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Bay Area United Against War Meeting
Monday, January 14, 2008 at 7PM
474 Valencia St. #145, San Francisco
(To the left and all the way to the rear of the building then turn right.)
As the U.S. government continues to kill thousands and thousands of Iraqi and Afghani people, and the politicians continue to vote for war funding while pretending to be against the war, some very serious demobilizing events have transpired in the national antiwar movement.
At the Oct. 27 Coalition meeting Sunday, January 6, there was discussion of efforts of the government to destroy the anti-war movement by utilizing the military groups to prevent
actions that significantly challenge the war and the right of the United States to intervene anywhere in the world.
Specifically, the IVAW is exerting pressure on the larger antiwar movement not to hold any national mass mobilizations against the war during their “Winter Soldier” hearings, March 13-16, 2008. They are putting a stranglehold on the larger antiwar movements’ rights to protest the war in their own way.
We applaud those veterans who will expose the crimes they have committed against the people of Iraq and Afghanistan and the continued brutality of the escalated war efforts by the U.S. government. These hearings, exposing the brutality of the U.S. Government’s war can help to dissuade young people from joining the U.S. military. But, we object to any segment of the antiwar movement demanding or pressuring others to do as they say and place one activity over that of other activities, including antiwar protests.
For all these reasons, we are calling for a meeting of the Bay Area United Against the War on Monday, January 14, 7:00 P.M. to discuss how we can redouble our efforts against the war.
We are reprinting below the UK Call to Action March 15; a letter by Tiffany Burns, which has been circulating and is self-explanatory; and two IVAW letters to the antiwar movement; which will shed light on the current situation in the antiwar movement—especially for those who were not at the Oct. 27 Coalition meeting. (Which was, by the way, the last and final meeting of the coalition.)
In solidarity,
Cristina Gutierrez
Carole Seligman
Bonnie Weinstein
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“Demonstrate for Troops Out! London, Saturday, March 15, 2008
“Five years after the invasion of Iraq the world has become much more dangerous and volatile. Latest estimates suggest as many as one million have died violent deaths as a result of the occupation of Iraq. The country’s infrastructure and civil society are in shreds. Brown has promised British withdrawals but there are still 5,000 British soldiers in Iraq.
“Despite talk of a change of attitude to the Bush’s wars, Brown is Bush’s key partner in NATO’s escalation in Afghanistan, and that hidden war is fast becoming a disaster mirroring that in Iraq. Meanwhile the political chaos in Pakistan is partly a product of the War on Terror and risks further military interventions. The Stop the War Coalition has joined with CND in calling a demonstration to mark the fifth anniversary of the invasion in London on Saturday March 15.
“The demonstration will coincide with World Against War marches around the world agreed at the International Peace Conference in London on December 1st. It will be calling for all foreign troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan, and demanding there is no attack on Iran. Stop the War is asking all groups to start mobilizing for this demonstration now. More details and a leaflet will be available shortly.
“World Against War Conference, December 2007
“A call for international demonstrations on March 15-22, 2008
“Over 1,200 delegates from the anti war movement across the globe came to London for the World Against War International Peace Conference in London.
“Delegates from 26 countries addressed the conference, reported on developments in their regions and discussed strategy for the movement. The conference issued a declaration, which is included below. There was unanimous agreement to organize demonstrations for Troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan and against an attack on Iran in every country around the fifth anniversary of the attack on Iraq between March 15-22.
“Delegates attended from Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Egypt, Iceland, Iran, Iraq, Ireland, Italy, Kenya, Lebanon, Netherlands, Norway, Pakistan, Palestine, Poland, Somalia, South Korea, Spain, Switzerland, Turkey, United Kingdom, United States.
“Declaration of World Against War conference
“This conference of delegates from peace, anti-war, anti-imperialist and liberation movements across the world declares its opposition to the “endless war” prosecuted by the U.S. government against states, peoples and movements in all parts of our planet.
“We oppose the interference of the U.S. and its allies in sovereign states, and assert the right of all peoples to self-determination. We support all people fighting for peace and against imperialism.
“In particular, we demand:
“— An immediate end to the illegal military occupation of Iraq, which has caused hundreds of thousands of deaths and displaced millions of people, a withdrawal of all foreign troops and the full transfer of sovereignty to the Iraqi people and their representatives.
“— A halt to all preparations for an attack against Iran, and a commitment to solve any issues through exclusively diplomatic means.
“— A withdrawal of foreign troops from Afghanistan, allowing the Afghan people to determine their own future.
“— Justice for the Palestinian people, and an end to Israeli aggression throughout the Middle East.
“— An end to plans for U.S. missile defence, and that all states actively pursue nuclear disarmament.
“We affirm the solidarity of all those fighting for peace, social justice and self-determination worldwide, and commit ourselves to strengthening our unity and developing new forms of co-operation.
“We therefore designate the anniversary of the invasion of Iraq as a worldwide day of action in support of the demands NO ATTACK on IRAN and TROOPS OUT OF IRAQ/AFGHANISTAN and call on all national anti-war movements to hold mass protests and demonstrations on that day.
“—Stop the War Coalition, December 2007
http://www.stopwar.org.uk/ “
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The Tiffany Burns Letter Regarding IVAW
“Hi Everyone,
“Most of you don't know this about me but; my father is a Vietnam Vet & a career military man, he retired when I was a senior in high school & I grew on military bases around the world. My cousin died in the same battle as Casey in Iraq & I have spent most of my adult life working with homeless veterans in South Central Los Angeles until I dedicated myself to the peace movement, so I have every right to speak out about this total bullshit with IVAW. I've been silent out of respect to Cindy for the last few days, but there seems to be a lack of clarity to this conversation that I think is an important piece of what's really going on.
“Jethro Heiko who is a consultant (not a veteran) working with IVAW has suddenly come to the center of this and created this dissention. To my knowledge no one in the core of the peace movement has ever even heard of him prior to this & according to his blog (below) his major objective is to tear down the peace movement and rebuild it from a military directed leadership. It sounds to me like his crack strategy of taking control of IVAW when there is a clear lack of intelligent leadership is either straight from the Bush administration or just a power grab - either way not a sincere motive for stopping the illegal occupation of Iraq.
“Not to mention Direct quote from Perry O'Brien representing IVAW on the real reason that they don't want an action on the 15th. ‘IVAW doesn't want any association with a anti-war contingent lead by Cindy Sheehan, we don't think it would have any credibility.’ Given that Kelly Dougherty told me that the main purpose of the Winter Soldier was to raise the profile of IVAW - NOT TO IMPACT THE WAR, I think what Perry was really saying is that any action lead by Cindy Sheehan on that weekend would take away attention from IVAW. Wow that is so selfless!
“Perry was also clear that many of the veterans participating in the Winter Soldier were not anti-war & didn't want to deal with the ‘peace movement.” So are we to assume that they just want to sit around and pat themselves on the back for committing war crimes to ease their conscious, not to make a difference. Just in case any of them are actually brave enough to accept the consequences of their crimes—let me be the first to volunteer to pay for a ticket to the Hague where a confession might actually mean something.
“The Camp Casey Peace Institute has removed ourselves from the Year 5 Committee because we absolutely will not bow in any way to support the selfish & un-strategic plans of IVAW or anyone in support of them. We do intend to an action in DC before or on the 15th, but we have the vision to understand that it's only one day in 1760 days of an ongoing illegal occupation & victimization of the Iraqi people.
“Finally I would just ask you all to consider how disgusting it is that there has been no conversation around how to support the Iraqi People, who did not volunteer to be massacred and can't refuse to return for another tour of duty or make immature demands to benefit their own need for glory.
“Who really deserves our sympathy and voice?
“Peace be with all of you,
“Tiffany”
To Allies of Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) and Winter Soldiers:
“The United States has been occupying Iraq for nearly five years, and Afghanistan for over six. It often amazes us, as veterans and active duty troops, that we are engaged in two foreign occupations that continue to grind on with no end in sight.
“Some of us were in junior high or high school when these wars began, and now we have to watch as our peers continue to fight and die overseas while our politicians continue to refuse to bring our troops home.
“For many of us, the most frustrating, depressing thing is to see the level of detachment and apathy that is so common among the American people. The anti-war movement seems no closer to ending the occupation, and more and more people seem content to believe that things in Iraq are improving and they no longer need to bother themselves with worrying about it.
“The voices of those who have been to war, have participated in occupation, and have been the victims and survivors of U.S. foreign aggression are not being heard.
“Those of us who know, first hand, the brutal realities of war have been ignored and marginalized, and it is well past time that we are given the space and opportunity to tell our stories.
“This is why Iraq Veterans Against the War is marking the fifth year of the Iraq invasion and occupation by holding Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan, March 13-16 in Washington, DC.
“We will offer first-hand, eyewitness accounts to tell the truth about these occupations; their impact on the troops, their families, our nation, and the people of Iraq and Afghanistan. Military resistance to the war in Iraq is just waiting to be organized and WS is an important action in IVAW's overall strategy to end the war and bring our troops home now.
“We hope that you share our vision of the importance and significance of this momentous event. Winter Soldier provides a unique opportunity to reveal the reality of U.S. occupation, and our success will depend upon the hard work of our members and the support of our allies.
“In order to give our veterans the necessary space and attention we deserve to tell our stories, we are requesting that, during Winter Soldier, March 13-16, the larger anti-war movement calls no national mobilizations and that there are no local protests or civil disobedience actions in Washington DC. IVAW will not endorse any mass mobilizations or DC-based actions that conflict with Winter Soldier. We feel that large-scale activities will compete with Winter Soldier and dilute the voices of those testifying.
“The success of Winter Soldier rests beyond IVAW and will ultimately depend on the support of our allies.
“We realize that ending the war will take more than any one single event or mobilization. However, Winter Soldier provides a venue like no other for those who experienced war on the ground to expose the truth and consequences of the "War on Terror" to the nation and the world.
“We hope that you share our vision.
“Respectfully,
“Kelly Dougherty
“Executive Director, IVAW”
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An Open Letter to the Anti-War Movement From Iraq Veterans Against the War
“As we approach the fifth anniversary of the quagmire known as the invasion/occupation of Iraq, many of us feel a need to mark this occasion with an appropriately momentous show of resistance.
“For the past few months, IVAW has been organizing ‘Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan.’ From March 13-16,2008, we will assemble the largest gathering of US veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan in history, as well as Iraqi and Afghan survivors, to offer first-hand, eyewitness accounts to tell the truth about these occupations — their impact on the troops, their families, our nation, and the people of Iraq and Afghanistan. Winter Soldier will require IVAW's full attention and organizing capacity leading up to and during the event.
“We would like to have as many people as possible attend the event and we are making arrangements to provide live broadcasting of the hearings for those who cannot hear the testimony first hand, as space will be limited. We ask all of you to help us to spread the message of the testimony, raise funds, and get more veterans and GIs involved.
“We have been inspired by the tremendous support that the movement has shown us and we believe the success of Winter Soldier will ultimately depend on the support of our allies and the hard work of our members.
