Veterans Denied Rights By Veterans?

A recent press release from VFP DC:

Washington D.C. May 9, 2008

On April 14, 2008 Veterans For Peace, Delwin Anderson Memorial chapter of Washington D.C. was officially accepted to join the National Memorial Day parade on May 26, 2008.
http://www.nationalmemorialdayparade.com/
On April 28 Veterans For Peace received notice that the organization did not meet the criteria to participate. This notice was sent by the American Veterans Center which is the organizer for the parade.
http://www.americanveteranscenter.org/

The parade director's revocation of Veterans For Peace participation stated "Unfortunately, we cannot have elements in the parade that have any type of political message or wish to promote a viewpoint." Veterans For Peace responded with a request for reconsideration because there was no agenda for presenting any type of political message or viewpoint. Veterans For Peace has not received any further communication from the parade director or the American Veterans Center.

This chapter has lost three WWII members since July 2007 and there are not many parades left for the two survivors to join. Plans were made to have the WWII veterans and Mrs. Delwin Anderson ride in a convertible and VFP members would march in the front and rear of the convertible with VFP and American flags. It is difficult to express their disappointment.

Veterans For Peace chapters throughout America have been receiving similar treatment from other parade organizers especially this past Veterans Day. Veterans For Peace does not accept veterans trying to keep other veterans from being seen in public. It is in the public interest to be aware that veterans who once took an oath to support and defend the Constitution are participating in efforts to deny their fellow veterans rights that are accorded to us all.

Since 2006 the Delwin Anderson chapter of Veterans For Peace has grown in number and participated in a number of local public events in Virginia including the Prince William County Fair, the Vienna Halloween parade, the Fall For Fairfax festivals and the Vienna Memorial Day weekend festivals. On Veterans Day 2007 the chapter was invited to the Kennedy Center by the Washington Chorus and the occasion was used to officially name the chapter the Delwin Anderson Memorial Chapter. The chapter has also been featured in the Washington Post and local media publications and broadcasts. Veterans For Peace is always warmly accepted by the general public when it participates in mainstream events.

Why does it appear that fellow veterans are trying to block the public's view of Veterans For Peace? Maybe it only seems that way because the major sponsors of the parade include the Ross Perot Foundation, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, the nation of Kuwait, the U.S. Army and the National Rifle Association. If there is a political message in the parade, it comes from the American Veterans Center and not from Veterans For Peace. A closer look into the backgrounds of the staff at the American Veterans Center reveals a very politically oriented viewpoint built from the blood and bones of veterans.
http://www.americanveteranscenter.org/AVC_contactus.html

The original acceptance letter and rejection notice are online at
www.vfpdc.org

Contacts:
Michael McPhearson
National Executive Director
Veterans For Peace
vfped@veteransforpeace.net
TEL: 314 725-6005

Michael Marceau
Vice President
Veterans For Peace
Delwin Anderson Memorial chapter
mikemarceau@juno.com
TEL: 301-542-9867

Anthony Teolis
Veterans For Peace
Delwin Anderson Memorial Chapter
vfpdc@vfpdc.org
TEL: 703-402-1763

Mackie Christenson
Parade Director
National Memorial Day Parade
mchristenson@americanveteranscenter.org
wvamackie@aol.com
Office: 703 302 1012 x 227
Cell: 703 350 0184

Celebrating the Destruction of an MRAP?

A friend of mine at Quantico just leaked the following PowerPoint presentation to me. I called the number at the bottom of the first slide and was able to speak with Major Ruhlen, who seems to be getting an annoying number of calls about this. His number is redacted here. He claimed that someone had just slapped his “letterhead” on this one, and he had nothing to do with this file or anything to do with the MRAP for that matter. In fact, he even said that he did not know how much an MRAP costs.

After a quick google search, I was able to find out that the MRAP costs about a million dollars. The presentation says that “everyone walked away from a 500 lb explosion.” I have no idea how they were able to determine the weight of the explosive. Perhaps they picked up all the scraps of shrapnel and put them back together. But odds are, the explosives used came from an old Iraqi stockpile. Even if it really was 500 pounds of explosives, it probably cost Saddam just a few dollars to make, and didn't cost anything for the people who were responsible for putting it under the MRAP.

If our enemies can cost us a million dollars at almost no cost, and send us off giddily making Power Point presentations about it, we are pretty much fucked as a country.

Notice that the author says, “EVERYONE IN THE VEHICLE WALKED AWAY,” and “the driver got some broken ribs.” “Walked away,” isn't exactly a medical term. Now, I'm sure the soldiers were grateful to be in an MRAP and not a humvee, but I'm just as sure that they are not thrilled about the possibility of Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) symptoms that may be with them for the rest of their lives.

