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“BY THE WAY, BETTER NOT GET WOUNDED OR YOU'LL HAVE TO PAY EXTRA FOR YOUR HEALTH CARE"
Legion Leader Says Proposed Budget
Reaches Deep Into Veterans’ Pockets
by National Commander Thomas P. Cadmus
Reaches Deep Into Veterans’ Pockets
by National Commander Thomas P. Cadmus
WASHINGTON (Feb.7, 2005) – The leader of the nation’s largest military veterans organization reacted strongly to the effects that President Bush’s budget plan will have on veterans. He called it a smoke screen to raise revenue at the expense of veterans.
“This is not acceptable,” said Thomas P. Cadmus, national commander of the 2.7 million-member American Legion. “It’s nothing more than a health care tax designed to increase revenue at the expense of veterans who served their country.”
Cadmus was referring to the portion of the proposed budget that would double the co-payment charge to many veterans for prescription drugs and would require some to pay a new fee of $250 a year to use their own their own health care system.
“Is the goal of these legislative initiatives to drive those veterans paying for their health care away from the system designed to serve veterans?” Cadmus asked. “The President is asking Congress to make ‘health care poaching’ legal in the world’s largest health care delivery system.”
“When the President first came to Washington, among his first official acts was to triple the prescription co-payment from $2 to $7,” Cadmus said. “Once again, the President wants to double the co-payment and fortunately, Congress has wisely rejected that proposal. Making veterans pay for timely access to quality health care is wrong.”
This is the third year in a row the President has attempted to establish an enrollment fee for those veterans making co-payments and third-party reimbursements to the VA.
“Many of these veterans are Medicare-eligible and already paying the federal government for their part A and B coverage, so why should they have to pay an additional enrollment fee? VA can't even bill Medicare,” Cadmus said. “Other veterans with private health insurance make co-payments and then VA is reimbursed for services. Again, why should they be forced to pay an additional $250 to go to VA medical facilities?”
“During my visits to VA hospitals, I have not run into Bill Gates, Donald Trump, or Ross Perot seeking care. I see mostly veterans – many on small fixed incomes – trying to make ends meet and exercising their very best health care option.” Cadmus observed.
“Veterans’ health care is an ongoing expense of war,” he added. “You don’t thank veterans for serving their country and then tell them, ‘By the way, better not get wounded or you’ll have to pay extra for your health care.’ This is offensive to every veteran in America. That is why this government must move VA health care out from under the umbrella of discretionary spending to mandatory spending,” Cadmus stressed. The American Legion has requested a $3.5 billion increase in health care spending in FY 2006. The President is proposing $9.5 billion in foreign aid, about $2.1 billion more than the current level.
“As young Americans in uniform battle terrorism in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as 119 other countries, it is incomprehensible that our veterans will pay for the shortfall in VA health care funding from their own pockets as tax dollars flow out the back door of America,” Cadmus said.
“We reminded the President of our position on veterans’ health care needs during his campaign and I personally testified on the issue on Capitol Hill last September,” Cadmus added. “Our budget request is very realistic when you consider the Secretary has slammed the door in the face of hundreds of thousands of veterans eligible, but currently forbidden from seeking quality care from VA.”
“The current appropriations process is broken and is not adequately funding VA medical care,” Cadmus said. “President George W. Bush’s Task Force to Improve Health Care Delivery for Our Nation’s Veterans on May 26, 2003, identified the mismatch between demand and funding as a major obstacle in meeting the nation’s commitment to veterans. The American Legion and nine other veterans’ organizations believe the answer lies in changing VA health care funding from discretionary to mandatory appropriation.”
"No active-duty service member in harm’s way should ever have to question the nation’s commitment to veterans. This is the wrong message at the wrong time to the wrong constituency.”
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Media contact:
Joe March, (317) 630-125; Cell (317) 748-1926
or Ramona Joyce, (202) 263-2982
http://www.calegion.org/html/guest_editorial.html
Bush Cuts Veterans-aid Programs
The Seattle Times/Washington Post
By Josh White
The Washington Post
October 04, 2004
Thousands of U.S. troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan with physical injuries and mental-health problems are encountering an overburdened benefits system, and officials and veterans groups worry the challenge could grow as the nation remains at war.
The disability-benefits and health-care systems that provide services for about 5 million U.S. veterans have been overloaded for decades, with a current backlog of more than 300,000 claims. As of Aug. 1, nearly 150,000 National Guard and reservist veterans became eligible for health care and benefits because they were mobilized to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan. That number is rising.
President Bush's budget for 2005 calls for cutting the Department of Veterans Affairs staff that handles benefits claims, and some veterans report long waits for benefits and confusing claims decisions.
"I love the military; that was my life. But I don't believe they're taking care of me now," said Staff Sgt. Gene Westbrook, 35, of Lawton, Okla. Paralyzed in a mortar attack near Baghdad in April, he has received no disability benefits because his paperwork is missing. He is supporting his wife and three children on his regular military pay of $2,800 a month as he awaits a ruling on whether he will receive $6,500 a month from the VA for his disability.
Through the end of April, the most recent accounting the VA could provide, 166,334 veterans of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan had separated from military service, and 26,633 — 16 percent — had filed benefits claims with the VA for service-connected disabilities. Less than two-thirds of those claims had been processed, leaving more than 9,750 recent veterans waiting.
Officials expect those numbers to increase as the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan continues.
"I think we're doing OK now, but I am worried," VA Secretary Anthony Principi said in a recent interview.
One of the most challenging elements of providing for recently returned veterans is the disconnect between the Defense Department and the VA, Principi said. His department has been working to streamline the process, he said, placing VA staff members at 136 bases nationwide and at military medical centers.
But people like Westbrook still fall into a no man's land.
Westbrook was deployed to Iraq in January as a drill sergeant, sent to train Iraqi army recruits. While on duty April 28 south of Sadr City in Baghdad, he was hit by a mortar shell, and the shrapnel severed his spine. He is paralyzed from the chest down, has limited movement in his right arm and battles constant infections. His wife takes care of him full time.
Though Westbrook praises the way the Army has treated him since his injury, including providing excellent medical care, he has struggled to make it on his regular pay since he returned July 14.
"They're supposed to expedite the process, and they have not done that," he said, adding that officers in his Army unit have been trying in vain to help. Charities have been set up in his honor to help defray costs.
"It's very draining, because I don't know what to do and my family is asking when we'll get the money," he said. "It's the hardest part about this whole thing."
Increasing visibility
What injured or ill veterans are finding when they return from overseas is a complex set of government processes for reviewing whether they will get financial help. They must navigate two of the largest U.S. government bureaucracies in the VA and the Pentagon, and multiple medical-review boards assess the extent of their injuries.
Even with the current backlog and the prospect of staffing cuts, VA officials are trying to increase the department's visibility, reaching out to new veterans to make sure they are aware of the services they can receive.
Principi said he recently sent letters to 178,000 veterans explaining benefits. The department is trying to keep wait times down by giving recent veterans higher priority, aiming for benefit claims that are filled within 100 days, he said. Currently, the VA takes about 160 days per claim, and 60,000 to 70,000 new claims come in each month.
There is also a more concerted effort to identify veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a condition that experts estimate affects 15 percent of veterans. Principi said he thinks mental-health concerns could become a dominant issue for the VA as insurgent warfare places new pressures on U.S. troops and society places more emphasis on mental health.
A Government Accountability Office report issued Sept. 20 concluded that the VA does not have enough information to determine if it can handle a rush of PTSD cases.
"The system is already strained, and it's going to get strained even worse," said David Autry, a spokesman for Disabled American Veterans. "It's not a rosy picture at all, and they can't possibly hope to say they're going to provide timely benefits to the new folks if they can't provide timely care to the people already in the system."
Rating a disability
For veterans, the VA's system for evaluating disability claims can be the most frustrating element. Through the end of August, the agency had about 330,000 cases waiting to get a "rating," or a percentage figure approved by an evaluation board that decides how much a disabled veteran will receive monthly from the VA.
The ratings system uses a complex guide to calculate, for example, how disabling it is to lose a foot or to be blinded in one eye. Soldiers are rated from zero percent to 100 percent disabled, and compensation varies from nothing to thousands of dollars each month. Those rated 100 percent disabled are eligible to receive indefinite monthly payments aimed at allowing them to live without working.
Decisions can take months as the board weighs the severity of injuries and makes sure they were suffered while the veteran was in the service. Appeals of such decisions can take years.
"Sometimes it takes six months to a year to get your claim decided, sometimes longer," said Cathy Wiblemo, deputy director for health care at the American Legion.
"We never think it's enough," Wiblemo said of disability payments. "It's hard to say that any amount of money can compensate for what these people have lost in defending our country."
Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company
U.S. accused of kidnapping family members of Iraqi detainees
Congress demands that the Pentagon release documents that could show U.S. forces kidnapped family members of terror suspects.
By Mark Benjamin
Jul. 14, 2006 | Congress has demanded that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld hand over a raft of documents to Congress that could substantiate allegations that U.S. forces have tried to break terror suspects by kidnapping and mistreating their family members. Rumsfeld has until 5 p.m. Friday to comply.
It now appears that kidnapping, scarcely covered by the media, and absent in the major military investigations of detainee abuse, may have been systematically employed by U.S. troops. Salon has obtained Army documents that show several cases where U.S. forces abducted terror suspects’ families. After he was thrown in prison, Cpl. Charles Graner, the alleged ringleader at Abu Ghraib, told investigators the military routinely kidnapped family members to force suspects to turn themselves in.
A House subcommittee led by Connecticut Republican Christopher Shays took the unusual step last month of issuing Rumsfeld a subpoena for the documents after months of stonewalling by the Pentagon. Shays had requested the documents in a March 7 letter. "There was no response" to the letter, a frustrated Shays told Salon. "We are not going to back off this."
The subpoena demands that the Pentagon turn over documents about apparent retribution by the military against Army Spc. Samuel Provance, a whistle-blower, who sought to expose abuse at the infamous prison by talking to military investigators and the press. Following his revelations, the Army demoted Provance from sergeant and revoked his security clearance.
The subpoena also includes a separate demand, at the behest of Government Reform Committee Ranking Member Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., for any documents that might show that U.S. forces were systematically detaining family members of suspects at Abu Ghraib, and mistreating them to force suspects to talk.