“Because Winter Soldier will provide a unique venue for those who experienced war on the ground to expose the truth and consequences of the ‘War on Terror’ to the nation and the world, we are requesting that, from March 13-16, the larger anti-war movement call no national mobilizations and that there be no local protests or civil disobedience actions in Washington, DC. Some leaders of the movement have expressed a desire to have a mass assembly to mark the fifth anniversary. Some have expressed support for a concert/rally. IVAW would support any events that do not interfere with the Winter Soldier hearings, our strategy, or goals. We would encourage our members to continue participating in events of the larger movement to end the occupation of Iraq, as we acknowledge both the significance and the necessity of such actions for movement building. IVAW will also arrange to make available copies of the Winter Soldier transcript highlights to support the various efforts of the antiwar movement.
“We are thankful for your enduring support of IVAW and Winter Soldier. Let us all continue to think strategically and act in a spirit of cooperation.
“In solidarity,
“Iraq Veterans Against the War
“IVAW Board of Directors
“Camilo E. Mejia
“Jabbar Magruder
“Margaret Stevens
“Phil Aliff
“Jason Lemieux
“Adam Kokesh
“Liam Madden
“Anita Foster
“Jose Vasquez
“Winter Soldier Organizing Team
“Aaron Hughes
“Fernando Braga
“Adrienne Kinne
“Perry O'Brien
“Martin Smith
“Lily Hughes
“Amadee Braxton
“For detailed information on how your organization can support Winter Soldier please write to: wintersoldier@ivaw.org”
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Meeting Resistance: What would you do?
What: Documentary Film Screening, Meeting Resistance
Directors Steve Connors & Molly Bingham will be in attendance for Q & A
Where: Grand Lake Theater*, Oakland, 3200 Grand Avenue (510) 452-3556,
http://www.renaissancerialto.com/current/grandlake.htm
When: Tuesday, Jan. 15, 7:30 pm, One Night Only
The highly acclaimed documentary Meeting Resistance is about the
US occupation of Iraq from the perspective of the Iraqi insurgents
fighting the occupation - including many everyday Iraqi citizens. The
filmmakers ask in the trailer to the film: What would you do?
And the film lets some of the Iraqi people answer.
Here is a link to the trailer: http://meetingresistance.com/trailer.html
Here are some of what critics have said.
“The documentary equivalent of a Seymour Hersh investigative story in the New Yorker!”
San Francisco Chronicle
“A powerful, fascinating documentary!”
The New Yorker
“A remarkable piece of war reporting.”
The Washington Post
“A rare glimpse into the hearts and minds of those who have dedicated themselves to ridding Iraq of its invaders.”
Variety
* Grand Lake Theater doesn't sell tix online or over the phone. You can
get them in advance starting Thursday or Friday (you can call their box
office to see whether they are available by the time you call: 510-465-7586.
They will also be available the night of the showing.
Please Forward.
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Support GI Resistance!
Help stop the war... Support of U.S. war resisters currently seeking sanctuary Canada. What you can do today:
1. Attend or organize an event on January 25-26
2. Sign the "Dear Canada" letter (if you have not already)
3. Hold a house party to show "Breaking Ranks"
4. Use these resources to get friends involved
January 25-26 U.S.-Canada Actions
Courage to Resist
http://www.couragetoresist.org/x/
On Friday, Jan. 25, community members will hold vigils and delegations to Canadian Consulates in Washington D.C., NYC, Seattle, SF, LA and elsewhere.
"Army of None" Pacific Northwest Tour
Co-author David Solnit and Seattle Chapter President of Iraq Veterans Against the War Chanan Suarez Diaz at events this week in Tacoma, Olympia, and Vancouver BC.
Oakland, CA Benefit Book Release Event Jan. 17
Col. Ann Wright (ret.) presents her new book "Dissent: Voices of Conscience" with special guests Daniel Ellsberg and Cindy Sheehan at Oakland, CA Courage to Resist benefit.
Sign the letter "Dear Canada: Let U.S. War Resisters Stay!" at:
http://www.couragetoresist.org/x/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=499
January 25-26 Events: "Let Them Stay!"
There is still time to organize a delegation to a Canadian Consulate near you or hold vigils or other public events that day, or the following day Saturday, January 26 in support of war resisters.
Let us know what you are planning. Send events to courage@riseup.net
Friday January 25
Keith Mather, David Solnit, Father Louis Vitale, Steve Grossman, Gerry Condon, Jacqueline Cabasso, Jeff Paterson, Evangeline Mix comprise similar delegation to Canadian Consulate on 5/15/06 in San Francisco. Photo Bill Carpenter
SAN FRANCISCO
Consulate General of Canada
580 California Street, San Francisco
(four blocks north of Montgomery St BART)
Noon to 1 pm vigil, 1 pm delegation
Sponsored by Courage to Resist
Info: courage@riseup.net , 510-488-3559
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THE NEXT MEETING OF THE STOP JROTC COMMITTEE IS
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 4, 7:00 P.M.
474 VALENCIA STREET, FIRST FLOOR, Room 145 (To the left as you come in, and all the way to the back of the long hallway, then, to the right.)
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SUPPORT THE DAY AFTER DEMONSTRATIONS TO FREE MUMIA ABU-JAMAL
SEE THE "TODAY SHOW" STORY ON MUMIA ABU-JAMAL - NOW ON YOUTUBE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tz-NL0Ju6aE
From: LACFreeMumia@aol.com
A ruling by the Third Circuit Court of Appeals on Mumia's case, based on the hearing in Philadelphia on May 17th 2007, is expected momentarily. Freeing Mumia immediately is what is needed, but that is not an option before this court. The Labor Action Committee To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal calls on everyone who supports Mumia‚s case for freedom, to rally the day after a decision comes down. Here are Bay Area day-after details:
OAKLAND:
14th and Broadway, near the Federal Building
4:30 to 6:30 PM the day after a ruling is announced,
or on Monday if the ruling comes down on a Friday.
Oakland demonstration called by the Partisan Defense Committee and Labor Black Leagues, to be held if the Court upholds the death sentence, or denies Mumia's appeals for a new trial or a new hearing. info at (510) 839-0852 or pdcbayarea@sbcglobal.org
SAN FRANCISCO:
Federal Courthouse, 7th & Mission
5 PM the day after a ruling is announced,
or Monday if the decision comes down on a Friday
San Francisco demo called by the Mobilization To Free Mumia,
info at (415) 255-1085 or www.freemumia.org
Day-after demonstrations are also planned in:
Philadelphia, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Toronto, Vancouver
and other cities internationally.
A National Demonstration is to be held in Philadelphia, 3rd Saturday after the decision
For more information, contact: International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal, www.mumia.org;
Partisan Defense Committee, www.partisandefense.org;
Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Coalition (NYC), www.freemumia.com;
MUMIA ABU-JAMAL IS INNOCENT!
World-renowned journalist, death-row inmate and political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal is completely innocent of the crime for which he was convicted. Mountains of evidence--unheard or ignored by the courts--shows this. He is a victim, like thousands of others, of the racist, corrupt criminal justice system in the US; only in his case, there is an added measure of political persecution. Jamal is a former member of the Black Panther Party, and is still an outspoken and active critic of the on-going racism and imperialism of the US. They want to silence him more than they want to kill him.
Anyone who has ever been victimized by, protested or been concerned about the racist travesties of justice meted out to blacks in the US, as well as attacks on immigrants, workers and revolutionary critics of the system, needs to take a close look at the frame-up of Mumia. He is innocent, and he needs to be free.
FREE MUMIA NOW!
END THE RACIST DEATH PENALTY!
FOR MASS PROTESTS AND LABOR ACTION TO FREE MUMIA!
In 1995, mass mobilizations helped save Mumia from death.
In 1999, longshore workers shut West Coast ports to free Mumia, and teachers in Oakland and Rio de Janeiro held teach-ins and stop-works.
Mumia needs powerful support again now. Come out to free Mumia!
- The Labor Action Committee To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal
PO Box 16222, Oakland CA 94610
510.763.2347
LACFreeMumia@aol.com
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ARTICLES IN FULL:
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1) Afghan Civilians Were Killed Needlessly, Ex-Marine Testifies
By PAUL von ZIELBAUER
January 9, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/09/world/asia/09abuse.html?ref=world
2) Military use of unmanned aircraft soars
By LOLITA C. BALDOR, Associated Press Writer
Tue Jan 1, 6:01 PM ET
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080101/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/unmanned_killers
3) Pregnant Marine Is Dead, Officials Say
By JOHN HOLUSHA and ANAHAD O'CONNOR
January 11, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/11/us/11cnd-marine.html?hp
4) U.S. Bombs Iraqi Insurgent Hideouts
By SOLOMON MOORE
January 11, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/11/world/middleeast/11iraq.html?ref=world
5) General Clears Army Officer of Crime in Abu Ghraib Case
By REUTERS
January 11, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/11/washington/11abuse.html?ref=world
6) War Torn
Across America, Deadly Echoes of Foreign Battles
By DEBORAH SONTAG and LIZETTE ALVAREZ
January 13, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/13/us/13vets.html?hp
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1) Afghan Civilians Were Killed Needlessly, Ex-Marine Testifies
By PAUL von ZIELBAUER
January 9, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/09/world/asia/09abuse.html?ref=world
CAMP LEJEUNE, N.C. — A former member of an elite Marine combat unit that operated last year in eastern Afghanistan testified Tuesday that his comrades appeared to have needlessly killed civilians after their convoy was attacked by a suicide car bomb.
Nathaniel Travers, a former Marine intelligence sergeant assigned to the 30-man Special Operations convoy that was patrolling on March 4 last year, testified in a military court here that a few marines fired at civilians and other unarmed noncombatants after the suicide bomber struck.
No marines have been charged with a crime in the episode. The hearing was held to determine whether troops had violated the laws of war.
The three judges on the Marine Corps court of inquiry are examining the actions of two officers who led the elite unit, Company F, Second Battalion, Marine Corps Forces Special Operations Command. They are Maj. Fred C. Galvin, the company commander, and Capt. Vincent J. Noble, the platoon leader.
Shortly after the March 4 shootings near Jalalabad, Company F was ordered to leave Afghanistan by Lt. Gen. Frank Kearney of the Army, the commander at the time of all Special Operations in the Middle East and Afghanistan.
Weeks later, an Army Special Operations commander in Afghanistan publicly apologized to the families of 19 people who he said had been unjustifiably killed by members of the Marine unit.
But the Army apology, given before military investigators had concluded their inquiry, was later condemned by senior Marine commanders as inappropriate and premature.
Mr. Travers, the first witness to testify, said the unit’s trip from its base at Jalalabad to the Pakistani border and back was uneventful until a minivan detonated near the convoy’s second Humvee. After the blast, Mr. Travers said, he heard gunfire and saw bodies in at least two vehicles as the Marine convoy sped away.
Only a few gunners in the heavily armed convoy fired, he said, until Captain Noble radioed a command to the entire convoy to stop firing.
The account by Mr. Travers, who left the Marines last year, contrasts sharply with those given by the American military and the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission.
