John has been empaneled and testified before a group of college board regents as to what veterans need to be successful, post combat, in school.

Bronze star recipient Sgt Nils Aron Andersson, combat veteran turned recruiter, originally from Oregon commits suicide. Married only 24 hours earlier, his new wife follows him and commits suicide a day later.

“He was morally opposed to putting more young men into that situation, where they could be injured or killed or see the things he’d seen,” Maxey said.

His superiors repeatedly criticized him for failing to meet his goal of signing two new recruits a month and assigned him five-page essays or extra duty as punishment, she said. In February 2006, he was passed up for promotion to staff sergeant.

“It wasn’t that he was lazy or not working. It’s just that he was not getting recruits and being punished for it, constantly,” she said. “It was just not the job for him.”

Instead of losing 15lbs in Iraq, now the average soldier in Baghdad is gaining ten. Hidden in the bloat is a segue into the outrageous profits reaped by KBR, Burger King and Pizza Hut. In the end it is the warrior who pays the price.

Passing time in a rec tent back in Kuwait, I chat with a soft-spoken 28-year-old sergeant who is preparing to fly back into the caldron of Baghdad’s Sadr City after three weeks of R&R in Georgia. In a room strewn with crepe paper palm trees and plastic hula skirts left over from the previous night’s “Spring Fling Luau,” the two of us look like attendees at a cornball junior prom. But the sergeant’s mind is a long way from such frivolities: He has recently lost his squad leader, and two other soldiers from his area of operations were killed a few days later.

Burying his head in his hands as we talk, he says: “All the Burger Kings in the world wouldn’t be enough for this. Some of us are on our third or fourth tours, and we just can’t do this anymore—we really can’t.”

No one volunteered to be ’stop lossed’ repeatedly into Iraq. Reestablishing a draft would be politically imprudent and detrimental to the continued war effort as envisioned by the administration. Consequently, our troops are being extended repeatedly against their will because pro-war advocates will not enlist. I have written about this before.

The above video is from Rawstory

Writer Robert Fisk discusses the semantics employed by George Bush. In particular, apparently to ‘re-educate’ the public about the truth in Iraq, Bush’s use of words beginning with ‘re’.

Note, too, the constant use of words that begin with “re -”. Renew. Revive. And – incredibly – Bush also told us that “we actually re-liberated certain communities”. This, folks, goes beyond hollow laughter. Since when did armies go around “re-liberating” anything? And what does that credibility-sapping “actually” mean? I suspect it was an attempt by the White House speech writer to suggest – by sleight of hand, of course – that Bush was really – really – telling the truth this time. But by putting “actually” in front of “re-liberate” – as opposed to just “liberate” – the whole grammatical construction falls apart. Rather like Iraq.

For by my reckoning, we have now “re-liberated” Fallujah twice. We have “re-liberated” Mosul three times and “re-liberated” Ramadi four times. The scorecard goes on. My files show that Sadr City may have been “re-liberated” five times, while Baghdad is “re-liberated” on an almost daily basis. General David Petraeus, in his pitiful appearance before the US Senate armed services committee, was bound to admit his disappointment at the military failure of the equally pitiful Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki in Basra. He had not followed Petraeus’ advice; which was presumably to “re-liberate” the city (for the fourth time, by my calculation but with a bit more planning).

Meanwhile our troops are supposedly re-motivated to die for their country so as not disappoint their commander in chief. Unfortunately GI suicide rates are at an all time high and while veterans comprise only 11% of the American population they account for 25% of the homeless.

A fellow peace activist wrote this and gave me permission to post it here. It is moving and thoughtful and attends to the too little attention given by the mainstream media upon these gut wrenching testimonies of our wounded warriors, our true winter patriots.

Editor:

As noted in The World (March 17, 2008), Sunshine Week is set aside “by media organizations and other groups to combat government secrecy and bring attention to the public’s right to know.” The World newspaper has been especially diligent over the years in trying to hold public officials to the requirements of open meeting laws, and they deserve kudos for that.

There is another kind of secrecy, however, that is rampant in our nation and that pertains to secrecy by omission and self-censorship by those same media organizations. Occasionally such actions are so blatant that they would cast shame and embarrassment on our media sources if they were at all serious about living up to their role of The Fourth Estate. Alas, they appear too often now to be “for the State.”

For instance, how many of us watched the Winter Soldier Hearings held on Palm Sunday weekend in Silver Springs, Maryland? How many even knew of their existence? Of course, you wouldn’t have if you depended on the mainstream media for relevant news, because there has been almost complete silence regarding this gathering. Our government did not want the light of day – sunshine – to illuminate the facts-on-the-ground in Iraq, and so there was near-blackout of this event. Was it censorship or self-censorship by the media?

How appropriate that these hearings should be held on the weekend before Easter when self-professed Christians have been engaged in a six-week season of penitence leading up to Easter. Let there be no misreading of the gut-wrenching sorrow and penitence displayed by these finest and bravest of our military who have been repulsed and broken by what they have seen and personally done. They are also the finest of our sons and daughters who have taken to heart and now tether their future lives to the beliefs and values set forth in our Constitution.

I wonder how many of our elected officials, local, state or federal, bothered to honor and support these soldiers by listening to their testimony?

Roberta Stewart

Bless them every one.

Peace be upon you…

One of the first conscientious objectors was Camilo Mejia who is now on the board of IVAW, Iraq Veterans Against the War. He has helped organize this Winter Soldier event because he feels it is his patriotic duty to defend the constitution.

Mejia was court martialed for refusing to redeploy to his unit after two weeks’ leave, and spent nine months in a military jail.

Now the chairman of the board of Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW), which has organized the four-day gathering, Mejia spoke of a groundswell of resistance within the US military to the war in Iraq, which will enter its sixth year later this month.

“Servicemen and women are refusing en masse to participate in this war. I have seen a rapid and inevitable growth of dissent within our ranks,” he said.

At the “Winter Soldier” event in Washington, some 200 soldiers like Coppa and Mejia will give eye-witness testimonies about what they lived through during their deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan, and afterwards.