In a hearing before Shays' Government Reform subcommittee last February, Provance testified that the Army had retaliated against him. Provance also made the disturbing allegation that interrogators broke an Iraqi general, Hamid Zabar, by imprisoning and abusing his frail 16-year-old son. Waxman was shocked. "Do you think this practice was repeated with other children?" he asked Provance. "I don't see why it would not have been, sir," Provance replied.
Zabar's son had been apprehended with his father and held at Abu Ghraib, though the boy hadn't done anything wrong. "He was useless," Provance said about the boy in a phone interview with Salon from Heidelberg, Germany, where he is still in the Army. "He was of no intelligence value."
But, Provance said, interrogators grew frustrated when the boy's father, Zabar, wouldn't talk, despite a 14-hour interrogation. So they stripped Zabar's son naked and doused him with mud and water. They put him in the open back of a truck and drove around in the frigid January night air until the boy began to freeze. Zabar was then made to look at his suffering son.
"During the interrogation, they could not get him to talk," Provance recalled. "They said, 'OK, we are going to let you see your son.' They allow him to see his son in this shivering, freezing, naked state," Provance said. "That just totally broke his heart and that is when he said, 'I'll tell you what you want to know.'"
Provance said the boy was timid and afraid. "He was so skinny and so frail, and he was scared out of his mind," Provance remembered. "He was so skinny the handcuffs would not fit securely on his wrist. I had to put this green sandbag on his head. I just felt like a horrible person doing this."
Provance was not an interrogator; at that time, he worked on a security detail at Abu Ghraib. He said he did not see firsthand the boy being abused in the truck, although an interrogator working on the general's case later explained the abuse to Provance in detail.
Provance's account does not appear to be an isolated allegation. It echoes similar accusations at Abu Ghraib and across Iraq. In an interview with military investigators conducted after he was imprisoned, Graner called kidnapping, in addition to detainee abuse, "the other big Geneva Convention violation" going on at the prison. "They were picking up, you know, Joe Snuffy's wife to get Joe Snuffy," Graner explained to military investigators. "So, more or less, we're holding this female with no charges, which happened a lot."
Graner did not say in the interview who was doing the kidnapping. There were a broad range of forces operating at Abu Ghraib, including military Special Operations troops and CIA operatives.
Similar allegations have shown that kidnapping may have been a systematic practice. Special Operations troops, working with an elite unit called Task Force 6-26, allegedly abducted the 28-year-old wife of a suspected Iraqi terrorist during a raid on a house in Tarmiya, Iraq, in May 2004, the month after the Abu Ghraib scandal broke. That is according to a memorandum buried in thousands of pages of documents obtained by the ACLU through the Freedom of Information Act. The memorandum, a formal complaint titled "Report of Violations of the Geneva Conventions," was filed in June 2004 by a 14-year veteran intelligence officer with the Defense Intelligence Agency. The Department of Defense blacked out the officer's name.
In the memorandum, the intelligence officer said the kidnapping was planned. "During the pre-operation brief it was recommended by TF [Task Force] personnel that if the wife were present, she be detained and held in order to leverage the primary target's surrender," the officer recalled, stressing that he objected to the tactic. Later, the wife was indeed present when the raid took place. "I determined that she could provide no actionable intelligence leading to the arrest of her husband," the officer recalled. "Despite my protest, a raid team leader detained her anyway." She was held for two days.
Little has been reported about kidnapping in comparison to the exposure of the detainee abuse depicted in the photographs from Abu Ghraib. But there have been isolated press reports.
In 2003, Iraqi Maj. Gen. Abed Hamed Mowhoush died in U.S. custody in northern Iraq after suffering beatings and interrogations. He died when he was stuffed into a sleeping bag and straddled by Chief Warrant Officer Lewis E. Welshofer Jr. In January 2006, Welshofer was reprimanded for Mowhoush's death. His son, Mohammed, told the Washington Post that month that U.S. forces first kidnapped him and his three brothers from their home. Mohammed was 15 at that time and claimed he was not an insurgent. "They said if my father does not come [turn himself in] you will never see your family back," Mohammad told the Post. The article stated that classified documents show the general "later surrendered in an attempt to free his sons."
Congressional staff said the Department of Defense so far has not adequately responded to the subpoena for documents about Provance or kidnapping at Abu Ghraib. The Pentagon claimed that Shays' subcommittee already had everything it needed about detainee abuse. "The Department has already provided much of this information to the Congress -- mainly to the House Armed Services Committee, a committee of oversight," Lt. Col. Mark Ballesteros said in an e-mailed statement. "We have delivered to the House Government Reform Committee all of the documents that can be provided and are appropriate to provide." Ballesteros added that, "Humane treatment is and always has been the Department of Defense standard for the treatment of detainees in its custody."
But staff from both parties on the House Government Reform Committee said that won't do. Shays, a pro-war incumbent facing a tough election this fall, told Salon that he had no intention of backing down. "If the administration wants more power, then oversight of it has to be more aggressive," he said. He lamented that congressional oversight of detainee issues should have been stiff all along. "I just wish we had been on top of this issue sooner," he said with regret.
Congressional experts agree. "Oversight has been moribund during the first five years of President Bush's terms," said Charles Tiefer, a professor at the University of Baltimore School of Law, who worked as solicitor and deputy general counsel of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1984 to 1995. "Nowhere has it been more moribund than with respect to the Pentagon."
There is no paper trail that shows that kidnapping or abusing the family of suspects might have been official Department of Justice or Pentagon policy. It is not mentioned in any of the Bush administration interrogation memos that have so far surfaced in the press. In late 2002, commanders at the military prison at Guantánamo Bay did request authority, during interrogations, for "the use of scenarios designed to convince the detainee that death or severely painful consequence are imminent for him and/or his family."
In a December 2002 memorandum, Rumsfeld rejected a "blanket approval" of that interrogation technique, but did not rule it out completely.
Man indicted in phone jamming case will argue Administration approved election scheme
John Byrne
Published: Friday July 7, 2006
The fourth man indicted in a New Hampshire phone-jamming scheme -- in which Republican operatives jammed the phone lines of Democratic get-out-the-vote efforts in a 2002 Senate race -- will argue at trial that the Bush Administration and the national Republican Party gave their approval to the plan, according to a motion filed by his attorney Thursday.
Shaun Hansen, the former owner of the company that placed hang-up calls to jam Democratic phone lines, was indicted in March for conspiring to commit and aiding and abetting the commission of interstate telephone harassment relating to a scheme to thwart get out the vote efforts on Election Day, 2002.
His lawyer's motion signals that Hansen intends to argue that he was entrapped because the Administration allegedly told his superiors the calls were legal. The filing indicates, however, that Hansen does not have firsthand knowledge of Administration intervention.
Hansen’s lawyer offered an inside look of his defense strategy in yesterday's filing: his client will assert that he believed he was acting on behalf of the government and the Republican Party through his work with GOP Marketplace, the company which subcontracted the phone jamming efforts.
"Mr. Hansen may assert that the government, or an agent therof, actually induced the offenses with which Mr. Hansen is charged, and was not otherwise prediposed to commit," Hansen's lawyer Jeffrey Levin writes.
"Mr. Hansen may asserts [sic] the defense of "derivative entrapment" in which the government uses a private party as its agent," Levin adds.
Phone calls lead to White House
Phone records show hundreds of phone calls from the New Hampshire Republican Party and convicted phone jammer James Tobin to the White House Office of Political Affairs during the time the scheme was being planned and carried out.
The Republican National Committee, which shelled out millions to defend Tobin, has said it is "preposterous" to suggest the calls involved phone jamming.
According to AP, "The phone records show that most calls to the White House were from Tobin, who became President Bush's presidential campaign chairman for the New England region in 2004. Other calls from New Hampshire senatorial campaign offices to the White House could have been made by a number of people."
A liberal political action group, Senate Majority Project, also uncovered that GOP Marketplace, which subcontracted out the hang-up calls to Hansen’s Mylo Enterprises, was partly owned by Mississippi Governor and former RNC Chair Haley Barbour.
Repeated hang-up calls that jammed telephone lines at a Democratic get-out-the-vote center helped secure the victory of Sen. John Sununu (R-NH) over Democrat Jeanne Shaheen in November 2002, 51 to 46 percent.
Hansen’s motion can be read here.
www.rawstory.com/news/
John Murtha's 'War in Iraq' speech - Transcript
Political Gateway (Nov 17th 2005) John Murtha, former Pro-Iraq War Democrat changes position and comes out against the war, calls for immediate pullout of US troops.
Begin Transcript - The war in Iraq is not going as advertised. It is a flawed policy wrapped in illusion. The American public is way ahead of us. The United States and coalition troops have done all they can in Iraq, but it is time for a change in direction. Our military is suffering. The future of our country is at risk. We can not continue on the present course. It is evident that continued military action in Iraq is not in the best interest of the United States of America, the Iraqi people or the Persian Gulf Region.
General Casey said in a September 2005 Hearing, “the perception of occupation in Iraq is a major driving force behind the insurgency.” General Abizaid said on the same date, “Reducing the size and visibility of the coalition forces in Iraq is a part of our counterinsurgency strategy.”
For 2 ˝ years I have been concerned about the U.S. policy and the plan in Iraq. I have addressed my concerns with the Administration and the Pentagon and have spoken out in public about my concerns. The main reason for going to war has been discredited. A few days before the start of the war I was in Kuwait – the military drew a red line around Baghdad and said when U.S. forces cross that line they will be attacked by the Iraqis with Weapons of Mass Destruction – but the US forces said they were prepared. They had well trained forces with the appropriate protective gear.
We spend more money on Intelligence than all the countries in the world together, and more on Intelligence than most countries GDP. But the intelligence concerning Iraq was wrong. It is not a world intelligence failure. It is a U.S. intelligence failure and the way that intelligence was misused.
I have been visiting our wounded troops at Bethesda and Walter Reed hospitals almost every week since the beginning of the War. And what demoralizes them is going to war with not enough troops and equipment to make the transition to peace; the devastation caused by IEDs; being deployed to Iraq when their homes have been ravaged by hurricanes; being on their second or third deployment and leaving their families behind without a network of support.
