The Letter I Sent to Senator Jim Webb

To The Honorable Jim Webb
January 25, 2007

Dear Sir,

Thank you.

My ex-husband, was a Vietnam Era Vet, though he never served in country, he did serve on a mission that is still classified. He is the father of my two oldest children and he died in a motorcycle accident last summer.

After the war he was able to start his life due to the GI Bill. I know that he would be very pleased to know that these new vets will be able to start their life with help from a new GI Bill.

Unfortunately he also had two things that these new vets will suffer and are suffering from. While on that classified mission he suffered a head injury, which left him in a coma. He awoke half a world away at Wilford Hall in San Antonio. Decades later, this hospital is where he died.

He also had PTSD. Had it been treated effectively and vigorously when he came home, I believe his life would not have been so troubled.

It is my hope that you and other Senators and Congresspersons who have served, especially in war, will make sure that these service persons will have full and abundant “after” services and therapy when they come home and rejoin our communities.

Veterans from every war have needed these services. In wars past many took to self medicating, becoming alcoholics, crippled by depression or violent toward their families. While we did not know then what we know now about PTSD, trauma, shock, etc. there is no excuse for us to withhold, deny or under fund these necessary services to those who have given and sacrificed so much, just because their country asked them to. We owe them.

Thank you for your service then and now, and please thank your son for me.

Answer Mr. Bush!

Call the White House and tell him "NO"
Call your Senators and Congresspersons and tell them "NO"
Print out Cindy Sheehan's quote and put it in your car window (or home window)

De-escalate
Investigate
Troops Home NOW!


Or :

No Gulf of Tonkin
Not Another Viet Nam
Stop the Insanity
Mr. Bush, Be GONE!

Of Lower Standards, Urban Warfare and US Street Gangs in Iraq

Two years or so ago I commented on Americablog about my concern for US soldiers coming back from Iraq and their psychological welfare. As the ex-wife of a Vietnam veteran the issue is of interest to me.

Will these men and women who served our country receive the mental help they need for them to get through the horrors that they've seen and allow them to be fully functioning members of society? Or will the government once again cut the benefits these who've risked so much for this nation deserve in full?

Well we already know that the Bush government/administration, while risking no family members themselves, are cutting back and/or not fully funding necessary services for those who have served. The president who can afford to privately pay for his own medical insurance and doctors, receives the finest tax payer funded care. He always will.

What I did not think about when raising my concerns is that when the military lowered it standards to try and reach recruiting goals, that meant letting in gang members. These gang members are more than eager to "serve" their country.

All that training in urban warfare, house to house fighting, sniping, suppressive fire, kill zones, explosives, not to mention field medic training. Our modern paramedics came from the medics in Vietnam. So successful was it to have on the scene medical help, that more soldiers survived. Bring that lesson home and ambulance ride became more than just loading the injured into the back a converted station wagon. It became, in some cases, a fighting chance to live.

The medics in Vietnam brought back their training for use at home. What do you think gang members, learning urban combat tactics will bring back from operations in places like Fallujah, Du-jail, etc.?

Don't think a gate community will save you either. Ever see what towns/cities in Iraq look like? Here's Mosul:

So while this brewing problem goes under and un-reported (another case of our lap dog media) do you think a Republican controlled government will help pay for the domestic devastation these military trained gang members in an unnecessary war, will cause? (At any other time they'd be vetted out).

Me neither.


Video report from North Carolina
The News Blog
Training Terrorists for the Home Front HuffPo
Street Gangs: The New Urban Insurgency Strategic Studies Institute
United States Army War College
Violent gangs infiltrating US Military? -- Whatsakyer

US intelligence officer brags about torturing in call to talk show

Way back, in what seems like a long time ago, I remember my grade school teachers telling my class with pride that we as a nation “didn’t do” torture. This was during the Vietnam War, this is what the commies did, not us.

We were above this. We were a civilized nation, besides any information gathered under torture is dubious at best. This is what happened in far flung places like Turkey (Billy Hayes), the USSR, or Uganda. Or closer to home like Chile, Haiti, Guatemala and Argentina. We were the beacon of hope, the island of light in all this darkness. This was NOT what “WE” did.

I was told this by conservative, Bible believing, Republican, red white and blue, support the President and the war in Vietnam, teachers.

Of course there was torture in America, places such as Arkansas State Prisons. But that, we were told, was aberrant and something to be removed from the American landscape. Dr. King was in, the KKK was bad, freedom was strong and the commies would not be allowed to take another country.

Then we had 9-11 and our moral compass changed. Some of us reasoned that torture would be okay, they forgot or chose to ignore that when you do this, you loose something vital from yourself, or from your nation as a whole. This is especially true of a nation of high ideals, that the forefathers articulated in several documents.