The commission, which conducted its own inquiry, said marines had fired indiscriminately at pedestrians and people in cars, buses and taxis over a 10-mile stretch of road after the attack. No marines were seriously wounded in the suicide bombing.
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2) Military use of unmanned aircraft soars
By LOLITA C. BALDOR, Associated Press Writer
Tue Jan 1, 6:01 PM ET
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080101/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/unmanned_killers
The military's reliance on unmanned aircraft that can watch, hunt and sometimes kill insurgents has soared to more than 500,000 hours in the air, largely in Iraq, The Associated Press has learned.
And new Defense Department figures obtained by The AP show that the Air Force more than doubled its monthly use of drones between January and October, forcing it to take pilots out of the air and shift them to remote flying duty to meet part of the demand.
The dramatic increase in the development and use of drones across the armed services reflects what will be an even more aggressive effort over the next 25 years, according to the new report.
The jump in Iraq coincided with the build up of U.S. forces this summer as the military swelled its ranks to quell the violence in Baghdad. But Pentagon officials said that even as troops begin to slowly come home this year, the use of Predators, Global Hawks, Shadows and Ravens will not likely slow.
"I think right now the demand for the capability that the unmanned system provides is only increasing," said Army Col. Bob Quackenbush, deputy director for Army Aviation. "Even as the surge ends, I suspect the deployment of the unmanned systems will not go down, particularly for larger systems."
For some Air Force pilots, that means climbing out of the cockpit and heading to places such as Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada, where they can remotely fly the Predators, one of the larger and more sophisticated unmanned aircraft.
About 120 Air Force pilots were recently transferred to staff the drones to keep pace with demands, the Air Force said.
Some National Guard members were also called up to staff the flights. And more will be doing that in the coming months, as the Air Force adds bases where pilots can remotely fly the aircraft. Locations include North Dakota, Texas, Arizona and California, and some are already operating.
One key reason for the increase is that U.S. forces in Iraq grew from 15 combat brigades to 20 over the spring and early summer, boosting troop totals from roughly 135,000 to more than 165,000. Slowly over the next six months, five brigades are being pulled out of Iraq that will not be replaced, as part of a drawdown announced by the administration, which began in December.
The increased military operations all across Iraq last summer triggered greater use of the drones and an escalating call for more of the systems — from the Pentagon's key hunter-killer, the Predator, to the surveillance Global Hawks and the smaller, cheaper Ravens.
In one recent example of what they can do, a Predator caught sight of three militants firing mortars at U.S. forces in November in Balad, Iraq. The drone fired an air-to-ground missile, killing the three, according to video footage the Air Force released.
Air Force officials said that Predator flights steadily increased last year, from about 2,000 hours in January to more than 4,300 hours in October. They are expected to continue to escalate when hours are calculated for November and December, because the number of combat air patrols had increased from about 14 per day to 18.
"The demand far exceeds all of the Defense Department's ability to provide (these) assets," said Air Force Lt. Col. Larry Gurgainous, deputy director of the Air Force's unmanned aircraft task force. "And as we buy and field more systems, you will see it continue to go up."
Use of the high-tech surveillance and reconnaissance Global Hawk has also jumped, as the Air Force moved from two to three systems on the battlefield.
"I think it has to do with the type of warfare we're engaged in — it's heavy into intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance," Gurgainous said. "This war requires a lot of hunting high-value targets."
The bulk of the unmanned flight hours belong to the Army's workhorse drone, the Raven, which weighs just four pounds and is used by smaller units, such as companies and battalions, in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The Ravens, which soldiers fling into the air and use for surveillance, will rack up about 300,000 hours this year — double the time they were used last year, said Quackenbush.
The Army has a total of 361 unmanned aircraft in Iraq alone — including Shadows, Hunters and Ravens. And in the first 10 months of 2007, they flew more than 300,000 hours.
Army officials have fought to maintain control of their unmanned vehicle usage, saying their unit commanders can quickly launch the smaller systems, and respond to the immediate needs of soldiers who may be pursuing insurgents or trying to avoid roadside bombs.
When the Raven's massive numbers are not included, UAV usage across all the military services jumped from nearly 165,000 flight hours in the 2006 fiscal year, to more than 258,000 for the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, 2007.
Those figures, compiled by the Pentagon, include some training flights, but the overwhelming majority was on the warfront. A majority of the flights are in Iraq, which has seen the biggest increase. But they are also used extensively in Afghanistan.
There, for example, the Air Force has hovered around 3,000-3,500 flight hours for the Predator each month.
Officials said they could not immediately provide a figure for how many hours of manned aircraft were flown in the wars this past year and said it was difficult to compare the two at any rate because one flight for a drone can routinely be 16 to 20 hours. In contrast, manned aircraft like the F-16, for instance, might spend about five hours on one sortie, said Air Force Capt. Uriah L. Orland, a spokesman for service in the Central Command area.
According to a new Pentagon report, the Defense Department plans to develop an "increasingly sophisticated force of unmanned systems" over the next 25 years. The effort will confront some current shortfalls, including plans to improve how well the drones can quickly and precisely identify and locate targets.
That would also involve increasing the precision of the guided weapons that are on some of the unmanned aircraft. Those efforts are considered critical because it enables the military to hunt down and kill militants without putting troops at risk.
In addition, the Pentagon said it wants to improve the drones' reconnaissance and surveillance abilities, which are the top priorities of commanders in the field.
On the Net:
Pentagon report on drones: http://www.acq.osd.mil/usd/Roadmap%20Final2.pdf
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3) Pregnant Marine Is Dead, Officials Say
By JOHN HOLUSHA and ANAHAD O'CONNOR
January 11, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/11/us/11cnd-marine.html?hp
The mystery of a missing pregnant marine may turn out to be a homicide. Lance Cpl. Maria Lauterbach, who disappeared from Camp Lejeune on December 14, is believed to be dead, said Sheriff Ed Brown, of the North Carolina county where the military facility is located.
The principal suspect is the man, a fellow Marine, who Corporal Lauterbach had accused of rape. Sheriff Brown said investigators have “tangible evidence” of Ms. Lauterbach’s death, and said authorities were searching for the body. He would not say how she died, other than it was of an “injury to her.”
He said it did not appear she had delivered the child she had been carrying before her death. Her body was said to be buried in a “residential, wooded area” within the county that includes the base.
Investigators are looking for Cpl. Cesar Armando Lauren, 21, who appears to have fled the base as the circumstances of the case unfolded. Corporal Lauterbach seems to have had some kind of renewed relationship with Cpl. Lauren after she disappeared.
Sheriff Brown said he had been expecting to find Corporal Lauterbach alive until Friday morning when a witness came forward with information about her death. He said the witness, a former marine from Camp Lejeune, contacted military authorities, who then alerted the sheriff’s office.
He said civilian authorities had not spoken to Corporal Lauren, despite the disappearance, because his lawyer declined to make him available. Corporal Lauren was driving a four-door pickup truck, the sheriff said, and possibly heading for his native state of Nevada.
The Marine Corps had brought Sergeant Daniel Durham, who had shared his house with Corporal Lauterbach for a brief time, to North Carolina from a training deployment in California for questioning. Sheriff Brown said Sergeant Durham did not have much information to offer and was not a subject in the case.
Corporal Lauterbach, 20, vanished about a month ago, on Dec. 14, when she was about to testify in the rape case. Local authorities say that five days passed before the woman was reported missing — not by the military, but by her stepmother, hundreds of miles away in Ohio.
Her stepmother, Mary Lauterbach, told the police that her daughter typically called home about 12 times a week, and that she had not been heard from in five days. A day later, the local police found the young woman’s cell phone at a Camp Lejeune gate, and eventually uncovered “suspicious activity” on her bank account. They also discovered her abandoned car at a Jacksonville, N.C., bus station.
“Her housemate had called and said ‘Maria’s not here, I think she’s gone,’ “ Mrs. Lauterbach said in an interview broadcast on CNN. “Most of her possessions were still in her room. Immediately we started calling her cell phone, and we found it had been turned off. She was gone.”
The sheriff said he did now know if Corporal Lauren is the father of Corporal Lauterbach’s child.
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4) U.S. Bombs Iraqi Insurgent Hideouts
By SOLOMON MOORE
January 11, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/11/world/middleeast/11iraq.html?ref=world
BAGHDAD — American bombers and fighter aircraft dropped 40,000 pounds of bombs on suspected militant hide-outs, storehouses and defensive positions in the southern outskirts of Baghdad on Thursday, the United States military said.
In one of the largest airstrikes in recent months, two B-1 and four F-16 aircraft dropped 38 bombs within 10 minutes near the Latifiya district south of Baghdad, the military said. The airstrikes were accompanied by a large Iraqi and American ground assault.
The air attack was part of a nationwide joint offensive that includes a continuing sweep in Diyala Province, north of Baghdad, and raids Thursday in Salahuddin Province, northwest of the capital, between Samarra and Ramadi.
The offensive took place as attacks against Iraqi security forces, American soldiers and Sunni Arab militias allied with the United States increased in the last few weeks. A series of suicide bombings, assassinations and car bombings has threatened to reverse the downward trend in violence, especially in Baghdad, where dozens of people have been killed since the new year.
Sixteen Americans have died this year, nine of them on Tuesday and Wednesday as soldiers tried to drive Sunni Arab insurgents out of their sanctuaries in Diyala Province. Despite the high death toll, American soldiers have met surprisingly little overall resistance during the sweep, and military officials suspect that insurgents were tipped off beforehand.
The American airstrikes on Thursday took place in an area densely blanketed with tall grasses and palm trees and rutted with irrigation canals. United States military officials have identified it as a haven for militants linked to Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, the largely homegrown Sunni insurgent group that American intelligence says is foreign-led and now represents a serious threat to stability in Iraq.
The air attacks hit more than 40 targets, the military said.
Iraqi Army officials said they were certain that the airstrikes had killed many insurgents but added that they were unable to conduct an official body count by nightfall. Dozens of suspected insurgents were detained during the assault, Iraqi Army officials said.
Residents of the area said they saw other insurgents speeding along remote roads on motorcycles, and trucks with mortar rocket launchers and rifles.
Several days of sporadic bombing around Latifiya and Arab Jabour culminated around 8 a.m. Thursday in concentrated airstrikes near the two towns, according to Abu Amna, a tribal chief who lives in the area.
“There was a big sound of explosions,” he said in a phone interview. Mr. Amna is a leader of one of hundreds of groups known as Concerned Local Citizens, a Sunni Arab tribal movement that has turned against Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia. “People began to flee the area after the air assault,” he said, because joint forces began a comprehensive raid after the bombing.
Col. Terry Ferrell, commander of the Second Brigade, Third Infantry Division, said that an extraordinary amount of firepower was necessary to clear areas that American forces had long neglected.
During a house search in Diyala on Wednesday, six American soldiers and an interpreter of unknown nationality were killed when insurgents detonated a bomb inside the structure.
Thursday’s bombing run was intended to avoid that kind of trap. Colonel Ferrell said that insurgents near Latifiya and Arab Jabour had built elaborate defenses, including roads lined with powerful bombs, booby-trapped houses and ambush positions.