The cost of the average humvee is about $140,000. Is it worth the extra cost of the MRAPs to save soldiers lives? Absolutely, if that was the equation in a bubble. The real question is, is it worth investing millions of dollars in this effort to force insurgents to make a marginally bigger bomb? But in the meantime, who is asking, “Should we stop making people want to blow us up and bleed us into bankrupcy?”

Here is the text from the first slide of the presentation, which is dated May 1st:

Soldiers survived!!

This is one of the new "hardened" MRAP vehicles that was hit by a 500 lb bomb (IED). The vehicle was totally destroyed, but EVERYONE IN THE VEHICLE WALKED AWAY.

Note the unusual construction of the bottom of the hardened Pathfinder APC. Note the bottom looks like the hull of a ship. The blast picked up the truck and turned it around! The driver got some broken ribs (see the photo of the steering wheel), but that's it. Everyone walked away from a 500 lb explosion directly beneath their vehicle.

The Prez In The Fez!

Last Tuesday I got to see Khalil Bendib's act, "The Prez in the Fez." It was hilarious and insightful. Khalil uses his humor and Muslim perspective to cut through a lot of the ways in which we are deluding ourselves as a country. His main gig is as a cartoonist and you can see some of his work here: http://www.bendib.com/

He sent me this cartoon and said he will be coming to my event in Marin on Tuesday at the College of Marin.

Happy May Day from the Iraq Labour Movement

Today, I will be at CSUF presenting on the implications of the Winter Soldier testimonies for our understanding of the occupation on the Iraqi people, so I thought it would be appropriate to share this with you. (from US Labor Against the War)

May Day 2008 Statement from the Iraqi Labour Movement
To the Workers and All Peace Loving People of the World

April 29th, 2008

On this day of international labour solidarity we call on our fellow trade unionists and all those worldwide who have stood against war and occupation to increase support for our struggle for freedom from occupation - both the military and economic.

We call upon the governments, corporations and institutions behind the ongoing occupation of Iraq to respond to our demands for real democracy, true sovereignty and self-determination free of all foreign interference.

Five years of invasion, war and occupation have brought nothing but death, destruction, misery and suffering to our people. In the name of our “liberation,” the invaders have destroyed our nation’s infrastructure, bombed our neighbourhoods, broken into our homes, traumatized our children, assaulted and arrested many of our family members and neighbours, permitted the looting of our national treasures, and turned nearly twenty percent of our people into refugees.

The invaders helped to foment and then exploit sectarian divisions and terror attacks where there had been none. Our union offices have been raided. Union property has been seized and destroyed. Our bank accounts have been frozen. Our leaders have been beaten, arrested, abducted and assassinated. Our rights as workers have been routinely violated.

The Ba’athist legislation of 1987, which banned trade unions in the public sector and public enterprises (80% of all workers), is still in effect, enforced by Paul Bremer’s post-invasion Occupation Authority and then by all subsequent Iraqi administrations. This is an attack on our rights and basic precepts of a democratic society, and is a grim reminder of the shadow of dictatorship still stalking our country.

Despite the horrific conditions in our country, we continue to organise and protest against the occupation, against workplaces abuses, and for better treatment and safer conditions.

Despite the sectarian plots around us, we believe in unity and solidarity and a common aim of public service, equality, and freedom to organise without external intrusions and coercion.

Our legitimacy comes from our members. Our principles of organisation are based on transparent and internationally recognised International Labour Organisation standards.

We call upon our allies and all the world’s peace-loving peoples to help us to end the nightmare of occupation and restore our sovereignty and national independence so that we can chart our own course to the future.

1) We demand an immediate withdrawal of all foreign troops from our country, and utterly reject the agreement being negotiated with the USA for long-term bases and a military presence. The continued occupation fuels the violence in Iraq rather than alleviating it. Iraq must be returned to full sovereignty.

2) We demand the passage of a labour law promised by our Constitution, which adheres to ILO principles and on which Iraqi trade unionists have been fully consulted, to protect the rights of workers to organize, bargain and strike, independent of state control and interference.

3) We demand an end to meddling in our sovereign economic affairs by the International Monetary Fund, USA and UK. We demand withdrawal of all economic conditionalities attached to the IMF's agreements with Iraq, removal of US and UK economic "advisers" from the corridors of Iraqi government, and a recognition by those bodies that no major economic decisions concerning our services and resources can be made while foreign troops occupy the country.

4) We demand that the US government and others immediately cease lobbying for the oil law, which would fracture the country and hand control over our oil to multinational companies like Exxon, BP and Shell. We demand that all oil companies be prevented from entering into any long-term agreement concerning oil while Iraq remains occupied. We demand that the Iraqi government tear up the current draft of the oil law, and begin to develop a legitimate oil policy based on full and genuine consultation with the Iraqi people. Only after all occupation forces are gone should a long term plan for the development of our oil resources be adopted.


