Obama’s War

[These remarkable combat photos begin when a U.S. army armored vehicle is hit by an IED Feb. 23, 2010.  The photos were taken minutes after the attack by AP photographer Brennan Linsley in Marjah, Helmand Province, Afghanistan.  T]

During a medevac mission in Marjah, a U.S. Army flight medic, bottom left, with Task Force Pegasus, sets up a backboard stretcher as he prepares to extricate a Marine from inside an armored vehicle disabled minutes earlier by a planted improvised explosive device.

A flight medic stands in a crater as he directs Marines extricating a wounded Marine, not visible, from their armored vehicle.  (AP Photo/Brennan Linsley)

A U.S. Army flight medic, second from left, with Task Force Pegasus, gives directions as he prepares to use a backboard to extricate a wounded Marine from inside the armored vehicle.

The flight medic Sgt. Bryan Eickelberg, center, directs Marines as they gently extricate their wounded comrade.

Flight medic Sgt. Bryan Eickelberg, bottom right, directs Marines as they help him strap a wounded Marine onto a backboard.

Marines gather around their wounded comrade after extraction.

Medical personnel attend to wounded in the attack to a waiting helicopter.

Marines preparing to move a wounded Marine to evacuation helicopter.

A flight medic, left, directs Marines as they carry two wounded to a waiting helicopter.  Pegasus crews are providing daily the fast medical evacuation of those wounded in Marjah. 

Marines carry wounded to a waiting helicopter.

Marines carry a wounded Marine to a waiting helicopter, following an attack on their armored vehicle by a planted improvised explosive device, in Marjah, Helmand province, Afghanistan, Feb. 23, 2010.

AFGHANISTAN WAR REPORTS

Taleban Snipers Prove To Be A Formidable Threat:

“A Team, Two People, Could Conceivably Suppress Three Companies”

“We’ve Never Experienced This Level Of Threat, This Trained Foe”

[Thanks to Sandy Kelson, Military Resistance, who sent this in.]

February 24, 2010 Ben Anderson, Marjah, and Tom Coghlan, Defence Correspondent, The Times [Excerpts]

The room was six feet wide and ten feet long. A narrow gap had been smashed out of one mud wall from floor to ceiling, letting in a shaft of light that glinted off a few empty bullet casings on the floor.

Captain Ryan Sparks surveyed the scene. “He’s not a real sniper, otherwise he would have never left those there,” he said.  Nonetheless, three of Captain Sparks’s Marines have been shot, possibly from this room, by a Taleban sniper.

All three survived.  Another man took a bullet above the eyes on day three of the operation.  It just failed to penetrate the rim of the man’s Kevlar helmet.

Looking through the crack in the wall, there was a perfect line of sight to the rooftop position where the men were hit.  It has been the main compound for Bravo Company, 1/6 Marines, since they landed here a week ago.

A Marine combat engineer who was killed on the first day with 1/6 Marines is also believed to have been shot by a well-concealed sniper.

Since the start of the Marjah operation, the expected threat from roadside bombs has proved less lethal than expected.

But it is the Taleban’s use of snipers — the first time Western forces have faced such skilled sharpshooters — that is causing greater concern. The discovery of NATO issue ammunition on the battlefield has also raised fears that the Taleban may have gained access to weaponry now being used against the alliance.

Tim Coderre, who used to be an army sniper in Iraq and now trains the Afghan police, explained the threat posed by effective snipers.

“A team, two people, could conceivably suppress three companies,” he said.  “Someone sticks their head up and you get a round which just misses, or hits, it will paralyse a unit, there’s probably nothing more lethal other than unmanned aerial stuff.”

Mr Coderre estimates that there have been at least five Taleban snipers targeting the Marines, “coming from various positions”.

On the first day of the operation the Taleban sniper fired three shots and hit two Marines — a level of marksmanship that surprised the American.

“We’ve never experienced this level of threat, this trained foe,” said Corporal Thomas Gibbonsneff, 22, the leader of the Marine sniping team with Bravo Company.

Alarming the Americans is that some of the casings being found are from NATO issue 5.56mm bullets.

