posted 01-08-2004 11:53 PM            

DAV Urges Defense Secretary to Get the Facts to War Wounded
1/7/04 4:09:00 PM

To: National Desk
Contact: David E. Autry of Disabled American Veterans, 202-554-3501

WASHINGTON, Jan. 7 /U.S. Newswire/ -- The Disabled American Veterans (DAV) is urging Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld to relax severe restrictions that are preventing wounded service members from the war in Iraq and the war on terror from receiving adequate information about their earned benefits and health care.

In a letter to Secretary Rumsfeld, DAV Washington Headquarters Executive Director David W. Gorman asked the Secretary "to ensure that America's newest generation of war-wounded veterans has access to appropriate information and representation."

"For more than six decades, the DAV has received access to military hospitals so that our professionally trained and fully accredited representatives could provide crucial information and counseling to servicemembers to help smooth their transition from military to civilian life," said Gorman. "The policies of the Department of Defense citing the Privacy Act and security are preventing our skilled representatives from carrying out our congressionally chartered mission."

While wounded soldiers receive some information about veterans' rights and benefits from the Defense Department and the Department of Veterans Affairs representatives, Gorman said that information often is "inadequate and fails to meet the needs of those who have been injured. DAV National Services Officers offer the best knowledge, skill, experience, and representations available to disabled veterans today." DAV services are offered at no cost to the servicemembers as part of our mission to help build better lives for disabled veterans and their families.

“For 83 years, we have accomplished that mission to the gratitude of millions of disabled veterans and their families," said Gorman. "Our record of service is unquestioned and second to none."

Gorman cited Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., for selecting patients who could be visited, requiring DAV to request permission to visit servicemembers, and strictly limiting information about the patients, such as name and nature of the injury to the servicemember. Gorman asked Secretary Rumsfeld to urge military medical facilities to restore DAV access to wounded servicemembers "in the best interests of those who have sacrificed so much in the name of freedom." The 1.2 million-member Disabled American Veterans, a non-profit organization founded in 1920 and chartered by the U.S. Congress in 1932, represents this nation's disabled veterans. It is dedicated to a single purpose: building better lives for our nation's disabled veterans and their families. For more information, visit the organization's Web site http://www.dav.org.

--------------

Following is a letter from DAV Washington Headquarters Executive Director David W. Gorman to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld:
January 2, 2004

Honorable Donald H. Rumsfeld Secretary of Defense 1000 Defense Pentagon Washington, DC 20301

Dear Mr. Secretary:

I am writing to express the serious concerns of the more than 1.2 million members of the Disabled American Veterans (DAV) about the future of those brave men and women who are wounded, sickened, or otherwise disabled in service to our nation, particularly those returning from Operation Iraqi Freedom, Enduring Freedom, and the war on terror.

With combat casualties returning to military hospitals in the United States, it is essential that these wounded soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines be made fully aware of their rights, benefits, and health care options even before they leave military service. I know you share my concern that unless they have this vital information, this new generation of veterans will be denied timely access to medical care and the full range of benefits provided by a grateful nation through the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA).

The Disabled American Veterans was founded in 1920 and was awarded a congressional charter in 1932 to carry out our mission to help build better lives for America's disabled veterans and their families. For 83 years, we have accomplished that mission to the gratitude of millions of disabled veterans and their families. Our record of service is unquestioned and second to none. We have provided our outstanding services free of charge to the men and women who so nobly sacrificed for our nations liberty and have assisted them in obtaining their rightful benefits guaranteed by a grateful nation.

For more than six decades, the DAV has always been granted access to military hospitals so our professionally trained and fully accredited representatives, attorneys-in-fact, could provide such crucial information and counseling to these servicemembers to help smooth their transition from military to civilian life. Sadly, that is no longer the case. The current policies of the Department of Defense citing the Privacy Act and security are preventing our skilled representatives from carrying out our congressionally chartered mission.

At one facility in particular-Walter Reed Army Medical Center (WRAMC) in Washington, D.C. -- our efforts to visit with wounded patients have been severely restricted. For example, all requests to visit patients must now be made through the WRAMC headquarters office, which then selects the patients we may visit and strictly limits information about the patients, even the patient's name and the nature of the injury is withheld without express permission. The DAV's representatives also are escorted at all times while in the facility, and all contact with patients is closely monitored by the escort. This is particularly unnerving and inappropriate as all conversations between a representative and client are confidential in nature.

I believe these overly broad restrictions on patient access inhibit the ability of our professional accredited representatives to help ensure these wounded servicemembers have the vital information they and their families need in order to obtain the medical care and benefits many of these veterans will depend on for decades to come.

The American public would be outraged if these restrictions became public knowledge. We are aware that some VA representation is available for these men and women. It is inadequate and fails to meet the need of those who have been injured. DAV National Service Officers offer the best knowledge, skill, experience and representation available to disabled veterans today. In addition, our expert representatives serve no special interests other than helping the veterans. The record of benefits awarded by the VA shows our honored wounded and injured are getting less than they are rightfully entitled. Those wounded and disabled in service to our nation should not be held captive and deprived of the knowledge that would allow them to receive all their rightful benefits, earned on a battlefield half a world away. It brings great dishonor to our nation to learn of disabled veterans suffering physical and economic hardships following their release from medical treatment solely because they are unaware and uninformed of their rightful benefits.

In that regard, I respectfully request the assistance of your office in our efforts to ensure that America's newest generation of war-wounded veterans has access to appropriate information and representation, in the pursuit of VA health care and the full range of their benefits without delay. Important guidance from your office urging military medical facilities to restore access to these patients by the DAV's accredited representatives would be in the best interests of those who have sacrificed so much in the name of freedom.

I look forward to your prompt reply.

Sincerely,
DAVID W. GORMAN Executive Director Washington Headquarters

----------------

posted 01-08-2004 11:58 PM            

It shouldn't happen to a vet
Uncle Sam needs soldiers to protect his pipelines in Iraq - but they shouldn't expect his help when it's all over

AL Kennedy
Wednesday January 7, 2004
The Guardian

Feeling restless? Is 2004 looking just like 2003? Do you long to have your place in life very firmly defined by others and to wear a range of interesting hats? Do you have low financial expectations, a vigorous desire to travel and a functioning index finger? Then the US military could be for you.

Not a US citizen? Don't fret - the Department of Defense Inc welcomes one and all. You can fight for a passport, fight for a green card, just fight for the Christian, God-fearing hell of it. And you'll be in good hands - Secretary of the Air Force James Roche is a former vice-president at Northrop Grumman; Secretary of the Navy Gordon England is a former executive at General Dynamics; and former Secretary of the Army Thomas E White came direct from those hard-fighting boys at Enron. You're only a few months of training from jury-rigging armour on your combat-unready vehicle, eating out of filthy, Halliburton-run kitchens, sewing patches on your Vietnam-issue flak jacket and tying plastic strips round the wrists of numberless fascinating strangers, often in their own homes. Brits also have local access to a subsidiary enterprise, run to the same exacting standards. French nationals need not apply.

Or perhaps you've just finished a tour for Uncle Sam. Maybe you're one of last year's lucky amputees, or you've suffered a recent "mystery illness" or "mental breakdown". Well, give yourself a shake, shine up those new prosthetics and re-enlist today. In other wars you'd have been left idle, but no matter what levels of physical and mental trauma you've endured, this time the Department of Defense Inc still needs you. And with veterans making up 9% of the US population but 23% of the homeless - and Veterans Affairs taking care of 40,000 out of 500,000 - what better options have you got? You have a 50% chance of substance abuse and a 45% chance of mental illness - and let's not even talk about Gulf war syndrome and depleted uranium. In fact, let's not talk about that, ever.