The threat posed by terrorism is real, but we have other threats that cannot be ignored. We must be prepared to face all threats. The future of our military is at risk. Our military and their families are stretched thin. Many say that the Army is broken. Some of our troops are on their third deployment. Recruitment is down, even as our military has lowered its standards. Defense budgets are being cut. Personnel costs are skyrocketing, particularly in health care. Choices will have to be made. We can not allow promises we have made to our military families in terms of service benefits, in terms of their health care, to be negotiated away. Procurement programs that ensure our military dominance cannot be negotiated away. We must be prepared. The war in Iraq has caused huge shortfalls at our bases in the U.S.
Much of our ground equipment is worn out and in need of either serious overhaul or replacement. George Washington said, “To be prepared for war is one of the most effective means of preserving peace.” We must rebuild our Army. Our deficit is growing out of control. The Director of the Congressional Budget Office recently admitted to being “terrified” about the budget deficit in the coming decades. This is the first prolonged war we have fought with three years of tax cuts, without full mobilization of American industry and without a draft. The burden of this war has not been shared equally; the military and their families are shouldering this burden.
Our military has been fighting a war in Iraq for over two and a half years. Our military has accomplished its mission and done its duty. Our military captured Saddam Hussein, and captured or killed his closest associates. But the war continues to intensify. Deaths and injuries are growing, with over 2,079 confirmed American deaths. Over 15,500 have been seriously injured and it is estimated that over 50,000 will suffer from battle fatigue. There have been reports of at least 30,000 Iraqi civilian deaths.
I just recently visited Anbar Province Iraq in order to assess the conditions on the ground. Last May 2005, as part of the Emergency Supplemental Spending Bill, the House included the Moran Amendment, which was accepted in Conference, and which required the Secretary of Defense to submit quarterly reports to Congress in order to more accurately measure stability and security in Iraq. We have now received two reports. I am disturbed by the findings in key indicator areas. Oil production and energy production are below pre-war levels. Our reconstruction efforts have been crippled by the security situation. Only $9 billion of the $18 billion appropriated for reconstruction has been spent. Unemployment remains at about 60 percent. Clean water is scarce. Only $500 million of the $2.2 billion appropriated for water projects has been spent. And most importantly, insurgent incidents have increased from about 150 per week to over 700 in the last year. Instead of attacks going down over time and with the addition of more troops, attacks have grown dramatically. Since the revelations at Abu Ghraib, American casualties have doubled. An annual State Department report in 2004 indicated a sharp increase in global terrorism.
I said over a year ago, and now the military and the Administration agrees, Iraq can not be won “militarily.” I said two years ago, the key to progress in Iraq is to Iraqitize, Internationalize and Energize. I believe the same today. But I have concluded that the presence of U.S. troops in Iraq is impeding this progress.
Our troops have become the primary target of the insurgency. They are united against U.S. forces and we have become a catalyst for violence. U.S. troops are the common enemy of the Sunnis, Saddamists and foreign jihadists. I believe with a U.S. troop redeployment, the Iraqi security forces will be incentivized to take control. A poll recently conducted shows that over 80% of Iraqis are strongly opposed to the presence of coalition troops, and about 45% of the Iraqi population believe attacks against American troops are justified. I believe we need to turn Iraq over to the Iraqis.
I believe before the Iraqi elections, scheduled for mid December, the Iraqi people and the emerging government must be put on notice that the United States will immediately redeploy. All of Iraq must know that Iraq is free. Free from United States occupation. I believe this will send a signal to the Sunnis to join the political process for the good of a “free” Iraq.
My plan calls:
To immediately redeploy U.S. troops consistent with the safety of U.S. forces.
To create a quick reaction force in the region.
To create an over- the- horizon presence of Marines.
To diplomatically pursue security and stability in Iraq
This war needs to be personalized. As I said before I have visited with the severely wounded of this war. They are suffering.
Because we in Congress are charged with sending our sons and daughters into battle, it is our responsibility, our OBLIGATION to speak out for them. That’s why I am speaking out.
Our military has done everything that has been asked of them, the U.S. can not accomplish anything further in Iraq militarily. IT IS TIME TO BRING THEM HOME.
www.politicalgateway.com
Moderates Want Iraq Rhetoric Toned Down
By LIZ SIDOTI
The Associated Press
Monday, December 12, 2005; 3:43 AM
WASHINGTON -- Moderates are imploring colleagues in Congress to tone down the rhetoric on Iraq as debate about President Bush's war policies has become increasingly bitter and partisan.
Their pleas are likely to be ignored.
The war is expected to be front and center in the upcoming congressional election year, particularly in several races where candidates are Iraq war veterans. Neither party has much incentive to pull its punches, with Republicans eager to paint Democratic critics of Bush's Iraq policies as soft on defense and Democrats looking to exploit his woes as polls show declining support for the war.
Nevertheless, some senior lawmakers are appealing for courteousness, saying that while debate is essential to democracy, politics and partisanship should stop at the waters' edge.
"The quality of congressional debate has an impact on events in Iraq and our prospects for success," Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said in the first of several letters he plans to write to House and Senate members on the issue. "We should continually strive to elevate our debate by studying thoughtful sources of information and embracing civility in our discourse."
Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, who in recent weeks has broken with most of his Democratic brethren and largely supported the president's Iraq strategy, urged discussion that goes beyond "dueling partisan press conferences."
"I hope that it goes on with a recognition that there are Republicans and Democrats on both sides, and that it should be conducted in the spirit of mutual respect and national interest," Lieberman said.
It's no surprise that moderates are acting as referees.
"They're the ones who are reaching across partisan aisles, trying to find common ground," said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, an expert on political rhetoric and campaigns. "It's the people on the partisan extreme that are the ones most likely to impugn integrity."
Iraq has dominated debate this fall on Capitol Hill with accusations being tossed around almost daily.
Democrats accuse Bush of misleading the United States into war and of failing to be candid about the current situation in Iraq. Republicans assert that Democrats are emboldening U.S. enemies with a "cut-and-run strategy."
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/12/AR2005121200121.html
Vets Hurt in Mind, Body Wait for Help
By MONI BASU
Atlanta Journal and Constitution
Sunday, June 26, 2005
ATLANTA — On a recent Friday, James Webb awoke without having had a dream about Iraq.
It was an exceptional day for the former Army specialist because when Webb dreams, he sees himself with his son, Christian, at his side being swallowed by infinite desert drabness. Suddenly they come under fire from a bus parked on the side of the road.
Webb whips out his handgun, passes it to Christian, and together father and son "light up the bus."
"I woke up and thought, Whoa, that's a disturbing dream," Webb said. "My son is 6 years old."
Webb is part of a new generation of American soldiers returning home from the battlefield with scars — some physical and some emotional — that can create havoc as they try to pick up the personal lives they left behind.
And like thousands of injured soldiers, Webb is waiting for help from the Department of Veterans Affairs. But by its own admission, the VA is severely backlogged.
The average wait time for a disability check in Georgia is 5˝ months, said Larry Burks, director of the regional VA office in Decatur. For some veterans, it could take even longer.
"That's too long for me," Burks said. "And we are desperately trying to change that."
For Webb, who was discharged for medical reasons, the struggle has been more about sleep-busting dreams at night, popping painkillers during the day and constant anxiety about how to pay next month's rent.
The weight of his troubles led him to contemplate suicide after he returned from Iraq last fall.
"I didn't feel like I had reason to live anymore," he said. "Sometimes I'd cry myself to sleep. I'd lie down at night and all I'd see was Iraq."
Some combat wounds are obvious — mangled flesh and broken bones.
Soldiers wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan are surviving severe injuries at higher rates than in any previous war because of sophisticated body armor and mobile medical units.
Many of the more severely wounded are facing lifelong rehabilitation for multiple amputations and brain trauma caused by suicide bombings and roadside blasts that have come to define the insurgency in Iraq.
Because of that, Congress passed new legislation last month that gives immediate financial relief to soldiers with traumatic injuries. The law entitles soldiers to receive $25,000 to $100,000, depending on the severity of the injury.
'Iraq poses unique risk'
But some battle scars are not so obvious — unseen wounds that lurk deep within the minds of soldiers who have seen the worst of war.
A study published in The New England Journal of Medicine reports that one in every six soldiers in Iraq will suffer post-traumatic stress disorder. Known as PTSD, it is a debilitating psychological condition that can surface as a response to combat trauma, said Dr. David Ready, a psychologist at the Decatur VA hospital's PTSD clinic.
The journal study was done a year ago. Some experts argue that the worsening situation in Iraq has led to even higher rates of PTSD.
"Iraq poses unique risk," Ready said. "There's much more unpredictability there."
Not since Vietnam has America had to cope with daily announcements of wartime casualties. Soldiers are filling military hospitals and VA clinics across the nation at an unexpected rate.
In Georgia, officials say first-time disability claims spiked 16 percent in 2004, partly because of Afghanistan and Iraq.
The VA hospital in Decatur has seen about 5,400 vets who have returned from Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001, said Chester Papineau, who coordinates services for this newest generation of veterans.
The most common need among them has been physical therapy for arm and leg injuries, though some have also required care for traumatic brain injuries, spinal cord injuries and post-traumatic stress, Papineau said.
Hospital officials say they added Papineau's position in April as part of their effort to provide a "seamless transition" from military to civilian life.
But advocates for veterans said the VA, which serves 5 million veterans every year, was underfunded and that at this rate, an already stressed system would see tremendous shortfalls in the near future, especially if the Iraq war continues to take such a toll.
"Our government is saying, We don't really value your service," said James Sursely, national commander of the Disabled Veterans of America. "Otherwise we would be providing health care and benefits in a more timely manner."
The VA managed to trim the backlog of disability claims during fiscal years 2002 and 2003 but has lost ground since then, according to a Government Accountability Office report released in March.
The report found that the average wait time for processing disability claims was 119 days at the end of March 2005, an average of eight days longer than at the end of fiscal year 2003.
During that period, the number of cases waiting for review grew by about 86,000 to about 340,000 — an increase of about one-third.
Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho), chairman of the Committee on Veterans' Affairs, said resources for veterans were adequate to take care of their needs.
"Of course there is a growing concern for the new veterans coming in," said Craig, sponsor of the bill for severely injured soldiers. "It is clearly our responsibility to deal with those upfront — both the physical side and mental side."
Veterans groups lobbied Congress for an amendment to the $80 billion supplemental appropriations bill that would have provided an extra $2 billion to cover what they call a shortfall in funding for veterans medical care. But the measure failed to pass.
While the funding debate continues in Washington, James Webb waits for help in his apartment in Covington.
