has had to make. She will honor his
request to be cremated.
That will happen after Monday’s
events. But the cremains
will not be immediately put into the old cemetery on Fort Huachuca.
They will be kept at the home. “My kids need to be with their dad for
awhile,” Jennifer said.
And, she with
her husband.
UNWELCOME
UNWANTED
NO MISSION
BRING THEM ALL HOME NOW
A U.S. Marine gets the hairy eyeball from
citizens in Karmah April 26, 2006. (AP
Photo/Jacob Silberberg)
TROOP NEWS
“Bring My Daughter Home NOW”
Denise Thomas, from Georgia,
joins protesters during an anti-war rally and march on the National Mall, May
13, 2006, in Washington. Thomas has a
daughter in the Army reserve who has already done one
tour in Iraq and expects to go back. (AP Photo/Lawrence Jackson)
Possible DU Health
Effects On Soldiers Will Be Studied:
U.S. House of
Representatives Passes McDermott Amendment
2006-05-11 By Mike DeCesare,
Communications Director, Rep. Jim McDermott (D-WA) [Excerpt]
After years of relentless and unwavering
efforts, including speeches, interviews, news conferences, working with groups like
Physicians for Social Responsibility, and even appearing on a song in a newly
released Punk Rock album, in order to raise public awareness, the House of
Representatives today passed legislation (DoD Authorization) that includes an
amendment by Rep. Jim McDermott (WA-D) ordering a comprehensive study on
possible health effects from exposure to depleted uranium on U.S. soldiers and
their children.
Rep. McDermott has spent several years
working to get the House to study DU. He
explained the reason behind his passionate advocacy for the issue in this way:
“For me, this is a personal, not
political, quest. My professional life
turned from medicine to politics after my service in the U.S. Navy during the
1960s, when I treated combat soldiers returning from Vietnam.
“Back then, the Pentagon
denied that Agent Orange posed any danger to U.S. soldiers who were
exposed. Decades later, the truth
finally emerged. Agent Orange harmed our soldiers. It made thousands sick and some died. During
all those years of denial, we stood by and did nothing while soldiers
suffered. No more Agent Orange!
“If DU poses no danger, we need to
prove it with statistically valid, and independent
scientific studies. If DU harms our
soldiers, we all need to know it, and act quickly as any doctor would, to use
all of our power to heal the sick. We
owe our soldiers a full measure of the truth, wherever that leads us.”
The amendment to undertake a
comprehensive study of possible health effects to soldiers from exposure to
depleted uranium was contained in the Department of Defense Authorization Bill,
which passed the House on Thursday evening.
Depleted uranium is a by-product of the
uranium enrichment process. Because it
is very dense, the U.S. military uses DU for munitions like armor-piercing
bullets and tank shells, and as a protective shield around tanks. When used in munitions, DU pulverizes into a
fine dust upon impact; it can hang in the air, be inhaled or seep into the
soil.
During the Gulf War, the U.S. military used
approximately 300 metric tons of DU as munitions. To date in the Iraq War, approximately 150
metric tons have been used. During conflicts in Bosnia, Kosovo, Serbia, and
Montenegro, about 12 metric tons were used. (A metric ton is slightly more than
2,200 pounds.)
In addition to its own use, the United States
has provided or sold DU and DU munitions to several other nations.
“Secret Service;
“Untold Stories Of
Lesbians In The Military”
Named Finalist In Book
Contest
May 13, 2006 Mike Varady
(by way of Tom Condit)
March 15, 2006 From Veterans' CARE, an lgbt group promoting rights for veterans:
"Secret Service: Untold Stories of
Lesbians in the Military" by Zsa Zsa Gershick has been named a
finalist for the ForeWord Magazine 2005 Book of the
Year Award, gay and lesbian nonfiction category.
ForeWord,
the Publisher's Weekly of independent presses and booksellers, yearly
acknowledges and recognizes excellence in publishing from indie presses. This year, the seventh annual, more than 1,500
books were considered for 55 categories.
Winners of Gold, Silver and Bronze will be
determined by ForeWord's readership of booksellers
and librarians.
An indictment of America's
pointless and destructive policy barring gays and lesbians from serving in the
military, "Secret Service" was recently featured on C-SPAN's "Book TV" and was an NPR Summer Reading
Pick.
The Advocate says, "In
probing interviews ... Gershick uncovers shocking
stories of sexual assault, harassment, and witch hunts - an atmosphere made
more toxic, not less, by "don't ask, don't tell."
GayWired.Com calls Secret Service a "...
sobering and eye-opening book chronicling the difficult life of lesbians in the
military. A must-read
for everyone who has ever thought about joining the military. For everyone who has served,
and everyone who hasn't."