And who would miss the chance of serving alongside forces from Kellogg Root Brown, Northrop Grumman and DynCorp International - the war professionals? They can ignore the Geneva convention (they're not protected by it, either) and you can simply dodge round it. Feel like beating some prisoners in Camp Bucca? Confining whole villages as collective punishment? Shooting unarmed civilians? Gunning down a surrendered combatant in the street? Arresting the pesky journalists who'd film you gunning down a surrendered combatant in the street? Failing to establish and sustain civil order? Obtaining information "under duress"? Lifting harmless valuables during house-to-house searches? Then this war's for you.

Or are you a brave, decent individual with a trust in your country's leaders and a deep sense of duty? Obviously, you can sign up, too, but your disillusionment will cause no end of trouble. You might well suffer long-term psychological problems, send emails to Michael Moore, complain to your relatives that you're being forced into illegal acts for corporate profit, and generally reduce company morale. Your duty is to keep your head down and make sure those pipelines stay secure.

Of course, if you don't keep your head down, you may experience a period of negative good health. This is to be avoided, because it tends to depress voters at home, so you might find yourself being withdrawn for a while and stored in a variety of hospitals, barrack blocks and sheds with other inconveniently indisposed personnel, until you can be returned to the combat zone, or filtered quietly back into society.

Your secluded storage may also affect your ability to receive Purple Hearts and other awards. And you will, naturally, be expected to repay your $8.10 food allowance for each day spent enjoying hospital meals, while any disability benefit you receive later (subject to further cuts) will be reimbursed to the government out of your retirement pay. There are moves afoot to alter these nominal, reasonable burdens, but don't hold your breath.

And rest assured, for those of you who no longer have breath to hold, the Charles C Carson Centre for Mortuary Affairs will deal with your remains efficiently in tasteful surroundings. You won't be best placed to appreciate it, but the 70,000 sq ft, state-of-the-art facility at Dover air force base, in Delaware, has been expressly designed to process you and your comrades. It has a foyer with reflecting pool and rock-effect seating area and a glass Wall of Fallen Heroes, ready and waiting for your name.

Better still, no ceremony will be held there to mark your passing, in case your grieving relatives feel compelled to attend. Coincidentally, this means George Bush won't be attending, either. And nor will the press gain any access - your arrival will be entirely private, as if you had never been.

posted 01-09-2004 12:02 AM            

Jan. 1, 2004, 9:12PM

Bush drug proposal enrages veterans
Plan may alienate military retirees by imposing higher fees for prescriptions
By DALE EISMAN
Copyright 2004 The Virginian-Pilot

WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration is considering dramatic increases in the fees military retirees pay for prescription drugs, a step that would roll back a benefit extended 33 months ago and risk alienating an important Republican constituency at the dawn of the 2004 campaign season.

Pentagon budget documents indicate that retirees may be asked to pay $10 -- up from $3 -- for each 90-day generic prescription filled by mail through Tricare, the military's health insurance program. Tricare's current $9 co-pay for a three-month supply of each brand-name drug would jump to $20.

The proposal also would impose charges for drugs the retirees now receive free at military hospitals and clinics. There would be a $10 fee for each generic prescription and a $20 charge for brand-name drugs dispensed at those facilities.

A Pentagon spokesman declined Wednesday to comment on the drug plan, calling it "pre-decisional." But word of the proposal was being spread at the speed of light by veterans service organizations, who were urging their thousands of members to send calls and letters of protest to the White House and members of Congress.

"It's something that we're going to look at very closely when we return," said Tom Gordy, chief of staff for Rep. Ed Schrock, R-Va. The House is to reconvene Jan. 20.

"You're tampering with a benefit that was earned by people putting their lives on the line," said James F. Lokovic, a retired Air Force chief master sergeant and deputy director of the Air Force Sergeants Association.

Lokovic's 136,000-member association already has sent Bush a letter warning of "significant backlash from millions of retired military voters" if the plan is included in the 2005 defense budget the administration will unveil in a few weeks.

"Somebody just isn't paying attention," the Military Officers Association of America said in "special alert" sent to its 390,000 members. "The war on terrorism is reminding the nation of servicemembers' sacrifices every night on the evening news ... and yet the administration seems to continue going out of its way to penalize the military community."

The officers association alert and an Internet site run by the sergeants association recall attempts by the administration to impose a $1,200 deductible for care provided to most military retirees at Veterans Affairs hospitals and the Pentagon's long-running opposition to bills providing for "concurrent receipt" of military pension and VA disability payments.

Bush and lawmakers agreed earlier this year on a concurrent receipt plan, a move widely seen as an attempt to shore up support for Republicans among military-minded voters. Military veterans and retirees are seen as providing Bush with his 2000 margin of victory in several key states, including Florida.

The budget documents circulating Wednesday gave no hint of the current status of the plan or the thinking behind it. Military retirees -- those who served 20 years or more -- had no prescription drug coverage until April 2001.

But the documents indicate that the proposed charges would considerably ease the burden of prescription drug costs on the defense budget. The new co-pays would generate more than $728 million in 2005, the Pentagon estimated, and nearly $4.2 billion by the end of 2009.

The proposed fees also would bring the military's co-pays into line with those imposed by the VA, the documents assert.

posted 01-09-2004 09:45 PM            

There is a recent increase in young vets with amputations.

When they question me about how the VA treated returning Nam vets, I usually mention:
"At least we had a legitimate government that wanted us to be there."

Some get upset, others are just bitter that their sacrifice for our country has been met with such disdain by the current Administration.
"Was Nixon this bad?" one amputee asked.
"To praise veterans yet cut benefits?" I asked.
he nodded yes.
"No! Every previous President has respect for us.
even the-draft-dodger-Clinton treated veterans better than the 'deserter in the White House' now does."

I become daily more dedicated to the stand:
Support our troops?
Bring them home.

End the Bushwar.!

American blood should not be spilled to prevent another nation from choosing their own leaders.

That is against everything we are supposed to stand for.

BTW:
How am I harmed?
Guns waved in my face when I ask simple questions like:
"What's wrong with actually counting votes?"

Shouted down by people who now spout that any criticism of the President is un-American..
People who spent the two terms of the Clinton Administration criticizing the President.

posted 01-09-2004 11:23 PM            

One of our son's roomates, just got notice, after serving in Quatar for quite awhile, and expecting to leave the service in Sept, that he's being shipped to Baghdad! Baghdad! It's like a death sentence! It's an internal draft, is what it is! They aren't telling him when he's coming back, either! We'll have him over for dinner and support him for sure--while he's there, also! Oh God! Our young men are being sacrificed at the oil and neocon alter of fear and hate!

We'll be praying for him as we pray for peace daily!

This so sucks! It sucked from 9/11 on!

bc

posted 01-10-2004 04:37 AM            

Fanatic waves a gun in my face,
(edit to remove personal comments)
rightwingers are so unused to any Liberal standing up to them
(edit to remove personal comments)
forehead scar from being shot usually scares conservatives off

They are small minded people.

One on one they always back down

They need to be a gang of bullies to press their warped agenda.
Needful of someone else to tell them what to think and what to do.

Hate filled rightwing propagandist martinets aim them towards targets.

If they were able to think for themselves,
they would be Liberals.

and law abiding citizens.

as Liberals typically are.

The real war is not in iraq.

it is right here in bushylvania,
as some of us want to restore the constitution and make it America again.

posted 01-10-2004 11:02 PM            

I didn't realize it was that bad for you personally -- with guns in your face, for God's sake!

If they had brains at all, they wouldn't be so fear-based like the Scarecrow in Oz -- "if I only had a brain!" And cowards, like the Lion all wanting OZ to tell them how to be! Oz is..... the PTB, their redneck buddies, whoever supports their fear who hide behind facades of ignorance and false assumptions!

So I say to you, great patriot, fight on!

And tell this story to the masses! Tell it to the military news as well!

I bow in respect to you, shatoga!

Love to you and yours!

bc

posted 01-10-2004 11:55 PM            

Thursday 8 January 2004

I am the enemy you killed, my friend.
I knew you in this dark: for so you frowned
Yesterday through me as you jabbed and killed.
I parried; but my hands were loath and cold.
Let us sleep now.