“Specifically, we were looking to clear the ground against known targets and threats that could harm our soldiers, the Concerned Local Citizens and the Iraqi security forces,” Colonel Ferrell said. “We were targeting caches and improvised explosives devices.”
The bombing run was also intended to dislodge insurgents from their hiding places, said Maj. Gen. Uthman Al-Ghanimi, commander of the Eighth Division of the Iraqi Army, which provided the bulk of the ground forces for the attack. The general said that about 850 Iraqi soldiers and 150 American soldiers took part in the assault.
One measure of the sophistication of the insurgents, many of whom are former Iraqi military officers, is that their hide-outs and weapons caches were placed in a remote area between two Iraqi Army divisions, General Ghanimi said.
American and Iraqi officials said that the airstrikes destroyed several weapons caches, a car bomb and two houses rigged with explosives.
During the air assault, United States helicopters carried Iraqi and American soldiers into the area to conduct a ground sweep and to block fleeing suspected insurgents, according to another high-ranking Iraqi Army officer who declined to be identified because he is not allowed to speak to the news media.
American military officials praised the tribal militias for providing information on insurgent locations, weapons stores and ambush sites.
Sunni Arab militias, about 80,000 members strong throughout Iraq, have brought relative calm to many areas in western Anbar Province and Baghdad that had long resisted security operations by American and Iraqi forces.
Ammar Falah, another tribal militia member near Latifiya, said that he and his fellow tribesmen had been fighting Qaeda insurgents since last month.
“We clashed with Al Qaeda two weeks ago, and with American help we were able to regain control of two towns,” Mr. Falah said. “We lost two of our men. After we took control of these towns, we held a celebration and we were able to bring back 150 out of 200 families that had been displaced by Al Qaeda.”
Mr. Falah said that civilian casualties in his area were avoided Thursday because American forces instructed his group to warn residents to leave the area.
Mr. Falah said that Thursday’s heavy bombardment followed days of more limited airstrikes.
“Ten days ago three women and two children were killed by mistake by American bombings targeting Al Qaeda,” he said.
Um Yasir, a 50-year-old homemaker, said that several bombs landed about 500 yards from her home while she was doing chores.
Um Yasir, who said that hers was one of only three families who had not been driven from her village by Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, said she fled with her children and grandchildren to a relative’s house and watched American bombs slam into nearby palm groves.
“I saw smoke coming from the bombed area and I saw gunmen moving out of the area,” she said. “They were carrying their guns.”
In other violence, improvised explosives killed two people in downtown Baghdad, and a car bomb killed one person in east Baghdad. At least 11 people were wounded in the two incidents.
Iraqi police officers found three bodies in Baghdad and one in the southern city of Hilla.
Iraqi police officials said they killed a suspected insurgent 50 miles north of Baquba and wounded another man as he tried to plant an improvised bomb.
In the northern city of Kirkuk a roadside bomb killed two Iraqi soldiers and wounded another soldier.
And in the holy city of Karbala, Shiite pilgrims continued to arrive for Ashura, an annual observance of the death of Imam Hussein Ali, a moment that cemented the birth of Shiism.
Khalid al-Ansary and Qais Mizher contributed reporting.
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5) General Clears Army Officer of Crime in Abu Ghraib Case
By REUTERS
January 11, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/11/washington/11abuse.html?ref=world
WASHINGTON (Reuters) — The only United States Army officer to face a court-martial over the scandal at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison has been cleared of any criminal wrongdoing in the case, the Army said Thursday.
A court-martial convicted Lt. Col. Steven Jordan in August of disobeying an order not to discuss the investigation of abuse at the jail and issued him a criminal reprimand as penalty.
But Maj. Gen. Richard Rowe, commanding officer for the Army Military District of Washington, on Tuesday disapproved of both the conviction and the reprimand, the Army said. The decision by General Rowe wipes Colonel Jordan’s record clean of any criminal responsibility.
“In light of the offense Jordan has been found guilty of committing, and the substantial evidence in mitigation,” an Army spokesman, Col. James Yonts, said in a statement, “Rowe determined that an administrative reprimand was a fair and appropriate disposition of the matter.”
Colonel Jordan had once faced a maximum punishment of five years in prison and dismissal from the Army over the Abu Ghraib scandal, which unleashed a wave of global condemnation against the United States when images of abused prisoners surfaced in 2004.
The photos included scenes of naked detainees stacked in a pyramid and other inmates cowering in front of snarling dogs.
Colonel Jordan, who was in charge of an Abu Ghraib interrogation center, said he had played no part in the abuse and complained that the military was trying to make him a scapegoat.
His defense team also argued that he held no command authority at the prison.
The judicial panel of 10 officers that convicted him in August of disobeying the order also acquitted him of any responsibility for the cruel treatment of Abu Ghraib detainees.
The letter of administrative reprimand that Colonel Jordan will now receive is a document used by military commanders to correct conduct that fails to comply with established standards.
Eleven lower-ranking soldiers have been convicted in military courts in connection with the physical abuse and sexual humiliation of Abu Ghraib detainees.
Two other officers have been disciplined by the Army, but neither faced criminal charges or dismissal.
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6) War Torn
Across America, Deadly Echoes of Foreign Battles
By DEBORAH SONTAG and LIZETTE ALVAREZ
January 13, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/13/us/13vets.html?hp
Late one night in the summer of 2005, Matthew Sepi, a 20-year-old Iraq combat veteran, headed out to a 7-Eleven in the seedy Las Vegas neighborhood where he had settled after leaving the Army.
This particular 7-Eleven sits in the shadow of the Stratosphere casino-hotel in a section of town called the Naked City. By day, the area, littered with malt liquor cans, looks depressed but not menacing. By night, it becomes, in the words of a local homicide detective, “like Falluja.”
Mr. Sepi did not like to venture outside too late. But, plagued by nightmares about an Iraqi civilian killed by his unit, he often needed alcohol to fall asleep. And so it was that night, when, seized by a gut feeling of lurking danger, he slid a trench coat over his slight frame — and tucked an assault rifle inside it.
“Matthew knew he shouldn’t be taking his AK-47 to the 7-Eleven,” Detective Laura Andersen said, “but he was scared to death in that neighborhood, he was military trained and, in his mind, he needed the weapon to protect himself.”
Head bowed, Mr. Sepi scurried down an alley, ignoring shouts about trespassing on gang turf. A battle-weary grenadier who was still legally under-age, he paid a stranger to buy him two tall cans of beer, his self-prescribed treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder.
As Mr. Sepi started home, two gang members, both large and both armed, stepped out of the darkness. Mr. Sepi said in an interview that he spied the butt of a gun, heard a boom, saw a flash and “just snapped.”
In the end, one gang member lay dead, bleeding onto the pavement. The other was wounded. And Mr. Sepi fled, “breaking contact” with the enemy, as he later described it. With his rifle raised, he crept home, loaded 180 rounds of ammunition into his car and drove until police lights flashed behind him.
“Who did I take fire from?” he asked urgently. Wearing his Army camouflage pants, the diminutive young man said he had been ambushed and then instinctively “engaged the targets.” He shook. He also cried.
“I felt very bad for him,” Detective Andersen said.
Nonetheless, Mr. Sepi was booked, and a local newspaper soon reported: “Iraq veteran arrested in killing.”
Town by town across the country, headlines have been telling similar stories. Lakewood, Wash.: “Family Blames Iraq After Son Kills Wife.” Pierre, S.D.: “Soldier Charged With Murder Testifies About Postwar Stress.” Colorado Springs: “Iraq War Vets Suspected in Two Slayings, Crime Ring.”
Individually, these are stories of local crimes, gut-wrenching postscripts to the war for the military men, their victims and their communities. Taken together, they paint the patchwork picture of a quiet phenomenon, tracing a cross-country trail of death and heartbreak.
The New York Times found 121 cases in which veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan committed a killing in this country, or were charged with one, after their return from war. In many of those cases, combat trauma and the stress of deployment — along with alcohol abuse, family discord and other attendant problems — appear to have set the stage for a tragedy that was part destruction, part self-destruction.
Three-quarters of these veterans were still in the military at the time of the killing. More than half the killings involved guns, and the rest were stabbings, beatings, strangulations and bathtub drownings. Twenty-five offenders faced murder, manslaughter or homicide charges for fatal car crashes resulting from drunken, reckless or suicidal driving.
About a third of the victims were spouses, girlfriends, children or other relatives, among them 2-year-old Krisiauna Calaira Lewis, whose 20-year-old father slammed her against a wall when he was recuperating in Texas from a bombing near Falluja that blew off his foot and shook up his brain.
A quarter of the victims were fellow service members, including Specialist Richard Davis of the Army, who was stabbed repeatedly and then set ablaze, his body hidden in the woods by fellow soldiers a day after they all returned from Iraq.
And the rest were acquaintances or strangers, among them Noah P. Gamez, 21, who was breaking into a car at a Tucson motel when an Iraq combat veteran, also 21, caught him, shot him dead and then killed himself outside San Diego with one of several guns found in his car.
Tracking the Killings
The Pentagon does not keep track of such killings, most of which are prosecuted not by the military justice system but by civilian courts in state after state. Neither does the Justice Department.
To compile and analyze its list, The Times conducted a search of local news reports, examined police, court and military records and interviewed the defendants, their lawyers and families, the victims’ families and military and law enforcement officials.
This reporting most likely uncovered only the minimum number of such cases, given that not all killings, especially in big cities and on military bases, are reported publicly or in detail. Also, it was often not possible to determine the deployment history of other service members arrested on homicide charges.
The Times used the same methods to research homicides involving all active-duty military personnel and new veterans for the six years before and after the present wartime period began with the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.
This showed an 89 percent increase during the present wartime period, to 349 cases from 184, about three-quarters of which involved Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans. The increase occurred even though there have been fewer troops stationed in the United States in the last six years and the American homicide rate has been, on average, lower.
The Pentagon was given The Times’s roster of homicides. It declined to comment because, a spokesman, Lt. Col. Les Melnyk, said, the Department of Defense could not duplicate the newspaper’s research. Further, Colonel Melnyk questioned the validity of comparing prewar and wartime numbers based on news media reports, saying that the current increase might be explained by “an increase in awareness of military service by reporters since 9/11.” He also questioned the value of “lumping together different crimes such as involuntary manslaughter with first-degree homicide.”
Given that many veterans rebound successfully from their war experiences and some flourish as a result of them, veterans groups have long deplored the attention paid to the minority of soldiers who fail to readjust to civilian life.
After World War I, the American Legion passed a resolution asking the press “to subordinate whatever slight news value there may be in playing up the ex-service member angle in stories of crime or offense against the peace.” An article in the Veterans of Foreign Wars magazine in 2006 referred with disdain to the pervasive “wacko-vet myth,” which, veterans say, makes it difficult for them to find jobs.
Clearly, committing homicide is an extreme manifestation of dysfunction for returning veterans, many of whom struggle in quieter ways, with crumbling marriages, mounting debt, deepening alcohol dependence or more-minor tangles with the law.