"I am disappointed at the way I was treated after I got back," said Webb, who lives every day surrounded by hints of the soldier he used to be.
There are the certificates of achievement on the wall and the honorable discharge, the piece of paper of which Webb is most proud. And there is still the glint in his eye of a man determined to fight.
Body, marriage strained
Webb completed a tour in Iraq that lasted a year and a week with the 4th Cavalry Regiment's Delta Troop. He and his buddies provided escorts for convoys traveling dangerous roads.
A pre-existing hip injury got much worse when an explosion threw him back against the steel of a gunner's turret. His medical records indicate an injury to his sacroiliac joint.
Webb, who grew up playing football, ran seven-minute miles and passed the Army's most rigorous physical endurance tests, can't stand up straight anymore. He hobbles around on legs that wasted away from months of inactivity.
"Some people wake up and listen to the birds sing," Webb said. "We got to hear mortar rounds going off."
Even in Iraq, Webb was having difficulties coping. His medical records show that his weapon was taken from him for a week when he was sent to a combat stress clinic.
Webb got married a few weeks after he returned home last September to Michelle, whom he met on the Internet. But when he went back to Fort Riley, Kan., she remained in Georgia.
At Fort Riley, Webb drifted in and out of the military hospital. He was treated for his hip pain, seizures and severe depression. Alone in a one-bedroom apartment off base, he said he entertained thoughts of ending his life.
The Army gave Webb a medical discharge on Feb. 4, the day before his 29th birthday. He returned to Georgia and applied for disability benefits.
He could receive $2,299 a month if the VA determines he is entitled to 100 percent disability. Webb will be happy with 30 percent of that.
"They said they'd get back to me in six or eight months," Webb said. "I think the VA is totally swamped. I know there's people a lot worse off than me. I would wait forever to see my buddies who really got messed up over there to go in front of me," he said, tears welling in his eyes.
Webb occasionally goes to a local hospital for physical therapy. His wife's health insurance policy helps pay the bills.
Michelle is now fighting to stop the foreclosure on her Covington house, but with one income, medical bills and three children from other marriages, "it has been tough," she said.
Hard now to 'suck it up'
The stress has taken a toll on their marriage, he said, and there have been frequent arguments, something not uncommon in the families of returning veterans.
A few weeks ago, Webb's mother, Jackie Gibson, called a local veterans group desperately pleading for help for her son. She said the group first agreed to help, then reneged.
"The VA rep told us we would have to wait," Gibson said. "Army people are poor people. We are not high on any totem pole."
Two other organizations — Military Families Speak Out and Veterans for Peace — have been trying to help the Webbs sort through their tangled life.
"We should ask America how we can send someone to war and let this happen," said Steve Robinson, executive director of the Washington-based National Gulf War Resource Center, who is familiar with the case.
When he was hurting in Iraq, Webb did what his officers told him to do: "Suck it up. Pain is for the weak."
Now it's hard to suppress that pain, either physical or emotional.
"Life is good," Webb said. "It's just different. Over there, there's no time to be scared — your adrenaline's pumping. I came back home and I have a lot of time to think."
Moni Basu writes for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. E-mail: mbasu@ajc.com. Staff writer Anna Varela contributed to this article.
August 8, 2005
New York Times
Of the Many Deaths in Iraq, One Mother's
Loss Becomes a Problem for the President
By RICHARD W. STEVENSON
CindySheehan
CRAWFORD, Tex., Aug. 7 - President Bush draws antiwar protesters just about wherever he goes, but few generate the kind of attention that Cindy Sheehan has since she drove down the winding road toward his ranch here this weekend and sought to tell him face to face that he must pull all Americans troops out of Iraq now.
Ms. Sheehan's son, Casey, was killed last year in Iraq, after which she became an antiwar activist. She says she and her family met with the president two months later at Fort Lewis in Washington State.
But when she was blocked by the police a few miles from Mr. Bush's 1,600-acre spread on Saturday, the 48-year-old Ms. Sheehan of Vacaville, Calif., was transformed into a news media phenomenon, the new face of opposition to the Iraq conflict at a moment when public opinion is in flux and the politics of the war have grown more complicated for the president and the Republican Party.
Ms. Sheehan has vowed to camp out on the spot until Mr. Bush agrees to meet with her, even if it means spending all of August under a broiling sun by the dusty road. Early on Sunday afternoon, 25 hours after she was turned back as she approached Mr. Bush's ranch, Prairie Chapel, Ms. Sheehan stood red-faced from the heat at the makeshift campsite that she says will be her home until the president relents or leaves to go back to Washington. A reporter from The Associated Press had just finished interviewing her. CBS was taping a segment on her. She had already appeared on CNN, and was scheduled to appear live on ABC on Monday morning. Reporters from across the country were calling her cellphone.
"It's just snowballed," Ms. Sheehan said beside a small stand of trees and a patch of shade that contained a sleeping bag, some candles, a jar of nuts and a few other supplies. "We have opened up a debate in the country."
Seeking to head off exactly the situation that now seems to be unfolding, the administration sent two senior officials out from the ranch on Saturday afternoon to meet with her. But Ms. Sheehan said after talking to the officials - Stephen J. Hadley, the national security adviser, and Joe Hagin, a deputy White House chief of staff - that she would not back down in her demand to see the president.
Her success in drawing so much attention to her message - and leaving the White House in a face-off with an opponent who had to be treated very gently even as she aggressively attacked the president and his policies - seemed to stem from the confluence of several forces.
The deaths last week of 20 Marines from a single battalion has focused public attention on the unremitting pace of casualties in Iraq, providing her an opening to deliver her message that no more lives should be given to the war. At the same time, polls that show falling approval for Mr. Bush's handling of the war have left him open to challenge in a way that he was not when the nation appeared to be more strongly behind him.
It did not hurt her cause that she staged her protest, which she said was more or less spontaneous, at the doorstep of the White House press corps, which spends each August in Crawford with little to do, minimal access to Mr. Bush and his aides, and an eagerness for any new story.
As the mother of an Army specialist who was killed at age 24 in the Sadr City section of Baghdad on April 4, 2004, Ms. Sheehan's story is certainly compelling. She is also articulate, aggressive in delivering her message and has information that most White House reporters have not heard before: how Mr. Bush handles himself when he meets behind closed doors with the families of soldiers killed in Iraq.
The White House has released few details of such sessions, which Mr. Bush holds regularly as he travels the country, but generally portrays them as emotional and an opportunity for the president to share the grief of the families. In Ms. Sheehan's telling, though, Mr. Bush did not know her son's name when she and her family met with him in June 2004 at Fort Lewis. Mr. Bush, she said, acted as if he were at a party and behaved disrespectfully toward her by referring to her as "Mom" throughout the meeting.
By Ms. Sheehan's account, Mr. Bush said to her that he could not imagine losing a loved one like an aunt or uncle or cousin. Ms. Sheehan said she broke in and told Mr. Bush that Casey was her son, and that she thought he could imagine what it would be like since he has two daughters and that he should think about what it would be like sending them off to war.
"I said, 'Trust me, you don't want to go there'," Ms. Sheehan said, recounting her exchange with the president. "He said, 'You're right, I don't.' I said, 'Well, thanks for putting me there.' "
Asked about Ms. Sheehan's statements, Trent D. Duffy, a spokesman for the White House, said Sunday: "The president knows one of his most important responsibilities is to comfort the families of the fallen. That is why he has personally met with and grieved with hundreds of families who have lost a loved one who made the ultimate sacrifice. We can only imagine how painful and difficult it must be for a mother to lose her son. Our hearts and prayers are always with the moms and dads and spouses and children of those who have fallen."
It is not clear how the White House will handle Ms. Sheehan. Mr. Bush usually comes and goes from the ranch by helicopter, but he might have to drive by her on Friday, when he is scheduled to attend a Republican fund-raiser at a ranch just down the road from where Ms. Sheehan is camped out. She will no doubt get another wave of publicity on Thursday, when Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice join Mr. Bush at the ranch to discuss the war.
The New Military Life: Heading Back to the War
By Monica Davey
The New York Times
Monday 20 December 2004
MANHATTAN, Kan. - Earlier this year, as Sgt. Alexander Garcia's plane took off for home after his tense year of duty in Iraq, he remembered watching the receding desert sand and thinking, I will never see this place again.
Never lasted about 10 months for Sergeant Garcia, a cavalry scout with the First Armored Division who finished his first stint in Iraq in March and is now preparing to return.
He and the rest of his combat brigade at Fort Riley, the Army base a few miles from this town, have been working for weeks, late into the frigid prairie nights, cleaning and packing gear and vehicles for the trip back to Baghdad after the New Year.
"I figured that the Army was big enough that one unit would not have to go back again before this thing was over," said Sergeant Garcia, 20. "It's my job and it's my country, and I don't have any regrets. But I kind of feel like I did my part. Just as I was readjusting to life back home, just as I was starting to feel normal again, this kind of throws me back into the waves."
No one is feeling normal anymore at Fort Riley and other bases across the country, where military life is undergoing a radical change. They are stoic here, and many point out, as Sergeant Garcia does, that they signed up for this.
Still, in decades past, troops had gotten used to a predictable rhythm to their deployments. Even during Desert Storm and Vietnam, most soldiers could expect to take just one trip into harm's way.
But with the military stretched thin in Iraq and in Afghanistan, some soldiers and marines are being sent to war zones repeatedly, for longer stretches in some cases, and with far less time at home between deployments than they say they have ever experienced before.
Here in Kansas, the base and the small towns nearby have begun to resemble an enormous machine in an endless cycle: bringing soldiers home with late-night celebrations in gymnasiums and screaming roadside banners, and then sending them off again, with fresh uniforms, new DVD players and snapshots, and formal farewells.
The motion is constant, whirring along, even as the world beyond Fort Riley's churning slows down for the holidays. Next month, a brigade of 3,500 Fort Riley soldiers will begin returning to Iraq for a second time; a few days ago, 3,500 others, many of whom arrived home to their quiet Midwestern post this fall, learned they would be headed back to Iraq as early as the middle of next year.
This frenzied pace is swiftly becoming the norm. Nearly a third of the 950,000 people from all branches of the armed forces who have been sent to Iraq or Afghanistan since those conflicts began have already been sent a second time. Part-time soldiers - Army national guardsmen and reservists - who often have handled support roles, not frontline combat roles, are slightly more likely to have served more than one deployment to the conflict zones than regular Army members.