We seek your support and solidarity to help us end the military and economic occupation of our country. We ask for your solidarity for our right to organise and strike in defence of our interests as workers and of our public services and resources. Our public services are the legacy of generations before us and the inheritance of all future generations and must not be privatised.

We thank you for standing by us. We too stand with you in your own struggles for real democracy which we know you also struggle for, and against privatisation, exploitation and daily disempowerment in your workplaces and lives.

We commend those of you who have organised strikes and demonstrations to end the occupation in solidarity with us and we hope these actions will continue.

We look forward to the day when we have a world based on co-operation and solidarity. We look forward to a world free from war, sectarianism, competition and exploitation.

Endorsed by: (signers as of 4/29/08)

Hassan Juma’a Awad, President, Iraqi Federation of Oil Unions (IFOU)
Faleh Abood Umara, Deputy, Central Council, Iraqi Federation of Oil Unions (IFOU)
Falah Alwan, President, Federation of Workers Councils and Unions in Iraq (FWCUI)
Subhi Albadri, President, General Federation of Workers Councils and Unions in Iraq (GFWCUI)
Nathim Rathi, President, Iraqi Port Workers Trade Union
Samir Almuawi, President, Engineering Professionals Trade Union
Ghzi Mushatat, President, Mechanic and Print Shop Trade Union
Waleed Alamiri, President, Electricity Trade Union
Ilham Talabani, President, Banking Services Trade Union
Abdullah Ubaid, President, Railway Trade Union
Ammar Ali, President, Transportation Trade Union
Abdalzahra Abdilhassan, President, Service Employees Trade Union
Sundus Sabeeh, President, Barber Shop Workers Trade Union
Kareem Lefta Sindan, President, Lumber and Construction Trade Union, General Federation of Iraqi Workers (GFIW)
Sabah Almusawi, President, Wasit Independent Trade Union
Shakir Hameed, President, Lumber And Construction Trade Union (GFWCUI)
Awad Ahmed, President, Teachers Federation of Salahideen
Alaa Ghazi Mushatat, President, Agricultural And Food Substance Industries
Adnan Rathi Shakir, President, Water Resources Trade Union
Nahrawan Yas, President, Woman Affairs Bureau
Sabah Alyasiri, President (GFWCUI) Babil
Ali Tahi, President (GFWCUI) Najaf
Ali Abbas, President (GFWCUI) Basra
Muhi Abdalhussien, President (GFWCUI), Wasit
Ali Hashim Abdilhussien, President (GFWCUI) Kerbala
Ali Hussien, President (GFWCUI) Anbar
Mustafa Ameen, Arab Workers Bureau, President (GFWCUI)
Thameer Mzeail, Health Services, Union Committee
Khadija Saeed Abdullah, Teachers Federation, Member
Asmahan, Khudair, Woman Affairs, Textile Trade Unions
Adil Aljabiri, Oil Workers Trade Union Executive Bureau Member
Muhi Abdalhussien, Nadia Flaih, Service Employees Trade Unions
Rawneq Mohammed, Member, Media and Print Shop Trade Union
Abdlakareem Abdalsada, Vice President (GFWCUI)
Saeed Nima, Vice President (GFWCUI)
Sabri Abdalkareem, Member, (GFWCUI) Babil
Amjad Aljawhary, Representative of GFWCUI in North America

The Nomination of Petraeus Can Mean Only One Thing: A Bigger Face For a Bigger War

On April 23rd, Army General David H. Petraeus became the President's nominee for head of CENTCOM. This was in conjunction with the nomination of his second in command, Lieutenant General Raymond T. Odierno to pin on a fourth star and take his place. Petraeus was praised for his dedication and having spent four of the last five years in Iraq. (He is the blind leading the blind.) Senator Kennedy said, “In his new position, General Petraeus will have a much larger regional and strategic responsibility,” and McCain had the hot air that we have come to expect from him for these, “two remarkable fighting men.”

The “remarkable fighting man” who resigned to make room for these two bunglers to get promoted was of course, the courageous, but similarly bungling, Admiral William J. Fallon. According to the conservative Washington Times, he was pressured to resign for letting Iranian fighters into Iraq. This just having happened to come right after an interview that he did with Esquire magazine in which Thomas P.M. Barnett, a former professor at the Naval War College wrote, “it may well mean that the president and vice president intend to take military action against Iran before the end of this year and don't want a commander standing in their way.” He has also openly opposed “the” surge in Iraq. (It's really more like the fifth or sixth, but who's counting? It's just the first to be marketed as THE surge.)

There is so much wrong with this picture, I don't know where to start. An administration hell-bent on starting another unnecessary war. A CENTCOM Commander not preventing the surge from happening. A Commander In Chief replacing commanders for speaking out. A media that doesn't realize it is being set up. And that gets to the most important part. Petraeus has been groomed, and branded, and molded into the perfect political football to be tossed around by Democrats and Republicans. He has become the modern face of war, and his promotion to a role with more “strategic responsibility” can only mean one thing: he will soon be the face of an expanded war.