ENOUGH OF THIS SHIT;

ALL HOME NOW

Feb 11:  US Marines patrol on the outskirts of Marjah.  (AFP/File/Patrick Baz)

U.S. soldiers of the 4th Battalion, 23th Infantry Regiment, 5th Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, work to retrieve a Stryker armored vehicle after it slid into a ditch on a narrow road west of Lashkar Gah in Helmand province, southern Afghanistan, Feb. 11, 2010.  (AP Photo/Pier Paolo Cito)

U.S. soldiers of the 4th Battalion, 23rd Infantry Regiment, 5th Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division West of Lashkar Gah in Helmand province, southern Afghanistan, Feb. 12, 2010.  (AP Photo/Pier Paolo Cito)

U.S. soldiers of the 4th Battalion, 23rd Infantry Regiment, 5th Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, west of Lashkar Gah in Helmand province, southern Afghanistan, Feb. 12, 2010. (AP Photo/Pier Paolo Cito)

U.S. Marines sleep in firing positions at a forward camp outside Marjah in Afghanistan’s Helmand province Feb. 12, 2010.  (AP Photo/David Guttenfelder)

U.S. Marines from 3rd Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment move as Taliban fighters fire on them in the town of Marjah in Afghanistan’s Helmand province on Feb. 15, 2010.  (AP Photo/David Guttenfelder)

A U.S. Marine from Bravo Company of the 1st Battalion, 6th Marines during battle in Helmand province February 21, 2010.  REUTERS/Goran Tomasevic

US Marines help a comrade who fell into a poppy field irrigation canal during a patrol around Marjah on February 24.  (AFP/Patrick Baz)

TROOP NEWS

THIS IS HOW OBAMA BRINGS THE TROOPS HOME:

BRING THEM ALL HOME NOW, ALIVE

The casket of Marine Pfc. Kyle J. Coutu from St. Teresa of the Child Church in Pawtucket, R.I., following funeral services Feb. 26, 2010.  Coutu was killed last week in Helmand province, Afghanistan.  (AP Photo/Stew Milne)

Coffee Strong Update:

“GI Voice Exists To Provide Essential Services To Returning Soldiers And Veterans, Who Are Having Difficulty With An Array Of Mental And Physical Health Problems And GI Rights Violations”

From: info@givoice.org

To: Military Resistance

Sent: February 23, 2010

Subject: Feb 2010 CS update

Coffee Strong is gearing up in preparation for soldiers returning to Ft Lewis later this year.  We are looking for volunteers and interns with specific skills and interests.  Contact Andrew or Jen for more details, at 253-581-1565, and check out the details at www.GIVoice.org.

We’re excited to announce a grant from RESIST, which means a new website is under development for Coffee Strong!  The new website will provide better communication among our community of supporters.  This month we look forward to:

Hosting guest speakers and films this Spring (see below)

Avoiding further burglaries

Yes, the third break-in took place January 23.  Several locations near-by also sustained burglaries.  Negative energy saps the indispensable enthusiasm our vets give their vital project, a safe haven for people who are really hurting.

GI Voice exists to provide essential services to returning soldiers and veterans, who are having difficulty with an array of mental and physical health problems and GI Rights violations.  In 2009 we provided services for 83 soldiers.  Andrew vanDenBergh, our coffeehouse manager, reminds us that many of the GI Rights cases go on for several months.

Coffee Strong vets are making an incredible difference; we often hear stories about how the support given to their peers literally saves lives.   A veterans’ advocacy group has been meeting at Coffee Strong, with students preparing to pass a very difficult test that prepares them to advocate for veterans’ benefits, just as an attorney does.  Many thanks to Dennis, Lena, Mark and Perry for your efforts to provide and film the training!

We are concerned about the well-being of the community and recognize many are locked out of health care, essential food, jobs and housing. And Coffee Strong is taking action to prevent further burglaries.  We send a special thanks to Larry who donated a Mac computer for administrative work, and to Perry, who donated two printers to the coffeehouse.   

This is a time to ask our Community of support to help with donations!  If you have a laptop to donate that runs well, we will bolt it to the floor! 

Innovative protective devices are under consideration, and we could use your financial help with this project.. 

We deeply appreciate your support, and donations can be made to Seattle Draft and Military Counseling Center, for a tax deduction, or to GI Voice.  Please mail to G.I. Voice, P.O. Box 99404, Lakewood, WA 98496.

With many thanks,

The Coffeehouse Baristas

See www.GIVoice.org for a list of volunteer and internship opportunities.  Positions are now open.