But these killings provide a kind of echo sounding for the profound depths to which some veterans have fallen, whether at the bottom of a downward spiral or in a sudden burst of violence.
Thirteen of these veterans took their own lives after the killings, and two more were fatally shot by the police. Several more attempted suicide or expressed a death wish, like Joshua Pol, a former soldier convicted of vehicular homicide, who told a judge in Montana in 2006, “To be honest with you, I really wish I had died in Iraq.”
In some of the cases involving veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, the fact that the suspect went to war bears no apparent relationship to the crime committed or to the prosecution and punishment. But in many of the cases, the deployment of the service member invariably becomes a factor of some sort as the legal system, families and communities grapple to make sense of the crimes.
This is especially stark where a previously upstanding young man — there is one woman among the 121 — appears to have committed a random act of violence. And The Times’s analysis showed that the overwhelming majority of these young men, unlike most civilian homicide offenders, had no criminal history.
“When they’ve been in combat, you have to suspect immediately that combat has had some effect, especially with people who haven’t shown these tendencies in the past,” said Robert Jay Lifton, a lecturer in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School/Cambridge Health Alliance who used to run “rap groups” for Vietnam veterans and fought to earn recognition for what became known as post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD.
“Everything is multicausational, of course,” Dr. Lifton continued. “But combat, especially in a counterinsurgency war, is such a powerful experience that to discount it would be artificial.”
Few of these 121 war veterans received more than a cursory mental health screening at the end of their deployments, according to interviews with the veterans, lawyers, relatives and prosecutors. Many displayed symptoms of combat trauma after their return, those interviews show, but they were not evaluated for or received a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder until after they were arrested for homicides.
What is clear is that experiences on the streets of Baghdad and Falluja shadowed these men back to places like Longview, Tex., and Edwardsville, Ill.
“He came back different” is the shared refrain of the defendants’ family members, who mention irritability, detachment, volatility, sleeplessness, excessive drinking or drug use, and keeping a gun at hand.
“You are unleashing certain things in a human being we don’t allow in civic society, and getting it all back in the box can be difficult for some people,” said William C. Gentry, an Army reservist and Iraq veteran who works as a prosecutor in San Diego County.
When Archie O’Neil, a gunnery sergeant in the Marines, returned from a job handling dead bodies in Iraq, he became increasingly paranoid, jumpy and fearful — moving into his garage, eating M.R.E.’s, wearing his camouflage uniform, drinking heavily and carrying a gun at all times, even to answer the doorbell.
“It was like I put one person on a ship and sent him over there, and they sent me a totally different person back,” Monique O’Neil, his wife, testified.
A well-respected and decorated noncommissioned officer who did not want to endanger his chances for advancement, Sergeant O’Neil did not seek help for the PTSD that would later be diagnosed by government psychologists. “The Marine way,” his lawyer said at a preliminary hearing, “was to suck it up.”
On the eve of his second deployment to Iraq in 2004, Sergeant O’Neil fatally shot his mistress, Kimberly O’Neal, after she threatened to kill his family while he was gone.
During a military trial at Camp Pendleton, Calif., a Marine defense lawyer argued that “the ravages of war” provided the “trigger” for the killing. In 2005, a military jury convicted Sergeant O’Neil of murder but declined to impose the minimum sentence, life with the possibility of parole, considering it too harsh. A second jury, however, convened only for sentencing, voted the maximum penalty, life without parole. The case is on appeal.
As with Sergeant O’Neil, a connection between a veteran’s combat service and his crime is sometimes declared overtly. Other times, though, the Iraq connection is a lingering question mark as offenders’ relatives struggle to understand how a strait-laced teenager or family man or wounded veteran ended up behind bars — or dead.
That happened in the case of Stephen Sherwood, who enlisted in the Army at 34 to obtain medical insurance when his wife got pregnant. He may never have been screened for combat trauma.
Yet Mr. Sherwood shot his wife and then himself nine days after returning from Iraq in the summer of 2005. Several months before, the other soldiers in his tank unit had been killed by a rocket attack while he was on a two-week leave to celebrate the first birthday of his now-orphaned son.
“When he got back to Iraq, everyone was dead,” his father, Robert Sherwood, said. “He had survivor’s guilt.” Then his wife informed him that she wanted to end their marriage.
After the murder-suicide, Mr. Sherwood’s parents could not help but wonder what role Iraq played and whether counseling might have helped keep their son away from the brink.
“Ah boy, the amount of heartbreak involved in all of this,” said Dr. Jonathan Shay, a psychiatrist for the Department of Veterans Affairs in Boston and the author of two books that examine combat trauma through the lens of classical texts.
An Ancient Connection
The troubles and exploits of the returning war veteran represent a searing slice of reality. They have served as a recurring artistic theme throughout history — from Homer’s “Odyssey” to the World War I novel “All Quiet on the Western Front,” from the post-Vietnam-era movie “The Deer Hunter” to last fall’s film “In the Valley of Elah.”
At the heart of these tales lie warriors plagued by the kind of psychic wounds that have always afflicted some fraction of combat veterans. In an online course for health professionals, Capt. William P. Nash, the combat/operational stress control coordinator for the Marines, reaches back to Sophocles’ account of Ajax, who slipped into a depression after the Trojan War, slaughtered a flock of sheep in a crazed state and then fell on his own sword.
The nature of the counterinsurgency war in Iraq, where there is no traditional front line, has amplified the stresses of combat, and multiple tours of duty — a third of the troops involved in Iraq and Afghanistan have deployed more than once — ratchet up those stresses.
In earlier eras, various labels attached to the psychological injuries of war: soldier’s heart, shell shock, Vietnam disorder. Today the focus is on PTSD, but military health care officials are seeing a spectrum of psychological issues, with an estimated half of the returning National Guard members, 38 percent of soldiers and 31 percent of marines reporting mental health problems, according to a Pentagon task force.
Decades of studies on the problems of Vietnam veterans have established links between combat trauma and higher rates of unemployment, homelessness, gun ownership, child abuse, domestic violence, substance abuse — and criminality. On a less scientific level, such links have long been known.
“The connection between war and crime is unfortunately very ancient,” said Dr. Shay, the V.A. psychiatrist and author. “The first thing that Odysseus did after he left Troy was to launch a pirate raid on Ismarus. Ending up in trouble with the law has always been a final common pathway for some portion of psychologically injured veterans.”
The National Vietnam Veterans Readjustment Study, considered the most thorough analysis of this population, found that 15 percent of the male veterans still suffered from full-blown post-traumatic stress disorder more than a decade after the war ended. Half of the veterans with active PTSD had been arrested or in jail at least once, and 34.2 percent more than once. Some 11.5 percent of them had been convicted of felonies, and veterans are more likely to have committed violent crimes than nonveterans, according to government studies. In the mid-1980s, with so many Vietnam veterans behind bars that Vietnam Veterans of America created chapters in prisons, veterans made up a fifth of the nation’s inmate population.
As Iraq and Afghanistan veterans get enmeshed in the criminal justice system, former advocates for Vietnam veterans are disheartened by what they see as history repeating itself.
“These guys today, I recognize the hole in their souls,” said Hector Villarreal, a criminal defense lawyer in Mission, Tex., who briefly represented a three-time Iraq combat veteran charged with manslaughter.
Brockton D. Hunter, a criminal defense lawyer in Minneapolis, told colleagues in a recent lecture at the Minnesota State Bar Association that society should try harder to prevent veterans from self-destructing.
“To truly support our troops, we need to apply our lessons from history and newfound knowledge about PTSD to help the most troubled of our returning veterans,” Mr. Hunter said. “To deny the frequent connection between combat trauma and subsequent criminal behavior is to deny one of the direct societal costs of war and to discard another generation of troubled heroes.”
‘The Town Was Torn Up’
At the Tecumseh State Correctional Institution in Nebraska, Seth Strasburg, 29, displays an imposing, biker-style presence. He has a shaved head, bushy chin beard and tattoos scrolled around his thick arms and neck, one of which quotes, in Latin, a Crusades-era dictum: “Kill them all. God will know his own.”
Beneath this fierce exterior, however, Mr. Strasburg, an Iraq combat veteran who pleaded no contest to manslaughter and gun charges in 2006, hides a tortured compulsion to understand his actions. Growing up in rural Nebraska, he read military history. Now he devours books like Lt. Col. Dave Grossman’s “On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society” and Dr. Shay’s “Odysseus in America: Combat Trauma and the Trials of Homecoming.”
Because Mr. Strasburg is introspective, he provides a window into the reverberations of combat violence within one veteran’s psyche and from there outward. In Arnold, Neb., population 679, the unintentional killing last year by Mr. Strasburg of Thomas Tiffany Varney V, a pre-mortuary science major known as Moose, was a deeply unsettling event.
“To lose one young man permanently and another to prison, with Iraq mixed up in the middle of it — the town was torn up,” said Pamela Eggleston, a waitress at Suzy’s Pizza and Spirits.
In late 2005, Mr. Strasburg returned to Arnold for a holiday leave after two years in Iraq. Once home, he did not easily shed the extreme vigilance that had become second nature. He traveled around rural Nebraska with a gun and body armor in his Jeep, feeling irritable, out of sorts and out of place in tranquil, “American Idol”-obsessed America.
During his leave, he shrank from questions about Iraq because he hated the cavalier ones: “So, did you kill anybody? What was it like?”
He had, in fact, killed somebody in Iraq and was having trouble dealing with it. Like several veterans interviewed, Mr. Strasburg was plagued by one death before he caused another one.
In 2004, Sergeant Strasburg’s section was engaged in a mission to counter a proliferation of improvised explosive devices, or I.E.D.’s, on the road west of Mosul. One night, posted in an old junked bus, he watched the road for hours until an Iraqi man, armed and out after curfew, appeared and circled a field, kicking the dirt as if he were searching for something. Finally, the man bent down, straining to pick up a large white flour sack, which he then dragged toward the road.
“In my mind at the time, he had this I.E.D. hidden out there during the day and he was going to set it in place,” Mr. Strasburg said. “We radioed it in. They said, ‘Whatever, use your discretion.’ So I popped him.”
With others on his reconnaissance team, Mr. Strasburg helped zip the man into a body bag, taking a few minutes to study the face that he now cannot forget. When they went to search the flour sack, they found nothing but gravel.
“I reported the kill to the battalion,” Mr. Strasburg said. “They said, you know: ‘Good shot. It’s legal. Whatever. Don’t worry about it.’ After that, it was never mentioned. But, you know, I had some issues with it later.”
Mr. Strasburg’s voice broke and he turned his head, wiping his eyes. A reporter noted that he was upset.
“I’m trying not to be,” he said, then changed his mind. “I mean, how can you not be? If you’re human. What if I had waited?”
“Maybe I was too eager,” he added. “Maybe I wanted to be the first one to get a kill, you know? Maybe, maybe, maybe. And that will never go away.”
Which bothers him, Mr. Strasburg said, telling himself: “Get over it. You shot somebody. Everybody else shot somebody, too.”
Shortly after Mr. Strasburg’s military tour of duty ended, he returned to Iraq as a private contractor because, he said, he did not know what else to do with himself after eight years in the Army. “I have no skill other than carrying a gun,” he said.