-Wilfred Owen, "Strange Meeting"

It will be upon us soon. Sometime, likely before January is out, the 500th American soldier to die in Iraq will fall. He will be killed by a roadside bomb, or a mortar, or a rifle shot from afar, or a pistol to the back of the head in a crowd, or a rocket-propelled grenade into his convoy, or into his helicopter which will plunge, blazing, from the sky. He will fall in Baghdad, or Tikrit, or Mosul, or some unnamed town in between.

The 500th soldier will come to know what Luke Frist, age 20, knows now. He will know what Justin C. Pollard, age 21, knows now. Michael Mihalakis, who was 18, Stuart Moore, who was 21, Nathan Nakis, who was 19, Kenneth Souslin, who was 21, Rian Ferguson, who was 22, Jeffrey Braun, who was 19, Joseph Blickenstaff, who was 23, Jason Wright, who was 19, Arron Clark, who was 20, Ryan Young, who was 21, Aaron Sissel, who was 22, Rel Ravago, who was 21, Robert Roberts, who was 21, Joseph Lister, who was 22, Scott Tyrrell, who was 21, Sheldon Hawk Eagle, who was 21, Richard Hafer, who was 21, Paul Bueche, who was 19, Damian Heidelberg, who was 21, Eugene Uhl, who was 21, Joey Whitener, who was 19, Irving Medina, who was 22, Daniel Parker, who was 18, Robert Wise, who was 21, Robert Benson, who was 20, Frances Vega, who was 20, Benjamin Freeman, who was 19, Steven Acosta, who was 19, and Charles Sims, who was 18, all know what this 500th soldier will come soon to find out for himself, in blood and anguish and a gathering darkness.

It is better to be alive than dead, better to be young than gone, better at least to die for one's country in a cause that is just than to be spent, oath and uniform and all, as a chess piece in someone's cynical power play.

Must that 500th soldier be a man? Ask Rachel Bosveld, who was 19, Kimberly Hampton, who was 27, Sharon Swartworth, who was 43, Karina Lau, who was 20, Analaura Gutierrez, who was 21, Alyssa Peterson, who was 27, Melissa Valles, who was 26 or Lori Ann Piestewa, who was 23, what place gender has on the fields of the dead. They would answer, if they could, but their voices were lost in the grinding of the guns in Iraq.

The number of wounded American soldiers shipped home fails to find a consistent count. Some say 2,000, others say 9,000, and still others say 11,000 and rising. Another generation of shredded American veterans has been born, honored when the country needs heroes to inspire the next generation into enlisting, but forgotten the rest of the time, left to pinch pennies and rub the stumps where their healthy young legs used to send them running and leaping and dancing through a life they surrendered in a blinding flash of pain and light.

The number now stands at 487 Americans killed, according to figures provided by the Department of Defense. The Army Times, a reading staple for the enlisted ranks, had different numbers before the New Year. Jimmy Breslin, columnist from Newsday, wrote on December 30 that the Army Times said, "There were 506 killed by the time the newspaper closed last Friday. Since then, another seven have died. The newspaper has said this is the deadliest year for the U.S. military since 1972, when 640 were killed in Vietnam." That makes 513 Americans killed before the ball dropped in Times Square. Add the six who have died since then, and the number becomes 519. Even on this most important tabulation, the numbers are fuzzy.

There is no accurate accounting of the civilians who have died, but a cross-section of the math places their count in the tens of thousands. They died in their homes, shocked and awed before the fire took them. They died in the streets, fleeing the storm. They died in their beds from wounds, or disease, or despair.

How did it come to this?

It came to this because Dick Cheney said, "Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction," on August 26, 2002.

It came to this because Ari Fleischer said, "We know for a fact that there are weapons there," on January 9, 2003.

It came to this because Colin Powell said, "We know that Saddam Hussein is determined to keep his weapons of mass destruction, is determined to make more," on February 5, 2003.

It came to this because Donald Rumsfeld said, "We know where they are," about these weapons. "They are in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad," on March 30, 2003.

It came to this because George W. Bush said, "We have sources that tell us that Saddam Hussein recently authorized Iraqi field commanders to use chemical weapons," on February 8, 2003.

It came to this because George W. Bush said, "Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised," on March 17, 2003.

It came to this despite the fact that Colin Powell said, "Hussein has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors," on February 24, 2001.

The Washington Post on January 7th ran a lead story titled "Iraq's Arsenal Was Only On Paper." The sub-headline reads, "Since Gulf War, Nonconventional Weapons Never Got Past the Planning Stage." This is yet another brick in the wall between what we were promised by the Bush administration, what we were told under the fearful and deliberately-cast shadow of September 11 was in Iraq and worthy of war, and what is actually there. The Post story reads, in part, as follows:

"In public statements and unauthorized interviews, investigators said they have discovered no work on former germ-warfare agents such as anthrax bacteria, and no work on a new designer pathogen -- combining pox virus and snake venom -- that led U.S. scientists on a highly classified hunt for several months. The investigators assess that Iraq did not, as charged in London and Washington, resume production of its most lethal nerve agent, VX, or learn to make it last longer in storage. And they have found the former nuclear weapons program, described as a 'grave and gathering danger' by President Bush and a 'mortal threat' by Vice President Cheney, in much the same shattered state left by U.N. inspectors in the 1990s."
"A review of available evidence, including some not known to coalition investigators and some they have not made public, portrays a nonconventional arms establishment that was far less capable than U.S. analysts judged before the war. Leading figures in Iraqi science and industry, supported by observations on the ground, described factories and institutes that were thoroughly beaten down by 12 years of conflict, arms embargo and strangling economic sanctions. The remnants of Iraq's biological, chemical and missile infrastructures were riven by internal strife, bled by schemes for personal gain and handicapped by deceit up and down lines of command. The broad picture emerging from the investigation to date suggests that, whatever its desire, Iraq did not possess the wherewithal to build a forbidden armory on anything like the scale it had before the 1991 Persian Gulf War. David Kay, who directs the weapons hunt on behalf of the Bush administration, reported no discoveries last year of finished weapons, bulk agents or ready-to-start production lines. Members of his Iraq Survey Group, in unauthorized interviews, said the group holds out little prospect now of such a find."
George W. Bush and his administration promised us that Iraq possessed 26,000 liters of anthrax, 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin, 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX gas, 30,000 munitions to deliver these agents, uranium from Africa for the development of a nuclear weapons program, and al Qaeda connections. This last bit was the key, for we were told that Saddam Hussein could hand these weapons to al Qaeda, and al Qaeda could bring them to the United States. "It would take one vial, one canister, one crate slipped into this country," said Mr. Bush, "to bring a day of horror like none we have ever known."

None of it was there. The Washington Post story carried a photograph of a crudely-drawn sketch of a rocket, like a child's musings of science fiction. That was the sum and substance of the weapons program.

In the aftermath, the rhetoric for why all of this death has been visited upon us has changed. We went to free the Iraqi people, and to bring democracy to the Middle East. When Saddam Hussein was hauled out of his hiding place several weeks ago, it was heralded as a great victory. Yet the truth of the matter undermines the bloviating glee from the Bush administration and a mainstream media that caters to their story line. Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction, no conventional military capabilities, no connections to al Qaeda, and no connections to September 11. Was he worth all this?

The democracy promised by the Bush administration is equally vacuous. The majority of Iraq's population are Shia Muslims, who are seeking to establish a fundamentalist Shia government like the one currently controlling Iran. Democracy means majority rules, and if democracy is brought, that Iraqi majority will elect that fundamentalist government and throw democracy out the back door. We knew this going in, and knew as well that a Shia-controlled Iraq would align itself with the Shia-controlled Iran on top of all that oil. So democracy, in truth, was never on the table.