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

Upcoming Events at Coffee Strong

Sergeant Travis Bishop received word that he was given a 3-month suspension, of the 12 month sentence he received last year for refusing to deploy to Afghanistan based on his Christian religious beliefs against war.

Sgt. Bishop’s clemency application included a legal brief (alleging problems at trial, problems with the processing of Bishop’s conscientious objector claim, and mistreatment at the Fort Lewis brig), a hand-written letter from Sgt. Bishop, and 433 letters (signed by a total of 538 people from 21 different countries) from members of Amnesty International and Coffee Strong, calling for Sgt. Bishop to be released.

Sgt. Bishop’s civilian attorney, James M. Branum, estimates that Sgt. Bishop will be released no later than March 31 based on the amount of good behavior credit Sgt. Bishop has earned..  Check  www.GIVoice.org for the announcement of the celebration planned on the day of his release, in collaboration with Amnesty International and Seattle Veterans for Peace.  We anticipate the date toward the end of March.

Join Elizabeth Stinson and Tanya Brannan at CS: March 2, 6:30 to 8:30 pm (no charge)

Two very powerful speakers will discuss dynamics they’ve identified over the last decade working with military sexual trauma (Stinson) and sexual assault among wives or partners of police officers (Brannan). Both women have extraordinary backgrounds, and both have received honors for their work in Sonoma County, CA.

Come meet Stinson, and appreciate the clarity of her communication, very respectful yet clear approach to resolving issues that threaten the power and rights of women and soldiers. Tanya Brannan argued the first successful lawsuit against a police department for their failure to provide protection for a woman against domestic violence.

Discussion re: Supreme Court decision, “Citizens United”  Friday, March 5, 7 to 9:00 pm (no charge)

The Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United is just the latest--and most blatant--example that corporations have hijacked our government. The ruling leaves ordinary citizens little opportunity to participate in making the fundamental decisions that affect our lives. Corporations are using our legal system to elect our representatives.

Rikki Ott and David Cobb (Democracy Unlimited Humboldt County; Green Party presidential candidate) will facilitate a community dialogue on how our community can join the movement to abolish corporate personhood.

SAVE THE DATE:

Friday, March 19th --  7th Anniversary of the War  -- Tacoma Event

War Costs!  Who Pays?  And Who Profits?

Friday, March 19th is the 7th anniversary of beginning the Shocking and Awful bombing of Iraq in 2003.

Save the date to protest our current foreign policy in Iraq, and Afghanistan/Pakistan.

4:00 pm RALLY at the Federal Courthouse in Tacoma, followed by MARCH to I-5 overpass.  Working at 4:00 PM?  Then join our demonstration at 5:30 at the Pacific Ave/I-5 overpass (bridge).

Watch www.GIVoice.org for more details. The Tacoma chapter of IVAW will be announcing powerful street theater events locally.  Co-sponsored by Iraq Veterans Against the War--Tacoma Chapter and United for Peace of Pierce County.  For information call 253-573-1504.

SAVE THIS DATE:

Ann Wright in Tacoma April 24, 2010!

Ret. Colonel Ann Wright will join us in Tacoma at King’s Books from 2 to 4 pm to discuss the wars in the Middle East.  King’s Books is located at 218 St Helens Ave., Tacoma, WA 98402. 

Ann will outline the relationship between the Israeli Occupation of Gaza, and the role the US plays in each of the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan.

An open discussion will follow, specific to the resistance of ongoing war, and costs to communities and returning soldiers.  Ann will have thoughts about what needs to happen, and we look forward to hearing from you.  Please RSVP at mollygibbs3@gmail.com or at Coffee Strong’s FB!

FORWARD OBSERVATIONS

“At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed.  Oh had I the ability, and could reach the nation’s ear, I would, pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke.

“For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder.

“We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake.”

Frederick Douglass, 1852

“There Is An Astonishing Lack Of Anger Among Liberals, Progressives And Radicals Who Have Abandoned Emotion To The Right”

“When The Wealthy Fuck Up, The Poor Get To Die”

“Where And When Did We Lefties Lose This Vital Part Of Our Social Language?”

Freedom of Speech: Norman Rockwell, 1943

24 February 2010 By Clancy Sigal, Guardian News and Media

“Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me and I welcome their hatred.”   -- President Roosevelt, Madison Square Garden, 31 October 1936

There is an astonishing lack of anger among liberals, progressives and radicals who have abandoned emotion to the right.