New York's Gay City News says,
"Secret Service" demonstrates why lifting the ban would benefit the
U.S. armed forces ... and makes it obvious that "Don't Ask, Don't
Tell," far from being a consistent policy, is whimsically and capriciously
enforced."
The winners will be announced Friday, May 19,
at a special program at BookExpo America, in
Washington DC.
IRAQ RESISTANCE ROUNDUP
Assorted Resistance Action
May 13, 2006 (AP) & (KUNA) &
(Reuters)
A police officer died in an explosion at his
home near Hillah.
Up to three Iraqis were wounded Saturday in
an explosion targeting a patrol for the Multi-National Forces in the northern
Iraqi city of Kirkuk.
An Iraqi police source in Kirkuk said that an
explosive device blew up as a patrol for the multi-national forces was driving
by along Baghdad Road
near a mosque in Kirkuk during which three civilians were wounded and damages
occurred to several vehicles.
Militants ambushed and killed two policemen
and wounded two others in the city of Mosul, 390 km (240 miles) north of
Baghdad, police said.
Three policemen and three civilians were
wounded when a roadside bomb exploded near their patrol in eastern Baghdad,
police said.
IF YOU
DON’T LIKE THE RESISTANCE
END THE
OCCUPATION
FORWARD OBSERVATIONS
Death Row At
The “Castle”:
Inside The U.S. Military’s Judicial System
As Russian
revolutionary Leon Trotsky wrote many years ago in his History of the Russian
Revolution, “An army is always a copy of the society it serves; with this
difference, that it gives social relations a concentrated character, carrying
both their positive and negative features to an extreme.”
Military
justice has never been about “justice”—that is, the most
elementary efforts to protect the rights of the individual, the presumption of
innocence, a jury of one’s peers, or a fair and speedy trail.
It has
always been about one thing: discipline, the power of the officer corps to
command and control soldiers, which has been upheld by the Supreme Court time
and time again. Chief Justice Earl
Warren said the military was “an enclave beyond the reach of the civilian
courts.” This
“enclave” has had a predictable record of injustice.
This article appears in the
May–June issue of the International Socialist Review. Joe Allen is a member of Teamsters Local 705
in Chicago and a long-time member of the International Socialist
Organization. He can be reached at
joeallen705@hotmail.com. Footnotes are available in the ISR
print edition.
By JOE ALLEN
IN LATE January, the Department
of the Army issued a set of regulations governing the U.S. military’s use
of the death penalty.
“This publication is a major
revision,” said Sandra Riley, an administrative assistant to the
secretary of the army. “This
regulation establishes responsibilities and updates policy and procedures for
carrying out a sentence of death as imposed by general courts-martial or
military tribunals.”
This “little-noticed move,” as
the Reuters news service described it, is the first public announcement by the
military of a policy that it has been quietly implementing for several years,
slowly placing soldiers on its version of death row.
While the civilian death
penalty is coming under greater scrutiny and several states are considering a moratorium
on executions, the U.S. military is gearing up to carry out its first execution
since 1961.
The death penalty was restored in the U.S.
military in 1984, but it is only recently that death sentences for American
soldiers related to the war in Iraq have been imposed. In March 2005, Sgt. Hasan
Akbar was sentenced to death for the “fragging” death of two
officers in Kuwait on the eve of the Iraq War in March 2003.
National Guard Sgt. Alberto Martinez also
faces a possible death sentence in another fragging case stemming from the
death of two officers in Iraq in June 2005.
The military is clearly testing the waters to see what it can get away
with.
The totalitarian world of “military
justice” would even shock opponents of the civilian death penalty.
Last year, Irene Khan,
secretary general of Amnesty International, described the treatment of Arab and
Muslim prisoners at the U.S. naval base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, as “the
gulag of our time.” A similar
gulag also exists for rank-and-file soldiers who get entangled in the
spider’s web of the military justice system, especially for those facing
the death penalty. The shrouded world of American military injustice needs to
be exposed for all to see.
The “Castle”
For millions of Americans just hearing the
word Leavenworth jolts something in the back of the brain, producing an
uncomfortable feeling of dread.
For the many thousands of soldiers, who have
been incarcerated over the years at the military prison at Fort Leavenworth, it
is known by the nickname the “Castle.” Castles, of course, have dungeons full of
hideous instruments of torture.
The military’s death row is located in
the basement of the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks (formerly known as the U.S.
Military Prison) at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. While hanging was the preferred
form of execution for most of its history, lethal injection is now the method
employed.