American forces will never leave Iraq. It was never about freedom, or democracy. It was about the occupation of an oil-rich nation in a world where petroleum stores are dwindling. Perhaps it was about revenge for September 11, but if so, it was revenge taken on a virtually defenseless civilian population that had no hand in these attacks. It was also about profit. Nearly $200 billion has been spent to date on this invasion and occupation. Most of that money has gone to massive corporations like Dick Cheney's Halliburton, to George Herbert Walker Bush's Carlyle Group, to weapons manufacturers, to other petroleum companies. Once upon a time, that money belonged to you. Now, it belongs to them.

So it goes for that 500th soldier, who may be the 550th soldier for all we know. Not so long ago he, or she, raised a hand and swore an oath to defend the United States of America, and pledged his, or her, life to that cause. Implicit in that oath was a promise from the country honored to receive that oath. That promise? Your life will not be spent to no good end, soldier. Your life will not be wasted. The promise was broken.

Lt. General Harold G. Moore, in his shattering memoir of the battle of Ia Drang, Vietnam, in 1965, said this: "It was no movie. When it was over the dead did not get up and dust themselves off and walk away. The wounded did not wash away the red and go on with life, unhurt. Those who were, miraculously, unscratched were by no means untouched. This is also the story of the suffering of families whose lives were forever shattered by the death of a father, a son, a husband, a brother in that Valley. This is our story and theirs. For we were soldiers once, and young."

Wilfred Owen, the poet who wrote "Strange Meeting," knows what that 500th soldier will come to know all too soon. Owen was a soldier in World War I, and was cut down by a machine gun on November 4, 1918, just seven days before the Armistice that ended the butchery. The church bells were ringing to celebrate the war's end in his home town when his parents answered the door to find the telegram which told them of their loss. Owen was 25 years old.

Before he died, he wrote a truth.

"If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,--
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori."

-------

William Rivers Pitt is the Managing Editor of truthout.org. He is a New York Times and international best-selling author of three books - "War On Iraq," available from Context Books, "The Greatest Sedition is Silence," available from Pluto Press, and "Our Flag, Too: The Paradox of Patriotism," available in August from Context Books.

-------

posted 01-11-2004 04:34 PM            

That is the usual precursor to some redneck waving a gun in my face as I get into my Ford to drive away.

That they never before met someone who reacts on instinct is their problem, not mine.
(should never get within reach when waving a gun)

They are used to people who cringe and run.
I react with sudden extreme violence.
(to any unlawful assault)

(edit to remove personal comments)

Any activist needs to be ready to fight against the brownshirts.

As do any veterans who really love both America and freedom: http://www.gulfwarvets.com/about.htm http://www.gulfwarvets.com/
http://www.vvaw.org/

posted 01-12-2004 01:18 PM            

Here's another vet's story from the Pentagon files. She too keeps fighting!

Former Pentagon Insider:
'Neoconservative Propaganda Campaign Led to Iraq War'
By Karen Kwiatkowski
The American Conservative

January 19th Issue

Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski, a former Pentagon insider, concludes her observations on the run-up to the Iraq war in this last of a three-part series.
As the winter of 2002 approached, I was increasingly amazed at the success of the propaganda campaign being waged by President Bush, Vice President Cheney, and neoconservative mouthpieces at the Washington Times and Wall Street Journal. I speculated about the necessity but unlikelihood of a Phil-Dick-style minority report on the grandiose Feith-Wolfowitz-Rumsfeld-Cheney vision of some future Middle East where peace, love, and democracy are brought about by pre-emptive war and military occupation.

In December, I requested an acceleration of my retirement after just over 20 years on duty and exactly the required three years of time-in-grade as a lieutenant colonel. I felt fortunate not to have being fired or court-martialed due to my politically incorrect ways in the previous two years as a real conservative in a neoconservative Office of Secretary of Defense. But in fact, my outspokenness was probably never noticed because civilian professionals and military officers were largely invisible. We were easily replaceable and dispensable, not part of the team brought in from the American Enterprise Institute, the Center for Security Policy, and the Washington Institute for Near East Affairs.

There were exceptions. When military officers conspicuously crossed the neoconservative party line, the results were predictable—get back in line or get out. One friend, an Army colonel who exemplified the qualities carved in stone at West Point, refused to maneuver into a small neoconservative box, and he was moved into another position, where truth-telling would be viewed as an asset instead of a handicap. Among the civilians, I observed the stereotypical perspective that this too would pass, with policy analysts apparently willing to wait out the neocon phase. In early winter, an incident occurred that was seared into my memory. A coworker and I were suddenly directed to go down to the Mall entrance to pick up some Israeli generals. Post-9/11 rules required one escort for every three visitors, and there were six or seven of them waiting. The Navy lieutenant commander and I hustled down. Before we could apologize for the delay, the leader of the pack surged ahead, his colleagues in close formation, leaving us to double-time behind the group as they sped to Undersecretary Feith’s office on the fourth floor. Two thoughts crossed our minds: are we following close enough to get credit for escorting them, and do they really know where they are going? We did get credit, and they did know. Once in Feith’s waiting room, the leader continued at speed to Feith’s closed door. An alert secretary saw this coming and had leapt from her desk to block the door. “Mr. Feith has a visitor. It will only be a few more minutes.” The leader craned his neck to look around the secretary’s head as he demanded, “Who is in there with him?”

This minor crisis of curiosity past, I noticed the security sign-in roster. Our habit, up until a few weeks before this incident, was not to sign in senior visitors like ambassadors. But about once a year, the security inspectors send out a warning letter that they were coming to inspect records. As a result, sign-in rosters were laid out, visible and used. I knew this because in the previous two weeks I watched this explanation being awkwardly presented to several North African ambassadors as they signed in for the first time and wondered why and why now. Given all this and seeing the sign-in roster, I asked the secretary, “Do you want these guys to sign in?” She raised her hands, both palms toward me, and waved frantically as she shook her head. “No, no, no, it is not necessary, not at all.” Her body language told me I had committed a faux pas for even asking the question. My fellow escort and I chatted on the way back to our office about how the generals knew where they were going (most foreign visitors to the five-sided asylum don’t) and how the generals didn’t have to sign in. I felt a bit dirtied by the whole thing and couldn’t stop comparing that experience to the grace and gentility of the Moroccan, Tunisian, and Algerian ambassadors with whom I worked.

In my study of the neoconservatives, it was easy to find out whom in Washington they liked and whom they didn’t. They liked most of the Heritage Foundation and all of the American Enterprise Institute. They liked writers Charles Krauthammer and Bill Kristol. To find out whom they didn’t like, no research was required. All I had to do was walk the corridors and attend staff meetings. There were several shared prerequisites to get on the Neoconservative List of Major Despicable People, and in spite of the rhetoric hurled against these enemies of the state, most really weren’t Rodents of Unusual Size. Most, in fact, were retired from a branch of the military with a star or two or four on their shoulders. All could and did rationally argue the many illogical points in the neoconservative strategy of offensive democracy—guys like Brent Scowcroft, Barry McCaffrey, Anthony Zinni, and Colin Powell.

I was present at a staff meeting when Deputy Undersecretary Bill Luti called General Zinni a traitor. At another time, I discussed with a political appointee the service being rendered by Colin Powell in the early winter and was told the best service he could offer would be to quit. I heard in another staff meeting a derogatory story about a little Tommy Fargo who was acting up. Little Tommy was, of course, Commander, Pacific Forces, Admiral Fargo. This was shared with the rest of us as a Bill Luti lesson in civilian control of the military. It was certainly not civil or controlled, but the message was crystal.

When President Bush gave his State of the Union address, there was a small furor over the reference to the yellowcake in Niger that Saddam was supposedly seeking. After this speech, everyone was discussing this as either new intelligence saved up for just such a speech or, more cynically, just one more flamboyant fabrication that those watching the propaganda campaign had come to expect. I had not heard about yellowcake from Niger or seen it mentioned on the Office of Special Plans talking points. When I went over to my old shop, sub-Saharan Africa, to congratulate them for making it into the president’s speech, they said the information hadn’t come from them or through them. They were as surprised and embarrassed as everyone else that such a blatant falsehood would make it into a presidential speech.