By late 2005, home on leave, he was preparing to return once more to Iraq in January.
On New Year’s Eve, Mr. Strasburg, accompanied by his brother, consumed vodka cocktails for hours at Jim’s Bar and Package in Arnold. Toward evening’s end, he engaged in an intense conversation with a Vietnam veteran, after which, he said, he inexplicably holstered his gun and headed to a party. Outside the party, he drunkenly approached a Chevrolet Suburban crowded with young people, got upset and thrust his gun inside the car.
Mr. Strasburg said he did not remember what provoked him. According to one account, a young man — not the victim — set him off by calling him a paid killer. Mr. Strasburg, according to the prosecutor, stuck his gun under the young man’s chin. There was a struggle over the gun. It went off. And Mr. Varney, a strapping 21-year-old with a passion for hunting, car racing and baseball, was struck.
Asked if he pulled the trigger, Mr. Strasburg said, “I don’t know,” adding that he took responsibility: “It was my gun and I was drunk. But what the hell was I thinking?”
The Suburban drove quickly away. Mr. Strasburg jumped into his Jeep, speeding along wintry roads until he crashed into a culvert. Feeling doomed, he said, he donned his bulletproof vest and plunged into the woods, where he fell asleep in the snow as police helicopters and state troopers closed in on him.
Mr. Strasburg had never been screened for post-traumatic stress disorder. Like many soldiers, he did not take seriously the Army’s mental health questionnaires given out at his tour’s end. “They were retarded,” he said. “All of us were like, ‘Let’s do this quickly so we can go home.’ They asked: ‘Did you see any dead bodies? Did you take part in any combat operations?’ Come on, we were in Iraq. They didn’t even ask us the really important question, if you killed someone.”
After his arrest, a psychologist hired by his family diagnosed combat trauma in Mr. Strasburg, writing in an evaluation that post-traumatic stress disorder, exacerbated by alcohol, served as a “major factor” in the shooting.
A Judge’s Harsh Words
At the sentencing hearing in Broken Bow, Neb., in September 2006, however, the judge discounted the centrality of the PTSD. He called Mr. Varney “the epitome of an innocent victim” and Mr. Strasburg “a bully” who “misconstrued comments” and “reacted in a belligerent and hostile manner.” In a courtroom filled with Arnold townspeople and Iraq veterans, he sentenced Mr. Strasburg to 22 to 36 years in prison.
Mr. Strasburg’s mother, Aneita, believing that the shooting was a product of his combat trauma, started an organization to create awareness about post-traumatic stress disorder.
Her activism, however, deeply offended the victim’s parents, who run the Arnold Funeral Home.
“I’m sorry, but it feels like a personal affront, like she’s trying to excuse our son’s death with the war,” Barb Varney said, adding that Mr. Strasburg has “never shown any remorse.”
Thomas Tiffany Varney IV, the victim’s father, expressed skepticism about Mr. Strasburg’s PTSD and the disorder in general, saying, “His grandfather, my dad, a lot of people been there, done that, and it didn’t affect them,” Mr. Varney said. “They’re trying to brush it away, ‘Well, he murdered someone, it’s just post-traumatic stress.’ ”
Mr. Strasburg himself, whose diagnosis was confirmed by the Department of Veterans Affairs, expressed discomfort with his post-traumatic stress disorder and its connection to his crime. “It’s not a be-all-and-end-all excuse, and I don’t mean it to be,” he said.
As Mr. Strasburg prefers to see it, he had adapted his behavior to survive in Iraq and then retained that behavior — vigilant, distrustful, armed — when he returned home. “You need time to decompress,” he said. “If the exact same circumstances had happened a year later” — the circumstances of that New Year’s Eve — “nothing would have happened. It never would have went down.”
Mr. Strasburg also voiced reluctance to being publicly identified as a PTSD sufferer, worried that his former military colleagues would see him as a weakling. “Nobody wants to be that guy who says, ‘I got counseling this afternoon, Sergeant,’ ” he said, mimicking a whining voice.
Mr. Strasburg’s former platoon leader, Capt. Benjamin D. Tiffner, who was killed in an I.E.D. attack in Baghdad in November, wrote a letter to Nebraska state authorities. He protested the length of the sentence and requested Mr. Strasburg’s transfer “to a facility that would allow him to deal with his combat trauma.”
“Seth has been asked and required to do very violent things in defense of his country,” Captain Tiffner wrote. “He spent the majority of 2003 to 2005 in Iraq solving very dangerous problems by using violence and the threat of violence as his main tools. He was congratulated and given awards for these actions. This builds in a person the propensity to deal with life’s problems through violence and the threat of violence.
“I believe this might explain in some way why Seth reacted the way that he did that night in Nebraska,” the letter continued. “I’m not trying to explain away Seth’s actions, but I think he is a special case and he needs to be taken care of by our judicial system and our medical system.”
Many Don’t Seek Treatment
Unlike during the Vietnam War, the current military has made a concerted effort, through screenings and research, to gauge the mental health needs of returning veterans. But gauging and addressing needs are different, and a Pentagon task force last year described the military mental health system as overburdened, “woefully” understaffed, inadequately financed and undermined by the stigma attached to PTSD.
Although early treatment might help veterans retain their relationships and avoid developing related problems like depression, alcoholism and criminal behavior, many do not seek or get such help. And this group of homicide defendants seems to be a prime example.
Like Mr. Strasburg, many of these veterans learned that they had post-traumatic stress disorder only after their arrests. And their mental health issues often went unevaluated even after the killings if they were pleading not guilty, if they did not have aggressive lawyers and relatives — or if they killed themselves first.
Of the 13 combat veterans in The Times database who committed murder-suicides, only two, as best as it can be determined, had psychological problems diagnosed by the military health care system after returning from war.
“The real tragedy in these veterans’ case is that, where PTSD is a factor, it is highly treatable,” said Lawrence W. Sherman, director of the Jerry Lee Center of Criminology at the University of Pennsylvania. “And when people are exposed to serious trauma and don’t get it treated, it is a serious risk factor for violence.”
At various times, the question of whether the military shares some blame for these killings gets posed. This occurs especially where the military knew beforehand of a combat veteran’s psychological troubles, marital problems or history of substance abuse.
In some cases, the military sent service members with pre-existing problems — known histories of mental illness, drug abuse or domestic abuse — into combat only to find those problems exacerbated by the stresses of war. In other cases, they quickly discharged returning veterans with psychological or substance abuse problems, after which they committed homicides.
Perhaps no case has posed the question of military liability more bluntly than that of Lucas T. Borges, 25, a former private in the Marines whose victims are suing the United States government, maintaining that the military “had a duty to take reasonable steps to prevent Borges from harming others.” The government is trying to get the claim dismissed.
Mr. Borges immigrated from Brazil at 14 and joined the Marines four years later. After spending six months in Iraq at the beginning of the war, he “came back different, like he was out of his mind,” said his mother, Dina Borges, who runs a small cleaning business in Maryland.
Assigned on his return to a maintenance battalion at Camp Lejeune, N.C., Private Borges developed a taste for the ether used to start large internal combustion engines in winter.
Mr. Borges did have a history of marijuana use, which he disclosed to the Marines when he enlisted, said Jeffrey Weber, a lawyer who represented the victims until recently.
But inhaling ether, which produces both a dreamy high and impairment, was new to him, and his sister, Gabriela, a 20-year-old George Washington University student, believes that he developed the habit to relieve the anxiety that he brought home from war.
The Marines, aware of Mr. Borges’s past drug use, also knew that he had developed an ether problem, but they never removed him from the job where he had ready access to his drug of choice, according to the lawsuit. They never offered him drug treatment, either, Mr. Borges’s own lawyer said in court.
Four months after he returned from Iraq, military officials moved to discharge Private Borges when he was caught inhaling ether in his car. They impounded the car, which contained several canisters of the government’s ether, and sent Mr. Borges, who threatened to kill himself, to the mental health ward of the base hospital.
“He was finally under the care of a psychiatrist, but they pulled him from that because he was a problem and they wanted to get rid of him,” Mr. Weber said. “They processed him out, handed him the keys to his car, and his supervisor said, ‘If you’re not careful, you’re going to kill somebody.’ ”
When Mr. Borges retrieved his 1992 Camaro, he discovered that the Marines had left their ether canisters inside — they did not have anywhere to store them, officials said at trial — and immediately got high. He then drove east down the westbound lane of a state highway, slamming headfirst into the victims’ car, killing 19-year-old Jamie Marie Lumsden, the daughter of a marine who served in Iraq, and seriously injuring four others.
Convicted of second-degree murder, Mr. Borges was sentenced to 24 to 32 years in prison.
Lost in Las Vegas
The Army has recently developed a course called “Battlemind Training,” intended to help soldiers make the psychological transition back into civilian society. “In combat, the enemy is the target,” the course material says. “Back home, there are no enemies.”
This can be a difficult lesson to learn. Many soldiers and marines find themselves at war with their spouses, their children, their fellow service members, the world at large and ultimately themselves when they come home.
“Based on my experience, most of these veterans feel just terrible that they’ve caused this senseless harm,” Dr. Shay said. “Most veterans don’t want to hurt other people.”
Matthew Sepi withdrew into himself on his return from Iraq.
A Navajo Indian who saw his hometown of Winslow, Ariz., as a dead end, Mr. Sepi joined the Army at 16, with a permission slip from his mother.
For a teenager without much life experience, the war in Iraq was mind-bending, and Mr. Sepi saw intense action. When his infantry company arrived in April 2003, it was charged with tackling resistant Republican Guard strongholds north of Baghdad.
“The war was supposedly over, except it wasn’t,” Mr. Sepi said. “I was a ground troop, with a grenade launcher attached to my M-16. Me and my buddies were the ones that assaulted the places. We went in the buildings and cleared the buildings. We shot and got shot at.”
After a year of combat, Mr. Sepi returned to Fort Carson, Colo., where life seemed dull and regimented. The soldiers did not discuss their war experiences or their postwar emotions. Instead, they partied, Mr. Sepi said, and the drinking got him and others in trouble. Arrested for under-age driving under the influence, he was ordered to complete drug and alcohol education and counseling. Shortly after that, he decided to leave the Army.
Feeling lost after his discharge “with a few little medals,” he ended up moving to Las Vegas, a city that he did not know, with the friend of a friend. Broke, Mr. Sepi settled in the Naked City, which is named for the showgirls who used to sunbathe topless there. After renting a roach-infested hole in the wall with an actual hole in the wall, he found jobs doing roadwork and making plastic juice bottles in a factory. Alone and lonely, he started feeling the effects of his combat experiences.
In Las Vegas, Mr. Sepi’s alcohol counselor took him under his wing, recognizing war-related PTSD in his extreme jumpiness, adrenaline rushes, nightmares and need to drink himself into unconsciousness.
The counselor directed him to seek specialized help from a Veterans Affairs hospital. Mr. Sepi said he called the V.A. and was told to report in person. But working 12-hour shifts at a bottling plant, he failed to do so.