Our role model continues to be not FDR, still less Malcolm X, but our “bipartisan” and apparently tone-deaf President Obama.

In this second or third year of a devastating depression, not just recession, that has inflicted an epidemic of suffering on the lower half of the American nation, Obama is very busy being fluent and civil while being essentially untouched by the rage felt by so many of us.

Our world, as we have known it, is being annihilated, and nobody in power shows signs of giving a damn.

The real anger is all on the right, kidnapped – or authentically voiced – by the all-white Tea Partiers, Palinites, Oath Keepers and “armed and dangerous” patriot groups, some but not all of whom are native-fascistic but also include pissed-off libertarians and the disappointed and dispossessed at the bottom of the pile.

Look at the mess.

Evictions – I’m a child of Great Depression furniture-thrown-on-the-street – are skyrocketing.

Mortgage holders are in a feeding frenzy on their hapless fellow citizens.

Michelle Obama lectures us on obesity while one in eight Americans (and one in four children) are on federal food stamps.

The human toll of long term, more-or-less permanent unemployment is yet to be counted as millions of Americans are pushed out of the middle class and become the “new poor” queuing up at food banks for the first time in their lives.

Those who do vent and get angry are put down as crackpots, which they sometimes are.

But the so-called left seems to have joined the mainstream (and even the radical) media in under- or mis- or never-reporting what’s actually happening in the lives of so many of us.

Like Obama, Pelosi and the rest of the Democratic party establishment we’ve forfeited real gut language in favour of policy abstractions, the “issues” syndrome, that so easily hide an open wound.

Joe Stack, who rammed his Piper Cherokee into the IRS building in Austin, Texas, murdering an IRS worker and injuring many, was one maladjusted injustice collector.

But his online 3000-word suicide note, a long-repressed scream of protest, has the virtue of unminced words we are never likely to hear from anyone in Washington or a state capitol.

“When the wealthy fuck up, the poor get to die.”

Where and when did we lefties lose this vital part of our social language?

Was it in pre-school where we’re urged as toddlers to use sweet reasonableness to resolve disputes?

Or have we grown so stiffly respectable that we’re afraid of being loud and vulgar?

Or that – horrors! – we’ll get too closely identified with the Great Unwashed like Joe Stack, Amy Bishop (the professor who shot her Alabama colleagues), crazy bikers, teenage gangs and “poor white trash” who tend to express their anger mainly against each other?

Whatever the reason, the suppression of sane, liberal anger has been around at least half a century, certainly since the sociologist C Wright Mills in his influential book The Power Elite deplored the loss of capacity by the public to experience outrage as contrasted with earlier periods in American history.

The last time I remember collective anger as legitimate was in the now-much-derided 1960s with its protest marches and brazen hippie-style slogans.

Ever since there’s been a gradual slide – I would argue descent – into sterile politeness.

Recently, I attended a meeting of my local school board where a mild, hardly-above-a-whisper grumble from a parent prompted his expulsion enforced by armed police.

Who knows what might have happened if any of us in the audience had stood up and actually spoken out as in that famous Norman Rockwell painting of a town hall meeting?

Why should full-throated emotion be the monopoly of the so-called “populists” who seem to be the only people around unafraid to shout, yell, stomp and scream?

I grew up in a boisterous, immigrant, loud neighborhood where everyone had an opinion and voiced it full throttle. Somewhere along the line, maybe when I shifted from working class to middle class, I lost my rough, grating, empowered, assertive voice – and maybe the anger that had fuelled it.  If so, that’s a pity.

We need liberal anger now more than ever.

Laotian Whore

From: Mike Hastie

To: Military Resistance

Sent: February 19, 2010

Subject: Laotian Whore

                   Laotian Whore

This is a picture of a Medevac helicopter in

my military unit in An Khe, Vietnam 1970.

In many ways the name painted on the front

of the helicopter is a metaphor for the entire

Vietnam War.

Laotian Whore.

The American War.

The United States Government brought horror

to three countries in Southeast Asia:

Vietnam

Cambodia

Laos

Fast forward 40 years and it is now:

Afghanistan

Pakistan

Iraq

No such thing as the Afghanistan War.

       
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