When General Zinni was removed as Bush’s Middle East envoy and Elliot Abrams joined the National Security Council (NSC) to lead the Mideast division, whoops and high-fives had erupted from the neocon cubicles. By midwinter, echoes of those celebrations seemed to mutate into a kind of anxious anticipation, shared by most of the Pentagon. The military was anxiously waiting under the bed for the other shoe to drop amidst concerns over troop availability, readiness for an ill-defined mission, and lack of day-after clarity. The neocons were anxiously struggling to get that damn shoe off, gleefully anticipating the martinis to be drunk and the fun to be had. The other shoe fell with a thump on Feb. 5 as Colin Powell delivered his United Nations presentation.

It was a sad day for me and many others with whom I worked when we watched Powell’s public capitulation. The era when Powell had been considered a political general, back when he was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, had in many ways been erased for those of us who greatly admired his coup of the Pentagon neocons when he persuaded the president to pursue UN support for his invasion of Iraq. Now it was as if Powell had again rolled military interests—and national interests as well.

Around that same time, our deputy director forwarded a State Department cable that had gone out to our embassy in Turkey. The cable contained answers to 51 questions that had been asked of our ambassador by the Turkish government. The questions addressed things like after-war security arrangements, refugees, border control, stability in the Kurdish north, and occupation plans. But every third answer was either “To be determined” or “We’re working on that” or “This scenario is unlikely.” At one point, an answer included the “fact” that the United States military would physically secure the geographic border of Iraq. Curious, I checked the length of the physical border of Iraq. Then I checked out the length of our own border with Mexico. Given our exceptional success in securing our own desert borders, I found this statement interesting.

Soon after, I was out-processed for retirement and couldn’t have been more relieved to be away from daily exposure to practices I had come to believe were unconstitutional. War is generally crafted and pursued for political reasons, but the reasons given to Congress and the American people for this one were so inaccurate and misleading as to be false. Certainly, the neoconservatives never bothered to sell the rest of the country on the real reasons for occupation of Iraq—more bases from which to flex U.S. muscle with Syria and Iran, better positioning for the inevitable fall of the regional sheikdoms, maintaining OPEC on a dollar track, and fulfilling a half-baked imperial vision. These more accurate reasons could have been argued on their merits, and the American people might indeed have supported the war. But we never got a chance to debate it.

My personal experience leaning precariously toward the neoconservative maw showed me that their philosophy remains remarkably untouched by respect for real liberty, justice, and American values. My years of military service taught me that values and ideas matter, but these most important aspects of our great nation cannot be defended adequately by those in uniform. This time, salvaging our honor will require a conscious, thoughtful, and stubborn commitment from each and every one of us, and though I no longer wear the uniform, I have not given up the fight.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/011204C.shtml
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posted 01-12-2004 02:25 PM            

Woo Hoo – I loved this statement she made: This time, salvaging our honor will require a conscious, thoughtful, and stubborn commitment from each and every one of us, and though I no longer wear the uniform, I have not given up the fight.

I noticed this is the third installment. I think I’ll try and locate parts 1 and 2 later to get an even bigger picture!

posted 01-12-2004 04:29 PM            

War Critics Zero In on Pentagon Office
By Jim Lobe
Inter Press Service News Agency

Tuesday 05 August 2003

WASHINGTON - On most days, the Pentagon's 'Early Bird', a daily compilation of news articles on defence-related issues mostly from the U.S. and British press, does not shy from reprinting hard-hitting stories and columns critical of the Defence Department's top leadership.

But few could help notice last week that the 'Bird' omitted an opinion piece distributed by the Knight-Ridder news agency by a senior Pentagon Middle East specialist, Air Force Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski, who worked in the office of Under Secretary of Defence for Policy Douglas Feith until her retirement in April.

"What I saw was aberrant, pervasive and contrary to good order and discipline," Kwiatkowski wrote. "If one is seeking the answers to why peculiar bits of 'intelligence' found sanctity in a presidential speech, or why the post-Saddam (Hussein) occupation (in Iraq) has been distinguished by confusion and false steps, one need look no further than the process inside the Office of the Secretary of Defence" (OSD).

Kwiatkowski went on to charge that the operations she witnessed during her tenure in Feith's office, and particularly those of an ad hoc group known as the Office of Special Plans (OSP), constituted "a subversion of constitutional limits on executive power and a co-optation through deceit of a large segment of the Congress".

Kwiatkowski's charges, which tend to confirm reports and impressions offered to the press by retired officers from other intelligence agencies and their still-active but anonymous former colleagues, are likely to make her a prime witness when Congress reconvenes in September for hearings on the manipulation of intelligence to justify war against Iraq.

According to Kwiatkowski, the same operation that allegedly cooked the intelligence also was responsible for the administration's failure to anticipate the problems that now dog the U.S. occupation in Iraq, or, in her more colourful words, that have placed 150,000 U.S. troops in "the world's nastiest rat's nest, without a nation-building plan, without significant international support and without an exit plan".

Kwiatkowski's comments echo the worst fears of some lawmakers, who have begun looking into the OSP's role in the administration's mistaken assumptions in Iraq. Some are even comparing it to the off-the-books operation run from the National Security Council (NSC) during Reagan administration that later resulted in the "Iran-Contra" scandal.

"That office was charged with collecting, vetting, disseminating intelligence completely outside the normal intelligence apparatus," Rep. David Obey, a senior Democrat in the House of Representatives, said last month.

"In fact, it appears that the information collected by this office was in some instances not even shared with the established intelligence agencies and in numerous instances was passed on to the National Security Council and the president without having been vetted with anyone other than (the secretary of defence)".

Actually, little is known about OSP, which was originally created by Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld and his top deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, to investigate possible links between Hussein and Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda terrorist group.

While only a dozen people officially worked in the office at its largest, scores of "consultants" were brought in on contract, many of them closely identified with the neo-conservative and pro-Likud views held by the Pentagon leadership.

There have been published reports that a similar informal group co-ordinated closely with the OSP from Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's office, but these have not been confirmed.

Headed by a gung-ho former Navy officer, William Luti, and a scholarly national-security analyst, Abram Shulsky, OSP was given complete access to reams of raw intelligence produced by the U.S. intelligence community and became the preferred stop, when in town, for defectors handled by the Iraqi National Congress (INC), led by Ahmed Chalabi.

It also maintained close relations with the Defence Policy Board (DPB), which was then chaired by neo-conservative Richard Perle of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), Feith's mentor in the Reagan administration.

Perle and Feith, whose published views on Israeli policy echo the right-wing Likud party, co-authored a 1996 memo for then-Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu that argued that Hussein's ouster in Iraq would enable Israel to transform the balance of power in the Middle East in its favour.

The DPB included some of Perle's closest associates, including former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director James Woolsey and former Republican Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, who played prominent roles in pushing the public case that Iraq represented an imminent threat to the United States and that its was closely tied to al-Qaeda and other terrorist networks.

In her article, Kwiatkowski wrote that OSP's work was marked by three major characteristics:

First, career Pentagon analysts assigned to the Secretary's office were generally excluded from "key areas of interest" to Feith, Wolfowitz, and Rumsfeld, notably Israel, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia. "In terms of Israel and Iraq, all primary staff work was conducted by political appointees, in the case of Israel, a desk officer appointee from the Washington Institute for Near Policy", a think tank closely tied to the main pro-Israel lobby in Washington, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).

Second, the same group of appointees tended to work with likeminded political appointees in other agencies, especially the State Department, the NSC, and Cheney's office, rather than with those agencies' career analysts or the CIA.

"I personally witnessed several cases of staff officers being told not to contact their counterparts at State or the National Security Council because that particular decision would be processed through a different channel," Kwiatkowski wrote.

The CIA's exclusion from this network could help explain why Cheney and his National Security Advisor, I. Lewis Libby, a long-time associate of Wolfowitz, frequently visited the agency, in what analysts widely regarded as pressure to conform to OSP assessments.