Petraeus: "The big green weenie that we are giving to the troopers after politely asking them to bend over with 'stop-loss' and 'involuntary extension' is about this big. And it's called the fifteenth month deployment."

By Request, A Couple of Images From Winter Soldier You Won't Find Anywhere Else

This is the original Rules Of Engagement card that I was issued for my deployment to Iraq. I think these were issued to us at one of the briefings we had to sit through in Kuwait. If you read it closely, you'll see that warfare has really evolved. Now we're killing people indiscriminately by the rules! [If you can't read the card, click the image to enlarge it.] The back of the card:

This was one of the "green monster" notebooks that I carried in Iraq. It's a very unique symbol of authority in the military, and Marines go to great lengths to personalize them. This one is a play on "winning the hearts and minds," as a graphic representation of, "two in the heart and one in the mind."

A New Desktop, Courtesy of My Housemate, Marc Train

You can make your own version of this at http://diy.despair.com/motivator.php. Let me know if you come up with anything good.

I Am Grateful That Casey J Porter is an IVAW Member

Depressed Freeper at Petraeus Hearing Derides Adam Kokesh

New York Times Responds to Readers About WSIA Blackout

New York Times public editor Clark Hoyt:

Dear Reader,

Thank you for writing about the Winter Soldier event in Maryland last month and its lack of coverage by the Times.

My assistant checked with various editors at the Times to see if there was any discussion about covering the Winter Soldier meeting. The editor in the Washington bureau who oversees national security coverage said he had not been aware of the group or its meeting. The Times normally has three Pentagon reporters. The meeting fell within their area of coverage, and one of them probably would have been assigned had editors chosen to staff the event. But one is on book leave, one was traveling with the secretary of defense, and one was in Iraq covering the war. The Times also did not cover an announcement the following day by Vets for Freedom, a group supporting the war and claiming more than 13 times the membership of Iraq Veterans Against the War, the group which organized Winter Soldier.

One group was emphasizing what it charged were war crimes, war profiteering and war mismanagement. The other group was protesting what it charged was the failure of the media to report more fully on signs of progress in Iraq, such as rebuilt schools and infrastructure.

News organizations like the Times, with its own substantial investment in independent reporting from Iraq tend to prefer their own on-scene accounts of the war, rather than relying on charges and counter-charges at home by organizations with strongly held political viewpoints about the war.

Sincerely,
Clark Hoyt
****

The Times' D.C. bureau editor's claim to have not heard of the hearings is remarkable, given that the AP newswire carried a story on the hearings, and IVAW has confirmed to FAIR that the D.C. bureau had been sent three separate rounds of different IVAW press releases. In addition, at least 150 Times staffers were sent press releases about Winter Soldier by the Institute for Public Accuracy, a group that encourages inclusion of overlooked facts and progressive perspectives in media coverage. Given that media organizations operating on a small fraction of the Times' budget were aware of and able to find the resources to cover these hearings, the Times' D.C. bureau's plea to ignorance about the hearings is all the more disappointing.

Meanwhile, Hoyt's justification of the Times failure to cover Winter Soldier on the grounds that they also did not cover "an announcement the following day by Vets for Freedom, a group supporting the war and claiming more than 13 times the membership of Iraq Veterans Against the War, the group which organized Winter Soldier," draws a far-fetched parallel between a group presenting eyewitness testimony about atrocities in Iraq and a group releasing a press release about media bias. (As a group that often puts out press releases about media bias that don't get covered by the Times, the comparison strikes us as rather absurd.) Further, the size of IVAW and Vets for Freedom are not directly comparable, as IVAW is a group of veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, whereas anyone can sign up on the Vets for Freedom website, which stipulates that "non-veterans can also be members of Vets for Freedom."

Hoyt's claim that "news organizations like the Times, with its own substantial investment in independent reporting from Iraq, tend to prefer their own on-scene accounts of the war" is akin to asserting that reporters on the police beat prefer to write about crimes they have seen themselves rather than talking to eyewitnesses. Given that Times reporters, like all Western journalists in Iraq, have great difficulty travelling freely outside the Green Zone, it is hard to imagine that they could provide a full and accurate picture of the war without interviewing people who have participated in it. And of course the paper does often interview U.S. military personnel about what they've seen, though when they are whistleblowers trying to call attention to what they describe as "the human consequences of failed policy," the Times suddenly has much less interest in what they have to say.

The New York Times' decision to assign one of its two available correspondents to tour with the Secretary of Defense instead of hearing the first-hand accounts of the Winter Soldiers demonstrates a very strange notion of "independent reporting."

fair.org
4/8/08