And, of the nearly 1,300 troops who have died in Iraq since the war began, more than 100 of them were on second tours.
The change is leaving its emotional mark on thousands of military families. Some family members say the repeated separations have been like some awful waking dream, holding their breath for their soldiers to make it home safely, only to watch them leave once more. Some families who have lost loved ones on repeat tours of duty said they felt a particular ache - a sense that the second trip pushed fate too hard.
Among some of the soldiers themselves, the thought of returning to Iraq carries one puzzling quality: Unlike so many parts of life, in which the second try at anything feels easier than the first, these soldiers say that heading to Iraq is actually more overwhelming the second time around.
"The first time, I didn't know anything," Sergeant Garcia said. "But this time I know what I'm getting into, so it's harder. You know what you're going to do. You know how bad you're going to be feeling."
During peacetime, marines have usually been deployed for six months, then stationed at home for 18 months, said Capt. Dan McSweeney, a Marine Corps spokesman. For now, Captain McSweeney said, the pace for some is closer to seven months away and seven months home. About half of the 32,000 marines now stationed in Iraq are serving second tours, he said.
The Army's goal is that fulltime soldiers can expect deployments one year of every three, and reservists expect to go away far less, one year of every six, said Lt. Col. Christopher Rodney, an Army spokesman. At the moment, though, Colonel Rodney said, some soldiers are leaving for a year and coming home for a year, though some tours have stretched longer, some stays at home shorter.
Army officials said they were seeking ways to make repeated deployments easier on soldiers and their families, as the Army is shifted to create more brigades and to spread the burdens. Colonel Rodney said that the military was also trying to give troops as much advance warning about deployments as possible. The Army's chaplains, too, said they were offering more extensive relationship counseling for military families as one way to ease the strains.
"This is a completely new and completely different kind of animal," said Sgt. First Class Tom Ogden, a member of an Army aviation unit from Fort Carson, Colo., who has spent nearly 20 years in the military.
"I've never seen anything like it," he said. "And what everybody is starting to know now is that this is going to be what's going on for the foreseeable future."
Sergeant Ogden, 37, returned home to his wife, Rene, and their 7-year-old twins in April. His unit is to leave again, he said, in March. "For me, this one will be harder," he said. "The last time, we thought there was an off-chance we would see some stuff. But things have escalated, and now we know we will."
At Fort Riley, soldiers and their families said they had wrestled with the new, faster pace. Some spouses said they worried about managing so much of life alone - children, bills, cars and home repairs.
"I think this is the new norm," said Sandra Horton, whose husband, Staff Sgt. T. J. Horton, is to leave Fort Riley for Iraq, once again, in January.
The Hortons have been through the stresses and loneliness of deployments many times in Sergeant Horton's 17 years in the service, and they said they would manage just fine this time, too. Again and again, they both said that this was simply his job, even if it meant that Ta'Von, 6, grew many more inches before his father saw him again.
Still, in a quiet moment, Ms. Horton acknowledged: "It feels never-ending now. We feel like he's always gone. But what can we do?"
For Specialist James Webb, a younger soldier here at Fort Riley, the family stresses seem overwhelming. "I feel like I'm in a no-win situation," he said.
Specialist Webb, 28, lives alone in a one-bedroom apartment off the base. He talks on the telephone for hours to his wife, who lives in Georgia. He said he was lonely, struggling with depression and being treated for post-traumatic stress from the roadside bombs and rocket-propelled grenades he saw as a gunner on the top of a Humvee.
He returned this fall, but has not been able to reunite permanently with his wife and three stepdaughters because he cannot find them on-base housing. His wife moved home, to Georgia, during his deployment, and now there is talk of another deployment as quickly as next year.
"There's been some distance," he said somberly of his wife, whom he married in October 2002, not long before his first deployment. "She's really not liking the military lifestyle at all. She tells me things would be better if I just moved back to Georgia."
Still, Specialist Webb said he hoped to remain a soldier for his career, though he said he worried about losing his family."At the same time, this is my job," he said. "I signed on the dotted line. And this is a small thing I can do for my country, to protect my wife and stepdaughters."
(Read SPC Webb's story on our HOME page.)
No one can be certain how the pace of deployment may affect the military in the years ahead: Will soldiers finish their enlistments and leave? Will fewer recruits agree to sign up? Two studies based on data before the 2001 terrorist attacks suggested that service members who had one or two deployments were more likely to re-enlist than those who had had no deployments, but the pace and danger levels of deployments have shifted since then.
Cpl. Kenneth Epperson, a Fort Riley soldier, said that he and his wife, Amanda, were fine with the pace of deployment. His daughter, Nikki, was born while he was in Iraq, and he has spent many weeks since he returned in April away from his family again, getting special training in California and Georgia.
"I joined the Army to be a soldier," said Corporal Epperson, who is 21 and headed back to Iraq in a few weeks. "I expected this."
Others were surprised.
At Camp LeJeune, in North Carolina, Lance Cpl. Peter Kirby said he probably would not re-enlist in the Marines when his contract ends in 16 months. He had thought about the military as a career, Corporal Kirby said, but was now leaning toward being a police officer or a park service worker.
"This isn't the life I'd like to lead," he said, adding that he was getting married in a few weeks. "If I'm going to start a family, I don't want to be absent in my kids' lives."
In Tucson, Elena Zurheide is preparing Christmas for her 7-and-a-half-month-old son, Robert III. "I hate Christmas," Ms. Zurheide said. "I hate holidays. I hate everything right now."
Her husband, Robert Jr., was a lance corporal in the Marines. He was killed in Falluja this spring, a few weeks before their son was born. He was on his second tour to Iraq.
"I never wanted him to go a second time," she said. "I just started having the feeling that we were pushing our luck too far, and he thought so, too."
She said she wrote to Corporal Zurheide's commander before he left, asking that her huband be permitted to stay behind - or that he at least be allowed to wait for the birth of their son. She said she never heard back.
"I should have broken his arm to keep him here," she said. "I knew it was too much to go again."
Her son, Ms. Zurheide said, looks just like his father.
Ex-Marine Says Public Version of Saddam Capture Fiction
Published on Thursday, March 10, 2005 by United Press International
A former U.S. Marine who participated in capturing ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein said the public version of his capture was fabricated.
Ex-Sgt. Nadim Abou Rabeh, of Lebanese descent, was quoted in the Saudi daily al-Medina Wednesday as saying Saddam was actually captured Friday, Dec. 12, 2003, and not the day after, as announced by the U.S. Army. "I was among the 20-man unit, including eight of Arab descent, who searched for Saddam for three days in the area of Dour near Tikrit, and we found him in a modest home in a small village and not in a hole as announced," Abou Rabeh said.
"We captured him after fierce resistance during which a Marine of Sudanese origin was killed," he said. He said Saddam himself fired at them with a gun from the window of a room on the second floor.
Then they shouted at him in Arabic: "You have to surrender. ... There is no point in resisting."
"Later on, a military production team fabricated the film of Saddam's capture in a hole, which was in fact a deserted well," Abou Rabeh said.
Abou Rabeh was interviewed in Lebanon.
Copyright © 2005. United Press International, Inc.
###
On Farthest US Shores, Iraq Is a Way to a Dream
By James Brooke
The New York Times
Sunday 31 July 2005
Saipan, Northern Mariana Islands - By jogging at sunset on the white sands of a palm-fringed beach here, 17-year-old Audrey O. Bricia is doing more than toning up for her next try in this island's Miss Philippines contest. She is getting in shape for United States Army boot camp.
To gain an edge on the competition for enlistment, she reserved a seat two days in advance to take Army's aptitude test on a recent Saturday morning here. Safely ensconced in her seat, she watched an Army recruiter turn away 10 latecomers, all new high school graduates.
"I am scared about Iraq, but I am going to have to give something in return for those benefits I want," said Ms. Bricia, a daughter of Filipino immigrants whose ambition is to attend nursing school in California.
From Pago Pago in American Samoa to Yap in Micronesia, 4,000 miles to the west, Army recruiters are scouring the Pacific, looking for high school graduates to enlist at a time when the Iraq war is turning off many candidates in the States.
The Army has found fertile ground in the poverty pockets of the Pacific. The per capita income is $8,000 in American Samoa, $12,500 in the Northern Marianas and $21,000 in Guam, all United States territories. In the Marshalls and Micronesia, former trust territories, per capita incomes are about $2,000.
The Army minimum signing bonus is $5,000. Starting pay for a private first class is $17,472. Education benefits can be as much as $70,000.
"You can't beat recruiting here in the Marianas, in Micronesia," said First Sgt. Olympio Magofna, who grew up on Saipan and oversees Pacific recruiting for the Army from his base in Guam. "In the states, they are really hurting," he said. "But over here, I can afford go play golf every other day."
Here, where "America starts its day," the Army recruiting station in Guam has 4 of the Army's top 12 "producers." While small in real terms, enlistments from Guam, Saipan, and American Samoa are the nation's highest per capita. Saipan, with a population of about 60,000 American citizens and green card holders, has 245 soldiers in Iraq.
[American Samoa, population of 67,000, has lost six soldiers in Iraq, most recently Staff Sgt. Frank F. Tiai of Pago Pago on July 17. Guam has lost three. Saipan has lost one.]
"I see yellow ribbons everywhere," Staff Sgt. Levi Suiaunoa said by telephone from the Army recruiting station in Pago Pago, capital of the territory. " 'Come home safely' signs almost litter the streets."
Despite the casualties, poverty and patriotism fuel enlistments.
"I buried at least one myself, but it hasn't stopped the number of recruits going in," said the Rev. J. Quinn Weitzel, bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Samoa-Pago Pago. "They still feel like they want to do something special for the United States."
In Guam and Saipan, the letters U.S.A. are emblazoned on license plates, as if to educate tourists that these territories are American.
"There is a very strong sense of patriotism throughout the U.S. territories," David B. Cohen, deputy assistant secretary of the Interior for Insular Affairs, said. "How else can you explain someone like Ray Yumul, a sitting Northern Marianas congressman who has spent a year serving in Iraq? He's certainly not someone who needed the military as a ticket out."
In the Marianas, the tradition of American military service stretches back three generations, starting with the defeat of Japanese rule here in the summer of 1944.