This exclusion of professional and independent opinions, both within the Pentagon and across government agencies -- according to Kwiatkowski -- resulted in "Groupthink", a technical term defined as "reasoning or decision-making by a group, often characterised by uncritical acceptance of conformity to prevailing points of view".

In this case, the prevailing points of view were presumably shaped by neo-conservatives like Feith, Wolfowitz and Perle, and the "intelligence" provided by the INC.

Kwiatkowski's broadside coincides with the appearance in neo-conservative media outlets, notably the 'Wall Street Journal', of defences of Feith, who is widely seen here as the Pentagon's most likely fall guy if it is forced to shoulder blame for bad intelligence and planning. The government of British Prime Minister Tony Blair has pressed Bush to fire Feith for several months, according to diplomatic sources.

In a lengthy defence published Tuesday, the associate editor of the Journal's editorial page described Feith's policy workshop as ”the world's most effective think tank".

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)

_________________________________

Here's another background piece referring to our lady of the whistle:

Pentagon Office Home to Neo-Con Network
By Jim Lobe
Inter Press Service News Agency

Thursday 07 August 2003

WASHINGTON, Aug 7 (IPS) - An ad hoc office under U.S. Undersecretary of Defence for Policy Douglas Feith appears to have acted as the key base for an informal network of mostly neo-conservative political appointees that circumvented normal inter-agency channels to lead the push for war against Iraq.

The Office of Special Plans (OSP), which worked alongside the Near East and South Asia (NESA) bureau in Feith's domain, was originally created by Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz to review raw information collected by the official U.S. intelligence agencies for connections between Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda.

Retired intelligence officials from the State Department, the Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA), and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) have long charged that the two offices exaggerated and manipulated intelligence about Iraq before passing it along to the White House.

But key personnel who worked in both NESA and OSP were part of a broader network of neo-conservative ideologues and activists who worked with other Bush political appointees scattered around the national-security bureaucracy to move the country to war, according to retired Lt Col Karen Kwiatkowski, who was assigned to NESA from May 2002 through February 2003.

The heads of NESA and OSP were Deputy Undersecretary William Luti and Abram Shulsky, respectively.

Other appointees who worked with them in both offices included Michael Rubin, a Middle East specialist previously with the neo-conservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI); David Schenker, previously with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP); Michael Makovsky; an expert on neo-con icon Winston Churchill and the younger brother of David Makovsky, a senior WINEP fellow and former executive editor of pro-Likud 'Jerusalem Post'; and Chris Lehman, the brother of the John Lehman, a prominent neo-conservative who served as secretary of the navy under Ronald Reagan, according to Kwiatkowski.

Along with Feith, all of the political appointees have in common a close identification with the views of the right-wing Likud Party in Israel.

Feith, whose law partner is a spokesman for the settlement movement in Israel, has long been a fierce opponent of the Oslo peace process, while WINEP has acted as the think tank for the most powerful pro-Israel lobby in Washington, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which generally follows a Likud line.

Also like Feith, several of the appointees were protéeges of Richard Perle, an AEI fellow who doubles as chairman until last April of Rumsfeld's unpaid Defense Policy Board (DPB), whose members were appointed by Feith, also had an office in the Pentagon one floor below the NESA offices.

Similarly, Luti, a retired naval officer, was a prot?g? of another DPB board member also based at AEI, former Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives Newt Gingrich. Luti in turn hired Ret Col William Bruner, a former Gingrich staffer, and Chris Straub, a retired lieutenant colonel, anti-abortion activist, and former staffer on the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Also working for Luti was another naval officer, Yousef Aboul-Enein, whose main job was to pore over Arabic-language newspapers and CIA transcripts of radio broadcasts to find evidence of ties between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein that may have been overlooked by the intelligence agencies, and a DIA officer named John Trigilio.

Through Feith, both offices worked closely with Perle, Gingrich, and two other DPB members and major war boosters -- former CIA director James Woolsey and Kenneth Adelman -- in ensuring that the ''intelligence'' they developed reached a wide public audience outside the bureaucracy.

They also debriefed ''defectors'' handled by the Iraqi National Congress (INC), an opposition umbrella group headed by Ahmed Chalabi, a long-time friend of Perle, whom the intelligence agencies generally wrote off as an unreliable self-promoter.

''They would draw up 'talking points' they would use and distribute to their friends'', said Kwiatkowski. ''But the talking points would be changed continually, not because of new intel (intelligence), but because the press was poking holes in what was in the memos''.

The offices fed information directly and indirectly to sympathetic media outlets, including the Rupert Murdoch-owned 'Weekly Standard' and FoxNews Network, as well as the editorial pages of the 'Wall Street Journal' and syndicated columnists, such as Charles Krauthammer.

In inter-agency discussions, Feith and the two offices communicated almost exclusively with like-minded allies in other agencies, rather than with their official counterparts, including even the DIA in the Pentagon, according to Kwiatkowski.

Rather than working with the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, its Near Eastern Affairs bureau, or even its Iraq desk, for example, they preferred to work through Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security (and former AEI executive vice president) John Bolton; Michael Wurmser (another Perle protéege at AEI who staffed the predecessor to OSP); and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs, Elizabeth Cheney, the daughter of the Vice President Dick Cheney.

At the National Security Council (NSC), they communicated mainly with Stephen Hadley, the deputy national security adviser, until Elliott Abrams, a dyed-in-the-wool neo-con with close ties to Feith and Perle, was appointed last December as the NSC's top Middle East aide.

''They worked really hard for Abrams; he was a necessary link'', Kwiatkowski told IPS Wednesday. ''The day he got (the appointment), they were whooping and hollering, 'We got him in, we got him in'''.

They rarely communicated directly with the CIA, leaving that to political heavyweights, including Gingrich, who is reported to have made several trips to the CIA headquarters, and, more importantly, I Lewis ''Scooter'' Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff and national security adviser.

According to recent published reports, CIA analysts felt these visits were designed to put pressure on them to tailor their analyses more to the liking of administration hawks.

In some cases, NESA and OSP even prepared memos specifically for Cheney and Libby, something unheard of in previous administration because the lines of authority in the Vice President's office and the Pentagon are entirely separate. ''Luti sometimes would say, 'I've got to do this for Scooter' '', said Kwiatkowski. ''It looked like Cheney's office was pulling the strings''.

Kwiatkowski said she could not confirm published reports that OSP worked with a similar ad hoc group in Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's office.

But she recounts one incident in which she helped escort a group of half a dozen Israelis, including several generals, from the first floor reception area to Feith's office. ''We just followed them, because they knew exactly where they were going and moving fast''.

When the group arrived, she noted the book which all visitors are required to sign under special regulations that took effect after the Sep. 11, 2001 attacks. ''I asked his secretary, 'Do you want these guys to sign in'? She said, 'No, these guys don't have to sign in' ''. It occurred to her, she said, that the office may have deliberately not wanted to maintain a record of the meeting.

She added that OSP and MESA personnel were already discussing the possibility of ''going after Iran'' after the war in Iraq last January and that articles by Michael Ledeen, another AEI fellow and Perle associate who has been calling for the U.S. to work for ''regime change'' in Tehran since late 2001, were given much attention in the two offices.

Ledeen and Morris Amitay, a former head of AIPAC, recently created the Coalition for Democracy in Iran (CDI) to lobby for a more aggressive policy there. Their move coincided with suggestions by Sharon that Washington adopt a more confrontational policy vis-a-vis Teheran.

Iran recently said it was prepared to turn over five senior al-Qaeda figures, including the son of Osama bin Laden, who are currently in its custody if Washington permanently shuts down an Iraqi-based Iranian rebel group that is listed as a terrorist organisation by the State Department.

Pentagon officials, particularly Feith's office, have reportedly opposed the deal, which had been favoured by the State Department, because of the possibility that the group, the Mujahadeen Khalq, might be useful in putting pressure on Tehran.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)
_________________________

I'll look for her other two parts of her writings!

posted 01-12-2004 05:19 PM            

She's been writing up a storm! Here's a link to all her essays!
http://www.lewrockwell.com/kwiatkowski/kwiatkowski-arch.html

Here's one I picked from the hat!