We used the excuse, or "reason" that if you caught a person who had kidnapped many people and they would all die if you didn’t find out where they were, torture should be an option. What if they were children?! Wouldn’t you use torture to compel the answer? But we had faced exactly that scenario in Chowchilla, CA. The people, children no less, were rescued before they died. Interestingly enough a year before I had checked out a book from my school library which had this very same plot. The crime followed the book in almost every detail. (I guess we should have had the Patriot Act back then so the government would have known about everyone who had read it. Someone may have gotten the idea from this book).

But now we are through the looking glass when it comes to torture. We do it (Abu Graib) or we “out source” it to other countries (rendition). And we even have intelligence officers calling into talk shows bragging about what they do and what they’ve done And talk show hosts applauding and supporting it. (don’t listen to this if you’ve just eaten or get sick easily).

While we have no way of knowing if this person actually did these things or is even with the government, what was once hard to believe about us, is now not so hard to believe. What if the people in question are innocent or really know nothing? Impossible you say? And no innocent person has been sent to prison here for a crime they didn’t commit. We have already "renderd" some proven to be innocent to be tortured.

We then we wonder why the rest of the world feels they way they do about us and does not trust us. "What?" we say, "even with this we are no where near as bad as those we replaced." But when you go in under the banner of "moral imperative" or reframe the reasons that you invaded a country under that banner, then you have an obligation to be hold yourself, your government, your officers and your troops strictly to that standard.

We have not and what we’ve lost to our collective American soul, and in our standing in the world as a whole is immeasurable. We fell down the slippery slope, and it may well be impossible for us to climb back up.

See also:
Bush Administration Trying to Act Like USSR

Did Bin Laden know the American people better than Bush?

When I play either a board military game or computer military game I play one of two ways to win. I either play a war of attrition or I win by overwhelming force. With few variations, this is how I play. I’m not an inspired tactician, or even a good tactician, but I also try not to be the reincarnation of General McClellan (Civil War).

My husband knows the way I play. I don’t know if you would call him inspired but if he can knock me out of the way I tend to play, he will win. Actually he almost always wins, though I have learned to throw a few surprises his way.

It has long been a military or even a business axiom to know ones enemy. But the only one who seems to have heeded that lesson was Osama Bin Laden, not our president or military leaders.

Early on Bin Laden told us he knew us. He told us we could not fight a war of attrition, but he could. Bush and all sort of laughed and said we could. Maybe we could, but Vietnam is still fresh and will be until those on both sides of the war (the protestors and those that fought) are no longer with us. Bush and company then proceeded to do many things which played into bin Laden’s hand and may prove him right. I want to highlight two.

First when facing an enemy who declares that he can withstand a war of attrition is to make sure the war never gets to that point. You don’t need to be a brilliant tactician to understand that. You are creative and you come in with overwhelming force. You move fast and you don’t forget history. Bin Laden hasn’t.

As far back as the Reagan years we have left areas when the death toll rose and we wondered why we were there. Even if one thought that after 9-11 it might be different, why risk it? If Bin Laden was right and we could not take a war of attrition, why send in a military that is far under strength for the job at hand? Why test his theory? Why prosecute this war in Iraq in a way that insures that it becomes a war of attrition?

If there was any doubt that we not only had problems remembering history or did not understand how to prosecute this war, it all should have been erased when Jessica Lynch’s supply convoy was attacked. The administration looked shocked! It acted as if an attack such as this were unheard of. But attacking supply lines, routes and convoys has been a constant military practice since long before Alexander the Great rolled through the area. Was this arrogance because we thought the enemy stupid?

We’ve done this before. Pappy Boyington (WWII) wrote about how he had been trained to think of the Japanese as bucked tooth simpletons in thick lensed glasses. But once fighting them in the AFG he realized that not only was that wrong but that stereotyped racism actually made him underestimate the enemy and under fight him as well. In sort he did not fight as well or to the best of his abilities. (After getting through the shock that the enemy was not as presented he then fought to the best of his ability)

Or were the problems in prosecuting this war correctly due to the incompetence of those planning this war? Not only was Lynch’s convoy ill protected ( lack of sufficient troops), but it didn’t even have the necessary armor.

The second failure I want to highlight here is a failure in leadership. Rumesfeld may want to rewrite history, but the fact is there is a man named Hans Blix who found no WMD. Not everyone believed that Saddam had WMD, not every intelligence report supported it. It has even come to light that the CIA massaged intelligence reports about WMD, or failed to give reports of opposing intelligence. We are can speculate as to why; a white house that is filled with “yes” men and fear of giving the president anything that does not support his already formed conclusions, retaliation for Saddam’s attempt on Bush Sr. life, oil, etc. of possible reasons for this, there is no shortage.

But the real face of all of this is that the White House did something it can never do when asking someone to serve and to die in it’s service, and that is lie to them as to why. Mothers, fathers, spouses and even a nation will begin to turn when the lie is discovered.

The lie shortens the ability for the public to support the war, no matter how long needed, or how many mistakes in it’s prosecution are made. An administration who lies to the American people to justify a war, undermines itself. And it shortens the nation's tolerance.