"We support our Liberation Days, our Memorial Days, our Flag Days," said Ruth A. Coleman, military and veterans affairs director for the Northern Marianas. A retired Air Force officer, she said: "Look at me: my father, husband and I were in the service. My youngest son is an M.P. His wife is an M.P. commander. My middle son is in the Air Force."
The tie between military service and economic advancement is clear to many young people here.
"It's the benefits," said Arnold Balisalisa, who took the aptitude test here in late June. Taking a break from his $3.25-an-hour job at a McDonald's, he said: "It is better than staying on this island. There's nothing going on here. I'm 19, and I have never even been to Guam."
His friend Ms. Bricia spent a year at a high school in California, and she can see the difference.
"People in the states have the higher pay, the residency," she said, referring to residency requirements to attend a state university at lower rates. "A lot of people in Saipan are joining the Army for the higher pay, the benefits."
Clouding Saipan's economic future, Japan Airlines, the carrier for one-quarter of Saipan's tourists, is to suspend service here in October. The garment industry, the island's largest source of employment, laid off thousands of workers after the recent liberalization of American import rules for clothing made in China.
To a tourist, Saipan may look like a paradise. For a restless teenager, it may look like a dead end. On the eastern flank of Mount Tapochao, Ross Delarosa, 18, looked beyond the cows and chickens near his front yard and seethed with ambition.
"There's hardly any life this island," Mr. Delarosa said. The son of Filipino immigrants, he confronts a society where land ownership and government jobs are largely the preserves of the indigenous Chamorro and Carolinean groups. A self-taught mechanic, he said: "Here it is not what you know, but who you know."
For teenagers who think they are invincible, the brakes often come from their mothers. Ms. Bricia's mother, Mira, kept her arms crossed during most of her daughter's interview.
"I heard about that Jessica Lynch, and I thought, 'My daughter? No way!' " she said, recalling the American private who was briefly captured early in the war. In the end, she signed the Army authorization papers for her daughter, a minor.
Potential recruits say that Iraq weighs heavily in their decision.
"The scary part is, what if you go to Iraq, and someone shoots you?" Mr. Balisalisa during his break at work. But soon he was worrying about how he fared on the Army's aptitude test. Turning to Audrey Bricia, he said: "He's called you. Why hasn't he called me?"
Army Kept Truth of Death from GI’s Family
Associated Press | September 12, 2005
WASHINGTON - The Army said Saturday it knew for more than a year after 1st Lt. Kenneth Ballard's death in Iraq in May 2004 that he was not killed in action, as it initially reported. The family was not told the truth until Friday.
Ballard's mother, Karen Meredith, of Mountain View, Calif., said in a telephone interview that she is angry and will press for a full explanation. She is a public critic of the war and has attended anti-war protests in Crawford, Texas, outside President Bush's ranch, with grieving mother and peace activist Cindy Sheehan.
Meredith said she blames the Army's error on official incompetence, not an intent to cover up the truth.
"This news is stunning to me," she said. "People in the Army knew this news for 15 months, and why they couldn't be bothered to tell me the truth when this first happened and to have me go through this pain 15 months later is unconscionable on the part of the Army. It's a betrayal to my son's service," she said. A letter from Army Secretary Francis Harvey was hand-delivered to her Friday in Mountain View. She said Harvey wrote, "I sincerely apologize to you for the unfortunate series of events that resulted in your not being informed."
Army officials said the failure to notify the family of the true cause of Ballard's death was an oversight. The military sometimes incorrectly categorizes the cause of war deaths. What is so unusual about the Ballard case is that the error was recognized early but not reported to the family for more than a year.
On Memorial Day in 2004, the day after Kenneth Ballard died, the Army informed his family that he had been killed by enemy fire while on a combat mission in the south-central Iraqi city of Najaf. In a casualty announcement from June 1, the Pentagon said Ballard died "during a firefight with insurgents."
The Army disclosed on Saturday that Ballard, 26, actually died of wounds from the accidental discharge of a M240 machine gun on his tank after his platoon had returned from battling insurgents in Najaf.
He was buried at Arlington National Cemetery last Oct. 22. An Army spokesman, Col. Joseph Curtin, said in an interview that separate investigations by the local commander and by the Army's Criminal Investigation Division concluded days after Ballard's death that it was an accident.
The tank accidentally backed into a tree and a branch hit the mounted, unmanned machine gun, causing it to fire, Curtin said. Ballard was struck at close range and died of his wounds, he added.
For reasons that are not clear, the Army did not correct the public record and inform the family until Friday.
Last spring, it was disclosed that the Army had delayed in telling the family of ex-pro football player Pat Tillman that his death in Afghanistan in April 2004 was caused by gunfire from his fellow Rangers and not enemy forces, as the Army initially reported. The Tillman case is being reviewed by the Pentagon inspector general's office.
Curtin said the Ballard matter was a regrettable mistake and that Harvey, the Army secretary, has ordered a review of procedures in reporting accidental deaths.
"Furthermore, the Army regrets that the initial casualty report from the field was in error as well as the time that it has taken to correct the report and to inform his family," Curtin said in a statement issued Friday night.
Ballard was a platoon leader in 2nd Battalion, 37th Armor Regiment, 1st Armored Division. During the Najaf fighting he was attached to a unit of the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment. On May 22, approaching the one-year anniversary of her son's death, Meredith wrote in a Web posting, "One year ago you were killed by a snipers bullet. They said you were killed instantly. There is not a minute that goes by that I do not remember answering the phone and hearing I regret to inform you."
The 1st Armored Division, which also investigated the death, said in a written statement from its post in Wiesbaden, Germany, on Friday night that investigations had "revealed additional information of the cause" of Ballard's death. It did not mention that the investigations were conducted more than a year ago.
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Copyright 2005 Associated Press.
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War Foes Intensify Texas Vigil
By Helen Kennedy
The New York Daily News
Saturday 13 August 2005
President Bush got his first look yesterday at the anti-war protest growing outside his Texas ranch when, on his way to a fund-raiser, he drove by the vigil staged by a slain soldier's mother.
As Bush went to party with fat cats who gave $2 million to the GOP, his motorcade didn't slow as it went by Cindy Sheehan and her sign: "Why do you make time for donors and not for me?"
"I'm glad that we were there because he rarely gets to see the faces of people who don't agree with him 100%," Sheehan said.
The President's black Chevrolet SUV has tinted windows, so it was not clear if he looked at her, or the growing ranks of demonstrators, or the hundreds of plain white crosses, painted with the names of the dead, they have planted.
But it's a sight that may become familiar to the President: demonstrators energized by the unexpected success of Sheehan's protest now plan to follow him back to Washington at the end of the month.
Sheehan began her dramatic vigil last Saturday. She says she wants to meet Bush face to face so she can tell him to bring home the troops from Iraq and ask him what the death of her 24-year-old son Casey accomplished.
Various factors - including the shocking deaths of 14 Marines, a press corps bored in Crawford while Bush takes a five-week vacation and the simple symbolism of a grieving mother challenging the President - have turned Sheehan into a phenomenon.
"This is the moment. This may be the time when we finally get the attention of the American people," said Linda Waste of Georgia, who stood with Sheehan and about 50 others yesterday as Bush went by.
Waste has three sons, a grandson and a granddaughter either in Iraq or just back. Last week she joined Military Families Speak Out, a group that wants the troops brought home.
[Note to self: Find Linda!]
Other parents who have lost children are converging on Crawford to join Sheehan today, and supporters of the war in Iraq are staging a counterdemonstration.
"I hope the mainstream media will give as much attention to those of us who think we should stay the course as those who want to create another Vietnam," said Dallas talk show host Darrell Ankarlo.
Bush said Thursday that he feels for mourning parents. "I've thought about their cry and their sincere desire to reduce the loss of life by pulling our troops out. I just strongly disagree," he said.
February 15th, 2005 5:34 pm
White House Turns Tables on Former American POWs
By David G. Savage / Los Angeles Times
WASHINGTON — The latest chapter in the legal history of torture is being written by American pilots who were beaten and abused by Iraqis during the 1991 Persian Gulf War. And it has taken a strange twist.
The Bush administration is fighting the former prisoners of war in court, trying to prevent them from collecting nearly $1 billion from Iraq that a federal judge awarded them as compensation for their torture at the hands of Saddam Hussein's regime.
The rationale: Today's Iraqis are good guys, and they need the money.
The case abounds with ironies. It pits the U.S. government squarely against its own war heroes and the Geneva Convention.
Many of the pilots were tortured in the same Iraqi prison, Abu Ghraib, where American soldiers abused Iraqis 15 months ago. Those Iraqi victims, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has said, deserve compensation from the United States.
But the American victims of Iraqi torturers are not entitled to similar payments from Iraq, the U.S. government says.
"It seems so strange to have our own country fighting us on this," said retired Air Force Col. David W. Eberly, the senior officer among the former POWs.
The case, now being appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, tests whether "state sponsors of terrorism" can be sued in the U.S. courts for torture, murder or hostage-taking. The court is expected to decide in the next two months whether to hear the appeal.
Congress opened the door to such claims in 1996, when it lifted the shield of sovereign immunity — which basically prohibits lawsuits against foreign governments — for any nation that supports terrorism. At that time, Iraq was one of seven nations identified by the State Department as sponsoring terrorist activity. The 17 Gulf War POWs looked to have a very strong case when they first filed suit in 2002. They had been undeniably tortured by a tyrannical regime, one that had $1.7 billion of its assets frozen by the U.S. government.
The picture changed, however, when the United States invaded Iraq and toppled Hussein from power nearly two years ago. On July 21, 2003, two weeks after the Gulf War POWs won their court case in U.S. District Court, the Bush administration intervened to argue that their claims should be dismissed.
"No amount of money can truly compensate these brave men and women for the suffering that they went through at the hands of this very brutal regime and at the hands of Saddam Hussein," White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan told reporters when asked about the case in November 2003.
Government lawyers have insisted, literally, on "no amount of money" going to the Gulf War POWs. "These resources are required for the urgent national security needs of rebuilding Iraq," McClellan said.
The case also tests a key provision of the Geneva Convention, the international law that governs the treatment of prisoners of war. The United States and other signers pledged never to "absolve" a state of "any liability" for the torture of POWs.
Former military lawyers and a bipartisan group of lawmakers have been among those who have urged the Supreme Court to take up the case and to strengthen the law against torturers and tyrannical regimes.