In July 2005, when Mr. Sepi was arrested, he identified himself as an Iraq veteran. But, Detective Andersen said, “He didn’t act like a combat veteran. He acted like a scared kid.”
Soon afterward, Nancy Lemcke, Mr. Sepi’s public defender, visited him in jail. “I asked him about PTSD,” Ms. Lemcke said. “And he starts telling me about Iraq and all of a sudden, his eyes well up with tears, and he cries out: ‘We had the wrong house! We had the wrong house!’ And he’s practically hysterical.”
As part of an operation to break down the resistance in and around Balad, Mr. Sepi and his unit had been given a nightly list of targets for capture. Camouflaged, the American soldiers crept through towns after midnight, working their way down the lists, setting off C-4 plastic explosives at each address to stun the residents into submission.
“This particular night, it was December 2003, there was, I’d say, more than 100 targets,” Mr. Sepi said. “Each little team had a list. And at this one house, we blow the gate and find out that there’s this guy sitting in his car just inside that gate. We move in, and he, like, stumbles out of his car, and he’s on fire, and he’s, like, stumbling around in circles in his front yard. So we all kind of don’t know what to do, and he collapses, and we go inside the house and search it and find out it’s the wrong house.”
Although Mr. Sepi said that he felt bad at the time, he also knew that he had done nothing but follow orders and that the Army had paid the man’s family a settlement. He did not imagine that the image of the flaming, stumbling Iraqi civilian would linger like a specter in his psyche.
Listening to Mr. Sepi recount the story of a death that he regretted in Iraq while grappling with a death that he regretted in Las Vegas, his lawyer grew determined to get him help. “It was just so shocking, and his emotions were so raw, and he was so messed up,” Ms. Lemcke said.
An Unusual Legal Deal
She found compassion for him among the law enforcement officials handling the case. The investigation backed up Mr. Sepi’s story of self-defense, although it was never determined who fired first. It made an impression on the police that he was considerably outweighed — his 130 pounds against a 210-pound man and a 197-pound woman. And it helped Mr. Sepi that his victims were drifters, with no family members pressing for justice.
The police said that Kevin Ratcliff, 36, who was shot and wounded by Mr. Sepi, belonged to the Crips and was a convicted felon; Sharon Jackson, 47, who was killed, belonged to NC, the Naked City gang, and an autopsy found alcohol, cocaine and methamphetamines in her blood.
Buoyed by an outpouring of support from Mr. Sepi’s fellow soldiers and veterans’ advocates, Ms. Lemcke pressed the Department of Veterans Affairs to find treatment programs for Mr. Sepi. This allowed an unusual deal with the local district attorney’s office: in exchange for the successful completion of treatment for substance abuse and PTSD, the charges against Mr. Sepi would be dropped.
After about three months in jail, Mr. Sepi spent three months at a substance abuse program in Prescott, Ariz., in late 2005, where the graying veterans presented an object lesson: “I don’t want to be like that when I’m older,” he said to himself. In early 2006, he transferred to a PTSD treatment center run by the V.A. in Topeka, Kan., where he learned how to deal with anger, sadness and guilt, to manage the symptoms of his anxiety disorder and, it seems, to vanquish his nightmares.
“For some reason, my bad dreams went away,” he said. “It’s pretty cool.”
Free to start life over, Mr. Sepi stepped tentatively into adulthood. Settling in Phoenix, he enrolled in automotive school and got a job as a welder for a commercial bakery. Once in a while, he said, a loud noise still starts his heart racing and he breaks into a cold sweat, ready for action. But he knows now how to calm himself, he said, he no longer owns guns, and he is sober and sobered by what he has done.
“That night,” he said, of the hot summer night in Las Vegas when he was arrested for murder, “if I could erase it, I would. Killing is part of war, but back home ...”
Research was contributed by Alain Delaquérière, Amy Finnerty, Teddy Kider, Andrew Lehren, Renwick McLean, Jenny Nordberg and Margot Williams.
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LINKS AND VERY SHORT STORIES
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Britain: Lethal Bird Flu at Famed Swan Reserve
By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.
World Briefing | Europe
The deadly H5N1 strain of avian flu has reached one of England’s most famous swan breeding grounds, the Abbotsbury Swannery on the Dorset coast. Tests on three dead mute swans confirmed the virus, spread by wild birds. The manager said he was working to determine how many swans might be affected.
January 11, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/11/world/europe/11briefs-swan.html?ref=world
Utah: Cholera Suspected in Bird Deaths
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
National Briefing | Rockies
About 1,500 dead birds that washed up on the southern shore of the Great Salt Lake may have been killed by avian cholera, an expert said. Dead grebes, ducks and gulls were being sent to the National Wildlife Health Center of the United States Geological Survey in Madison, Wis., for examination. “If I was a betting man,” said the expert, Tom Aldrich of the State Division of Wildlife Resources, “I would bet it was cholera.” The disease, which poisons the blood, spreads when birds are overcrowded and food supplies are short. It does not affect humans. [Doesn't affect humans? How does the death of birds not affect humans?...bw]
January 5, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/05/us/05brfs-CHOLERASUSPE_BRF.html?ref=us
United Nations: Assembly Calls for Freeze on Death Penalty
By WARREN HOGE
In a vote that made for unusual alliances, the General Assembly passed, 104 to 54 with 29 abstentions, a nonbinding resolution calling for a moratorium on the death penalty. Among the countries joining the United States in opposition to the European-led measure were Iran, Myanmar, North Korea, Sudan and Zimbabwe. Opponents argued that the resolution undermined their national sovereignty. Two similar moves in the 1990s failed, and Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said the new vote was “evidence of a trend toward ultimately abolishing the death penalty.”
December 19, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/19/world/19briefs-deathpenalty.html?ref=world
Carbon Dioxide Threatens Reefs, Report Says
By KENNETH CHANG
National Briefing | Science and Health
Carbon dioxide in the air is turning the oceans acidic, and without a reduction in emissions, coral reefs may die away by the end of the century, researchers warn in Friday’s issue of the journal Science. Carbon dioxide dissolves into ocean water, changes to carbonic acid, and carbonic acid dissolves the calcium carbonate in the skeletons of corals. Laboratory experiments have shown that corals possess some ability to adapt to warmer waters but no ability to adapt to the higher acidity. “Unless we reverse our actions very quickly, by the end of the century, reefs could be a thing of the past,” said Ken Caldeira, a scientist at the Carnegie Institution’s department of global ecology and an author of the Science paper.
December 14, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/14/science/earth/14brfs-CARBONDIOXID_BRF.html?ref=science
Iraq: Marine Discharged Over Killing
By REUTERS
World Briefing | Middle East
A Marine reservist, Lance Cpl. Delano Holmes, 22, of Indianapolis, was sentenced to a bad-conduct discharge and reduced in rank to private, a day after being convicted at Camp Pendleton, Calif., of negligent homicide in the 2006 stabbing death of an Iraqi soldier he stood watch with at a guard post in Falluja. He has served 10 months in a military prison and will not spend any more time in custody. The lance corporal’s lawyer has said that the killing was in self-defense. Prosecutors contended that he killed the Iraqi and then set up the scene to support his story. He was also found guilty of making a false official statement.
December 15, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/15/world/middleeast/15briefs-MARINEDISCHA_BRF.html?ref=world
Canada: Mounties Urged to Restrict Taser Use
By IAN AUSTEN
In a report, the watchdog commission that oversees the Royal Canadian Mounted Police recommended that Taser stun guns be used only on people who are “combative or posing a risk of death or grievous bodily harm,” much like a conventional firearm rather than a nightstick or pepper spray. The report was ordered by the government after a confused and angry Polish immigrant, Robert Dziekanski, left, died at the airport in Vancouver after being stunned at least twice by Mounties. The report found that Tasers were increasingly being used against people who were merely resistant rather than dangerous.
December 13, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/13/world/americas/13briefs-taser.html?ref=world
Greece: Tens of Thousands March in Strike
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
A one-day strike by unions representing 2.5 million workers brought Athens to a standstill. Protesting planned government changes to the state-financed pension system, an estimated 80,000 people marched through central Athens. In Thessaloniki, 30,000 people rallied, the police said. The strike shut down hospitals, banks, schools, courts and all public services. Flights were canceled, and public transportation, including boats connecting the mainland with the islands, ground to a halt. More strikes are expected next week.
December 13, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/13/world/europe/13briefs-strike.html?ref=world
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GENERAL ANNOUNCEMENTS AND INFORMATION
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Russell Means Speaking at the Transform Columbus Day Rally
"If voting could do anything it would be illegal!"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8Lri1-6aoY
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Stop the Termination or the Cherokee Nation
http://groups.msn.com/BayAreaIndianCalendar/activismissues.msnw?action=get_message&mview=1&ID_Message=5580
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We Didn't Start the Fire
http://yeli.us/Flash/Fire.html
I Can't Take it No More
http://lefti.blogspot.com/2007_11_01_archive.html#9214483115237950361
The Art of Mental Warfare
http://artofmentalwarfare.com/pog/artofmentalwarfarecom-the-warning/
MONEY AS DEBT
http://video. google.com/ videoplay? docid=-905047436 2583451279
http://www.moneyasd ebt.net/
UNCONSTITUTIONAL
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6582099850410121223&pr=goog-sl
IRAQ FOR SALE
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6621486727392146155
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Port of Olympia Anti-Militarization Action Nov. 2007
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOkn2Fg7R8w
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"They have a new gimmick every year. They're going to take one of their boys, black boys, and put him in the cabinet so he can walk around Washington with a cigar. Fire on one end and fool on the other end. And because his immediate personal problem will have been solved he will be the one to tell our people: 'Look how much progress we're making. I'm in Washington, D.C., I can have tea in the White House. I'm your spokesman, I'm your leader.' While our people are still living in Harlem in the slums. Still receiving the worst form of education.
"But how many sitting here right now feel that they could [laughs] truly identify with a struggle that was designed to eliminate the basic causes that create the conditions that exist? Not very many. They can jive, but when it comes to identifying yourself with a struggle that is not endorsed by the power structure, that is not acceptable, that the ground rules are not laid down by the society in which you live, in which you are struggling against, you can't identify with that, you step back.
"It's easy to become a satellite today without even realizing it. This country can seduce God. Yes, it has that seductive power of economic dollarism. You can cut out colonialism, imperialism and all other kind of ism, but it's hard for you to cut that dollarism. When they drop those dollars on you, you'll fold though."
—MALCOLM X, 1965
http://www.accuracy.org/newsrelease.php?articleId=987
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A little gem:
Michael Moore Faces Off With Stephen Colbert [VIDEO]
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/video/57492/
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LAPD vs. Immigrants (Video)
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/qws/ff/qr?term=lapd&Submit=S&Go.x=0&Go.y=0&Go=Search&st=s
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Dr. Julia Hare at the SOBA 2007
http://mysite.verizon.net/vzeo9ewi/proudtobeblack2/
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"We are far from that stage today in our era of the absolute
lie; the complete and totalitarian lie, spread by the
monopolies of press and radio to imprison social
consciousness." December 1936, "In 'Socialist' Norway,"
by Leon Trotsky: “Leon Trotsky in Norway” was transcribed
for the Internet by Per I. Matheson [References from
original translation removed]
http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1936/12/nor.htm
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Wealth Inequality Charts
http://www.faireconomy.org/research/wealth_charts.html
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MALCOLM X: Oxford University Debate
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dmzaaf-9aHQ
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"There comes a times when silence is betrayal."