December 1, 2003 issue
Copyright © 2003 The American Conservative

In Rumsfeld’s Shop

A senior Air Force officer watches as the neocons consolidate their Pentagon coup.

By Karen Kwiatkowski

Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski recently retired from the U.S. Air Force. Her final posting was as an analyst at the Pentagon. Below is the first of three installments describing her experience there. They provide a unique view of the Department of Defense during a period of intense ideological upheaval, as the United States prepared to launch—for the first time in its history—a “preventive” war.

In early May 2002, I was looking forward to retirement from the United States Air Force in about a year. I had a cushy job in the Pentagon’s Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, International Security Affairs, Sub-Saharan Africa.

In the previous two years, I had published two books on African security issues and had passed my comprehensive doctoral exams at Catholic University. I was very pleased with the administration’s Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Sub-Saharan Africa, former Marine and Senator Helms staffer Michael Westphal, and was ready to start thinking about my dissertation and my life after the military.

When Mike called me in to his office, I thought I was getting a new project or perhaps that one of my many suggestions of fun things to do with Africa policy had been accepted. But the look on his face clued me in that this was going to be one of those meetings where somebody wasn’t leaving happy. After a quick rank check, I had a good idea which one it would be.

There was a position in Near East South Asia (NESA) that they needed to fill right away. I wasn’t interested. They phrased the question another way: “We have been tasked to send a body over to Bill Luti. Can we send you?” I resisted—until I slowly guessed that in true bureaucratic fashion and can-do military tradition my name had already been sent over. This little soirée in Mike’s office was my farewell.

I went back to my office and e-mailed a buddy in the Joint Staff. Bob wrote back, “Write down everything you see.” I didn’t do it, but these most wise words from a trusted friend proved the first of three omens I would soon receive.

I showed up down the hall a few days later. It looked just like the office from which I came, newer blue cubicles, narrow hallways piled high with copy paper, newspapers, unused equipment, and precariously leaning map rolls. The same old concrete-building smell pervaded, maybe a little mustier. I was taking over the desk of a CIA loaner officer. Joe had been called back early to the agency and was hoping to go to Yemen. Before he left, he briefed me on his biggest project: ongoing negotiations with the Qatari sheiks over who was paying for improvements to Al Udeid Air Base. I was familiar with Al Udeid from my time on the Air Staff a few years before. Back then we seemed to like the Saudis, and our Saudi bases were a few hours closer to the action than Al Udeid, so the U.S. played a woo-me game. Now that we needed and wanted Al Udeid to be finished quickly and done up right, it was time for the emirs to play hard to get. Joe gave me the rundown on counterterrorism ops in Yemen and an upcoming agreement with the Bahraini monarch to extend our military-security agreement, locking in a relationship just in case those Bahraini experiments with democracy actually took off.

I had an obligatory meeting with the deputy director, Paul Hulley, Navy Captain. This meeting followed a phone call in which I hadn’t been as compliant as I should have been with a Navy Captain, and since Paul had handled my bad attitude with candor and grace, I was determined to like him—and I did. I gave him my story: I was a year from retirement and, more importantly, I was in a car pool. I’d be working a 7:15 to 17:30 schedule. He was neither charmed nor impressed. He advised that I’d need to be working a lot longer than that. Then we stepped in to meet Deputy Undersecretary of Defense Bill Luti. I knew Luti had a Ph.D. in international relations from the Fletcher School at Tufts and was a recently retired Navy Captain himself. At this point, I didn’t know what a neocon was or that they had already swarmed over the Pentagon, populating various hives of policy and planning like African hybrids, with the same kind of sting reflex. Luti just seemed happy to have me there as a warm body.

My second omen was the super-size bottles of Tums and Tylenol Joe left in his desk. The third occurred as I was chatting with my new office mate, a career civil servant working the Egypt desk. As the conversation moved into Middle East news and politics, she mentioned that if I wanted to be successful here, I shouldn’t say anything positive about the Palestinians. In 19 years of military service, I had never heard such a politically laden warning on such an obscure topic to such an inconsequential player. I had the sense of a single click, the sound tectonic plates might make as they shift deep under the earth and lock into a new resting position—or when the trigger is pulled in a game of Russian roulette.

I had never worked for neocons before, and the philosophical journey to understand what they stood for was not a trip I wanted to take. But my conversations with coworkers and some of the people I was meeting in the office opened my eyes to something strange and fascinating. Those who had watched the transition from Clintonista to Bushite knew that something calculated had happened to NESA. Key personnel, long-time civilian professionals holding the important billets, had been replaced early in the transition. The Office Director, second in command and normally a professional civilian regional expert, was vacant. Joe McMillan had been moved to the NESA Center over at National Defense University. This was strange because in a transition the whole reason for the Office Director being a permanent civilian (occasionally military) professional is to help bring the new appointee up to speed, ensure office continuity, and act as a resource relating to regional histories and policies. To remove that continuity factor seemed contraindicated, but at the time, I didn’t realize that the expertise on Middle East policy was being brought in from a variety of outside think tanks.

Another civilian replacement about which I was told was that of the long-time Israel/Syria/Lebanon desk, Larry Hanauer. Word was that he was even-handed with Israel, there had been complaints from one of his countries, and as a gesture of good will, David Schenker, fresh from the Washington Institute, was serving as the new Israel/Syria/Lebanon desk.

I came to share with many NESA colleagues a kind of unease, a sense that something was awry. What seemed out of place was the strong and open pro-Israel and anti-Arab orientation in an ostensibly apolitical policy-generation staff within the Pentagon. There was a sense that politics like these might play better at the State Department or the National Security Council, not the Pentagon, where we considered ourselves objective and hard boiled.

The anti-Arab orientation I perceived was only partially confirmed by things I saw. Towards the end of the summer, we welcomed to the office as a temporary special assistant to Bill Luti an Egyptian-American naval officer, Lt. (later Lt. Cmdr.) Youssef Aboul-Enein. His job wasn’t entirely clear to me, but he would research bits of data in which Bill Luti was interested and peruse Arabic-language media for quotations or events that could be used to demonize Saddam Hussein or link him to nastiness beyond his own borders and with unsavory characters.

While I was still hoping to be sent back to the Africa desk, I was also angling to take the NESA North Africa desk that would be vacated in July. During this time, May through mid-July, the news in the daily briefing was focused on war planning for the Iraq invasion. Slides from a CENTCOM brief appeared on the front page of the New York Times on July 5. A few weeks later, Secretary Donald Rumsfeld ordered an investigation into who leaked this information. The Air Force Office of Special Investigation was tasked to work with the FBI, and everyone in NESA was supposed to be interviewed.

My interview, by two fresh-faced OSI investigators, occurred sometime in July. One handed me a copy of an article by William Arkin discussing Iraq-war planning published in May 2002 in the Los Angeles Times and asked if I knew Arkin. I didn’t recall the name, but when I checked I learned that he had spent time at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). Apparently, Arkin had facilitated a leak six weeks before, but it hadn’t caused a fuss. I pointed out that I did know a person with major SAIS links who probably knew Arkin. They leaned forward eagerly. “Have you ever heard of Paul Wolfowitz?” They looked puzzled, so I called up the bio of the deputy secretary and showed them how he ran SAIS during most of the Clinton years. I suggested the investigation look at the answers to the cui bono question. I also told them no one in the military or at CENTCOM would leak war plans because as Rumsfeld accurately said, it gets people killed. But the politicos who were anxious to get the American people over the mental hump that the Bush administration was going to send troops to Iraq were not military and had both motive and opportunity to leak.

During the summer, I assumed the duties of the North Africa desk. Part of my job was to schedule and complete two overdue bilateral meetings with longtime U.S. security partners Morocco and Tunisia. Bilateral meetings historically included a tailored regional-security briefing addressing Weapons of Mass Destruction threats and status. In planning my upcoming bilateral agendas and attendee lists, I discovered that Bill Luti had certain issues regarding the regional-security briefing, in particular with the aspects relating to WMD and terrorism.