"Our government is on the wrong side of this issue," said Jeffrey F. Addicott, a former Army lawyer and director of the Center for Terrorism Law at St. Mary's University in San Antonio. "A lot of Americans would scratch their heads and ask why is our government taking the side of Iraq against our POWs."
The POWs' journey through the court system began with the events of Jan. 17, 1991 — the first day of the Gulf War. In response to Hussein's invasion of Kuwait five months earlier, the United States, as head of a United Nations coalition, launched an air attack on Iraq, determined to drive Iraqi forces from the oil-rich Gulf state. On the first day of the fighting, a jet piloted by Marine Corps Lt. Col. Clifford Acree was downed over Iraq by a surface-to-air missile. He suffered a neck injury ejecting from the plane and was soon taken prisoner by the Iraqis. Blindfolded and handcuffed, he was beaten until he lost consciousness. His nose was broken, his skull was fractured, and he was threatened with having his fingers cut off. He lost 30 pounds during his 47 days of captivity.
Eberly was shot down two days later and lost 45 pounds during his ordeal. He and several other U.S. service members were near starvation when they were freed. Other POWs had their eardrums ruptured and were urinated on during their captivity at Abu Ghraib.
All the while, their families thought they were dead because the Iraqis did not notify the U.S. government of their capture.
In April 2002, the Washington law firm of Steptoe & Johnson filed suit on behalf of the 17 former POWs and 37 of their family members. The suit, Acree vs. Republic of Iraq, sought monetary damages for the "acts of torture committed against them and for pain, suffering and severe mental distress of their families."
Usually, foreign states have a sovereign immunity that shields them from being sued. But in the Anti-Terrorism Act of 1996, Congress authorized U.S. courts to award "money damages … against a foreign state for personal injury or death that was caused by an act of torture, extrajudicial killing, aircraft sabotage [or] hostage taking."
This provision was "designed to hold terrorist nations accountable for the torture of Americans and to deter rogue nations from engaging in such actions in the future," Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and George Allen (R-Va.) said last year in a letter to Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft that urged him to support the POWs' claim.
The case came before U.S. District Judge Richard W. Roberts. There was no trial; Hussein's regime ignored the suit, and the U.S. State Department chose to take no part in the case.
On July 7, 2003, the judge handed down a long opinion that described the abuse suffered by the Gulf War POWs, and he awarded them $653 million in compensatory damages. He also assessed $306 million in punitive damages against Iraq. Lawyers for the POWs asked him to put a hold on some of Iraq's frozen assets.
No sooner had the POWs celebrated their victory than they came up against a new roadblock: Bush administration lawyers argued that the case should be thrown out of court on the grounds that Bush had voided any such claims against Iraq, which was now under U.S. occupation. The administration lawyers based their argument on language in an emergency bill, passed shortly after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, approving the expenditure of $80 billion for military operations and reconstruction efforts. One clause in the legislation authorized the president to suspend the sanctions against Iraq that had been imposed as punishment for the invasion of Kuwait more than a decade earlier.
The president's lawyers said this clause also allowed Bush to remove Iraq from the State Department's list of state sponsors of terrorism and to set aside pending monetary judgments against Iraq.
When the POWs' case went before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, the three-judge panel ruled unanimously for the Bush administration and threw out the lawsuit.
"The United States possesses weighty foreign policy interests that are clearly threatened by the entry of judgment for [the POWs] in this case," the appeals court said.
The administration also succeeding in killing a congressional resolution supporting the POWs' suit. "U.S. courts no longer have jurisdiction to hear cases such as those filed by the Gulf War POWs," then-Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage said in a letter to lawmakers. "Moreover, the president has ordered the vesting of blocked Iraqi assets for use by the Iraqi people and for reconstruction."
Already frustrated by the turn of events, the former POWs were startled when Rumsfeld said he favored awarding compensation to the Iraqi prisoners who were abused by the U.S. military at Abu Ghraib.
"I am seeking a way to provide appropriate compensation to those detainees who suffered grievous and brutal abuse and cruelty at the hands of a few members of the U.S. military. It is the right thing to do," Rumsfeld told a Senate committee last year.
By contrast, the government's lawyers have refused to even discuss a settlement in the POWs' case, say lawyers for the Gulf War veterans. "They were willing to settle this for pennies on the dollar," said Addicott, the former Army lawyer.
The last hope for the POWs rests with the Supreme Court. Their lawyers petitioned the high court last month to hear the case. Significantly, it has been renamed Acree vs. Iraq and the United States.
The POWs say the justices should decide the "important and recurring question [of] whether U.S. citizens who are victims of state-sponsored terrorism [may] seek redress against terrorist states in federal court."
This week, Justice Department lawyers are expected to file a brief urging the court to turn away the appeal.
Data Shows Faster-Rising Death Toll Among Iraqi Civilians
By SABRINA TAVERNISE
Published: July 14, 2005
NEW YORK TIMES
BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraqi civilians and police officers died at a rate of more than 800 a month between August and May, according to figures released in June by the Interior Ministry. In response to questions from The New York Times, the ministry said that 8,175 Iraqis were killed by insurgents in the 10 months that ended May 31. The ministry did not give detailed figures for the months before August 2004, nor did it provide a breakdown of the figures, which do not include either Iraqi soldiers or civilians killed during American military operations.
While the figures were not broken down month by month, it has been clear since the government of Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari took over after the Jan. 30 election that the insurgency is taking an increasing toll, killing Iraqi civilians and security workers at a faster rate.
In June the interior minister, Bayan Jabr, told reporters that insurgents had killed about 12,000 Iraqis since the start of the American occupation - a figure officials have emphasized is approximate - an average monthly toll of about 500.
The issue of civilian deaths in Iraqi has been a delicate one, with some contending that the Bush administration and the Pentagon have deliberately avoided body counts to deprive their critics of a potent argument against the war. Estimates have ranged from the 12,000 offered by Mr. Jabr to as many as 100,000 in a widely reported study last year. The new figures are likely to add to that debate.
The figures, released by e-mail through an American official after multiple requests, are a significant milestone, for while the Iraqi government tallies Iraqi deaths, figures on the overall totals have been tightly guarded. But the numbers do not account for civilian deaths caused by American and Iraqi soldiers in military offensives, at checkpoints or on raids. "It's an important number, it's a big deal," said Marc Garlasco, senior military analyst at Human Rights Watch in New York. "It shows the toll Iraqi civilians are paying for their freedoms."
Obtaining tallies of Iraqi dead has always been difficult, in part because they have not always been compiled systematically. For some time after the 2003 invasion, the Health Ministry released daily counts that were cobbled together mostly from figures provided by hospitals. But last year, when the numbers began to rise, the ministry stopped releasing even those tallies publicly, and provided classified copies to the government.
Last summer, the Interior Ministry took over responsibility for tracking the deaths, according to a ministry official who oversees statistics. The official, Waleed Khalil, said that before August 2004, the figures came in haphazardly on scraps of paper, and that a large portion had been what he called "dark numbers," approximate counts of all the deaths. Where the Health Ministry figures covered only hospitals and morgues, the Interior Ministry's system is far more comprehensive, Mr. Khalil said, although he declined to be more specific.
In another set of figures provided to The New York Times, officials in the communications office of the Iraqi cabinet gave a breakdown of the deaths by Iraqi province, and by gender and age. These figures, compiled by the Health Ministry and provided in an e-mail message, are far lower than those given by the Interior Ministry because they come only from hospitals. They show that about 32 percent of the 3,853 deaths the ministry listed for the six months ending on April 5 occurred in Baghdad. The second highest number of deaths was in Anbar, a largely Sunni Arab province of about 1.2 million people that has formed the heart of the resistance to the American occupation. The third highest was in Najaf, the Shiite holy city in the south that has been the site of frequent insurgent attacks and American military operations against a firebrand cleric twice last year. Children accounted for 211 of the total deaths.
In per capita terms, the highest death rates were in Anbar, Najaf and Diyala Provinces.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/14/international/middleeast/14casualties.html?th&emc=th
Layla Isitfan contributed reporting for this article.
Shocking report reveals
local troops may be victims of america's high-tech weapons
By JUAN GONZALEZ
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Four soldiers from a New York Army National Guard company serving in Iraq are contaminated with radiation likely caused by dust from depleted uranium shells fired by U.S. troops, a Daily News investigation has found. They are among several members of the same company, the 442nd Military Police, who say they have been battling persistent physical ailments that began last summer in the Iraqi town of Samawah. "I got sick instantly in June," said Staff Sgt. Ray Ramos, a Brooklyn housing cop. "My health kept going downhill with daily headaches, constant numbness in my hands and rashes on my stomach."
A nuclear medicine expert who examined and tested nine soldiers from the company says that four "almost certainly" inhaled radioactive dust from exploded American shells manufactured with depleted uranium.
Laboratory tests conducted at the request of The News revealed traces of two manmade forms of uranium in urine samples from four of the soldiers.
If so, the men - Sgt. Hector Vega, Sgt. Ray Ramos, Sgt. Agustin Matos and Cpl. Anthony Yonnone - are the first confirmed cases of inhaled depleted uranium exposure from the current Iraq conflict.
The 442nd, made up for the most part of New York cops, firefighters and correction officers, is based in Orangeburg, Rockland County. Dispatched to Iraq last Easter, the unit's members have been providing guard duty for convoys, running jails and training Iraqi police. The entire company is due to return home later this month.
"These are amazing results, especially since these soldiers were military police not exposed to the heat of battle," said Dr. Asaf Duracovic, who examined the G.I.s and performed the testing that was funded by The News.
"Other American soldiers who were in combat must have more depleted uranium exposure," said Duracovic, a colonel in the Army Reserves who served in the 1991 Persian Gulf War.
While working at a military hospital in Delaware, he was one of the first doctors to discover unusual radiation levels in Gulf War veterans. He has since become a leading critic of the use of depleted uranium in warfare.
Depleted uranium, a waste product of the uranium enrichment process, has been used by the U.S. and British military for more than 15 years in some artillery shells and as armor plating for tanks. It is twice as heavy as lead.
Because of its density, "It is the superior heavy metal for armor to protect tanks and to penetrate armor," Pentagon spokesman Michael Kilpatrick said.
The Army and Air Force fired at least 127 tons of depleted uranium shells in Iraq last year, Kilpatrick said. No figures have yet been released for how much the Marines fired.
Kilpatrick said about 1,000 G.I.s back from the war have been tested by the Pentagon for depleted uranium and only three have come up positive - all as a result of shrapnel from DU shells.