--Martin Luther King
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YouTube clip of Che before the UN in 1964
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtATT8GXkWg&mode=related&search
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The Wealthiest Americans Ever
NYT Interactive chart
JULY 15, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/ref/business/20070715_GILDED_GRAPHIC.html
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New Orleans After the Flood -- A Photo Gallery
http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/?article=795
This email was sent to you as a service, by Roland Sheppard.
Visit my website at: http://web.mac.com/rolandgarret
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[For some levity...Hans Groiner plays Monk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51bsCRv6kI0
...bw]
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Which country should we invade next?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3g_zqz3VjY
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My Favorite Mutiny, The Coup
http://www.myspace.com/thecoupmusic
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Michael Moore- The Awful Truth
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xeOaTpYl8mE
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Morse v. Frederick Supreme Court arguments
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_LsGoDWC0o
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Free Speech 4 Students Rally - Media Montage
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfCjfod8yuw
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'My son lived a worthwhile life'
In April 2003, 21-year old Tom Hurndall was shot in the head
in Gaza by an Israeli soldier as he tried to save the lives of three
small children. Nine months later, he died, having never
recovered consciousness. Emine Saner talks to his mother
Jocelyn about her grief, her fight to make the Israeli army
accountable for his death and the book she has written
in his memory.
Monday March 26, 2007
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,,2042968,00.html
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Introducing...................the Apple iRack
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-KWYYIY4jQ
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"A War Budget Leaves Every Child Behind."
[A T-shirt worn by some teachers at Roosevelt High School
in L.A. as part of their campaign to rid the school of military
recruiters and JROTC--see Article in Full item number 4, below...bw]
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THIS IS AN EXCELLENT VIDEO DESTRIBUTED BY U.S. LABOR AGAINST
THE WAR (USLAW) FEATURING SPEAKERS AT THE JANUARY 27TH
MARCH ON WASHINGTON FOCUSING ON THE DEMAND - BRING
THE TROOPS HOME NOW.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6935451906479097836&hl=en
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George Takai responds to Tim Hardaway's homophobic remarks
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcJoJZIcQW4&eurl_
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Iran
http://www.lucasgray.com/video/peacetrain.html
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Another view of the war. A link from Amer Jubran
http://d3130.servadmin.com/~leeflash/
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A Girl Like Me
7:08 min
Youth Documentary
Kiri Davis, Director, Reel Works Teen Filmmaking, Producer
Winner of the Diversity Award
Sponsored by Third Millennium Foundation
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1091431409617440489
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Film/Song about Angola
http://www.prisonactivist.org/angola/
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"200 million children in the world sleep in the streets today.
Not one of them is Cuban."
(A sign in Havana)
Venceremos
View sign at bottom of page at:
http://www.cubasolidarity.net/index.html
[Thanks to Norma Harrison for sending this...bw]
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
"Cheyenne and Arapaho oral histories hammer history's account of the
Sand Creek Massacre"
CENTENNIAL, CO -- A new documentary film based on an award-winning
documentary short film, "The Sand Creek Massacre", and driven by
Southern Cheyenne and Arapaho people who tell their version about
what happened during the Sand Creek Massacre via their oral
histories, has been released by Olympus Films+, LLC, a Centennial,
Colorado film company.
"You have done an extraordinary job" said Margie Small, Tobient
Entertainment, " on the Colorado PBS episode, the library videos for
public schools and libraries, the trailer, etc...and getting the
story told and giving honor to those ancestors who had to witness
this tragic and brutal attack...film is one of the best ways."
"The images shown in the film were selected for native awareness
value" said Donald L. Vasicek, award-winning writer/filmmaker, "we
also focused on preserving American history on film because tribal
elders are dying and taking their oral histories with them. The film
shows a non-violent solution to problem-solving and 19th century
Colorado history, so it's multi-dimensional in that sense. "
Chief Eugene Blackbear, Sr., Cheyenne, who starred as Chief Black
Kettle in "The Last of the Dogmen" also starring Tom Berenger and
Barbara Hershey and "Dr. Colorado", Tom Noel, University of Colorado
history professor, are featured.
The trailer can be viewed and the film can be ordered for $24.95 plus
$4.95 for shipping and handling at http://www.fullduck.com/node/53.
Vasicek's web site, http://www.donvasicek.com, provides detailed
information about the Sand Creek Massacre including various still
images particularly on the Sand Creek Massacre home page and on the
proposal page.
Olympus Films+, LLC is dedicated to writing and producing quality
products that serve to educate others about the human condition.
Contact:
Donald L. Vasicek
Olympus Films+, LLC
7078 South Fairfax Street
Centennial, CO 80122
http://us.imdb.com/Name?Vasicek,+Don
http://www.donvasicek.com
dvasicek@earthlink.net
303-903-2103
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A NEW LOOK AT U.S. RADIOACTIVE WEAPONS
Join us in a campaign to expose and stop the use
of these illegal weapons
http://poisondust.org/
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You may enjoy watching these.
In struggle
Che:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqcezl9dD2c
Leon:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukkFVV5X0p4
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FIGHTBACK! A Collection of Socialist Essays
By Sylvia Weinstein
http://www.walterlippmann.com/sylvia-weinstein-fightback-intro.html
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[The Scab
"After God had finished the rattlesnake, the toad,
and the vampire, he had some awful substance left with
which he made a scab."
"A scab is a two-legged animal with a corkscrew soul,
a water brain, a combination backbone of jelly and glue.
Where others have hearts, he carries a tumor of rotten
principles." "When a scab comes down the street,
men turn their backs and angels weep in heaven, and
the devil shuts the gates of hell to keep him out."
"No man (or woman) has a right to scab so long as there
is a pool of water to drown his carcass in,
or a rope long enough to hang his body with.
Judas was a gentleman compared with a scab.
For betraying his master, he had character enough
to hang himself." A scab has not.
"Esau sold his birthright for a mess of pottage.
Judas sold his Savior for thirty pieces of silver.
Benedict Arnold sold his country for a promise of
a commision in the british army."
The scab sells his birthright, country, his wife,
his children and his fellowmen for an unfulfilled
promise from his employer.
Esau was a traitor to himself; Judas was a traitor
to his God; Benedict Arnold was a traitor to his country;
a scab is a traitor to his God, his country,
his family and his class."
Author --- Jack London (1876-1916)...Roland Sheppard
http://web.mac.com/rolandgarret]
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END ALL U.S. AID TO ISRAEL!
Stop funding Israel's war against Palestine
Complete the form at the website listed below with your information.
https://secure2.convio.net/pep/site/Advocacy?
JServSessionIdr003=cga2p2o6x1.app2a&cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=177
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Sand Creek Massacre
"THE SAND CREEK MASSACRE" AWARD-WINNING DOCUMENTARY
SHORT FEATURED AT NATIVE AMERICAN FILM FESTIVAL:
http://www.aberdeennews.com/mld/aberdeennews/news/local/16035305.htm
(scroll down when you get there])
"THE SAND CREEK MASSACRE" AWARD-WINNING
WRITER/FILMMAKER DONALD L. VASICEK REPORT:
http://www.digitalcinemareport.com/sandcreekmassacre.html
"THE SAND CREEK MASSACRE" AWARD-WINNING DOCUMENTARY
SHORT FINALIST IN DOCUMENTARY CHANNEL COMPETITION (VIEW HERE):
http://www.docupyx.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=28&Itemid=41
VIEW "THE SAND CREEK MASSACRE" AWARD-WINNING DOCUMENTARY
SHORT FILM MOVIE OF THE WEEK FOR FREE HERE:
http://twymancreative.com/twymanc.html
On November 29, 1864, 700 Colorado troops savagely slaughtered
over 450 Cheyenne children, disabled, elders, and women in the
southeastern Colorado Territory under its protection. This act
became known as the Sand Creek Massacre. This film project
("The Sand Creek Massacre" documentary film project) is an
examination of an open wound in the souls of the Cheyenne
people as told from their perspective. This project chronicles
that horrific 19th century event and its affect on the 21st century
struggle for respectful coexistence between white and native
plains cultures in the United States of America.
Listed below are links on which you can click to get the latest news,
products, and view, free, "THE SAND CREEK MASSACRE" award-
winning documentary short. In order to create more native
awareness, particularly to save the roots of America's history,
please read the following:
Some people in America are trying to save the world. Bless
them. In the meantime, the roots of America are dying.
What happens to a plant when the roots die? The plant dies
according to my biology teacher in high school. American's
roots are its native people. Many of America's native people
are dying from drug and alcohol abuse, poverty, hunger,
and disease, which was introduced to them by the Caucasian
male. Tribal elders are dying. When they die, their oral
histories go with them. Our native's oral histories are the
essence of the roots of America, what took place before
our ancestors came over to America, what is taking place,
and what will be taking place. It is time we replenish
America's roots with native awareness, else America
continues its decaying, and ultimately, its death.
You can help. The 22-MINUTE SAND CREEK MASSACRE
DOCUMENTARY PRESENTATION/EDUCATIONAL DVD IS
READY FOR PURCHASE! (pass the word about this powerful
educational tool to friends, family, schools, parents, teachers,
and other related people and organizations to contact
me (dvasicek@earthlink.net, 303-903-2103) for information
about how they can purchase the DVD and have me come
to their children's school to show the film and to interact
in a questions and answers discussion about the Sand
Creek Massacre.
Happy Holidays!
Donald L. Vasicek
Olympus Films+, LLC
http://us.imdb.com/Name?Vasicek,+Don
http://www.donvasicek.com
dvasicek@earthlink.net
303-903-2103
"THE SAND CREEK MASSACRE" AWARD-WINNING DOCUMENTARY
SHORT FEATURED AT NATIVE AMERICAN FILM FESTIVAL:
http://www.aberdeennews.com/mld/aberdeennews/news/local/16035305.htm
(scroll down when you get there])
"THE SAND CREEK MASSACRE" AWARD-WINNING
WRITER/FILMMAKER DONALD L. VASICEK REPORT:
http://www.digitalcinemareport.com/sandcreekmassacre.html
"THE SAND CREEK MASSACRE" AWARD-WINNING DOCUMENTARY
SHORT FINALIST IN DOCUMENTARY CHANNEL COMPETITION (VIEW HERE):
http://www.docupyx.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=28&Itemid=41
VIEW "THE SAND CREEK MASSACRE" AWARD-WINNING DOCUMENTARY
SHORT FILM MOVIE OF THE WEEK FOR FREE HERE:
http://twymancreative.com/twymanc.html
SHOP:
http://www.manataka.org/page633.html
BuyIndies.com
donvasicek.com.Peace Articles at Libraryofpeace.org">
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