There had been an incident shortly before I arrived in which the Defense Intelligence Officer had been prohibited from giving his briefing to a particular country only hours before he was scheduled. During the summer, the brief was simply not scheduled for another important bilateral meeting. Instead, a briefing was prepared by another policy office that worked on non-proliferation issues. This briefing was not a product of the Defense Intelligence Agency or CIA but instead came from the Office of the Secretary of Defense.

At the end of the summer of 2002, new space had been found upstairs on the fifth floor for an “expanded Iraq desk.” It would be called the Office of Special Plans. We were instructed at a staff meeting that this office was not to be discussed or explained, and if people in the Joint Staff, among others, asked, we were to offer no comment. We were also told that one of the products of this office would be talking points that all desk officers would use verbatim in the preparation of their background documents.

About that same time, my education on the history and generation of the neoconservative movement had completed its first stage. I now understood that neoconservatism was both unhistorical and based on the organizing construct of “permanent revolution.” I had studied the role played by hawkish former Sen. Scoop Jackson (D-Wash.) and the neoconservative drift of formerly traditional magazines like National Review and think tanks like the Heritage Foundation. I had observed that many of the neoconservatives in the Pentagon not only had limited military experience, if any at all, but they also advocated theories of war that struck me as rejections of classical liberalism, natural law, and constitutional strictures. More than that, the pressure of the intelligence community to conform, the rejection of it when it failed to produce intelligence suitable for supporting the “Iraq is an imminent threat to the United States” agenda, and the amazing things I was hearing in both Bush and Cheney speeches told me that not only do neoconservatives hold a theory based on ideas not embraced by the American mainstream, but they also have a collective contempt for fact.

By August, I was morally and intellectually frustrated by my powerlessness against what increasingly appeared to be a philosophical hijacking of the Pentagon. Indeed, I had sworn an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic, but perhaps we were never really expected to take it all that seriously …

To be continued
______________________________________________

In a coming installment, Lieutenant Colonel Kwiatkowsi relates what happens when a group of Israeli generals treads the well-worn (for them) path to Douglas Feith’s office.

December 1, 2003 issue
Copyright © 2003 The American Conservative

__________________

Go Karen!

You can find all of her works on the link above!

posted 01-12-2004 08:25 PM            

quote:

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Originally posted by Boomer Chick:
OMG! I found the mother lode on Kwiatkowsk!

You can find all of her works on the link above!

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posted 01-12-2004 08:46 PM            

I wouldn't doubt if she ends up compiling everything and putting it in book form as well!

Who wouldn't want to publish it after O'Neill's taboo breaking book?! WhoopeeeEE!

posted 01-14-2004 09:17 PM            

WASHINGTON - The Army's suicide rate in Iraq has been about a third higher than past rates for troops during peacetime, the Pentagon's top doctor said today.

Also, the military still has about 2,500 troops waiting for medical care after returning from overseas, said Dr. William Winkenwerder, the assistant secretary of defense for health affairs. The Pentagon is preparing for even more soldiers on "medical extension" after tens of thousands of troops are rotated home from Iraq this spring, Winkenwerder said.

The issue of suicides so worried the military that the Army sent an assessment team to Iraq late last year to see if anything more could be done to prevent troops from killing themselves. The Army also began offering more counseling to returning troops after several soldiers at Fort Bragg, N.C., killed their wives and themselves after returning home from the war.

Winkenwerder said the military has documented 21 suicides during 2003 among troops involved in the Iraq war. Eighteen of those were Army soldiers, Winkenwerder said. That's a suicide rate for soldiers in Iraq of about 13.5 per 100,000, Winkenwerder said.

During recent peacetime years, that number for the Army has hovered around 10.5 to 11 per 100,000, Winkenwerder said.

"We don't see any trend there that tells us that there's more we might be doing," Winkenwerder told a breakfast meeting of Pentagon reporters.

The military has nine combat stress teams in Iraq to help treat troops' mental health problems, and each division has a psychiatrist, psychologist and social worker, Winkenwerder said. He said between 300 and 400 troops have been medically evacuated from Iraq for mental health problems.

The military prefers to treat mental health problems such as depression by keeping troops in their regular duties while they get counseling and possibly medication, Winkenwerder said. Less than one percent of the troops in Iraq are treated for mental issues during an average week, he said.

Winkenwerder said he had no specifics on the number of troops being treated for battlefield stress, although the military is focused on treating that problem.

"We believe they are being identified, they are being supported," Winkenwerder said.

The military also is working to solve the issue of soldiers awaiting medical care. Since November, about 1,900 of the 4,400 troops waiting for medical care have been treated, Winkenwerder said.

But the military expects more problems when tens of thousands of troops are rotated in and out of Iraq this spring, Winkenwerder said. Many of those troops may have to wait at various bases for medical treatment such as physical therapy for injuries, he said.

posted 02-01-2004 10:40 PM            

This is how Bush supports our troops
By cutting benefits and health care for those putting their lives on the line in Iraq

by Kenneth Norris
Staff Writer
January 28, 2004

Do you support our troops? If so, prepare to be outraged that our commander in chief does not.

The Bush Administration's 2004 budget proposed gutting Veterans Administration (VA) services, including health care funding. Proposed cuts included: denying at least 360,000 veterans access to health care; $250 annual premiums; increased pharmacy co-payments; a 30 percent increased primary care co-payments; and increased waiting time for a first medical appointment.

Because of budgetary shortfalls, the VA suspended the enrollment of veterans not injured in service earning between $24,450 and $38,100 annually. VFW officials estimated the administration's VA budget is at least $2 billion short of meeting the demand for quality health care.

The FY 2004 budget approved by Congress calls for reducing VA funding over a 10-year period by $6.2 billion. Cuts are in the areas of veterans' health care and disability benefits.

The cuts affect VA discretionary funding, which could mean discontinuation of burial benefits for veterans or delays in the cost-of-living adjustment for disability benefits.

Some veterans must pay a new $250 annual enrollment fee to join the VA healthcare system. The VA believes 1.25 million veterans nationwide, already under the VA healthcare plan, may no longer be able to participate because of the new fee.

Veterans who can remain under the VA health-care system will pay increased co-payments for physician benefits and prescription drug cost, amounting to an estimated increase in out-of-pocket expenses of $347 each year.

The Bush Administration's budget proposal would have under-funded the VA by more than $2 billion. Bush's proposal would have cut the number of employees available to process disability claims, yet veterans already wait more than six months for a review of disability applications. The Bush plan for dealing with the waiting lists at VA clinics and hospitals is to reduce the number of veterans treated by the VA.

Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-FL), chairman of the Subcommittee on Health, disputed the credibility of Bush's budget proposal. He doubted reducing VA medical staff could meet the expanding needs at the Veterans Health Administration.

Rep. Bob Stump(R-AZ) noted the VA budget "identifies hundreds of millions of dollars needed for existing fixed costs, new advanced treatments and new initiatives to provide greater care for veterans. Unfortunately, the Administration hasn't included any new funding to address those needs."

Last March, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a budget that included a $28.8 billion 10-year reduction in funding for veterans. The Veterans of Foreign Wars, American Legion and Disabled American Veterans began a letter-writing campaign to protest the reduction, so a House-Senate conference committee reduced the cut to $6.2 billion. President Bush complained that Congress needed fiscal restraint.

An army of veterans twice the size of that involved in Operation Iraqi Freedom has lost health insurance benefits since Bush took office. As many as half a million vets are homeless. Seven VA hospitals are being closed as part of an effort to "restructure" the Department of Veterans Affairs. Meanwhile, veterans of the Iraq campaign can fall in line with over 250,000 veterans who are already waiting at least six months to see a doctor.

The General Accounting Office estimates that 20 percent of Army Reserve a