But the test results for the New York guardsmen - four of nine positives for DU - suggest the potential for more extensive radiation exposure among coalition troops and Iraqi civilians.
Several Army studies in recent years have concluded that the low- level radiation emitted when shells containing DU explode poses no significant dangers. But some independent scientists and a few of the Army's own reports indicate otherwise.
As a result, depleted uranium weapons have sparked increasing controversy around the world. In January 2003, the European Parliament called for a moratorium on their use after reports of an unusual number of leukemia deaths among Italian soldiers who served in Kosovo, where DU weapons were used.
I keep getting weaker. What is happening to me?
The Army says that only soldiers wounded by depleted uranium shrapnel or who are inside tanks during an explosion face measurable radiation exposure.
But as far back as 1979, Leonard Dietz, a physicist at the Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory upstate, discovered that DU-contaminated dust could travel for long distances.
Dietz, who pioneered the technology to isolate uranium isotopes, accidentally discovered that air filters with which he was experimenting had collected radioactive dust from a National Lead Industries Plant that was producing DU 26 miles away. His discovery led to a shutdown of the plant.
"The contamination was so heavy that they had to remove the topsoil from 52 properties around the plant," Dietz said.
All humans have at least tiny amounts of natural uranium in their bodies because it is found in water and in the food supply, Dietz said. But natural uranium is quickly and harmlessly excreted by the body.
Uranium oxide dust, which lodges in the lungs once inhaled and is not very soluble, can emit radiation to the body for years.
"Anybody, civilian or soldier, who breathes these particles has a permanent dose, and it's not going to decrease very much over time," said Dietz, who retired in 1983 after 33 years as nuclear physicist. "In the long run ... veterans exposed to ceramic uranium
oxide have a major problem." Critics of DU have noted that the Army's view of its dangers has changed over time.
Before the 1991 Persian Gulf War, a 1990 Army report noted that depleted uranium is "linked to cancer when exposures are internal, [and] chemical toxicity causing kidney damage."
It was during the Gulf War that U.S. A-10 Warthog "tank buster" planes and Abrams tanks first used DU artillery on a mass scale. The Pentagon says it fired about 320 tons of DU in that war and that smaller amounts were also used in the Serbian province of Kosovo.
In the Gulf War, Army brass did not warn soldiers about any risks from exploding DU shells. An unknown number of G.I.s were exposed by shrapnel, inhalation or handling battlefield debris.
Some veterans groups blame DU contamination as a factor in Gulf War syndrome, the term for a host of ailments that afflicted thousands of vets from that war.
Under pressure from veterans groups, the Pentagon commissioned several new studies. One of those, published in 2000, concluded that DU, as a heavy metal, "could pose a chemical hazard" but that Gulf War veterans "did not experience intakes high enough to affect their health."
Pentagon spokesman Michael Kilpatrick said Army followup studies of 70 DU-contaminated Gulf War veterans have not shown serious health effects.
"For any heavy metal, there is no such thing as safe," Kilpatrick said. "There is an issue of chemical toxicity, and for DU it is raised as radiological toxicity as well."
But he said "the overwhelming conclusion" from studies of those who work with uranium "show it has not produced any increase in cancers."
Several European studies, however, have linked DU to chromosome damage and birth defects in mice. Many scientists say we still don't know enough about the long-range effects of low-level radiation on the body to say any amount is safe.
Britain's national science academy, the Royal Society, has called for identifying where DU was used and is urging a cleanup of all contaminated areas.
"A large number of American soldiers [in Iraq] may have had significant exposure to uranium oxide dust," said Dr. Thomas Fasey, a pathologist at Mount Sinai Medical Center and an expert on depleted uranium. "And the health impact is worrisome for the future."
As for the soldiers of the 442nd, they're sick, frustrated and confused. They say when they arrived in Iraq no one warned them about depleted uranium and no one gave them dust masks.
Experts behind News probe
As part of the investigation by the Daily News, Dr. Asaf Duracovic, a nuclear medicine expert who has conducted extensive research on depleted uranium, examined the nine soldiers from the 442nd Military Police in late December and collected urine specimens from each.
Another member of his team, Prof. Axel Gerdes, a geologist at Goethe University in Frankfurt who specializes in analyzing uranium isotopes, performed repeated tests on the samples over a week-long period. He used a state-of-the art procedure called multiple collector inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry.
Only about 100 laboratories worldwide have the same capability to identify and measure various uranium isotopes in minute quantities, Gerdes said.
Gerdes concluded that four of the men had depleted uranium in their bodies. Depleted uranium, which does not occur in nature, is created as a waste product of uranium enrichment when some of the highly radioactive isotopes in natural uranium, U-235 and U-234, are extracted.
Several of the men, according to Duracovic, also had minute traces of another uranium isotope, U-236, that is produced only in a nuclear reaction process.
"These men were almost certainly exposed to radioactive weapons on the battlefield," Duracovic said.
He and Gerdes plan to issue a scientific paper on their study of the soldiers at the annual meeting of the European Association of Nuclear Medicine in Finland this year.
When DU shells explode, they permanently contaminate their target and the area immediately around it with low-level radioactivity.
Originally published on April 3, 2004
CHARLIE BATTERY’s DEATHS BY STOP-LOSS:
The Bloody Reality of War in Iraq
June 14, 2004 By Gina Cavallaro, Army Times staff writer
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- The soldiers of Charlie Battery don’t have a name for what happened April 29. For a while, they could hardly talk about it. They would stare down and shake their heads when the subject of that day’s devastating car bombing came up.
And then there is the “what if” question: What if their tour in Iraq hadn’t been extended? Would this have happened at all? Would eight of their fellow soldiers have been killed in a single incident?
The fight began for the 4-27 almost as soon as its guns rolled out of camp into unfamiliar territory.
On April 21, during the first leaders’ reconnaissance mission for Charlie Battery’s 2nd Platoon, three soldiers were seriously wounded when shrapnel from a roadside bomb tore open the howitzer they were in.
The bomb ripped it to shreds, said Charlie Battery commander Capt. Jim Hickman, 37, of Atlanta. The next day, we modified the guns [with sandbags and extra armor] so that wouldn’t happen again.
Four days later, while on patrol with the battalion’s scout platoon, there was another roadside explosion next to the scouts’ uparmored Humvee, wounding two soldiers and an interpreter, who got so spooked he jumped out of the vehicle and was seriously injured when he was run over by an approaching Humvee.
After the two attacks and the discovery of 11 unexploded road bombs consisting of more than 100 artillery shells, including four 350-pound aerial bombs strung together, the battalion resolved to carry out dismounted sweeps of two roads leading into the farming town of Yusufiyah, 15 miles southwest of Baghdad.
The area had been largely underpatrolled by coalition troops, Hickman said, and many of the town’s residents had worked in a bomb factory there and were knowledgeable about handling munitions.
The darkest day
The battalion’s batteries began taking turns conducting foot patrols on and near the roads.
Patrolling on April 29 in a wedge formation about 200 meters into the brush, the soldiers of Charlie Battery stopped on both sides of a farm road when the lead man identified what appeared to be an improvised explosive device. The artillerymen-turned-riflemen lowered themselves into culverts and irrigation ditches and took a security halt position so the engineer company trailing by about 400 meters could catch up.
Hunkered down over a 400-by-400 meter area, the soldiers waited and teased one another on their two-way radios.
“We were saying things to each other like, I can see you, but you can’t see me,” recalled Staff Sgt. Raymond Young, 26, of Georgetown, S.C., a section chief in 1st Platoon. The radio calls darted among the men with the kind of tongue-in-cheek expressions born of having spent a year together.
“I love you. I love you, too. I love you guys,” they remembered saying to one another in a mocking, high-pitch voice.
Danger was on its way to them in the form of a suicide bomber in a brown Opel station wagon that battalion commander Lt. Col. Brian McKiernan estimates was carrying up to 500 pounds of explosives and artillery rounds.
The vehicle was spotted just before 11:30 a.m., approaching slowly from the west on a road perpendicular to the one the soldiers were on. When the driver reached the farm road, he turned left toward the 2nd Platoon and the soldiers stood up from their covered positions.
The car passed one soldier and the rest moved in to surround it. Platoon leader 1st Lt. Jared Vineyard, stepped forward to stop the vehicle.
“Which is exactly what he was supposed to do,” McKiernan said. “The bomber was in a position to either use his bomb or lose it.”
What ordinarily would have been a routine vehicle stop-and-search instead became an unspeakable scene of carnage.
The driver detonated his deadly cargo, killing himself and taking eight soldiers with him: Staff Sgt. Esau Patterson, Staff Sgt. Jeff Dayton, Sgt. Ryan Campbell, Spc. James Beckstrand, Spc. Justin Schmidt, Pfc. Ryan Reed, Pfc. Norman Darling and Pvt. Jeremy Ewing. Three others were wounded-- Vineyard, Staff Sgt. Bradley Smelly and Spc. Ernesto Victor.
“I doubt the soldiers were the target. It was not a tactic we had seen the enemy use, attacking a dismount with a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device,” McKiernan said. “These soldiers died accomplishing their mission, which was to prevent an attack against the clearing force. But that doesn’t make it any easier.”
The consequences of the explosion were “horrific,” McKiernan said.
The surviving soldiers were stunned.
“It shocked the hell out of me. At first we all kind of hit the ground and looked around,” said Spc. Stephen Ates, 23 of Jackson, Miss., a member of the 1st Platoon who was across the road at the time of the blast. “I saw Staff Sergeant Dayton. He was still alive, but there was nothing we could do for him. He said, ‘Help me up,’ but that was it.”
Running to the scene to give medical aid, 1st Platoon medic Pfc. David Haugh looked around for 2nd Platoon medic Darling.
“I got there and I was looking for a medic. There was no medic and it was strange,” said Haugh, 21, of Houston. “Later we found Darling lying face down in a field.”
In the aftermath of what some described as “a huge fireball,” the numbed soldiers of Charlie Battery set about recovering their buddies’ remains and equipment. As difficult as it was, McKiernan said, the battery finished the day’s mission.
“I always wanted to be a section chief, but not like this,” said Staff Sgt. Jermaine Brown, 31, of Columbus, S.C., who replaced Dayton as a section chief in 2nd Platoon.
The Charlie Battery soldiers say they can’t igno