The Castle is the only long-term prison
operated by the Department of Defense, as distinct from prisoner-of-war (POW)
camps that were meant to operate only during wartime. The prison was established by an act of
Congress in 1874 and has been in continuous operation since 1875, when the
Castle was built by prisoners from gray stone blocks cut from the bluffs above
the Missouri River.
A new modern prison was completed in
2002. It incarcerates members from all
branches of the armed forces—the U.S. Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force, and
the Coast Guard.
The last prisoner to be executed at the
Castle was African American Army Private John Bennett, by hanging, in 1961.
The last American soldier executed during
wartime for desertion was Private Eddie Slovik, shot
by a firing squad in Europe in 1945.
In both cases, the hero of that war and
beloved president, Dwight D. Eisenhower, signed the death warrants—the
first time as the supreme allied commander in Europe and the second time as
president of the United States.
There is a perception that Slovik was the only American soldier executed during the
Second World War, but there were dozens of others. One hundred thirty-five soldiers have been
executed by the U.S. military since 1916.
Currently there are eight men on death row at
the Castle: six African-Americans, one white, and one Asian of Filipino
descent. There are no women on military
death row.
These numbers are all the more
stark when it is recalled that Black men make up 6 percent of the entire U.S.
population, and that Blacks as a whole make up 30 percent of enlistees. The only white inmate on death row is the
former senior airman Andrew Witt convicted last October for the double murder
of two people in the summer of 2004. To
say that racism plays a role in who gets death in the military justice system
is an understatement.
While some may argue that the
small number on the Castle’s death row doesn’t allow us to draw any
definitive conclusions about the role of race in sentencing, the numbers
parallel racial disparities in sentencing outside the military and are no
accident.
As Russian revolutionary Leon
Trotsky wrote many years ago in his History of the Russian Revolution,
“An army is always a copy of the society it serves; with this difference,
that it gives social relations a concentrated character, carrying both their
positive and negative features to an extreme.”
The extreme racism, sharp class divisions,
and corrupt judicial system of U.S. society are starkly reflected in the
American military today. Currently, 75
percent of federal death row prisoners are non-white, while 43 percent on death
row nationally are African American.
It’s not surprising, then, that the racial disparity on military
death row is far greater.
Last Man Executed
This becomes abundantly clear when looking at
the last man executed by the U.S. military: Private John A. Bennett. He was executed at the Castle in 1961 for
rape, a crime that is no longer punishable by the death penalty in civilian
courts. Bennett’s case is a stark
example showing the wrong then and now of the death penalty, in civilian life
and in the American military.
Bennett came from an extremely poor Black
Virginia sharecropping family; he dropped out of school at an early age. His family had a long history of mental
illness—his grandfather and great-uncle were both institutionalized, and
his first cousin committed suicide.
Bennett was later diagnosed with epilepsy. Throughout his life he complained of
dizziness, chronic headaches, and blackouts.
He joined the army in the early 1950s and was assigned the dirtiest,
hardest, and most dangerous jobs, which Blacks were traditionally given in the
military, working first as an ammunition handler and then as a truck driver.
According to the few documented accounts of
his life, John Bennett had no trouble in the army until December 1954, when he
was charged with raping an eleven-year-old white girl in Austria, where he was
stationed. Because Bennett was an active
duty GI, and because of treaties signed by the Austrian and U.S. governments,
the U.S. Army tried him rather than the Austrian courts. Such treaties have been the focus of protest
and opposition wherever American forces occupy a country. Had Bennett been tried in an Austrian court,
he would certainly not have faced death, the death penalty having been outlawed
there in 1950.
While the evidence presented against Bennett
seemed overwhelming, he always claimed he had been forced to confess at
gunpoint. What is not in dispute is that
his court-martial, held in Austria, lasted only five days.
His defense counsel didn’t put up much
of a fight, issues of mental illness were dismissed as irrelevant, and the jury
deliberated for just twenty-five minutes before finding him guilty. He was
eventually sentenced to death by hanging and moved to the Castle to await
execution.
The issues surrounding
Bennett’s conviction come into sharper focus when his fate and those of
other Black defendants are compared to white defendants charged with similar or
worse crimes during the Eisenhower era. According to Los Angeles Times reporter
Richard Serrano:
During the six years between (Bennet’s) trial and death, eight other soldiers were
executed, all of them Black. Six white
prisoners were on death row during those years. Some had killed little girls or
had killed more than once. None were
executed. President Dwight Eisenhower
commuted the sentences of four. Two were
spared by the courts.
“In the 1950s,”
explains Serrano, “black soldiers routinely were hanged while whites were
spared. Between the passage of the
Uniform Code of Military Justice in 1950 and the suspension of military executions
in 1961, eight of the nine soldiers put to death were black; one was
white.”<